Piscataway

The name may be derived from the area's earliest European settlers who came from near the Piscataqua River, a landmark defining the coastal border between New Hampshire and Maine, whose name derives from peske (branch) and tegwe (tidal river), or alternatively from pisgeu (meaning "dark night") and awa ("place of") or from a Lenape language word meaning "great deer". The area was appropriated in 1666 by Quakers and Baptists who had left the Puritan colony in New Hampshire.

Piscataway Township was formed on December 17, 1666, and officially incorporated by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 21, 1798, as part of the state's initial group of 104 townships. The community, the fifth-oldest municipality in New Jersey, has grown from Native American territory, through a colonial period and is one of the links in the earliest settlement of the Atlantic Ocean seacoast that ultimately led to the formation of the United States.