A time capsule view into the past: Ledgewood's King Store

Morris County's old Ledgewood Circle is no more, but if you follow a couple of small brown directional signs to the Drakesville Historic District, you'll find one of the earliest remnants of what made this crossroads the focus of a rural community from the heyday of the Morris Canal until the early 1900s.

Just off the intersection of Routes 10 and 46, the Roxbury Historic Trust is in the process of restoring the King Store and Homestead. Hidden New Jersey friend Kelly Palazzi suggested we check it out, but it wasn't easy: the property is open only on the second Sunday of the month and is closed entirely from January through March.

It's easy to imagine a few neighbors trading news
on the porch of the old King Store.

Our welcome to the King Store was probably a lot like the one a canal boat crew would have gotten in the 1800s: the proprietors were standing in the doorway of the stone building and called out a greeting as we pulled up. Walking onto the porch and into the store was like stepping back in time: the interior was lined with wooden shelves, groceries and sundries of a previous age stocked here and there. A cast-iron stove stands in the center of the room, just in front of a large scale, and a tall set of cubby holes near the door sufficed as the community's post office. In the back room, the wooden doors of a large icebox are open to help visitors imagine how milk and other perishables were kept fresh in the days before refrigeration.

Our friendly guides explained that the store was built around 1826 on what was then the Essex-Morris-Sussex Turnpike, one of the first roads chartered by the New Jersey Legislature at the start of the 19th century. The original owners, the Woodruff family, operated the store until 1835 before closing it for unknown reasons. Two years later, canal boat owner Albert Riggs bought the property and reopened it to serve the local community and the increasing traffic through the nearby Morris Canal lock and two planes. Riggs transferred ownership and operation of the store to his son-in-law Theodore King in 1873, and the new storekeeper and his wife Emma moved into the living quarters above the mercantile.

Brands of the past find their homes on the King Store shelves.

Though competition from the railroads was already digging into the canal's business, King was on his way to prosperity. Besides the popular general store, he got into the mining business and bought significant tracts of land, some of which he sold at a handsome profit while retaining the rest as vacation rental space. He also operated hotels and a steamboat company to cater to the tourist trade at nearby Lake Hopatcong. The proceeds from all of these businesses enabled him to build a comfortable Victorian home on the lot next to the store, where he could keep an eye on business while enjoying time with his wife and their daughter, Emma Louise.

King died in 1926, and with him the store. His daughter simply locked the door, leaving the goods sitting on the shelves. Dwindling traffic on Canal had ended with its termination a few years before. According to our guide, family members would come in from time to time to take items they fancied, but for the most part, the building was a de facto time capsule. Louise King divided her time between New Jersey and Florida until her death in 1975.

Fresh milk, anyone?

A few years later, the Roxbury Rotary Club took on the store as a civic project, clearing the overgrown, weeded lot and acquiring state Green Acres funding to buy the property for the township. Now the responsibility of the Roxbury Historic Trust, the King Store is slowly being restored; a new slate roof is the latest improvement, along with a refurbished scale sitting next to the porch.

While work clearly needs to be done to stabilize the structure to prevent further decay, there's much to be said for keeping a good part of the current look. Too much paint and varnish would take away the character of a classic general store. As it stands, it doesn't take much to imagine a local farmer or canal mule tender at the counter, ordering supplies and settling his bill.

The next stop on our visit to historic Drakestown was the King house, just next door... but that's a story for our next installment.

Milling around in Stillwater, generally speaking

Our visit to White Lake built up a thirst, so we found ourselves wandering in search of liquid refreshment. We found it at the general store in Stillwater.

Stillwater General Store always
seems to have someone parked
directly in front of it. 

If you've done any wandering through the less built-up areas of the state, you've probably run into a historic general store building or two. I say 'historic' because many of them don't serve the 'general' purpose anymore. Instead of selling various groceries and housing the community post office, they've been converted into gourmet sandwich shops or coffee houses. There's nothing patently wrong with that -- repurposing buildings is often the best way to preserve them -- but they lack a certain authenticity. They often sell fair-trade coffee by the pound instead of penny nails, and if you need toilet paper or soap you'd better be prepared to drive a distance to a big-box store.

The minute we pulled up to the Stillwater General Store, it was clear which category it falls into. An out-of-service Texaco Fire Chief gas pump stood in front of the porch, paired with one of those vintage advertising signs. Both came by their weathered appearance honestly, as did the screen door that had clearly welcomed generations of local residents. Once inside, we passed a wall of post office boxes on the way to the beverage cooler. To be honest, I was so focused on getting something to drink that I didn't study the groceries on the shelves, but it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they probably focus on the bare necessities someone might need when a trip to a distant supermarket was out of the question. Oh, and when we made our purchase, the proprietor said something about pie. I'm still regretting passing that up. I mean, Sussex County pie must be really good.

Our thirst issue resolved, we noticed that the general store wasn't the only interesting building in town. A short walk brought us to the home of Casper Shafer, the German immigrant who'd settled the area in the early 1740s. While the Vass family was growing grain in Hardwick, Shafer ran a successful grist mill that was paired with a sawmill just before the Revolution. In addition to counting on the nearby Paulins Kill to power his mills, he used the waterway as means to get his product to the Delaware and eventually to customers as far away as Philadelphia.

The Stillwater Mill, looking a lot like one of those
cute figurines people collect. 

Shafer's wooden mill was destroyed by a fire in 1844, but its replacement still stands nearby, looking as if it could be transplanted to an old village in the Alps. In fact, it looks a little too good, as if it shut down just a few years ago. Actually, in the continuum of milling in New Jersey, that's the case. Its continuous operation ended in 1954, but new owners reopened it in the early 1970s, running it as a milling business during the week and an educational establishment on the weekends.

It's not clear when the Stillwater shut down for good, but when it did, it was the last of New Jersey's operating grist mills. The industry had fallen victim to development, as more grain farms were sold and converted to residential communities.

Somehow, Stillwater seems to have avoided overdevelopment, or at least the area around Main Street has. On our Sunday visit it was quiet, except for the steady flow of visitors to the general store. There were an assortment of other buildings we didn't check out... the church on the hill and the historical society, to name two. Maybe another time, when we'll be sure to stop for the pie.

Milling around in Ralston

Rambling around the state, I'm always fascinated by places that aren't there anymore. Well, it's not like you're driving into a black hole -- the places are THERE but have been swallowed up by a larger town.

Such is the case with Ralston, now part of Mendham, but once a community on its own. The locals have kept the name as a historic district, now restricted to a few Colonial-era buildings. I went there because I'd heard it was the site of New Jersey's oldest post office. According to The WPA Guide to 1930s New Jersey, the building had served that purpose since 1792, in addition to serving as the community general store.

The drive out from Morristown is an enjoyable one -- you take County Road 510, which doubles as the old State Route 24. Believe the maps on that one if you choose; I didn't see a single Route 24 sign the whole way. You'll pass through some residential areas before you start running into a few farms. I was a little disappointed that a new housing development now covers the hill the WPA guide said had been topped with a large wooden horse.

Don't travel too quickly, because it's easy to miss the general store/post office at the corner of Roxiticus Road. The slight dark brown building does have a large "GENERAL STORE" sign, but it's basically hidden under the roof overhang. You might see the historical society sign hanging near the curb, telling us the place is open on Sundays during the summer and fall. That's right -- it's no longer an operating store, nor is it a post office, having lost that designation in 1941. In its final years, the post office was down to fourth class status, meaning that residents had to stop by to pick up their mail, even though the Mendham mail route ran right along Route 24.

Originally known by the native name of Roxiticus, Ralston was an active little place. Settled near the north branch of the Raritan River, it was a perfect location for a mill, and several were built within the community. One of the mills, owned by John Logan, even supplied flour to the Continental troops at Jockey Hollow during the difficult winters of 1779 and 1780. That very patriotic gesture ended up forcing Logan into bankruptcy like many other war suppliers when the Continental Congress didn't pay him for the goods.

While he lost the mill, it wasn't lost to the family. Logan's daughter had married wealthy Philadelphia merchant John Ralston, who bought the mill and the adjoining manor house from his father-in-law in 1785. True to the profession that had brought him success, Ralston built and opened the community's general store. Money was generally tight in the young United States, so he bartered with other merchants in New York and Georgia to get goods, creating markets for his community's products, as well. As his wealth and influence grew, the businesses and farms around him prospered, too, and the area was eventually renamed Ralston.

The mills have long since closed, and there are just a few small farms scattered about, but Ralston is a nice place to see authentic Colonial architecture. Mentally erase the modern street signs, electrical hookups and pavement, and it's not hard to imagine what the place looked like back in Ralston's day.

A grocery store in your house? How convenient!

Hillside's Woodruff House/Eaton Store Museum crams a lot of history into a very small space. Nestled into a pleasant neighborhood on Conant Street, the original house was built in 1735, with additions built in 1790 and into the 19th century.

Typical of most colonial house museums, the house contains a mix of artifacts representative of life during the 1700s and early 1800s. There's also a sizeable, more 'modern' kitchen constructed in the late 1800s. More than anything else, the house is a great way to show young people and other local residents what life for the average family was like when the region was still largely agricultural.

The real treat of a visit to the house is what's attached: a complete neighborhood grocery store. I've been to a lot of house museums, and I can't recall ever seeing one that had a retail establishment appended to it. You hear about families that own stores and live above or behind them, but it's a bit less typical to add a store to an existing house.

Not surprisingly, the Eaton store originated as a bit of an afterthought. The Woodruff family had already built and moved into a house next door when Theresa Woodruff realized that it would be convenient to have a place to sell the fruit from the family's orchards nearby. Using wood left over from construction of their new house, the family built the store onto the end of their then-vacant house. Eventually, as Theresa found the store took too much of her time, she rented it to a series of merchants, ending with Gilbert Eaton, who'd been doing business out of his horse-drawn cart. His wife Sarah operated the store while he continued his mobile business, and under her management, the location grew into a true general store and a community center of sorts. While making their purchases, local residents would discuss local events and politics, including the secession of Hillside from neighboring Union. Many counted on the Eatons for telephone service, as well, since they were among the few who'd had a phone installed.

Visitors today may not be able to make purchases, but they can get a good sense of what it was like to shop there. An Eaton family member contributed many of the vintage grocery items on the store's shelves and helped to guide the overall restoration. You'll see many familiar brands represented, only in different incarnations, plus a host of local memorabilia. To my knowledge, there's no other museum quite like this in Union County.

In many ways, the Eaton store is a distant forebear of the bodegas and corner stores you might see in a large city. The inventory represents a little of everything, and the place tends to be a gathering point for the neighborhood.