AsaHunt1830Farmhouse

The entrance to the Asa Hunt House is not really at the front, it’s around the side. You know how it is: most folks pull in the driveway and walk in the side door. That’s especially true of our kids’ friends, who come and go at all hours of the day and night. If a…

The Asa Hunt House sits on “Pennington-Lawrenceville Road” in Hopewell township NJ. In this part of the state, the roads all have common labels in addition to their official state number; our road is also NJ 546. If you travel our road just a couple miles east, you cross into Lawrence township, and though you…

In the 1850’s, something new fired to life on the banks of the Delaware River. The city of Trenton held a strategic location at the head of navigation on the river: it was easy to bring raw materials down to the city from upriver and from the hinterland. Trenton was also centrally located in the…

As June broke into the clear, so did the inside of the house. The new windows had arrived, and what little remained of the demo and cleanup finished up. As the new windows were installed, light poured in, allowing us to see what we were doing and get underway with the installation of the electric,…

Back in 2000, not long after we had moved into the Hunt House, we were eating breakfast and heard a plaintive mewing coming from somewhere. At first it seemed to come from living room, but when we investigated we thought we could hear it coming from under the floorboards. Aha: the basement! We went down…

By now you’re probably saying, “There can’t be any more connections between the Roman Empire and Federal-style buildings.” Well consider this: for as long as civilization has been around, folks have tried to create man-made stone. The Babylonians used clay to hold their buildings together. The Egyptians added roasted gypsum to the clay for a…

One of the challenges of the Asa Hunt House is that it surrounded by woodlands on all sides, with a lot of pin oaks that dump huge amounts of leaves every Fall. Many of the leaves blow across the yard back into the woods, but still, it’s a big seasonal chore raking up all the…

There used to be a great hardware store right here in downtown Pennington. It was run by a nice couple of local folks, who had grown up here and had attended the same elementary school, Bear Tavern, that our kids first attended. (Gotta love a grammar school named for a wild animal and a drinking…

On the afternoon of July 4, 1776, right after signing the Declaration, the Continental Congress appointed three men – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin – to create a design for a national seal. They each had different ideas, but ultimately agreed on a Lady Liberty holding a shield defending the United States. The…