New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Historic Preservation Office
ELIGIBILITY WORKSHEET
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Historic Sites #:
History: The Cadwallader family has operated this active dairy farm across three generations. Quakers William P. and Marion L. Cadwallader settled here in 1938. William was from Yardley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and married Marion Lawrence, a Mannington woman whose family’s multi-generational farm was near this one. William and Marion’s son Asa and Asa’s sons David and Jason work together today as Waldac Farm. This locale, along the Salem-Woodstown Road (Route 45) is historically known as Mannington Hill. The hill is a summit of 61 feet elevation about 1,400 feet to the southeast, rising 35 feet higher than the farm. Along the road in 1849 were 11 buildings (Stansbie, 1849), variously occupied by a blacksmith, a wheelwright, shoemakers, storekeepers, and a tavern, with a landing on the creek, and was considered to be the principal village in Mannington (Cushing and Sheppard, 439). Barely half a mile to the southwest was another hamlet called Welchville, the site of more blacksmith and wheelwright shops, a store, and the town hall. The brick farmhouse was reputedly built circa 1790 (Mannington Historical Sites Inventory, 3). In 1790, the property, a farm of 200 acres, was owned by Grace Bassett (possibly 1730-1828), a widow who had bought the farm from Joseph Sharp, who was her son by Joseph Sharp, Sr. (1709-1776) in 1787. The 200-acre tract goes back to a sale to Thomas and Grace Smith by William and Nathaniel Hall in 1731 (recited in Deed C/237). These were sons of William Hall the 1677 immigrant who was a major landholder in the colony, one piece of which was 1000 acres in Mannington. Thus, the establishment of this farmstead fits into the New Jersey statewide historic context of Initial Colonial Settlement (1630-1775). Thomas and Grace Smith’s 200-acre plantation passed to their daughters Mary Smith and Grace Sharp upon Grace Smith’s death in 1778 as moieties, or undivided halves (Honeyman, Vol. 34, 474). Grace Bassett’s purchase deed of 1787 for her sister’s moiety traces the titles, the deeds for some being otherwise unrecorded (C/237). Mary Smith’s moiety became her husband Elisha Allen’s upon her death, and upon his in 1776, it passed to his brother Champnys Allen. Joseph Sharp, Jr. purchased Mary Smith’s moiety from Allen in 1782 and sold it to his mother, Grace Sharp Bassett in 1787, thus consolidating both moieties into the ownership of one of the Smith sisters. Grace Bassett held the land for 30 years before selling it back to her son as a unified 200-acre parcel in 1817. Joseph and Mary Sharp sold it to Joseph Bassett one year later, in 1818. The brick house on the property has traits of both Georgian and Federal architecture, styles which generally date to before and after the Revolutionary War, respectively. The Flemish brick bond on the principal façade is not checkered with vitrified headers and there are no designs on other façades, so the house clearly departs from the post-medieval style so prevalent among Quaker-built 18th-century Salem County brick houses. Plain Flemish bond, however, was still used locally until about 1830. The striking belt course of a pair of protruding horizontal brick bands between the two floors and stepping down to the kitchen wing, and the rather short windows, are decidedly Georgian features, emphasizing the horizontal. A purely Federal style house would have more attenuated windows following taller interior spaces, expressing verticality. The classical modillions of the elaborate eave cornice can be Georgian or Federal, but express a high style not typical of this Quaker-dominated region. The semi-circular fanlight over the main front door is a common Federal feature, but the rectangular transom over the kitchen wing door is Georgian. It would not be unusual for a post-Revolutionary house in a rural area to express conservatism in its architecture, so this house, as a blend of styles, likely dates to the years following the Revolutionary War, and could be termed late-Georgian. A very similar house is the Jacob Fox house, standing one mile northwest on the north side of Mannington Creek, built in 1813. One of the three barns that make up the dairy barn was definitely built in 1792, as told by a dated beam (removed in 1938, salvaging the section with the incised date of May 26, 1792), so it was built while Grace Bassett owned it. But did she occupy the farm and did she build the house? In 1760 when her mother Grace Smith wrote her will, she lived on her 200-acre plantation, so a house and outbuildings were built between 1731 and 1760. After her death in 1778, it appears that Joseph and Grace Sharp did not occupy it, as Joseph died in 1776 indicating his residency in Pilesgrove (Honeyman, Ibid, 455, http://archive.org/stream/calendarofnewjer05newj#page/455/mode/1up ). The Sharps were an extensive, wealthy and enterprising family. Joseph had developed the Marlborough Iron Works in Sussex County, though they did
Survey Name: Surveyor:
SALEM COUNTY FARMS RECORDING PROJECT JANET L. SHERIDAN
Organization:
Date:
May 19, 2017
DOWN JERSEY HERITAGE RESEARCH, LLC