• New Jersey had about 100 townships at the time of the American Revolution.  These townships were later divided to reach the current count of 566.  Between the mid 1800's and the early 1900's, new townships were created at the rate of about five per year.

• Meyersville, the oldest settlement in town, was owned in the 1600s by Joel Bebout.  He received the land as a grant from the King of France.  The village was named for Kasper W. Meyer, a wealthy landholder in the community, who deeded a tract of land to be used for a German church and cemetery.
• Millington was a major settlement begun in the 1730s.  It is believed Millington received its name between 1778 and 1833 because of water-powered mills built below the Millington Gorge.  A public school was built about 1850, and that schoolhouse has served as the Municipal Building of Long Hill Township since 1871.
• Gillette was named in 1870-1871 by George Howell, an engineer who surveyed for the construction of the West Line Railroad, which ran from Bernardsville to Summit.  The railroad was given a right of way for the station and tracks as it passed through the Cornish farm in Passaic Township.  Howell named the village Gillette to honor the Cornish family. He had married Rachel Gillette Cornish, and he chose his wife's middle name for this part of town.
• Stirling was settled in 1740.  It was named by Fred S. Winston who purchased about 500 acres of land in the area for development.  He named the area after Lord Stirling who had owned 1,000 acres of land lying on both sides of the Passaic River.  A manufacturing and residential community was developed in the area  of the railroad in the decades after the Civil War.
• Homestead Park, purchased in the 1730's, is the easternmost section of the township.  Homestead Park was named in 1920 by developer L. Preston Gates.  It was one of the first major residential developments in the township.

For curiousity value, you might want to see a 1905 topographic map of Passaic Township.  It is large, and you will have to scroll around to use it.  Courtesy of unh.edu.

The New Jersey League of Historical Societies maintains a list of all the Historical Societies in New Jersey.  It is somewhat out-of-date.

The Morris County Heritage Commission website also lists valuable information about local preservation.

In the 1910's, the farming villages (New Vernon, Green Village) in the northern end of Passaic Township were depressed.  The good earth was exhausted, and the parcels had been divided by inheritance so they were uneconomically small to farm.  There was no railroad and hence, no industry.  The young men had gone off to war, and many did not come back.

Some industrialists in New York decided this was a good place for estates, and began buying up distressed farm parcels and consolidating large estates.  They built homes and bought cars.  Land values went up, tax assessments went up and soon, the northern villages were paying more than half the taxes in Passaic Township.

The new landowners demanded the township improve the local roads for their fine new automobiles, but the Township Committee was slow to act.  The votes were in the (industrialized) southern villages.

The new landowners had good connections in Trenton.  They got the Legislature to pass a bill to create the new township, with no discussion and no local votes.  It was a surprise to everyone in the southern villages.  To keep things moving and not get into any extraneous controversy, they simply named the township after President Warren Harding.

They then held an election for their own Committee, hired away all the Passaic Township officials who lived in the northern villages, and started improving roads (but not TOO much).