If you blink your eye, you will pass this bridge along the Alloway Creek just outside of Alloway, NJ, a sleepy little town just outside the County seat of Salem, NJ. What may seem like just a bridge with an historical marker once held a big place in the history of the Revolutionary War for this part of New Jersey. This was once a major travel and transport point during the area’s heyday of the farming industry in the early part of the country’s history, supplying food for the Philadelphia and lower New Jersey area.
Today the Alloway Creek is used more for fishing and recreation from I saw the afternoon I visited the site but once upon a time, this was a busy throughfare for travel. The creek was used for transport and the road was a crossways between all the small communities in the area.
Take time to stop in the parking lot next to the bridge and take a look at the significance of this area and what this meant in the context of the war years.
Alloway Creek today in 2022
History of Quinton’s Bridge at Alloway Creek:
(From Revolutionary War New Jersey.com):
In March of 1778, a group of about 1500 British troops under the command of Charles Mawhood occupied the town of Salem. Their objective was to confiscate cattle, hay and corn to bring across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, which was then controlled by the British.
Local citizen had moved some of the cattle south of Salem, past Alloways Creek to keep it from the British. Alloways Creek extends abou thirty miles inland from the Delaware River, creating a natural southern boundary that could only be crossed at three bridges in the area; Quinton’s Bridge, Hancock’s Bridge about four miles east of here and Thompson’s Bridge about five miles to the west. Salem and Cumberland County militiamen took positions at the bridges to stop the British from moving past them.
The British made an attack on Quinton’s Bridge on March 18th. During the attack, the British lured about 200-300 of the militamen across the bridge into an ambush feigning a retreat. The British had actually hidden some of their soldiers in a house near the creek and when the militiamen moved past them, the soldiers rushed out of the house to cut off the militiamen’s retreat to the bridge. Militiamen were captured or killed but their defense of the bridge held and the British were not able to cross Alloways Creak at Quinton’s Bridge.
Three days later an attack was made on the militiamen at Hancock’s Bridge in which militiamen were bayoneted to death in their sleep in a nearby house.
A Video on the Washington Township Historical Society
I came to the Washington Township Historical Site as part of Morris County’s “Pathways of History” tour and visited the Union Schoolhouse Museum and then the Union Church and Burial Ground that is located right next door on the same property. This sleepy little town was once a bustling manufacturing site with the sawmill and Ghrist around the corner and the Welsh Farms Ice Cream factory up the street from the site.
The Union Schoolhouse Museum at 6 Fairview Avenue
The museum, which was once the town’s schoolhouse, is an engaging site that showcases how the town developed over the last two hundred years. On the bottom floor, the society has Native American artifacts, period furniture and clothing and in the back of the museum is a full display of the original Welsh Farms Ice Cream factory. The Welsh’s were a very prominent family from the area.
The Welsh Farms Ice Cream Factory display
Some of the old bottles and equipment from the factory
The second floor of the museum has a display of town memorabilia from different businesses, farming equipment from the area’s agricultural past and pictures of businesspeople and prominent citizens of the town. It shows how the commercial past of the community kept evolving.
Display of the town memorabilia
To the side of the second floor is a display of a period schoolroom from the time that the building served as a school of the local population. You can see that not much has changed over the years.
School rooms of the past are not too different from today
The one thing that creeped me out was a picture of a local businessman from the 1800’s who looked exactly like the actor, Blake Ritson, who plays “Oscar Van Rijin” in the TV show “The Gilded Age”. These men are almost 100 years apart and he looks like the actor from that exact time period.
The picture is of local businessman Ernest Paul Hunger
This picture is of actor Blake Ritson who plays “Oscar Van Rijin” in “The Gilded Age”
I had to take this picture because everyone says you have a twin from the past and I can tell that these two men look exactly alike in the same clothing. What is really interesting is that they are the same age at the same time period. Like that picture of the gentleman from the 1880’s that looks exactly like actor Nicolas Cage, I think there is some weird time travel here. It is almost like the film “Time after Time”.
After touring the whole museum, I went next door to visit the church and the cemetery for a tour. When I exited the museum, I had not really noticed the beauty of the gardens that surrounded the museum. The local garden club had done a great job in landscaping and planting the walled garden around the museum. In the early Spring, it was a colorful display of flowers.
The walled garden was so colorful in the early spring
The cemetery walk was intriguing in that you got to walk through the ruins of the old church and get to see how it was once constructed. It gave me insight of how big these churches were at one time and building construction was in early colonial New Jersey.
The ruins of the old Union Church
The Union Church surrounded by the cemetery
When we visited each family’s plot, there was a discussion about what contributions that everyone made to the town and their place in society. What was interesting was that the volunteers were cleaning the tombstones with tombstone cleaner, and I had wondered when we were taking the tour why they looked so new. There is a lot of care of the people of this cemetery.
The Welsh Farm Family plot at the Union Church was just cleaned
The whole site is an interesting look into the community’s past by a group of volunteers who give it their all to make the site interesting, historical, visually engaging to the visitor and offer a surprise or two into history that you may not know of New Jersey. One the warm, sunny day that we visited the site, it made it even nicer to walk around and have the time to soak it all in.
When you visit the Union Schoolhouse and Union Church and Burial Ground take the time out to take the formal tour of the site. It is very informative to a past that is not so different from today. It offers a lot of insight of people’s lives of this community.
The history of the Union Church and Cemetery Site:
(From the Washington Township Historical Society pamphlet)
Mission: To bring together people interested in the history of Washington Township, Morris County, NJ and promote a better appreciation of our American heritage.
The history of the site:
European settlement had begun in Long Valley by 1730. The early settlers, primarily from Germany and Holland, came fleeing religious persecution, an oppressive tax burden and hoping for a better life in America.
In 1749, a joint log meeting house had been built near the site of the Stone Church by the Zion Lutherans and Dutch Reformed Congregations. During these early times the congregations were served either by preachers from these churches or by laymen. One of the ministers of the time was Henry M. Muhlenberg, who has been called the Father of the Lutheran Church in America. His son, John Peter also ministered to the Raritan Valley before 1772. In 1776, John left his church in Virginia to raise and lead a regiment in the American Revolution, serving with distinction and retiring as a brevet major general.
On February 4th, 1774, the Dutch Reformed and German Lutheran congregations drew up articles and agreements that provided for the building of a joint meetinghouse. “Whereas we the members of the Evangelical Reformed Congregation and we, the members of the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation are willing to build a meeting house jointly, “Acted the 4th day of February 1774, which is testified to by: Henry Muhlenberg Jr., deputy director of Zion’s Welsch; Diedric Strubel; Conrad Rorick; Casper Eick; Anthon Waldorf; Adam Lorenz; Philip Weis; Christopher Karn; Leonard Neighbour; Roulof Roulofsen; John Schwackhammer; Andrew Flock.”
Let the Building Begin:
According to local tradition, the stone used to construct the building of the meetinghouse, the people of the two congregations turned out in a body to cart the stone. It had been a previous agreement, that whoever on the day appointed, should bring the first load, should receive the honor of having his horse decorated with flags and ribbons. The story goes that Judge David Welsch, then 17, secretly loaded his wagon and hid it that night. The next day, wagons came like thunder from all parts of the valley. Although David Welsch was confident of winning, he was almost beaten. Before he could unload his wagon, all of German Valley was on the ground.”
A Stately and well built structure:
A description of the Stone Church was given during a sermon by Reverend Alfred Hiller in July 1876. He said, “it was a heavy gallery on the one side and across each end; the entrance on one side (south), under the gallery and on the opposite side (north) was the pulpit, one of the Jack in the Pulpit style, with sounding board suspended above. There is no chimney on the church, in the center of the church, a space about eight feet square was made with a dirt floor and on the square a great mass of charcoal was burned, the congregation getting for their share at least the smell of the fire.”
The Old Stone Church today
Historic photographs indicate the building had a clipped-gable or jerkin-head roof with roof ridge parallel to the longer north and south walls. The two-story church, three bays wide and two bays deep, featured a wide and two bays deep, featured a wide central entry surmounted by a segmental arch, as were the windows. The walls were of coursed rubble stone construction, pointed with a white lime-rich mortar, except on the south or front elevation which was stuccoed and “penciled” with white pointing to replicate regular ashlar stone. However, this may have been a later 19th century embellishment.
Decline:
In 1832, both congregations decided to separate houses of worship. Since that time the Old Stone Church has stood abandoned and surrounded by the graves of the early congregants. Despite efforts at stabilization between the 1960’s and the 1980’s, the deterioration continued until recent efforts spearheaded by the members of the Washington Township Historical Society with permission of The Zion Lutheran and Long Valley Presbyterian Churches have improved this.
The Old Stone Church with the cemetery surrounding it
I visited the Silas Riggs Saltbox House on a visit to the Roxbury Township Historical Society during the Morris County’s “Pathways to History” event. The event gave us a chance to visit many different sites in one day.
The Historical marker in front of the house
The Silas Riggs Saltbox House is part of the King Victorian Home & King Canal Store complex it shares with the Roxbury Historic Trust. The Silas Riggs home is a preserved colonial era, Revolutionary War period residence. It is managed by the Roxbury Township Historical Society as a “Living History Museum”, hosting events that bring a sense of the past to those who step inside (Roxbury Historical Society).
The Silas Riggs Saltbox House during the tour
The last historical site on my tour that day, it was also one of the most interesting not just because of the history of the home itself but the care and TLC the site is given by its volunteers and docents. The Riggs home is a place that you feel you have stepped into someone’s home who just left for the afternoon. Many historical societies that I have been to in the past are usually dusty and musty with artifacts thrown here and there. The Riggs home was decorated by lifestyle of the periods that it was lived in.
The volunteers were nice enough to stay open for me and we ended up talking for over 45 minutes on the house and how it was decorated. There was a care in this home as the walls and ceilings were in perfect shape and the home was so welcoming that it did not feel like a museum but more like a tour through someone’s grandmother’s home.
You are welcomed in the front room by an office set up with a large knit quilt and period furniture in a sun filled room that is such an engaging place to be greeted and just talk. The period furniture is in perfect shape and fits the mood of the room.
The front parlor room
To the side of the room is the old office area space where work would have been done and the family would have gathered. The sun-drenched room would have been a bit homier in its day but reflected how homes back then were used for both business and pleasure.
The living room/office of the Silas Riggs house
The kitchen was a reflection of kitchen’s today as the center of the home for not just cooking but socializing. The kitchen was not just a source of cooking but heat for the house. There must have been a lot of family gatherings in this room. The Historical Society during the holidays uses the kitchen for a special “Soup Dinner”, where freshly made soup is made in the hearth along with homemade corn bread. This fundraiser is considered very popular, and you have to sign up early to experience being part of the home’s family. On a cold winter night, this must have been the perfect room to be in. Even today, the kitchen is the gathering spot for all families.
The kitchen hearth of the Silas Riggs house
The bedroom that connected the back kitchen to the front parlor was decorated with period furnishings, clothing from the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The furniture had a heavy look with dark colors and sturdiness to the items in the room as made by hand and meant to last for a long time.
The volunteers were telling me that many people came to the home and said that they could move in right now. This was the care and detail that has been put into this site. It is not just that the home is a reflection of the period, but it is set up in a way that makes you feel that the family is still greeting you when you walk in the door. The museum is a cheery atmosphere that invites its visitors in for the day.
Architectural historians have said that the Saltbox house was one of the earliest homes built in Ledgewood, NJ in the circa 1740. Saltbox houses are a flat in the front with a central chimney set square in the middle of the roofline. The roofline of a saltbox house is asymmetrical with a short, steep roof in the front and a much longer, sloping roof in the back which accommodates the one-story extension of the home.
While the original owners of the Silas Riggs Saltbox House are unknown, but records indicate that by the early 1800’s, the house was owned by Silas Riggs and his wife, Harriet. Silas was a tanner by trade and supplied the local mines with leather pouches used to transport ore. He was also a contractor for a section of the Morris Canal in 1830. He oversaw the operation of three barges in the area. His son, Albert, ran the nearby Canal Store during the canal’s early years.
The design of the house is of post and beam construction, held together with wooden pegs visible in the second story eaves, the Saltbox house, is so called because of its extended, rear sloping roofline, recalling the design of salt containers of colonial times (Roxbury Historical Society).
I visited the Obadiah La Tourette Grist & Sawmill during a visit to Long Valley, NJ for Morris County’s “Pathway to History” tour and this was one of the most unusual and interesting sites on the tour. The mill was once one of the most active businesses in the area. The Mill processed and packaged flour for the areas farmers making it one of the most profitable businesses in the region. By the end of WWII, the Mill was itself was becoming antiquated and larger producers could make the product for far less money and the business closed.
The Obadiah La Tourette Mill
The entrance of the Obadiah La Tourette Grist and Sawmill
The Mill itself it is getting a renovation, and, on the tour, I took, you could visit all three floors of the Mill and see how the product was made. On the first floor is where some of the processing took place.
The first floor now greets you where it once served as the Receiving area
The wheat was brought in, processed and milled. One of the machines is still in the building. This is where the raw product was brought in for processing into flour.
Processing the flour
The bottom level is where are all machinery is where the power source of the stream moved all the equipment along.
The power source of the stream below moved the wheels to process the flour
This was really interesting because the stream still lies underneath the mill and you can see the flow of water throughout the bottom of the building as it had over 100 years ago. This is how Mother Nature did her part before electricity.
History of the Obadiah La Tourette Mill Restoration:
(From the Washington Trust Pamphlet)
The Mill was built in circa 1750 and owned by Philip Weise. The Mill was essential to the economy and development of German Valley and the surrounding agricultural community. For much of its history, it was the most successful business in the village, grinding grain and producing flour and animal feed. A sawmill was located behind the grist mill during the 1800’s.
Originally powered by two water wheels, the mill was converted to turbine power by owner Obadiah La Tourette in the 1870’s. Milling operations continued until the early 1940’s. Most of the machinery remains, reflecting the history of milling over 200 years.
The stream is the power source of the Mill
In 1991, the Washington Township Land Trust purchased the condemned building and embarked upon its restoration with the aid of volunteers, grants and generous donations. The current scope of work is being funded by a grant from the Morris County Historic Preservation Trust Fund. It includes the restoration of structural framing, soffit trim, doors and siding of the street facade; restoration of some first-floor beams and joists and restoration of thirteen windows.
The Mill in 1993
The History of the Washington Township Land Trust:
(From the Washington Trust Pamphlet)
The Washington Township Land Trust of Morris County, NJ was organized in 1990 and incorporated in 1991 as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation. It is exclusively for charitable, educational and scientific purposes, to protect and preserve the lands, watercourses, ponds, streams and structures which contribute to the natural beauty and rural character of Washington Township.
To achieve this, the Land Trust acquires interests in land through purchase or donation, manages land uses for the benefit of the public and makes itself available to the Township of Washington to assist in the stewardship of public lands and easements.
In 1991, the Land Trust acquired the Obadiah La Tourette Mill and the surrounding ten acres of land, now preserved as a wetlands park. A portion of the park has been set aside as a memorial garden for Helen Andrews, a longtime resident of Long Valley and wife of Stan Andrews. The Land Trust also administers the issuance of easement markers for Washington Township and may in the future expand its operation to the monitoring of easements.
The Land Trust provides education to the public on various preservation issues such as conservation easements and other topics of value. Lastly, the Land Trust works with other land trusts, open space groups and conservation organizations to provide an organized approach to meet our common goals.
Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical 