Middletown Township is a township in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township had a total population of 66,522, making it the state's 16th largest municipality, having seen an increase of 195 residents (0.3%) from its population of 66,327 in the 2000 Census, when it was the state's 17th most populous municipality, which had in turn declined by 1,856 (-2.7%) from the 68,183 counted in the 1990 Census. Middletown is one of the oldest sites of European settlement in New Jersey.

Due to its affluence, low crime, access to cultural activities, public school system, and central commuting location, Middletown was ranked in 2006, 2008, and 2010, and 2014 Top 100 in CNNMoney.com's Best Places to Live.Time magazine listed Middletown on its list of "Best Places to Live 2014".

In 2016, SafeWise named Middletown Township as the fifth-safest city in America to raise a child; the township was the highest ranked of the 12 communities in New Jersey included on the list.

Small communities of the Lenape Navesink tribe were common throughout the area when the first known European landing in what would become Middletown Township occurred in 1609. Sea captain and explorer Henry Hudson, in search of the mythical Northwest Passage in the service of the Dutch West India Company, anchored along the shores of Sandy Hook Bay in 1609, describing the area "a very good land to fall in with and a pleasant land to see." While a patroonship was granted by the company in 1651 the land wasn't officially settled. Today's Shoal Harbor Museum and Old Spy House includes portions of a house constructed by Thomas Whitlock, one of the area's first European settlers (and a Reformed Baptist at Middletown) who arrived here as early as 1664, before the English conquest of New Netherland began in 1665 as part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Long-standing tradition had Penelope Stout, one of the first settlers, hiding in a tree from hostile Native Americans.

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