He was a son of Jonathan Furman, an early settler, whose name appears on the Hopewell tax list of Furman took up residence in Trenton, the county seat, and became the town's postmaster and the county's High Sheriff by In , he became a founding member of Trenton's Library Company and its secretary, and in , a trustee of the First Presbyterian Church, and two years later its treasurer.
He formed a partnership with Andrew Reed in the mercantile business, which was dissolved in , succeeded by a partnership with Abraham Hunt. Their Trenton store, and another store in Princeton , were apparently managed by others. In , Furman had taken up residence in Philadelphia and formed a new partnership there with the city's mayor William Coxe, which later added the mayor's son, the prominent Tench Coxe.
This firm, with river warehouses, became a leading importer of goods from England. While in Philadelphia, Furman married Sarah White, a belle of the city. A wealthy man even in the s, Furman began during that decade to acquire large tracts of land in Pennsylvania and New York. Pittstown under Furman's ownership continued to thrive. In a advertisement for "Cornwall," a nearby acre Stevens family's estate, one of the property's selling points was its "convenience to Pittstown," which had two grist mills, a fulling mill, a sawmill, and "a large well-assorted store.
Again listing him as merchant, the rateables imposed a tax on the same acres but also a sawmill and fulling mill "formerly his father's," and three gristmills; also 20 horned cattle, 12 horses, and 12 hogs. He fulfilled his responsibilities at first from his Trenton home, but he also maintained an office in Pittstown and stored Army supplies in his mill, as indicated by his advertisement announcing the theft at different times of five barrels of rum, which were property of the United States.
In , he removed his headquarters to Pittstown, possibly considering the farms north of Hunterdon County a better source of supplies. Records of his frustrations in having insufficient funds to buy forage and grains at skyrocketing prices, and difficulty even in finding sellers, are contained in his letters to fellow officers.
Cartmen were abandoning their work because they said they could not live on the pay. Nonetheless, he rounded up and sent what he could, including hundreds of horses to be put to various uses, and huge quantities of board lumber which he shipped to Raritan Landing. He resigned in , stating he was "obliged now for the support of my family to remove to my farm at Pitts-Town.
Following a return stay in Philadelphia, he came back to Trenton in the s to live, where he was again appointed a trustee of the Presbyterian Church and later served on their new building committee. He had the honor bestowed upon him by the State Legislature of appointment as first Mayor of Trenton following its incorporation in In he was chosen as a Presidential Elector to represent New Jersey. During Furman's ownership of Pittstown, the tavern continued to be operated in the charge of various innkeepers, while it served as a center for venues of great tracts of land including those owned by Lord Stirling, James Alexander , for inquisitions of Loyalists, and for a court hearing by magistrates and Army officers on petition of residents of three townships who had failed to serve their time in the local militia, or to find substitutes.
In November , the New Jersey legislature, in flight from other locations because of the British threat, met in Pittstown. The New Jersey Council of Safety convened in Pittstown on October 16, , and remained in session there until the 24th, guarded by a detachment of soldiers.
In December , British soldiers captured with General Burgoyne's Army were briefly kept in the village before being marched to Virginia. These events may explain a tradition recited by historian Snell that a part of the American army was once encamped at Pittstown. Consisting of several discrete buildings and functions, the commissary was centered in the vicinity of the gristmill. However, the sites of the buildings used in commissary operations have not been pinpointed.
It is reported that Furman built a nail factory and whiskey distillery in front of the gristmill and that the store was located on the site of the William R. Smith House, possibly in the same building also said to have been home to Benjamin Guild, a later shopkeeper and Furman's agent.
A small stone building behind this house may date to this period. Snell's history states that the commissary storehouse was in a barn on the adjacent farm owned by Hiram Deats in , which Deats took down, and that its farmhouse, no longer extant, was the scene of a visit from General Washington.
The buildings that comprised this military support complex may still survive as archeological resources, but no testing of their probable sites has been undertaken. In , Furman had a new tavern built at Pittstown. The 3rd story must be cut up into bedrooms for traveling customers.
If I build, it shall not be a Henroost. This is the tavern building Pittstown Inn at the crossroads, at the same site as Hoff's Tavern. The swinging partition may have been a popular feature for inns of the time. This feature of the Pittstown tavern no longer exists, assuming it was actually constructed, because the interior of the building was consumed by fire in The walls of the building have survived, but the interior was destroyed.
The estate eventually passed to William E. Hunt, the only surviving grandchild, after the deaths of his parents. He broke up the Pittstown property into at least 20 numbered parcels, and beginning in he sold them out of the family. The most southerly lot of the land division, of six acres, was sold to Daniel Little. It adjoined Christy Little's land.
The grist mill lot with 16 acres went to W. On this property stand the Smith House and stone outbuilding , besides the gristmill Bodine's Lumber. This would include the extant tavern, Hoff Mills Inn Pittstown Inn and stone dwelling with milk house. A 4-acre property fronting on the main street north of the mill race then contained a blacksmith shop and was sold to Van Camp, the presumed blacksmith.
A spring flowing through a milk house on the same lot was reserved for the use of all the residents of the village, with a right of way to it. Described as being some 60 paces from the tavern, it is perhaps the same milk house associated with the above-mentioned stone dwelling.
South of the gristmill lot was a numbered tract called "the fulling mill lot," which extended across Pittstown Road and up the hillside, reaching to the hilltop farms of John Little and Luther Updike, Jr. Tradition states that this fulling mill had been a gristmill in the 18th century, built by Edward Rockhill before the arrival of Charles Hoff.
Hiram Deats bought this parcel in to use the abandoned mill complex for a foundry and machine shop. With the exception of a few new houses, there was little growth in the village during the first half of the 19th century. A school was built behind the tavern and a post office was established, thought to have been in the store that Benjamin and Ralph Guild kept.
Pittstown had entered a period of decline, even though some nearby villages, such as Quakertown, only a half-mile away, experienced a wave of growth in population and service shops that continued for several decades. Pittstown's declining importance might have led to a future as a mere hamlet like Littletown, somewhat to its south on Pittstown Road, which consisted solely of the gristmills, sawmills, and homes of the Little family.
Pittstown's future was changed in by the decision of Hiram Deats to establish a manufactory for farm equipment and other items in the village. Hiram Deats' life illustrates the ethic of a Horatio Alger story. Descended from German stock, his grandfather had settled in Hunterdon County in the 18th century and pursued the trade of wheelwright.
His father, John Deats, also became a wheelwright. According to Snell, John "began early to experiment in plows, and made the model of the celebrated Deats plow, which, in the hands of his son Hiram, has become so widely and favorably known.
He obtained the patent for it, and not being able to engage in its manufacture, went West for the purpose of disposing of rights there, and never returned. H e little dreamed of the magnitude to which the business would ultimately grow. At his farm near Quakertown, Deats made the castings for the manufacturing of the plow at a foundry he set up single-handedly and was able to tackle any aspect of the work in this field unfamiliar to him rather than hire help.
Historian Snell credits this facility as "the key to his future success," since Deats was too poor to employ a work crew, and had he not been a jack of all trades, the enterprise "must have died in its infancy. His business so prospered that in he decided to go into larger production.
Splitting the operation, he set up the stove casting enterprise at Stockton , NJ, while starting up a new business at nearby Pittstown. He bought the abandoned old fulling mill site with its pond and race, at which he built a machine shop, and manufactured threshing machines, corn shellers, and other agricultural implements.
In , he enlarged the shop and built a foundry, finally closing the home-spun operation on his farm entirely. At this location he now went into large production of the plow along with reapers and mowers. Deats, Case and Company, afterward changing its name to L. Deats was twice married. By his second wife he had a son, Hiram E. Mercer of Bucks County , Pennsylvania.
This son presented one of his father's original plows to Rutgers University in , which became the nucleus of the university's agricultural museum. Hiram Deats is significant to New Jersey agricultural history for his production of the plow designed and patented by his father, which clearly in its molded feature represented an improvement on the old, unmolded designs. Unchanged, it remained in use into the s. His innovation was thereafter incorporated into future improvements in plows.
Locally, and county-wide, Deats made an important contribution to the agricultural economy through his primary role in the development of Pittstown as an early manufacturing and commercial center for farm products and trade.
The growth of Pittstown to its present size was largely due to the expansion of his operations, which transformed the village into an informal company town.
Deats' enterprise led to the rise of others, making Pittstown the prime service center for farmers. In the s, E. Deats, a relation, took over the Christy Little fulling and oil mill at the southern end of the village, to which a sawmill had been attached.
There he continued in the lumber business, but recognizing a need for peach baskets when area farmers began shipping this crop in quantity, he added their production as a side line. At a later date, he installed a steam engine and produced roller buckwheat, fancy rye, and wheat flour, "and all kinds of mill feeds," according to his invoice form.
At the time of Deats' arrival, the village core was concentrated between the Pittstown Tavern and Race Street. Deats' activities enlarged the village to the south. His purchase of the fulling mill lot included the hillside on the west side of the road, which was being farmed at the time. Deats used this frontage for a series of houses, two for employees in a simple vernacular style and a third in Greek Revival temple style.
It is believed locally that the last was constructed for himself, but the Atlas Map identifies it as the home of his son, Leland M.
Traditions that attach to Deat's house site as the location of Moore Furman's house make more sense, also, at this location. Over the years, additional houses were built and owned by Deats, his partner Case, and their firm on both sides of the road down to the Quakertown Road-Pittstown Road intersection, making them the major landlord of the village. In , 11 of the 29 buildings in Pittstown belonged either to members of the Deats or Case families or to their company.
During the s, a new one-room school house was built on Race Street toward the top of the hillside, the only building on what was then Everittstown Road except for the blacksmith's shop at the corner and one house near it. An old photograph shows the schoolhouse to have originally been a typical one-room school, but it assumed its present size post, when it became a residence after a new school house was erected. In , Sylvester Probasco took over the south corner lot at Race Street and Pittstown Road for a new store where the Guild store had been, according to one tradition.
This gable-fronted building is ornamentally detailed with sunk-panel corner pilasters and frieze, which partly survive today despite an altered facade. Adjoining it on the same lot in stood the shopkeeper's home. This may or may not be the extant house, as its elaborate Italianate trappings and Queen Anne porch suggest a later date. Either the first house was remodeled and reoriented to the road or totally replaced, possibly in the s when the Reed family bought the store.
In , Probasco gave up the first store and built another directly across from it, combined with a residence, duplicating with greater elaboration the Greek Revival detailing employed on his first shop. The company-owned tenant houses, which include the stone two-family dwelling, and its neighbors, the house opposite them, and another at the southeast corner of the Quakertown Road intersection, are all simple, straightforward, vernacular structures, without stylistic detail, but each differs from the other, as they were not built on order, according to one plan, nor at one time.
In contrast to these are the domiciles of the more prosperous community residents, including principals in the Deats firm. The temple-style Deats house, earlier mentioned, although awkward in its proportions and application of elements of style, as seen in an early photograph before additions, illustrates a conscious effort to make a social distinction. The c. Probasco was built on what was probably the choicest site in town, on the distant side of Capoolon Brook, facing the lane from Deat's complex, thus avoiding the restrictions of hillside construction and grandly setting it off from the streetscape.
The main block has a defined attic story with "eyebrow" windows, under a flattened roof partly concealed by a center cross gable containing an oculus; it is flanked by two recessed flat-roofed two-story wings.
Its owner after , Artemis Hoffman, a cattle dealer, gave the house new prominence by adding a splendid Queen Anne veranda of complex design that sweeps around the central unit in a curve across one wing. The home of Deat's partner W. Case takes advantage of a corner lot at Quakertown Road and is distinguished by its very visible coursed stone foundation and pointed-arch fenestration.
Of block-and-wing plan, it appears to have been reoriented to Pittstown Road from Quakertown Road toward century end, the block and wing then being unified by means of an elaborate porch in Eastlake style. The addition of decorative porches on these two residences, as also on the Deats House, reflect the continuing use of architectural features for purposes of prestige, a human desire acted upon even in such a small industry-oriented country village as Pittstown.
Pittstown has never had a house of worship, as churches representing three denominations were within three miles distance of it as early as the s, and a fourth church was built in Quakertown in the 19th century. In the s, however, the Sunday School Union of the county apparently was prevailed upon to construct a building within the village on land obtained along Race Street, the residents desiring some form of religious service within walking distance, especially for children.
Of impressive scale, the building stands apart from the general appearance of Pittstown for its use of brick and large Italianate windows arranged on the facade in a central grouping with an oculus above. The tall, upper story contains an auditorium and stage preserved but now used as an office.
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