By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The first expansion of Princeton Battlefield State Park in 43 years saw the state and other partners pool their money to buy a 4.6-acre-property on Stockton Street that might hold the remains of Revolutionary War soldiers.
The state said this week that it needs to close on the $850,000 acquisition of the D’Ambrisi property, formerly a private residence. That legal formality is expected soon.
The purchase opens the opportunity for researchers to see what artifacts the land might contain.
Kip Cherry, a vice president of the Princeton Battlefield Society, said Tuesday that her nonprofit group has a $47,000 federal grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program, a division of the National Park Service, to pay for historical research and archeology on the property.
"We’re hoping to be able to figure out where burial might be using ground penetrating radar and other methods. And then we will do some careful, incisive work in those locations if we can find some."
Her comments came after a press conference by the Civil War Trust, a nonprofit group that has pledged $25,000 toward the demolition of the house and the archeology study.
Trust president Jim Lighthizer said the organization, having been dedicated solely to preserving Civil War battlefields, is changing its mission to preserve Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 battlefields too.
"It’s the right thing to do," he said standing in front of the Princeton Battle Monument next to old Borough Hall. "This important, crucial, arguably most important part of our American heritage is disappearing from the landscape — the battlefields where our freedom was won and then later where our country was affirmed."
The Trust joined the state, the town, Mercer County and the Friends of Princeton Open Space in having a hand in the Stockton Street property. The town’s share of $100,000 paid for repairing a dam on the site, and will go toward demolishing the house and other structures this year.
"A lot of people stepped up to the bar to make this purchase a reality," said Richard Boornazian, the assistant commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The state will own the land, which adds to the 681-acre park on Mercer Road.
In her remarks, Mayor Liz Lempert said tourists visit the town because of its importance in the Revolutionary War. She said historical tourism is good for the local economy.
"We owe a debt of gratitude to those who came before us with the foresight to preserve Princeton’s historic sites so that we are able to experience them today," she said. "The fact that so many sites around the country were not preserved makes the spots we still have even more precious and our efforts to protect, preserve and enhance them even more important."
Her comments about preservation came even though, as a member of the Princeton Planning Board in 2012, she voted in favor of the 15 units of faculty housing the Institute for Advanced Study plans to build on part of the battlefield, on land the institute owns.
Mr. Cherry’s organization is suing in state court to get that approval overturned. Last week, the Planning Board voted to allow the institute to shrink the lot sizes of the housing units, a change the Battlefield Society also challenged.
Society president Jerry Hurwitz, appearing at the press conference, said the institute project would go on land where Washington staged his counterattack to defeat the British in January 1777.
"So you really can’t get a more important section of the battlefield to preserve and save, the heart of the Princeton Battlefield," he said.
