An illustration of Pastor Constant Hart with the Baptists of Wantage and Hardyston coming to a log meeting house. He is shown with a horse, as clergy in the wilderness were often itinerant—traveling from village to village to deliver their sermons.
During this prelude to the actual 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence we are looking at some of our local people who put their possessions and lives on the line for freedom for America. We speak here about Reverend Constant Hart: Revolutionary-Era Baptist Pastor.
Reverend Hart was born in 1728 in Little Compton, R.I. From the writings of A.A. Haines, Hart was a Baptist pastor and a community leader in Sussex County during the Revolutionary War.
Pastor Hart had, in 1777, organized a religious society that took the name “Baptist Church of Wantage, Hardyston and Newton. They built a house of worship on Lawrence’s Hill to the west of Hamburg. This was likely the hill along today’s Route 94 where the Lewis Morris’ (signer of the Declaration of Independence) daughter lived with her husband Thomas Lawrence in the 1790s.
This apparently was not satisfactory as many Baptist families lived in Wantage further north so in 1782 it was taken down and rebuilt in Wantage and became known as The First Baptist Church of Wantage or commonly known as the Papakating Meeting House. It is said that this second building was on the hill just above today’s Papakating Cemetery. A third church was then built where it stands today in Sussex Borough.
In the Hamburg area, the earliest settlers were Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed who occasionally had religious meetings in their house as early as 1750. Hart, Marsh, and Southworth were Baptists who came to Hamburg in 1770. Pastor Hart was chosen as the leader after Pastor Marsh was killed in the massacre at Wyoming, Pennsylvania in 1778.
The widely known and feared massacre at Wyoming involved the British Loyalists and several bands of Indians. This reinforced the fearful condition of the settlers of Sussex County, one to which they could respond in force to a year later in the Revolutionary War.
Bill Truran, Sussex County’s historian, may be contacted at billt1425@gmail.com He is the author of “Franklin High School: Two Basketball Dynasties (with Mike Ferrara).”
