NJ’s oldest house?    (OLD Stone House )

According to my old encyclope­dia, South Orange is located on the Rahway River — and the Del., Lack., and West, and the Newark and S. Orange electric railways.

The town is picturesquely locat­ed on the Orange Mountains, with many fine residences, particularly those of New York businessmen. The new town hall was completed in 1895, and the population increased from 2,178 in 1880 to an estimated 5,000 in 1895.

Frederick W. Ricord edited in 1898 a biographical and geological history of Essex County. He wrote that William A. Brewer Jr.’s ancestors arrived in Boston in 1632. William Augustus Brewer, born in 1807 in Boston, by profession. a druggist, enjoyed his native city but as he aged he lived with his son in South Orange, where he died at the age of 83. Of his four children, William 4ugustus Jr., after Harvard and employment in the profession of civil engineering, became an actuary at Mutual Life Insurance. in 1860 he joined the Washington Life insurance Co. as its secretary and actuary, was promoted to vice president and in 1879 he became president of the organization.

He lived in South Orange from 1867 until 1916 and had purchased an old local landmark known as the “Stone House by the Stone House Brook.” He built an addition to the old stone house that still left the historic building  pretty much as it had been, incorporating it into a Queen Ann Shingle-style mansion with Folk Victorian influences — essentially’ building an additional house in front of the original build­ing. The residence was three units wide and two units deep, a side-gables building with a full front and three stories high. Brewer was very active in the community serv­ing in numerous positions. For instance, he was commissioner of assessments and president of the village from 1875 to 877, as well as a long-tern, secretary of the South Orange Library Association In 1881 he was appointed one of the commissioners of drainage whose job was to provide the means for draining the east branch of the Rahway River. That particular area, close to the stone house, was swamp land with lots of mos­quitoes. With Brewer in charge the area was cleaned up and the land donated for public use to what is now Grove Park.

Nathaniel Wheeler, a founder of Newark and signer of the Funda­mental agreement of the Newark colony was not only the firsi hilly recorded European settler in that area, but also the first recorded owner of the Stone House as well as the surrounding area, a farm of about 60 acres. All together there had been 20 known and recorded owners of this venerable home, though some of these went bankrupt while living there. The Stone House, in existence since 1680, has the distinction of being believed to be the oldest house in the state of New Jersey. It is listed on both the slate and national Registers of Historic Places.

Owned by the township of South Orange Village since 1953, ii was once leased to the Board of Education As reported by The South Orange Record, it was prob­ably the only Board of Education building with a fully operational wine cellar. Vacant since 1983, efforts are now being made not only to rehabilitate the building, but also to conduct additional research.

Tours with a taped oral history are available Save our History, Save our House,” is the slogan of the South Orange Historical and Preservation Society. Donations go to P.O. Box 61 in South Orange.

Does anyone know of an older New Jersey house than that?

F Kurt Landsberger is reached at kLandsberger@ belart . com

Klandesbergerbelart.com