Timothy Ball House - 1743

425 Ridgewood Road, Maplewood

The Timothy Ball House is one of the most interesting and impressive early houses in the region, both historically and structurally. It was built in 1743 by a grandson of Edward Ball, who settled in Newark in 1666 (just six years after the English took over the Island of Manhattan from the Dutch and renamed it New York) and was a signer of the Fundamental Agreement Among the Puritans. In about 1718, Edward Ball’s son Thomas acquired a 400-acre tract of land between what is now the Wyoming section of Millburn and the Hilton section of Maplewood. Thomas, a blacksmith and constable of the Colony of Newark, divided up his plantation among his seven surviving sons, including Timothy, upon his death in 1744.

A House of Distinction

Timothy and his wife Esther Bruen Ball lived in a small cabin not far from the present house when they married in 1734. Eight years later, to accommodate a growing family, they built a larger house with spacious proportions, a long roofline, massive chimneys and thick foundation walls. Although a farmhouse, it had distinction more in keeping with a man of Timothy’s standing as a prosperous farmer in the community.

The house was constructed just beyond the brook that divided Orange from Springfield, made of reddish-brown sandstone quarried on Orange Mountain (later called First Newark Mountain). Oak trees were cut down in nearby woodlands to make structural beams, the kitchen mantelpiece and other woodwork. In the front chimney, above the peak of the roof, is a stone inscribed T. & E.B. 1743. Photographs remain of the house in its original state, with dark siding and one small window beside the front door.

After Timothy Ball died in a smallpox epidemic in 1758, his widow, Esther, and her two older daughters continued to run the farm and care for three younger sons, John, Uzal and David.

The Revolutionary War Period

Timothy and Esther’s boys grew up to join the New Jersey Militia in the Revolutionary War. A short distance away, at the corner of the Road to Springfield and Old Mountain Road (now Ridgewood and Cedar Lane), was a cavalry stable for 40 horses; a watchtower on Coon Road on the mountaintop above the house was used to exchange signals with the Vaux Hall ridge regarding the movements of the British. George Washington, who may have been a cousin (his mother was Mary Ball), was a frequent visitor to the house during the war and reportedly slept in the large room over the kitchen, or a smaller room next to it. The General was said to have tied his horse to the huge walnut tree that juts into the roadway in front of the house and in one instance, for safety, to have kept his horse in the kitchen overnight. David Ball had married and moved a short way down the road, and General Washington sent his wife and baby up in the mountain at one point for safety.

The Next Generations

Esther continued to live in the house for 50 years with her children and grandchildren. Her son Uzal eventually took title to the homestead and lived there until his death in 1799. In 1802, the land was partitioned among Uzal’s five children and one grandchild, and the property remained in the Ball family until 1853. A series of other families owned the house and land over the ensuing decades, and it gradually fell into disrepair. In 1919 it was sold to the developers of Washington Park, who restored and renovated the house, adding three dormers and a columned portico, and opened it to the public as The Old Washington Inn, which it remained for more than 30 years.

Interior Features

The House is commodious and substantial, built on six different levels. The lowest, a half-story below ground level, was probably designed as a storage cellar, and is now the modern kitchen. The original kitchen, on ground level, has a huge hearth, 11 feet wide and three feet deep. The logs for it were so large that they were reportedly dragged in by horses that entered through the front door and exited through a smaller door on the other side of the room (now a window).

Originally, steep, ladder-like steps connected the kitchen with the parlor level, which has a hallway extending the width of the house, from a door to the back to an upper front entrance. On the west side of the hallway are two small rooms sharing a unique structural feature that is the earliest example of one found in several Maplewood houses: two diagonal fireplaces facing into two separate rooms, but using one chimney. (A similar arrangement is in the Durand-Hedden House.) The fireplace in the second room was closed off some years ago.

The next level up is a large room over the kitchen that shares the kitchen chimney. This room would have been quite warm because of the fire in the kitchen hearth, and was said to have been used by Washington when he was in the area. A small bedroom is off the north side of that room. A small, square window to the right of the fireplace overlooks the road.

A full flight of stairs extends up to what is now a master bedroom suite, the west part (now a sitting room) a few steps below the east. The room has lofty ceilings brightened by the 1919 dormer windows. The massive stone chimneys dominated either end of the space (now obscured by closets and a bathroom), but there were no fireplaces. This was in all likelihood a sleeping loft for the family.

As “Maplewood Past and Present” concludes, “The house was not built as a mansion for formal living but as a homestead for the comfortable and efficient carrying-on of a considerable farm of the time. It is a house of originality and integrity and says much for the character of its builders.”

Information about the house was derived in large part from Maplewood Past and Present, 1948, and from research by Beatrice Peppard Herman in 1984.

Jonas Ball House - 1750

88 Tuscan Road, Maplewood

The Jonas Ball House was constructed in 1750 as a cooper shop, made of massive fieldstone and hand-hewn timber. It was the place where barrels and other containers were made on the plantation of Jonas Ball, one of seven surviving sons of Thomas Ball. Thomas was a son of Edward Ball, who had moved from Connecticut to Newark in 1666 and was a signer of the Fundamental Agreement among the Puritans. About 1718, Thomas acquired a 400-acre tract of land between what are now the Wyoming section of Millburn and the Hilton section of Maplewood.

Jonas Ball acquired the property when his father’s plantation was divided among his sons at his death in 1744. Around that time, Jonas married Hannah Bruen, probably a relative of his brother Timothy’s wife, a

nd built a homestead (now gone) on the north side of Tuscan Road, the only road leading from Newark to Springfield. He built the cooper shop on the south side of the road. Joseph Bruen, a member of Hannah’s family, inherited the farm, and Elizabeth Bruen sold it to Abel Atwood in 1828.

William Courter bought the plantation from Atwood in about 1840, using the cooper shop as a springhouse to cool his dairy products. In the late 19th century, his son David Courter, who by then owned the farm, renovated and expanded the building into a residence, adding an airy, high-ceilinged dining room and bedrooms above. Two other Tuscan Road homes were part of David Courter’s farm: #90, in which David’s adopted son Theodore Daly lived, and #97, known for many years as The David Courter House. The Courter farm was among the last of Maplewood’s 18th century plantations to disappear when the Newark Realty Company purchased it in 1910 and developed it into small residential lots called Mountain View Terrace.

This information was adapted from material researched by Beatrice Peppard Herman in 1984 for A Skeletal History of the David Courter Farm.

Lewis Pierson House - Vauxhall - 1843

Lewis Pierson, owner of Pierson’s Mill, built the House known as Vaux Hall in 1843. Vaux Hall and the Durand-Hedden House are the only early Maplewood houses still having a large share of land about them.

Lewis’ father Samuel Pierson came from Connecticut to Newark, and in 1776 moved to Maplewood, to a section described as “wooded, wild country.” Samuel purchased 250 acres between what is now Springfield Avenue and what became Jefferson Village (west of the railroad tracks) and built a store and house on Valley Street, a country road that was a direct road from Orange to Springfield. Lewis, born in 1801, expanded the family business, building a gristmill in 1831 after damming up the East Branch of the Rahway River to generate waterpower. Area farmers brought their wheat, corn, oats, barley and buckwheat to Pierson’s Mill and took home flour for baking and feed for their poultry and livestock.

According to a diary kept by Lewis Pierson’s wife, Abby Susannah Beach Pierson, on May 3, 1843, the family moved into the barn for the spring and summer so that Samuel’s original house could be torn down to make way for the present structure. The elegant and imposing building is one of only a few Greek Temple-fronted Greek Revival houses still standing in New Jersey. It was a style that celebrated the ancient Greek ideals of democracy, beauty and simplicity.

Within a month the frame of the new house was raised, and construction proceeded with breathtaking speed. On September 16, Mrs. Pierson wrote, “We have taken tea in our new house this eve for the first time.” A nearby spring supplied the house with running water, and fed a fountain on the lawn.

Classical features are present throughout. Dramatic fluted Doric columns support a thick entablature and pedimented front-gabled roof. A high style, full-width colonnaded porch beneath the gable gives the house the appearance of a Greek temple. Fluted pilasters adorn the corners of the house. A fanned design in the pediment served as both a Greek Revival style embellishment and a functional role as a louvered vent to the attic. The classic pediment of the portico is repeated harmoniously throughout the house. The front door is capped by a pedimented lintel and flanked by fluted vertical piers. Inside the house, windows, doors and the archway between the parlors are framed by pediments and stepped vertical posts.

In the larger of the front parlors, an Empire sofa original to the house has pride of place before the inviting hearth, adorned with mid-19th century lamps called lusters, hung with prisms. The stone chimney behind the Italian marble mantelpiece is nearly five feet deep and forms a foundation for the entire structure. The kitchen fireplace opened off the other side of it, a later example of the two-fireplace chimney seen in the Timothy Ball and Durand-Hedden Houses. The original kitchen was made into a dining room many years ago, and the fireplace area has become an arched and enclosed china cupboard. A cherry corner cupboard in the room has been in place since the house was built.

Unusual folding doors are found in several rooms in the house, including the “carriage door” through which visitors arriving by carriage or horse would enter.

The staircase adjacent to the dining room is completely walled on both sides with original woodwork. Just beyond is a cozy room now used as a library. It reportedly served as a holding cell for the town jail at one point in its history.

Upstairs, the hall and bedrooms remain much as they were save for the addition of a tasteful master bath adjacent to the spacious master bedroom.

The authors of Maplewood Past and Present found the Lewis Pierson House to “give a clear impression of the judgment and good taste of the planners, as well as of the unhurried and skilled workmanship that went into its building.”

Information about the house was derived in large part from Maplewood Past and Present, 1948.