The first recorded European settler within the boundaries of present-day Newton was a German Palatine immigrant named Henry Hairlocker who arrived sometime before 1751 when he appears in Morris County records as receiving a tavern license. The "Newtown Precinct", a large township, was created in 1751, and Sussex County was created from Morris two years later on June 8, 1753. The township would be named "Newtown" after the colonial village of Newtown in Queens, New York from where the Pettit family originated (the six Pettit brothers, all prominent landowners and influential figures in early local government, settled in northwestern New Jersey in the 1740s) or from its status as a "new town".