Roads carved out of the wilderness, along what were once Native American trails, presented opportunities to build larger settlements, and within a few years the towns of New Brunswick, Plainfield, and Somerville were formed. The Hulls, Dunhams and Suydams, pioneers from New Hampshire, first settled in Piscataway Town, near what is now Washington Avenue in Edison but soon they chose larger pieces of property within the confines of the original purchase, to create plantations. Piscataway stretched from the Woodbridge/Perth Amboy area as far south as Princeton's border and north and west to the Sourland Mountains. The original land grant was nearly 300 square miles, and included parts of Somerset County and more than half of Middlesex County. One of the nation's 50 oldest communitiesįounded in 1666, Piscataway, New Jersey, is one of the nation's 50 oldest communities: in 2016 it celebrayted its 350th birthday. A $2.5 million restoration has saved one of the state's best examples of a New Jersey Vernacular style farmhouse today, it is one of only two surviving structures from a vital 17th and 18th century port. In 2003, after nearly a quarter century in operation, the museum suffered a fire that destroyed one third of the building and more than a quarter of its collection of area artifacts. It was decided that the site's name should reflect its 18th century owner as well as its 20th century nickname, and today it is called The Metlar-Bodine House. During the next two and a half decades, as the Route 18 expansion proceeded, archaeological investigations in the River Road area confirmed the historical significance of Raritan Landing and documented Peter Bodine's contributions to the area's 18th century commercial vitality. A hard-fought 1979 preservation effort spearheaded by the Fellowship for Metlar House and Piscataway Township saved the building, and it now serves as the community's Historical and Cultural Museum. In the mid-1970s The New Jersey Department of Transportation purchased the property, intending to use it for a Route 18 interchange. Newton appreciated the home's history and wrote the nomination that placed the site on the State and National Registers. In the 1950s John sold Metlar House to John Newton, a Rutgers University professor. John and his family moved in, his wife re-christening the home 'Metlar House' when it became a trolley-stop for the light rail running along the River Road corridor. In 1914, George's son, John, inherited the house and one-third of his father's real estate holdings. In 1890 he purchased Sunnyside allowing his farm manager, John Mason, to reside there. The entrepreneur George Metlar was a Central New Jersey real estate magnate who, by the late 1800s, owned thousands of acres in Piscataway. This Greek Revival addition, with its lovely front porch and circular attic window, and a Victorian style rehabilitation twenty years later, significantly improved the property.

The Bodine House passed through a number of owners before it was expanded in the 1850s and named 'Sunnyside' by George Knapp, a New Brunswick businessman. The busy commercial center survived numerous British incursions and several battles during the Revolutionary War, thriving until the early 19th century when it was overshadowed by New Brunswick, a boom town and county seat, boasting an interstate canal and railroad connection on the southwest side of the river.

Peter Bodine was a leading merchant at Raritan Landing, one of the nation's earliest river-ports, located in the large 1666 land grant called 'Piscataway.' His small one room home, with sleeping loft and root cellar, was built in 1728 on a bluff along 'The Great Road Up the Raritan' (today's River Road), about 1/4 mile from his warehouse. The older of only two remaining homes from the Colonial era New Jersey community, Raritan Landing

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