In 1762, Jonathan Hampton, of Elizabethtown, surveyed the location for a county courthouse and town green at the intersection of a military supply road he built during the French and Indian War and a major north–south artery called the King's Highway (present-day New Jersey Route 94). The construction of the courthouse was completed in 1765 and the village that developed around it became known as "Sussex Court House". The county courthouse was the site of a raid by British partisan Lieutenant James Moody during the American Revolution.