Today, Sunday, October 29th, my pal Barbara Solem, for my birthday, took me on a tour of White Hill Mansion, Fieldsboro, NJ. It has been open for tours for a couple of years, but this is the first time we have been able to get there since we last visited about ten years ago.
When I last visited, with an old friend and fellow historic house buff, Loretta Kelly, she was working on historic house designation and on creating a protective non-profit organization to save the house. It was, then, filled with the cast off furniture of evicted people from the township. There was an abandoned tractor trailer in the front yard and leaks from the roof had rotted a carpet which was sagging the floor in one of the upstairs rooms. Despite all this, the mansion had such power and beauty that Loretta devoted herself to saving it. She had written a masters on it previously and she told me relevant (to me at the time) details about its Revolutionary War period history. Richard Fields had been on the Committee of Correspondence. On his way home across the river from Ben Salem, he drowned under very mysterious circumstances, leaving his young wife Mary to fend for herself in perilous times.
Mary, using her wits and charm had parried with a couple of Hessian officers sent to search her house for 'Rebels' which she was accused of harboring.
The house has a long long and colorful history starting with this Revolutionary War connection and going on through speak-easies and crime connections on its way to the present.
Take the Tour and hear the stories, you'll be entertained and edified with yet another perspective on New Jersey history.
Our tour guides after the introductory talk with Loretta Kelly in the parlor, were delightful and considerate. AND the house is mysterious and beautiful, especially now that the workers have cleared it of the accumulated debris of former neglect, and revealed its faded grandeur.
Lots of Paranormal activity for those of you who walk on the shadowy side! The ghost-hunters have found many fascinating and inexplicable things to report on at White Hill Mansion.
They were open every Sunday in October. Check their web-site for what's going on in November.
Just google White Hill Mansion, Fieldsboro, NJ
Happy Trails and Happy Halloween!
ps. I haven't been back to Thompson Street yet, but I will try to get there and see how the Pirate theme is coming along. I think this rain probably set them back. I am guessing that they had counted on all day Sunday for finishing touches. On the topic of the weather however, the gloomy rainy day added to the spookiness of the White Hill Mansion tour!
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