Shippen Manor

About this property

Shippen Manor is located in Oxford Township, Warren County, New Jersey, United States. The manor was built in 1755 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 20, 1984, for its significance in architecture and industry. It was later added as a contributing property to the Oxford Industrial Historic District on August 27, 1992. Shippen Manor was built c. 1754 on an estate of four thousand acres for William Shippen Sr. and his brother Joseph Shippen Jr.. The brothers owned the nearby Oxford Furnace and would manage the furnace from this home. The old furnace produced iron from 1741 to 1882. According to George Wyckoff Cummins' book, The History of Warren County, NJ (1911), "The Shippen family, who at the time of the [American Revolution] came into possession of Oxford Furnace". During the war, part of the family were identified as "Loyalists" (Loyal to the British Crown) while others were considered "Patriots". The great-niece of William Shippen Sr. was Mrs. Margaret "Peggy" Shippen Arnold, wife of traitorous general, Benedict Arnold. (The part of the Shippen family associated with the Manor were originally Quakers and chose to not choose a side during the war, even though they profited from it.) Peggy Shippen married Arnold on 8 April 1779 when she was nineteen and he was thirty-eight and a Colonel in the US Army. They neither lived at nor visited Shippen Manor. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Chief Justice Edward Shippen IV (1729-1806), who was neither a Patriot nor Loyalist. Joseph William Shippen, son of William Sr., managed his father's estate in Oxford for nearly thirty years. He was involved in a consensual relationship with his housekeeper, Martha Axford, the only daughter of John and Anna Beach Axford. (Note: Although the book refers to Joseph William Shippen and Martha Axford as being "married", there is no documentation to prove that they were legally married.) Before 1831, Morris Robeson, Esq. (grandson of Jonathan Robeson, came into possession of the Manor and Furnace. From 1831 to 1842, Henry Jordan & Co., who manufactured stoves until 1839, leased the property from Morris Robeson's widow. The Scranton brothers, George W. and Selden T. Scranton, took charge of the Furnace, related industries and the Manor, which continued to house the iron masters. In the later part of the 19th c., the Manor was referred to as the "Fowler House" and boarded workers in Oxford. During the 20th c., it transferred hands a few times, ultimately becoming property of the State of New Jersey who transferred ownership to the County of Warren. Today it is a county museum and houses the offices of the Warren County Division of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, a division of the Department of Land Preservation.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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