The history of Somerville began with a tavern on a hill and the stage set for action by eight years of war that left this nation free and independent and New Jersey impoverished and struggling to rebuild. The tavern keeper, Cornelius Tunison, offered to give land for a new county courthouse in which the congregation could worship on Sundays. Voters gave their approval in 1782. He was not around to profit from subsequent development because decades passed before so much as a village materialized. The first signs of significant progress were improvements to the stretch of the Great Road by New Jersey Turnpike Co., chartered in 1806. When the NJ Legislature in 1863 gave Somerville power churches, more banks, more stores, more schools, a library, a hospital and trolley cars the population had doubled by 1905. In 1909 Somerville elected its first borough council and chose Charles Kenyon to be its first mayor.