Express-Times article
Here’s the full text of an article in the Express-Times following the visit by the Warren County Municipal and Charitable Trust committee.
Warren County Land Preservation officials tour Roseberry Homestead as part of grant approval process
PHILLIPSBURG | Frank Greenagel of the Phillipsburg Historical Society led guests through the Roseberry Homestead and pointed to holes and exposed walls that revealed secrets of the building’s past.
Wooden planks demonstrate an antiquated but reliable method of construction on one room’s bare walls. Tufts of horse hair remain preserved in limestone mortar. A colorful stencil design emerges from beneath a thin layer of paint in the parlor room.
The Georgian-style home would have cost up to 2,000 pounds to build at a time when the average yearly income was 40 pounds.
“Even in New York or Philadelphia,” Greenagel said, this would have been one of the grander homes.”
Greenagel led members of the Warren County Municipal and Charitable Conservancy Trust on a tour Friday, hoping the trust would give the historical society a grant to stabilize and preserve the home. The reconstituted historical is seeking $247,000 for a three-phase preservation project.
Greenagel said he was skittish about how the county’s land preservation office would view the newest efforts to preserve the aging house. Members of the town’s historical society got nearly $100,000 in the 1970s but failed to spend most of the money when the group fell into disarray and abandoned the cause.
“One of the things I was worried about when we applied was, ‘Do we have a bad reputation?’” Greenagel said.
The Warren County freeholders are to decide in December whether the society will receive the money.
Pat MacCallum, a member of the conservancy trust’s board, found the Roseberry Homestead inspiring.
“On a historical level, I think it’s exceptionally worthwhile,” MacCallum said. “It shows where people came from and the type of integrity they had 250 years ago.”