South Orange, a township and a village of Essex (disambiguation)|Essex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the N.E. of the state, about 15 m. W. of New York City. Pop. of the village (1900), 4608, of whom 1140 were foreign-born; (1905) 4932; (1910) 6014. Pop. of the township, excluding the village (1900), 1630; (1905, state census) 1946. The village is served by the Morris & Essex division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad, and is connected with Orange and with Newark by electric lines. It is primarily a residential suburb of New York and Newark. On the Orange mountain is Essex county park, a wild tract with forest roads. The western part of the township is locally known as Maplewood, the eastern as Hilton. South Orange has a public library and a town hall, and is the seat of Seton Hall College (Roman Catholic), named in honour of Mother Elizabeth Seton, founded at Madison, N.J., in 1856, and removed to South Orange in 1860. Among the landmarks of South Orange are an old stone house of unknown date, but mentioned in legal documents describing the surrounding property as early as 1680; the Baldwin House (c. 1717); and the Timothy Ball House (1743). Settlements were made within the present limits of the township in the latter part of the 17th century by some of the founders of Newark. The township was created in 1861 from parts of the town of Orange and the township of Clinton. The citizens secured in 1869 a village charter providing a village president and a board of trustees; in 1904 the village was entirely separated from the township, except as regards school government. In 1891 a tract of 150 acres, known as Montrose Park and containing many handsome residences, was annexed to the village.
See H. Whittemore, The Founders and Builders of the Oranges, (Newark, 1896).
