There once was a house. And there will be again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ralph Hunt arrived on Long Island in 1652, \u201camong a party of\nEnglishmen.\u201d He may have landed in America even earlier; there is a Ralph Hunt\nof the correct age listed on the passenger manifest of the Primrose that sailed\nfrom London to Virginia in 1635. Ralph had four sons and a daughter, and he\ndied in Newtown, NY in 1676.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of his children were pioneer settlers to the New Jersey\nvillage of Maidenhead \u2013 now known as Lawrence \u2013 which is strategically located\non the pike between Princeton and Trenton. From there they also spread\nnorthward to Hopewell, the township where George Washington landed after his\nfamous Delaware River crossing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On that fateful Christmas night in 1776, a member of the family, a\nmerchant named Abraham Hunt, was entertaining Colonel Johann Rall, the leader\nof the enemy Hessian forces that were housed in and around the Old Barracks in\nTrenton. Hunt was no loyalist, and his hospitality may have distracted Rall\nfrom his duty, and given Washington\u2019s troops some of the surprise element they\nneeded to win the battle of Trenton and turn the tide of the American\nRevolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so it is that the Hunts left their mark on the Revolution, and\non this area. Perhaps the most famous dwelling in Hopewell Township is the Noah\nHunt House on Blackwell Road. Built in 1760, it was by far the grandest home in\nthe area, and was expanded over numerous generations, before becoming\ndilapidated in the 20th<\/sup> century, and then being restored in 2013 as\nthe home of the Mercer County Park Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another Hunt house was built in 1830 by one of Noah\u2019s distant\ncousins \u2013 who may have owned Noah\u2019s house for a time – on the Pennington\nMaidenhead Road. It is a beautiful white Federal farmhouse, a style iconic to\nthis part of New Jersey, but which is becoming increasingly endangered by\ndevelopment and road expansion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We know that Asa had a farm here, and perhaps a tannery elsewhere.\nWe know the house passed to Asa\u2019s daughter-in-law, and then to 11 successive owners,\nwho made various additions and renovations over the years, the most recent in\n1987. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We know all this because we are the 14th<\/sup> owner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2000 we bought the Asa Hunt House, and we\u2019ve been working our tails\noff keeping up with it ever since. Failing septic system? Check. HVAC installation?\nDone. Leaky water lines and pipes? Oh yeah. Paint job? Um, check, and check,\nand check again. We had finally gotten it right where we wanted it. The only\nthing left to do was upgrade the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funny, that. On December 5, 2018, around 11AM, a kick-plate heater\nunder the kitchen island, installed as part of that 1987 modernation, seized up\nand caught fire. Sara called 911, and volunteers from six townships heroically\nresponded. The fire burned for less than 15 minutes, but it destroyed the\nkitchen and very nearly jumped to several adjacent rooms before it was contained.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a very close call, but the house still stands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the coming year, it will be completely gutted and restored.\nWe will have to pull out everything down to the studs and rafters, and then we\nwill take a look inside. This house has secrets to reveal, and a story to tell.\nWe\u2019re going to help tell it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is installment one in that tale. More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There once was a house. And there will be again. Ralph Hunt arrived on Long Island in 1652, \u201camong a party of Englishmen.\u201d 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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,1715,1716,990,1262],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-revolution","tag-hopewell","tag-hunt","tag-princeton","tag-trenton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/IMG_3725.jpg?fit=4000%2C2248&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}