Built some 25 years before H.B. Smith's arrival in Burlington County , the Greek Revival mansion symbolizes in its buildings and gardens the complexity of its most famous owner.
In the 1600s the King of England was accustomed to granting friends and nobles portions of the Empire’s holdings in the New World.
The holdings were called PROPRIETORSHIPS
The proprietorship local to the Rancocas Creek was the Proprietorship of West Jersey.
The story of the colonization of West Jersey, which encompasses Burlington County, can be traced largely to the men and women from England who arrived on the banks of the Delaware and navigated the inland waterways (The Pennsauken, Rancocas and Crosswicks Creeks), creating many of the communities of Burlington County.
The Proprietors established guidelines for the proportioning and distribution of the property in their colony.
In this case, the West Jersey Proprietorship determined that specifically:
Each piece would have a proportional amount of creek frontage to the total acreage
There would be time limits to settle the land
There would be an equal distribution of meadow and woodland
There would be a minimum size for any given tract
There was a stipulation that no land owner be allowed to take up land on opposite sides of the creek – UNLESS AUTHORIZED
This was of course TO CONTROL THE BUILDING OF MILL DAMS
There was also a formula to govern the distance between dams. It was simply a matter of mathematics:
The HEIGHT of the dam determines the
HEIGHT of the BACKWATER
The FALL of the River determines
HOW FAR UPSTREAM the River will FLOOD.....OR
MINIMUM DISTANCE between dams
FOR EXAMPLE :
The Rancocas falls at 4 FEET PER MILE
Thus, building an 8 ft. dam meant the next dam site
Would be 2 MILES UPSTREAM.
As a result, dams sprung up at Bridgetown ( Mt. Holly), Smithville, Birmingham, New Mills (Pemberton)
The administration of these regulations is best illustrated by what happened to the Rancocas in the vicinity of Smithville.
In 1676, HENRY STACY (who lived in England at the time) purchased 500 acres of land in the area which includes Smithville (it was Edward Bylling’s portion of the Proprietorship of West Jersey)
Henry Stacy died before he was able to travel to the New World to settle his land.
Mary Stacy (his widow) sold the land to:
Sarah Parker, who GAVE the land to:
Aaron Anderson, who sold the land to:
Daniel Gaskill, who, coincidentally OWNED THE LAND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CREEK! He gave the land to his son:
Joseph Gaskill, who sold the land to:
Solomon Southwick, who sold the land to:
Jacob Parker – who wanted to build a dam! He presented his petition in 1776. He never received permission – and built the dam anyway. Because his dam affected his neighbor, Thomas Merrit, there were 12 years of litigation and recriminations. Merrit died and Parker went bankrupt and in 1830 Samuel and Jonathan Shreve purchased the property for their Calico Printing Factory.
