There once was a house. And there will be again.
Ralph Hunt arrived on Long Island in 1652, “among a party of Englishmen.” He may have landed in America even earlier; there is a Ralph Hunt of the correct age listed on the passenger manifest of the Primrose that sailed from London to Virginia in 1635. Ralph had four sons and a daughter, and he died in Newtown, NY in 1676.
Most of his children were pioneer settlers to the New Jersey village of Maidenhead – now known as Lawrence – which is strategically located on the pike between Princeton and Trenton. From there they also spread northward to Hopewell, the township where George Washington landed after his famous Delaware River crossing.
On that fateful Christmas night in 1776, a member of the family, a merchant named Abraham Hunt, was entertaining Colonel Johann Rall, the leader of the enemy Hessian forces that were housed in and around the Old Barracks in Trenton. Hunt was no loyalist, and his hospitality may have distracted Rall from his duty, and given Washington’s troops some of the surprise element they needed to win the battle of Trenton and turn the tide of the American Revolution.
And so it is that the Hunts left their mark on the Revolution, and on this area. Perhaps the most famous dwelling in Hopewell Township is the Noah Hunt House on Blackwell Road. Built in 1760, it was the grandest home in the area, and was expanded over numerous generations, before becoming dilapidated in the 20th century, and then being restored in 2013 as the home of the Mercer County Park Commission.
Another Hunt house was built in 1830 by one of Noah’s distant cousins – who may have owned Noah’s house for a time – on the Pennington Maidenhead Road. The Asa Hunt House is a beautiful white Federal farmhouse, a style iconic to this part of New Jersey, but which is becoming increasingly endangered by development and road expansion.
We know that Asa had a farm here, and perhaps a tannery elsewhere. We know the house passed to Asa’s daughter-in-law, and then to 11 successive owners, who made various additions and renovations over the years, the most recent in 1987.
We know all this because we are the 14th owner.
In 2000 we bought the Asa Hunt House, and we’ve been trying to keep up with it ever since. Failing septic system? Check. HVAC installation? Done. Leaky water lines and pipes? Oh yeah. No heat? Usually at about 2AM. Paint job? Um, check, and check, and check again. We had finally gotten it right where we wanted it. The only thing left to do was upgrade the kitchen.
Funny, that. On December 5, 2018, around 11AM, a kick-plate heater under the kitchen island, installed as part of that 1987 modernization, seized and caught fire. Sara called 911, and volunteers from six townships heroically responded. The fire burned for less than 15 minutes, but it destroyed the kitchen and very nearly jumped to several adjacent rooms before it was contained.
It was a very close call, but the house still stands.
Over the coming year, it will need to be completely gutted and restored. Everything that can absorb smoke will have to be pitched. We will gut it down to the studs, joists and rafters, and then we will take a look inside.
This house has secrets to reveal, and a story to tell. So we’re going to tell it.
This is installment one in that tale. More to come.
