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July, 1999. ********************************************************************** ********************************************************************** FROM: From Portrait and Biographical Record, Of Warren and Hunterdon Counties, New Jersey, 1898 Pages 536 and 537 JOHN W. DEHART is one of the most enterprising and aggressive business men, not only of his home place, Bloomsbury, but of Hunterdon County. He has lived here for the past twenty years and during this period has been foremost in the support of local industries, improvements, and in everything which he believed would make for the public benefit. He is interested in agriculture, dealing in live stock, and has many other business concerns. He is the president of the Bloomsbury Canning Company, which, in 1897, canned two hundred thousand cans of peaches and sixty thousand cans of tomatoes. This is one of the young industries of the place and is rapidly gaining prominence. The paternal grandfather of the above, Isaac DeHart, was a native of this state and was a farmer by occupation. He married Dorothy Smith, by whom he had eleven children, of whom William was the eldest. The latter, father of our subject, was born March 4, 1815, on a farm lying between Bloomsbury and Asbury. He became largely interested in cattle dealing, buying and selling stock in all parts of this country. On March 17, 1850, he removed to New York City, where he embarked in the commission business, and during the six years of his residence there he transacted about the most extensive business of any firm in his line. From 1856 until the war broke out, he made his home in Valaparaiso, Indiana, then enlisting for three years in the Twentieth Indiana Regiment. He took part in a number of battles and engagements, and received an honorable discharge in Jeffersonville, July 12, 1865. Upon his return home, he engaged in gardening until his death, which occurred in 1890. He was a Democrat in his political views, and religiously a Methodist. His wife was Elizabeth Osborne, in her girlhood her home being in West Portal, Hunterdon County. They have four children, all of whom are living. Isaac located in Nashville, Tennessee after the war and is a manufacturer of sash, doors and blinds; Mary Elizabeth is the widow of Samuel Kees, of Nashville; Lydia Ann is the wife of W.H.H. Price, now of Atlanta, GA. John Wilson DeHart was born in Asbury, Hunterdon County, on August 21, 1842, and was afforded excellent educational privileges. He was for six years a student in the schools of New York, and later pursued a business course of training in the Bryant & Stratton's Commercial College of Newark, New Jersey. In 1858 he returned to his native place from Indiana, whither he had gone with the family, and found employment with his Uncle Isaac, who was then running a hotel. At the end of a year and a half, our subject went into business on his own account as a buyer and seller of live stock. September 4, 1861, he enlisted in Company H, Eighth New Jersey Regiment and was active until he was wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville, May 5, 1861. He had participated in the engagements of Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Fredericksburg, Seven Days Fight in the Wilderness, and many others. He started in as a corporal and won his way upward to the rank of sergeant major by his own merit and gallant service. For over a year he languished in various hospitals, being transferred from one to another, from the one in Washington to that on Bedloe's Island, thence to one on Long Island, and finally was honorably discharged on September 4, 1864. Upon his recovery he returned to Asbury and continued his former occupation of dealing with cattle. In the spring of 1878 he came to Bloomsbury and has since given much attention to agriculture and kindred things. He owns a fine farm of three hundred acres and regularly employs five men to manage the place. Under his judicious policy, the Bloomsbury Canning Company is flourishing, and on his farm are raised the tomatoes that are canned in the factory. He assisted in the organization of the Gleitz Piano Company, which has since gone out of existence, but he gave no attention to the business, as he was fully occupied with his other interests. He is vice president of the Bloomsbury Cemetery Association. In politics, he is a Democrat, and in religion is a Methodist. He materially aids in meeting the expenses of the church and is liberal with his means on behalf of the needy. On October 19, 1865, Mr. DeHart married Mary Jane, daughter of Charles Stewart, of Asbury. She was born in Little York, Hunterdon County, and is a most estimable lady. As almost in supportable grief came to our subject and wife in 1871, when both of their children were stricken with and died from that dread disease, scarlet fever. They were bright and promising little ones: Eva, aged four years and eight months; and Charles, aged two years and eight months.