This is one of my favorite photographs.1 The building is Mount’s Hotel on Flemington’s Main Street, across from and a little north of the Union Hotel. It was replaced in the 1970s by the group of shops called ‘New Market,’ built by Don Schuman.
Actually, the hotel was not entirely replaced.
I reached out to architect Chris Pickell to see if he had any thoughts on what the building was like before it was so dramatically changed. He told me (via email) that he had visited it and found remnants of the old building. He wrote:
I have off-and-on tried to map this photo of the hotel onto the current Newmarket complex. I do believe that parts of that building are still there – the exterior walls are solid brick, and the wood floors upstairs are sagging, and obviously old. In the basement, there are rubble stone foundations left from a corner fireplace just a bit behind the sidewalk – clearly the remnants of a colonial era fireplace – very old.
Jan Armstrong, someone very familiar with Flemington history, told me that the name County Hotel used to be visible in the sidewalk by the sewing machine repair store, but after sidewalk ‘improvements,’ the name disappeared. She also noted that at one time there was a clump of bushes behind the Market Roost restaurant, and hidden inside was the carriage steppingstone with the letters C.H.
As to the hotel’s appearance in the photograph above, Chris Pickell wrote that it conforms to the Italianate style, popular from about 1850 to 1870. I will have more to say about that in a later article.
And take a look at Main Street in the photograph, still just a dirt road–admittedly, a very wide dirt road. This had me wondering when the town of Flemington got around to paving it. I learned from Chris Pickell that paving municipal roads was related to the form of a town’s government.
My understanding was that ‘boroughitis’ occurred in the 1890’s through the 1920’s in New Jersey – a spate of Boroughs separating from their Townships; largely due to paying for public schools, and the cost & desirability of paving dirt roads in town – townies fer it, farmers agin it.
Farmers ‘agin’ it because of the increased taxes they did not want to pay; even though they were the ones who had been doing the grading. Flemington became a Borough in 1910. The actual paving probably did not happen until a short time before the Lindbergh trial.
The New Market shops had always struck me as out-of-place in a town with so many great 19th-century buildings. I kept wondering what was there before. Finding this photograph gave me the start of an answer.
It was probably taken some time before August 1906 and was labeled ‘Mount’s Hotel.’ Mount was Samuel H. Mount who purchased the hotel property from William H. and Hannah Force on June 1, 1891 for $25,000.2
“The Hunterdon Historical Newsletter” for Winter 1997 identified the stout fellow standing by the lamppost as Cornelius ‘Dutchy’ Tunison, who died in August 1906. Here is part of his obituary in The Democrat-Advertiser that month:
Deceased was the son of Cornelius Tunison, Sen., deceased, and was born in Somerville about 48 years ago. In 1866 his mother and step-father removed to Flemington and here he remained. He was a boy then and arriving at proper age he learned the butchering trade with the late A. Prall Hoagland and followed it for many years. For a number of years past, he had charge of the billiard tables at the County Hotel.
He was an unusually large man, a fact of which he was very proud. In the days of his health and vigor his weight approached 400 pounds, and his strength was in proportion to his enormous dimensions. By nature, he was happy and care-free, and his life was rollicking and gay. Among his associates he was popular and now at his death friends come forward with a word in his praise. His wife, who was a Miss Johnson, died several years ago.
They don’t write obituaries like that anymore.
The County House
The deed for Mount’s purchase in 1891 was for “a certain Hotel property known as the “County House.” That name suggests the reason for bothering to research a property whose original building has lost its appearance and its purpose.
In 1790, over one hundred years before Mount bought his hotel, Flemington was designated the county seat of Hunterdon County, which at the time extended from Trenton on the south to the boundary with Sussex County and the Musconetcong River on the north.
The new county seat needed a new courthouse. George Alexander, “Innkeeper of Flemington,” came to the rescue, conveying a half-acre lot out of his existing 6.5-acre lot on Main Street to the Freeholders of Flemington for the purpose of erecting a new courthouse.3
Alexander’s inn was located where Mount’s hotel was standing in 1906. (The county’s courthouse remains in its original location, although the original courthouse was destroyed by a fire in 1828. It was quickly replaced that year with the courthouse that still stands today.)
By 1807, Alexander’s tavern, then owned by Alexander Bonnell, had acquired the title “The County Tavern,” no doubt in recognition of its connection with the courthouse nearby.4
The Cornell map of 1850 identified it as the County Tavern, but in 1855, a certain Jacob B. Smith took over the tavern, modernized it and turned it into the hotel shown in the photograph above. He advertised it as “The County House” in the Hunterdon Gazette on May 6, 1855 (more on that later). By the time William H. Force bought the hotel, not long after the Civil War, it was called “The County Hotel,” rather than County House.
House, Hotel–the name County was attached to the property for over a century. (It was still called the County Hotel when it was sold in 1907.)
18th Century Flemington
Researching owners of the County House turned out to be a good way to learn about Flemington’s early history. Some of the tavern’s owners were the most important people in Flemington during the 18th and early 19th centuries: Thomas Lowrey, Alexander Bonnell, Samuel L. Southard, Alexander Wurts, and Asa Jones.
I had intended to include Samuel Fleming in that list, since he owned the property where the County House was located. I had assumed his tavern was there, but I was mistaken. Samuel Fleming acquired the property as early as 1741, and he was definitely a tavern owner. But his tavern was located elsewhere. (The history of Fleming’s tavern will have to wait for a separate article.)5
For the history of the tavern/hotel that became the County House, I must begin with the year 1773.
Prior to that year, Fleming’s son-in-law Thomas Lowrey in partnership with Christopher Marshall, apothecary, James Eddy, merchant, Wm. Morris Jr., merchant, all of Philadelphia, and Gershom Lee, carpenter of Amwell acquired Samuel Fleming’s property at a Sheriff’s sale. Fleming had gone into debt, for over £1,000, and could not repay his creditors. Jacob Mattison, one of several of Fleming’s creditors, took him to court, which ordered Fleming’s property to be seized by Sheriff Samuel Tucker and offered for sale. The first sale took place in 1762, in which 166.25 acres was separated from Fleming’s original 210 acres and sold to William Pidgeon of Trenton.6
That left two lots, one of 40 acres, the other of about 3 acres, which were both sold to Fleming’s son-in-law Thomas Lowrey and partner Gershom Lee on September 1, 1766.7 On April 19, 1773, Lowrey and Lee carved out a lot of 6.5 acres from the tract of 40 acres and sold it to one Joseph Smith.
The date of this sale is interesting. In 1762, Lowrey and his partners had purchased not only the bulk of Samuel Fleming’s 210 acres on the west side of Main Street, but also the 147 acres belonging to David Eveland on the east side of the street. Very soon after the Eveland purchase, that property was surveyed and divided into several small lots. (See Union Hotel, part one.)
But that was not the case with the Fleming property. After Fleming’s remaining property was purchased in 1766, nothing else happened to it until this sale to Joseph Smith of 6.5-acres facing most of the small lots on the Eveland tract across Main Street.
Why didn’t Lowrey develop both sides of the street at the same time? I have no answer to that.
The Road to Howell’s Ferry
The lot sold to Joseph Smith in 1773 ran along the west side of Main street, bordered on the north a short distance south of today’s Capner Street and on the south by a line a short distance south of Court Street. Its western border was something else. In a later deed it was described as running along “the road that leads to the Delaware River.” That road was also known as the road to Howell’s Ferry, which is today’s Stockton Borough. It originated as an ancient Indian path running all the way from the Delaware River to Whitehouse and beyond. Today it is known as County Route 523.
Originally the road ran diagonally through the settlement of Fleming’s Town (as it was sometimes called). This route was mapped out in Snell’s 1881 history of Hunterdon County, titled “Plan of Flemington in 1822.”8
The map indicates the County House as “Charles Bonnell’s Hotel (Peter Smick).” The Howell’s ferry road is labeled “Old Centre Bridge road of 1800, since vacated.”
The route shown on the Snell map is a very straight line and probably only an estimate. However, it does explain why the rear border of a Main street lot, shown on the Beers Atlas of 1873 as belonging to W. E. Rockafellow runs at a slant and why prominent resident Robert K. Reading’s house, shown on the Cornell Map of 1850, is set way back from Main Street.
Reading’s house is not shown on the map of 1822. He bought his property in 1833 from then owner of the County Tavern, Stephen Albro. The western boundary then bordered land of Thomas Capner dec’d and ran along a diagonal line, similar to the old route of the Centre Bridge road.9 The Reading house was built facing that road rather than Main Street.
In 1798, Lucius W. Stockton persuaded highway surveyors to set up a new road to run “from J. Petits bridge to Flemington” along a course whose eastern end crossed the Stockton property at the end of Joseph Capner’s hedge, and continuing to “the great road from Flemington to Ringoes old tavern” (Main Street). This new road eventually became known as Mine Street, since it led west from Flemington to properties where copper mining took place. It soon became a preferred route to Howell’s Ferry (by that time known as Centre Bridge).10
The old route through Flemington, the diagonal one, remained in use for a time but was abandoned once “New Street” was established. In 1846, when Reading bought some extra acreage next to his lot, the western boundary was on “New Street,” now Park Avenue. (Note: I cannot say which of the lovely old houses on Park Avenue was the one that Robert K. Reading built.)
That old diagonal route of the road to Howell’s Ferry was the western boundary of Joseph Smith’s 6.5-acre lot.
The Revolution
In January of 1773 Britain passed the infamous Tea Act. Joseph Smith bought his property in April 1773, and the Boston Tea Party took place on Dec. 16, 1773. The next year Committees of Correspondence were set up in each colony, and in 1775 new county governments, including those in New Jersey, chose delegates to attend the newly created colony-wide Provincial Congress.
On May 22, 1775, the First Provincial Congress met in New York City. For safety’s sake, the Second Congress was held on June 14, 1775 in Trenton. That’s when Congress moved to supersede the Colonial Assembly to create a Continental Army.
Perhaps it was this troubling environment that encouraged Thomas Lowrey to sell his Flemington property and move to Frenchtown.
On February 12, 1776, Lowrey offered all of his 300-acre plantation “in the vicinity of Flemington” for sale, with a detailed description of the several buildings on it.11
There were no immediate takers. He was still running his store house in December 1776 when a British group of light horse under Cornet Francis Geary were sent to determine if as was rumored there was a large quantity of beef & pork in Thomas Lowrey’s storehouse.12
Just two days after Lowrey’s notice was published, Joseph Smith offered his 6.5-acre lot for sale in The Pennsylvania Journal.
TO BE SOLD. A House and Lot of Ground containing six acres, part of it good meadow, and in excellent post and rail fence, situated in Flemingtown [sic], in the township of Amwell and county of Hunterdon, West-Jersey, the house is new and has three rooms on a floor, well-finished, with a good cellar under the whole, and is very convenient. It is well situated for a Sadler, or turner and Chairmaker, or any trademan or private family, being upon the Old York road, and very public to Brunswick, Trenton and Philadelphia, and in a very healthy part of the county, is twenty four miles north west from Brunswick, and fifty miles west from New-York, twenty four miles north from Trentown, and forty-five miles from Philadelphia. There is a work-ship lately built, is tight and good, is twelve feet wide, and twenty three feet long; also a barn and stable entirely new, and very convenient. Any one inclinable to purchase may depend on having an indisputable title and know the particulars by applying to JOSEPH SMITH living on the premises.13
Smith’s description of his new house is very interesting. It would have been a treat to see that c.1775 house today, but most of it is long gone. However, as noted above, when architect Chris Pickell visited the building a while ago, he found a corner fireplace in the basement that was of colonial vintage, more than likely the remains of Joseph Smith’s “new house.”
I know next to nothing about this Joseph Smith. I do know that he was not an innkeeper. A later court case identified Smith as a “nailer,” presumably a person who manufactured nails, a job similar to that of a blacksmith. Apparently, this was not a profitable enterprise. It is curious, however, that Smith decided to build a relatively large house just when trouble was brewing. Like Thomas Lowrey’s property, in 1776 Joseph Smith’s went unsold.
On July 2, 1776, four months after Smith and Lowrey offered their properties for sale, the NJ Assembly at Trenton adopted its first constitution, and two days later, the Declaration of Independence was published. On June 26, 1776, the Provincial Congress in Trenton ordered militiamen to suppress Tory demonstrators in Hunterdon County (which included Trenton).
Meanwhile, the Continental Army was in a very difficult situation, attempting to escape Gen. Howe’s British army by moving from Newark across the colony by way of New Brunswick and Princeton to the safety of the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. Washington went ahead to plan the route his troops would be taking.14
On July 30, 1776, George Washington was in Coryell’s Ferry (Lambertville) when he wrote to the Provincial Congress describing his desperate need for boats to ferry his army across the Delaware River. Washington not only needed boats, but he also needed volunteers to supplement his very diminished army, after the travails of the previous months.
Washington did get enough boats to cross the Delaware ahead of Gen. Howe and the British army. When Washington and the Continental Army made a surprise return to New Jersey on Christmas night 1776, a turning point in the war had been reached. Gen. Howe withdrew for the rest of the winter, leaving outposts at New Brunswick and Perth Amboy. For Washington’s army and the residents of NJ attached to the patriot cause, there was a new enthusiasm and commitment.
The Tavern Licenses of 1777
This meant an increased movement of militias and volunteers traveling to all the places where they were required.15
Flemington was an important crossroads. There must have been a considerable demand for taverns there, because on May 5, 1777, three men applied to the county court in Trenton for a tavern license in Flemington.
They were George Alexander, Joseph Mattison and Cornelius Waldron. Unfortunately, the petitions did not specify the exact locations of their taverns.
It is safe to assume that Joseph Mattison ran the tavern on the property owned by his father Jacob Mattison, later to become the Union Hotel. (See Union Hotel, part one).
Samuel Fleming’s old tavern was located in a stone house north of Capner Street. By 1774, Samuel & Mary Fleming had moved to Sherrerd’s Ferry. Their tavern was leased to several different tavern keepers over the years. In 1776, Cornelius Waldron’s petition stated that he “has lately hired the House in Fleming Town & Township of Amwell which has been kept for a Tavern for upwards of twenty or thirty years.”16
When Waldron applied again on May 5, 1777, he wrote that he “has been indulged with [a] License to keep a Public House of entertainment in Flemington for some time past.” Dennis Bertland found that George Alexander was the first to sign Waldron’s petition.17 Alexander’s own license petition noted that “he has been indulged with [a] License to keep a public house of Entertainment at Flemington for some time past” [my emphasis]. Cornelius Waldron was the first to sign Alexander’s petition, and Thomas Lowrey signed both of them.18
So–where was George Alexander’s tavern?
George Alexander & Mary Fleming
On November 29, 1766, not long after Thomas Lowrey purchased Samuel Fleming’s remaining property, Fleming’s daughter Mary married George Alexander.
I have no certain information on Alexander’s parents. He might have been a Scottish immigrant, but he must have been living in the Flemington area for some time before 1766 in order to get married that year. In fact, it is possible Alexander immigrated to Hunterdon along with or soon after the Flemings did. He was not much younger than Thomas Lowrey.
After Lowrey purchased the Fleming property in 1762 and 1766, it is more than likely that Samuel & Esther Fleming remained for a time in their old house, and after Mary Fleming’s wedding, she and her new husband probably moved in with Mary’s parents.
That changed in 1774 when Samuel and Esther removed to Sherrerd’s Ferry. (Sherrerd was John Sherrerd, another of the Fleming’s sons-in-law, who married Elizabeth Fleming about 1760. Sherrerd’s Ferry eventually became Frenchtown.)
What was George Alexander doing between 1766 when he married Mary Fleming and 1777 when he petitioned for a tavern license? I can imagine he was assisting for a time in the management of his father-in-law’s tavern.
Recall the announcement by Joseph Smith in the Pennsylvania Gazette in February 1776. He stated there was a new house on the property with “three rooms on a floor, well-finished, with a good cellar under the whole.” In 1777, a building like this would be quite suitable for a tavern. Considering that Smith was a ‘nailer,’ not a tavernkeeper, and that there were very few substantial buildings in Flemington at that time, it seems possible that Alexander might have rented the house on the 6.5-acre lot to use as a tavern.
But there was something else going on. Joseph Smith had “absconded.”
He had gotten into trouble the same way Samuel Fleming did, by becoming indebted to Jacob Mattison, owner of the hotel property across the street (the Union Hotel).
In October 1777, Jacob Mattison took Joseph Smith to court for a debt of £35. The Hunterdon Court of Common Pleas identified “Joseph Smith, Nailer” as the defendant. It ordered that the sheriff seize Smith’s property at Flemington, including “a lot of about 7 acres more or less,” bordering property of Tho. Lowrey and Thomas Skelton, among others.19
I had assumed from this that Joseph Smith had “absconded” because of his debts. But it turns out there was another, more compelling reason.
The Disappearance of Joseph Smith
Following the success of the Continental Army in December 1776 and January 1777, local Committees of Safey more actively sought to identify Loyalists and to seize their property. Inquisitions were held before these committees to identify local Loyalists and decide what measures to take.
Hunterdon County’s Committee of Safety announced on June 10, 1778 that an Inquisition had been taken and made “at Fleming Town.” There were 22 members of the Committee (listed here as they were listed in the report):
Joseph Reading Esq., Joseph Higgens, Henry Wambock, John Philips, Elijah Allen, Cornelius Quick, Jacob Snider, Derrick Hogland, John Snyder, John Young, Garret Schank, Abraham Williamson, Saml Griggs, David Chambers, Tunis Quick, George Holcombe, Joseph Boss, Cornelius Hoppogh, Charles Reading, Saml. Holcombe, Jonathan Pidcock and Abraham Deremer.
They testified before Justice Nathan Stout, in somewhat garbled language:
“that JOSEPH SMITH [my caps] late of Amwell in the County aforesaid did Since the fourth day of October in the year one Thousand seven hundred and seventy six and before the fifth day of June in the year one thousand Seven hundred and Seventy seven to wit about the Month of December in the year one thousand Seven hundred & Seven Six go to the army of the king of Brittan or at least to some place in their possession and still remains there against the form of his Allegiance [to] the peace of this State the Government . . . We whose names are hereunto set and seals afixed being the Jurors above named to upon the Evedance to as prodused find the inquition [sic] as aforesaid true.”20
Altogether, Inquisitions for 33 men (plus Mary the wife of Brereton Pointing) had been taken. Their names, including that of Joseph Smith, were reported to the Court of Common Pleas by Commissioners for Hunterdon County, Jared Sexton, Nathaniel Hunt and Peter Brunner on August 17, 1778.
NOTICE is hereby given to the said offenders that if they do not appear, or any person in their behalf, or whoever shall think himself interested in the premises, at the next Court of Common-Pleas, to be holden on the fourth Tuesday of October next, at the Court-house in Trenton, for the county of Hunterdon, to offer to traverse the said inquisitions, and put in the required security, that then the said inquisitions will be taken to be true, and final judgment will be entered thereon in favour of the State.21
Joseph Smith did not appear that October. He had fled to the British in December 1776, presumably during that period of time when things looked darkest for the patriots. Or, he may have fled after news of Washington’s crossing reached Flemington, leading Smith to fear retaliation for his support of the British. There must be so much more to this story. Did Smith have a family to take with him? His departure certainly explains why he failed to pay his debt to Jacob Mattison.
By May 5, 1777, Joseph Smith’s property was unoccupied. And as a result of the Inquisition, it had reverted to the State of New Jersey, which named auditors to sell it.
Unfortunately, the deed for the sale of the property is missing. We only know of it from a recital in a later deed, and curiously enough, that deed makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith had left Flemington to join the British army.
The Conveyance of 1779
As a result of the Inquisition, the Court of Common Pleas (or the auditors) ordered Hunterdon County Sheriff Samuel Tucker to seize the property and offer it for sale. The sale took place on June 3, 1779, while the Revolution was still very much in progress. The buyer was George Alexander. A description of the sale was included in a later deed for the same property, dated July 22, 1797.22
It stated, in somewhat confusing language, that
Whereas Samuel Fleming late the place afos’d [aforesaid], i.e., the Township of Amwell] deceased was seized in fee of & in several Tracts of Land in Amwell afsd which was seized and levied upon by Samuel Tucker, Esq. then high sheriff of the county afsd in order to pay his debts & a part thereof was sold to Thomas Lowrey & Gershom Lee as by deed dated September the first 1766 may appear, who being so thereof possessed April 19, 1773 sold a lot thereof to Joseph Smith, who being so seized absconded & being indebted unto Jacob Mattison attached the lot of land afsd which was sold by auditors pursuant to a law of the state of New Jersey, and George Alexander partie to these presents was the purchaser as by a conveyance by the auditors as afsd dated June 3, 1779 . . .
The deed goes on to describe boundaries of the lot, the same ones as listed in “the conveyance of the said Thomas Lowrey & Gershom Lee,” located on “the great road that leads from the Union Iron Works to Trenton and the road to the Delaware River.” The road from the Iron Works eventually became Route 31, and the road to the Delaware River became Route 523. But in 1779, they were little more than paths through a small village.
The lot sold to Smith, and then to George Alexander, contained “six acres one quarter & eleven rods.”
This was the location of George Alexander’s tavern all through the Revolution. It became an attractive meeting place for Hunterdon’s Board of Chosen Freeholders when they were not meeting in Trenton. They would still be meeting there when it the time came to locate a new courthouse in Flemington.
End of Part One of the County House
To be continued.