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Newton is the largest and oldest town in Jasper County. Because of its favorable location within the county, it was named county seat in 1835.
Jasper County was formed in 1831 and approved on Dec. 19, 1834. The county was named after American Revolutionary War hero, Sergeant Jasper. He and his close friend, Sergeant Newton, were patriots that saved American prisoners of war from certain death at the hands of British soldiers. Thus, the county and town became their namesakes.
A post office was established in Newton in March of 1883. The post office was not established in a building, but rather in a man’s hat. A rider brought the mail from Vincennes, Ind., made a stop in Newton once a week and then continued delivering mail on his route north of Newton. By 1841 the town had increased to five families. Lawrence Hollenbock and Samuel Garwood built a saw and grist mill and Benjamin Harris opened the first grocery store in Newton. In 1855, Newton had Miller’s Hotel and a small inn known as The
American House that is now Yesterday's and Today’s Pub
.
By 1865, the population of Newton grew to 300 and a decade later reached 400 people. In 1874 Joe Litzelman’s Hack Express began traveling daily to and from Olney on what is now Route 130.
Today, Newton has a population near 3,000. The community is made up of local businesses, industry, a high school of more than 600 students and several organizations and churches.
The old burying ground at Centre and Cotton streets was one of the first to be included in the National Register of Historic Places as an individual site. It is the most important, the most evocative and also the most fragile historic site in the city. As the resting place of Newton’s founding families it is a direct link with the past and, as an out- door museum, it displays the sequence of styles in gravestone art and the changes in burial practices over the years.
The first permanent residents in what would become Newton settled near the Brighton line in the 1630s. Gradually others joined them and by the 1650s about fifteen families were living in an area that was still part of Cambridge. Because of this, transacting town business, going to school or attending religious services involved a journey (probably on foot) to the vicinity of Harvard Square.
In 1654, most of the families living south of the river started holding religious meetings locally, and as a means of prodding the General Court to relieve them of taxes to support the minister in Cambridge, John Jackson gave an acre of land to be used as a burying place and for a meeting house. This acre remains the core of the burying ground and the site of the first meeting house is marked by a monument erected in 1852 by the descendants of the first settlers. The twenty names inscribed on the west face of the marble obelisk are now all but obliterated, but attached to schools, streets, brooks and ponds, they are familiar to modern residents.
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