Our History
​
​
For more than two and a half centuries, the English family Farm on Valley Road in Liberty Corner, a village of Bernards Township, has been in continuing use. It was settled in 1740, witnessed the Revolutionary War, hosted the French when the army of Comte Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau encamped overnight in 1781 en route to Yorktown, VA and the surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis; served as the first manse of the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church from 1837-1872; thrived in a dairy business with the arrival of the railroad in 1872. It has retained its landscape of gently rolling cultivated fields while Bernards Township developed around it.
This respected agricultural holding has contributed to the life of the community through involvement in daily activities. English family members and their extended relatives have participated in events in Township, County and State governments while working the land. In addition there is another important parcel directly east, across Valley Road, that contains Harrison Brook surrounded by a grazing meadow.
It was Jacob Castner who settled in Annin’s Corner (later called Liberty Corner) and built the first house on the farm. His son, Peter, fought in the Revolutionary War. Nicholas Conover Jobs, a Bound Brook teacher, married into the family in 1815, marrying Peter’s daughter Margaret. Nicholas was a member of the NJ State Legislature and Liberty Corner Postmaster. As a trustee of the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church, he arranged for the Rev. James English (The Old Dominie) to serve as the first pastor (1837-1873). Born in 1810, Rev. English was a direct descendant of the family that founded Englishtown. He married Nicholas’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth.
Conover English, son of Nicholas Conover Jobs English and grandson of Rev. English, was the father of Woodruff J. and Nicholas C. English, who owned and operated the farm together from the 1950s until the early 1980s, when Woodruff took over ownership of the farm. Woodruff was an attorney who led McCarter & English, New Jersey’s oldest and largest law firm. As a boy, Mr. English recalled helping to take milk cans in a horse drawn wagon from his father’s dairy farm in Liberty Corner to where the milk was pasteurized, bottled and sent by railroad to Newark and New York. The five adult children of Woodruff and Carolyn English and their children are the current owners of the family farm.
In December 2003, Bernards Township recognized the importance of this site by placing an historic marker on the property which reads “French Encampment 1781”. The farm is located within the Liberty Corner Historic District, entered into the NJ State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1991. In May 2004, the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission awarded the English family a citation for historic preservation and continuing use of the English Farm.
Contributed by June Kennedy
​