The Old Dutch Parsonage is a historical house built in 1751, moved about 1913 and now located at 65 Washington Place,
Somerville
Somerville may refer to:
*Somerville College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford
Places
*Somerville, Victoria, Australia
* Somerville, Western Australia, a suburb of Kalgoorlie, Australia
* Somerville, New Zealand, a subur ...
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, United States. It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
on January 25, 1971, and noted as "an excellent example of mid-18th-century
Flemish Bond
Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and Mortar (masonry), mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called ''Course (architecture), courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall.
Bricks ...
brick structure".
History
The -story brick house was the home of the first ministers of the first
Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...
es in the area, built by the combined efforts of the congregations in
Raritan, New Jersey
Raritan is a borough in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 6,881,John Frelinghuysen who taught seminarians in the house. His son Frederick Frelinghuysen was a captain in the
Continental Army
The Continental Army was the army of the United Colonies (the Thirteen Colonies) in the Revolutionary-era United States. It was formed by the Second Continental Congress after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, and was establis ...
.
Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh
Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (22 February 1735/6 – 30 October 1790) was an American Dutch Reformed clergyman, colonial and state legislator, and educator. Hardenbergh was a founder of Queen's College—now Rutgers, The State University of New J ...
, one of the seminarians who occupied the house after Frelinghuysen's death along with the former reverend's widow and her children, succeeded Frelinghuysen as minister, occupant of the house, and, in 1756, as husband to the former Mrs. Frelinghuysen.
Hardenbergh helped establish Queen's College, now known as
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
, in 1766 and in 1785 became its first president. He moved from the house in 1781, but it continued in use as a parsonage until 1810.
Peter Stryker bought the house in 1810 and sold it to the Doughty family in 1836. They owned it until 1907 when they sold it to the
Central Railroad of New Jersey
The Central Railroad of New Jersey, also known as the Jersey Central or Jersey Central Lines , was a Class I railroad with origins in the 1830s. It was absorbed into Conrail in April 1976 along with several other prominent bankrupt railroads of ...
.
In 1913, the house was set to be knocked down by the railroad, but instead it was moved adjacent to the Wallace House, which was built in 1775.
Notable burials
The Old Dutch Parsonage Burial Ground located behind the house contains early-18th-century graves.
Harmanus Barkeloo II (1745–1788) and John Waldron (1737–1790) are buried in the cemetery.
See also
*
List of museums in New Jersey
This list of museums in New Jersey is a list of museums, defined for this context as institutions (including nonprofit organizations, government entities, and private businesses) that collect and care for objects of cultural, artistic, scientific, ...