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Harbourton today reflects its past

The Hopewell Township Committee plans to adopt an ordinance designating a section of Harbourton as a rural historic district.

By David Blackwell
   Editor’s note: The Hopewell Township Committee plans to adopt an ordinance designating a section of Harbourton as a rural historic district. The measure was introduced Nov. 29 and was slated for an adoption vote Dec. 10, but was removed from that agenda. Mayor Vanessa Sandom said the matter would be taken up again early next year.
   The following account about the area was written by David Blackwell of the Hopewell Township Historic Preservation Commission,
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   The creaking wagons and gigs, their spinning wheels, the neighing of horses, and the greetings of the neighborhood farmers and Baptist worshipers are gone now. Neighborhood men like Jackson Blackwell and George and Ernest Hart no longer debate politics on the porch of the store, yet this remarkable (Harbourton) village remains. We can see it as they did, from the south on the Harbourton-Woodsville Road looking across the fields, or approaching it along River Road, or coming in from the Mount Airy Road up the embankment between the stone store and the clapboards of Black Tom’s house.
   As many as seven generations of Hopewell Township men and women arrived in the village under the power of horses, or the earliest horseless carriages, to bring garden produce to the store, and go away with the supplies of daily farm life. James Wilson Marshall, who discovered gold in California in 1849 was the son of members of this little Baptist church, and a member of the same Wilson family as John Harbourt.
   No where else in Hopewell Township can this image of rural life from farm to village appear in the mind’s eye and the real eye simultaneously. No where else does a rural village of Hopewell Township still occupy its landscape in the way of two centuries past.
   By creating the Harbourton Rural Historic District in January of this coming year, the Preservation Commission would be able to advise the homeowners on character-preserving choices as they maintain and alter their homes and outbuildings.
   In this case, however, there is more to do. Increasingly, speeding traffic through this rural village lowers the safety and desirability of living in this place. We have watched as traffic lights, turning lanes, impatient commuters, and accidents have ruined the character of Mount Rose, once a comparable historic village in the eastern part of the township. In at least three cases, cars have left the road at Harbourton and damaged property. Residents feel daily the lack of safety. The road right-of–way goes to the very doors of the buildings. It is time now to protect this village through a Historic District ordinance and negotiations with Mercer County to provide true traffic safety and hence ensure the preservation of this village.
   DURING 2007, the Hopewell Township Historic Preservation Commission documented the history of Harbourton, a rural village and neighborhood within the township. The locale retains exceptional historic character. With all the changes that have taken place around the township in terms of roads, residential developments, and utilities, it is remarkable that this little collection of historic buildings remains intact. The fact that that the village can still be seen from several vantage points across the farmland that once sustained it, seems almost miraculous.
   We deeply appreciate the succession of private owners who have lovingly maintained the quality and historic character of these buildings. In 2002 the Preservation Commission, according to its charge, initiated the designation process, according to the state procedural model, and brought the recommendation in front of the Township Committee for a designation on the Hopewell Township Register of Historic Places earlier this month.
   The road that runs to the north through the village was called the River Road in colonial times, there being no north-south road closer to the Delaware. A second road, leading to Mount Airy intersects the first on a low ridge of the Sourland chain. Both roads give some evidence of having been the forest trails of the earliest people. It was at this intersection in 1768, that John Harbourt, an in-law of the local Wilson family, purchased a 1-acre lot of farmer John Cornell, and built a stone building as close to the intersection as possible. Known to be a schoolteacher, he was probably a merchant as well, as the placement and type of building suggests. At the time, Titusville did not exist, and the nearest stores were at Pennington and Linvale, leaving a third of the township in range of this enterprise.
   Within sight of the store to the south was the farmhouse of Isaac LaRue, soon to be sold to Adam Ege with its lands sloping to the south. Ege was the ancestor of Hopewell’s 19th century historian, Ralph Ege. Both these buildings were of stone and built into banks. Harbourt also owned an acre of land from Cornell on the south side of the River road, which was sold by 1782 to John McKinstry, a Revolutionary War veteran and son-in-law of Ege. Another acre and a half, adjacent to the store, was owned by McKinstry and called the “barn lot.” McKinstry opened a tavern in the village by 1785, and his mortgage deed of 1782 first uses the town name Harbourton. This tavern stood directly across from the store, and the present building on the site, which may be the same, or a later building, continued as a tavern until 1840.
   By 1782, a schoolhouse stood immediately adjacent to the tavern, where the prim gothic church is now. The land had been loaned for a school by Adam Ege, but in 1803, 24 members of the Old School Baptist Church at Hopewell, then called Columbia, having respectfully asked permission to form a new church closer to their residences, took over the schoolhouse. They continued in it until 1879, when they built the present building on the same site. The minutes of this little congregation still exist, and we can follow their sorrows and trials for more than a century. Having peaked earlier at about 60 members, the building is a testament to the faith of an aging few who remained. Its gothic-arched windows give character to the landscape of Hopewell Township.
   When the Baptists purchased the schoolhouse and lot from George Ege in 1805, a house existed across the road in the western corner of the intersection. It was occupied by Black Tom. His widow Mary resided there until after 1830, and thereby was an occupant of at least a portion of the present building, making it perhaps the earliest extant free black home in the township. Thomas Wilson held an agreement with the Baptists for many years to sweep the church and keep its fires.
   The two building segments attached to the old store are also 18th century, and the store continues from Harbourt to storekeeper Joseph Burroughs, who retired in 1814, and on to a family who operated the store through several generations from 1814 to 1963. Henry Roscoe followed Burroughs at this stand, and also taught school as Harbourt had done. Before moving to Harbourton, Roscoe was a merchant and teacher in Pennington, as his account book shows. He remained active to an advanced age, and lived his later years in still another village house, north of the store along the “River Road.” The store was taken over by his son William Roscoe and descendants by the name of Lawrence and Johnson. Most of the family may be found buried in the village graveyard. A post office existed in the store from 1875 until 1963.
   The tavern building was owned by Samuel C. Cornell from 1835 until 1864. In 1850 he listed himself as a surveyor, and the following year he was one of the publishers of a map of Hunterdon County. After that effort, he settled down to a wheelwright business on the site, and his shop, a medium sized barn, still stands along the road, north of the tavern.