John Hart (New Jersey politician)
| John Hart | |
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| Born | between 1706 and 1713 Stonington, Connecticut (uncertain) |
| Died | May 11, 1779 (age 66-74) Hunterdon County, New Jersey |
| Resting place | Old School Baptist Meeting House Burial Ground, Hopewell, New Jersey |
| Occupation | Public official/politician |
| Known for | signer of the United States Declaration of Independence |
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John Hart (born between 1706 and 1713 – May 11, 1779) was a public official and politician in colonial New Jersey who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and also signed the Declaration of Independence.
Sources disagree as to the year and place of Hart's birth. He was perhaps born in 1706 in Stonington, Connecticut, or in 1713 in Hopewell Township, Burlington (now part of Mercer) County, New Jersey.
Hart was baptized at the Maidenhead Meetinghouse (now the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville) on December 31, 1713. He was the son of Captain Edward Hart, a farmer, public assessor, Justice of the Peace, and leader of a local militia unit during the French and Indian War, and grandson of John Hart, a carpenter who came to Hopewell from Newtown, Long Island.
In 1741, John Hart married Deborah Scudder (1721–1776). The couple would have thirteen children: Sarah, Jesse, Martha, Nathaniel, John, Susanna, Mary, Abigail, Edward, Scudder, an infant daughter, Daniel, and Deborah, of whom only Daniel and Deborah were still minor children at the time of John Hart's death in 1779. Deborah Hart predeceased her husband, dying October 28, 1776. In 1747 he donated a piece of land in his front meadow to local Baptists who had been seeking a place to build a church. The location was known for some time thereafter as the Old Baptist Meeting House. John Hart is buried there.
Hart was elected to the Hunterdon County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1750. He was first elected to the New Jersey colonial Assembly in 1761 and served there until 1771. He was appointed to the local Committee of Safety and the Committee of Correspondence, and became a judge on the Court of Common Pleas. He was often called "Honest John."
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