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Place Record Title
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Old Dutch Parsonage, Somerville
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Identifier
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NJS-PLC-00019
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Place Type
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Domicile
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Description
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The Old Dutch Parsonage is a historic house in Somerville, Somerset County, NJ. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The house was built in 1751 for the Dutch Reformed minister the Rev. John (Johannes) Frelinghuysen who pastored three congregations in the area. Frelinghuysen was a key figure in the history of Queen's College (now Rutgers University), and although he died before the college officially received its charter, he is considered a progenitor of the college because he began educating future ministers in his home. It was here at the Old Dutch Parsonage that Frelinghuysen delivered theological instruction, most notably educating Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh who would go on to become the first president of Queen's College. After the Rev. John Frelinghuysen died in 1754, Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh took over his churches, married Frelinghuysen's widow Dinah Van Bergh, and moved into the Old Dutch Parsonage as his residence.
The house is almost certainly a historical site of enslavement as Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh and Dinah Van Bergh were known to hold several people in bondage based on their correspondence, but the names of the enslaved people who labored in their household are not known.
One very famous Black man who may have spent time at the Old Dutch Parsonage was Ukawsaw Gronniosaw who published his autobiography in England in 1772. His narrative was the first such book to be published by an author of African descent in England, and it documented his life experiences from Africa, where he was captured and enslaved, to New Jersey and then the Caribbean and Europe. In New Jersey, Gronniosaw was bought by the Rev. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747), who was the father of the aforementioned John Frelinghuysen. Gronniosaw was manumitted by the elder Frelinghuysen on his deathbed, but he continued working for several of Frelinghuysen's sons in the 1750s. It is not known exactly where he lived after the death of the elder Rev. Frelinghuysen, but there is a strong possibility that he would have spent some time working at John Frelinghuysen's home, i.e. at the Old Dutch Parsonage.
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Location Name
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Old Dutch Parsonage
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Locality
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Somerville
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Country
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United States of America
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Latitude
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40.569661
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Longitude
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-74.622081
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Image Rights
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The Old Dutch Parsonage in Somerville, New Jersey. Photograph by Zeete, 2017. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Source: Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Dutch_Parsonage,_Somerville,_NJ_-_2017.jpg
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Record Contributor
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Jesse Bayker
Rutgers University
Letter from Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh to his father Col. Johannes Hardenbergh
Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh Sr. (1736-1790)