Documentation of the Cuff-Dubois House, Lower Alloways Creek Township, Salem County, New Jersey

Documentation of the Cuff-Dubois House,

Lower Alloways Creek Township, Salem County, New Jersey:

A Vernacular Architecture Study

by

Janet L. Sheridan

Under a Program Grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission

June 30, 2008

© 2008 Janet L. Sheridan

The Cuff-Dubois House

Purpose of the Study and Methodology

This study documented a house in rural Lower Alloways Creek Township, Salem County, which was linked to Reuben Cuff, the son of a slave who was the earliest known leader of the black Methodist movement in New Jersey. Cuff is listed as owning and occupying a parcel of land and a house of this description in the 1798 Federal Direct Tax records. By this linkage, the everyday life of Reuben Cuff, a significant African-American figure, is located upon a domestic landscape for the first time. The house is also architecturally notable as a rare-surviving colonial stone house, a very small version of the three-room open plan, and as an example of farm house evolution in Salem County.1 Solomon Dubois acquired the property sometime before 1821 and his descendents owned the property until 1948.2 Solomon’s son Richard is probably the one who made most of the alterations of the house. Hence this study refers to the house as the Cuff-Dubois house.

With an object-centered, vernacular architecture approach, this study produced measured drawings of the house, and made linkages through primary documents such as deeds, wills, inventories, census and tax records mostly to Reuben Cuff, for whom the house is most significant. Floor plans and elevations were field-measured to scale, and selected views were drafted with AutoCAD. The measuring crew consisted of Janet Sheridan, local volunteers Sharon Washburn and Jeff Parker, and University of Delaware historic preservation program colleagues Jon Schmidt, Russ Stevenson, and Cary Corbin.

Setting and Overall Description

The Cuff-Dubois House stands on a rise of land above small tributaries of Silver Lake Meadow, a tidal estuary on the Delaware Bay in Lower Alloways Creek Township, Salem County, New Jersey. Though surrounded by crop fields, it is barely visible from the Harmersville-Canton Road which lies 1200 feet to the east (see maps, Figures 1-3). The frame main block of the house faces southerly and presents a two-story, five-bay, symmetrical façade with a centered, one-story porch and a bracketed roof eave (Photos 2, 3). The front façade occupies the side wall of a gable-roofed, one-room deep house, otherwise known as an I-house for its one-room deep, rectangular plan. Centered behind the main block is a wing with a first story built of native stone and a second story of frame (Photo 4). The northerly facing stone gable-end wall is striking for an array of unusually large stones. Attached to the main block on the westerly side are two, one-story, frame shed-roofed additions (Photo 5). The house is privately owned and not accessible to the public.

Reading the house by its structure, materials, finishes, and floor plans, a story emerges of generational changes not otherwise obvious. There are six separate sections distinguished by foundations, framing methods, materials. The evidence suggests a chronological sequence of construction and constant efforts to enlarge and re-style the house, and reflects a long period of prosperity from the mid-

1 In this study, “colonial” means before the Revolutionary War. 2 Deed Book Z, Page 317, and Deed Book 283, Page 370 in Salem County Clerks Office

DOCUMENTATION OF THE CUFF-DUBOIS HOUSE, LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK, SALEM COUNTY, NEW JERSEY

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eighteenth-century through the late-nineteenth-century. When a reading of the house is linked to documents, a story of people who lived and labored within these walls emerges.

Reuben Cuff’s House of 1798

Stone houses were always rare in Salem County, which occupies the Inner Coastal Plain of New Jersey. Here, scattered deposits of an iron-rich concretion of quartz pebbles and sand variously called iron stone, Jersey sandstone, or peanut stone, are found. This stone is the most recent deposit in the Inner Coastal Plain, formed 11 million years ago, and is consequently found near the surface.3 The rarity of this house makes it easier to link with a particular document which is also rare in New Jersey, the 1798 Federal Direct Tax list. Lower Alloways Creek Township has the distinction of being one of only five townships in New Jersey for which this record survives, and three of those are in Salem County. Only three stone houses were reported from the Salem County townships for which 1798 “A” lists survive—one among the 127 houses in Lower Alloways Creek, two among Mannington’s 110 houses, and none among Pittsgrove’s 125 houses. 4 There are only a small handful of colonial stone houses known to exist in all of present-day Salem County, though there is no official count. A 1984 township survey refers to this house as the only stone house in the township, one that “is unique and merits further research.”5

The 1798 A List detailed houses in terms of owner, occupant, material, dimensions, number of stories, windows, kitchens, outbuildings, acres associated for tax purposes (two or less), and the tax valuation in dollars. Reuben Cuff owned and occupied the singular stone house, which was assessed at $300. It had one story, three windows, a kitchen, and measured twenty by twenty feet.6 Today’s sole stone house in the township also measures twenty feet square and began as a one-story house. There are only two windows, but the missing south wall undoubtedly contained a third. Upon this evidence, the house under study is considered to be Reuben Cuff’s 1798 home.

A quantitative analysis of these records puts this property in context with cultural landscape of the whole township. In 1798, township house values ranged $105 to $1,300 with a mean of $340 and a median of $250. Put within the context of the whole township, Cuff’s property value of $300 fell in the 59th percentile of value, above the median but below the mean. Of the 127 properties, his was 3 “Lenape Woods Nature Preserve: A Human & Natural History,” http://ahnj.com/ahnj/Parks/Lenape%20Woods.html (accessed January 15, 2008). 4 Janet L. Sheridan, “‘Their houses are some Built of timber’ : The Colonial Timber Frame Houses of Fenwick’s Colony, New Jersey.” (M. A. Thesis, University of Delaware, 2007), 10. The “A” list accounted for houses valued higher than $100. The “B” list accounted for house worth less than $100, other buildings, and the total acres of land. 5 Maria M. Thompson and John M Dickey, “Salem County Cultural Resource Survey Phase I,” Salem County Cultural and Heritage Commission, August 1984, property #1704-84-A. New Jersey Historic Preservation Office, Trenton. Local historian David A. Fogg knows of no other stone house in the township (personal communication, January 8, 2008). 6 United States Direct Tax, 1798, “A” List. Salem County, New Jersey: Lower Alloways Creek Township. Copy of original list, Center for Historic Architecture and Design, University of Delaware. Original in New Jersey State Archive Record Series New Jersey General Assembly / Tax Ratables (Duplicates), 1786-1846, Book 1520.


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among the seventy-seven or 61% that had kitchens. With regard to gross square feet of house (accounting for stories), Cuff’s one-story house of 400 square feet ranked at the 36th percentile, below both the mean of 654 square feet and the median 504. But compared to just the seventy, one-story houses, Cuff’s value fell at the 87th percentile, well above both the mean of 215 square feet and the median of 158 square feet. In sum, by comparison to all houses valued above $100, Cuff’s fell slightly below the mean but above the median values for dwelling value, and compared to one-story houses, Cuff’s was rather outstanding in terms of both value and gross area. Cuff was also among the 55% majority on the A List who owned their own home. Almost as rare as a stone house, his house was one of only five square houses among the 127 houses on the A List. The other four were brick (two 18x18 and one 22x22), and wood (one 18x18).

The “B” list also survives for Lower Alloways Creek, the only Salem County township to have both lists survive, allowing a complete enumeration of housing. There were 280 parcels of land, 76 barns, 76 dwellings valued less than $100, one stable, three mills and three shops. Reuben Cuff owned and occupied thirty-eight acres of land valued at $476 on which was a barn measuring twenty-five feet by twenty feet and no house. 7 Since he had only one record on each list, his A List house was no doubt associated with his B List barn and land. In terms of acreage, the parcels ranged from less than an acre to 900 acres, with a mean of 75 acres and a median of 40 acres. With 38 acres, Cuff was below these values. Land values, which included outbuildings but not dwellings, ranged from $13 to $4,600, with a mean of $653 and a median value of $300. Cuff’s $476 was therefore below average but above the median. These analyses place Reuben Cuff as a middling landowner within the context of the local economy and its cultural landscape. As a man of color, he was clearly exceptional, as only one person was noted as “black” on the lists—one William Davis who owned a house and land on the B List. His brother Mordecai appeared on both lists as well, but whether any of the other persons listed are of mixed-race is unknown.

Analysis of the Cuff-Dubois House

Detailed architectural analysis revealed evidence of construction and change through time. This section describes three periods during which major building events took place. The process began with field measuring, observation of structure and finishes, the making of drawings, and the synthesis of physical and contextual evidence. Refer to the photos and drawings that follow this narrative.

Period I – 1740s-1760s (House A)

The stone wing (House A) was the first-built house (Photo 4). 8 Its builder is unknown, as are occupants prior to Reuben Cuff. It is approximately square in plan, twenty feet on each side, was one-

7 United States Direct Tax, 1798, “B” List. Salem County, New Jersey: Lower Alloways Creek Township. Copy of original list, Center for Historic Architecture and Design, University of Delaware. Original in New Jersey State Archive Record Series New Jersey General Assembly / Tax Ratables (Duplicates), 1786-1846. 8 See drawings for key to house sections.


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story high, with a centered door and one flanking window on the east and west walls.9 The first-floor level is about thirty inches above the ground above a full basement. The peanut-stone walls are 16-17 inches thick at the basement level and 15 inches thick at the first story. The north gable end has an unusual pattern of large and small stones (Photo 7). At the basement level, fabric of probable colonial origin is extant—a westerly-facing, partial window frame that is pegged at the corners with evidence of horizontal bars that were diamond-shaped in cross section (Photo 13); hand-hewn floor joists six inches in height varying four to eight inches in width (Drawing Sheet 2); gauged floorboards (Photo 9); and corner fireplace foundations centered in the gable wall of the first floor (Drawing Sheet 1). The floor of the basement is paved with brick in a running bond. Edges of floorboards visible at the interior basement entrance are one-inch thick and either tongued or grooved, also typical of 18th century work. The practice of “gauging” the edges of the floorboards, that is, cutting the outer half-inch or so of the board to a uniform thickness with a rabbet plane, allowed boards of varying thicknesses to be adzed to the same thickness at the joists, resulting in a even floor.10 This practice and the profiled moldings around the basement window frame speak to the high level of finish of this house.

The evidence for the back-to-back corner fireplaces suggests that the house was conceived as double-pile (also known as double-cell), or two-rooms deep. However, dividing a square plan into two rooms, each with a corner fireplace, would have made two very narrow parlors. Double-pile houses are typically rectangular in plan to provide for two squarish parlors divided by a partition. The existing floor appears to have co-existed with the corner fireplaces, according to the triangular floor patches on both sides of the existing, altered fireplace (Drawing Sheet 3). Although there was no obvious evidence on the floor for a removed partition, an undivided room with two fireplaces seems unlikely. But another piece of evidence, the continuous line across the floor where two sets of floorboards abut, suggests the existence of a partition across the room just at the north edges of the doors. Thus this house could have been a diminutive three-room plan containing a hall and two parlors (Drawing Sheet 5). The three-room plan of this layout was less common than the one-room “hall” and the two-room “hall/parlor” in the eighteenth century and was generally utilized for more elaborate houses.11 The largest room, or hall, would have contained a fireplace in the south gable wall, a window in the same wall, and a stair to the garret in one corner. The two small parlors would have been for sleeping or more private entertaining, and both would have been accessible from the hall but probably not from each other. Most known examples are much larger, however—850 to 900 square feet on the first floor—versus Cuff’s 400 square feet. In addition, they were never common.12 These parlors would have measured only roughly eight by nine feet. The plastered but formerly exposed ceiling joists may conceal further evidence of the layout. As such a small example, and as a stone example, it would be a very rare expression of the three-room idea, one of several housing 9 The cardinal directions in this discussion are nominal, not magnetic. See the “Plan North” arrow on the drawings for orientation. 10 Lee H. Nelson, “Notes on Historic Flooring: An 18th Century Method of Making High Quality Wooden Flooring from Boards of Irregular Thickness,” CRM Bulletin, Vol 13: No. 4 (1990), 27-28. 11 Gabrielle Lanier and Bernard L. Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes, (Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 21. 12 Gabrielle Lanier, The Delaware Valley in the Early Republic: Architecture, Landscape and Regional Identity, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 138-139. Lanier discussed the type as represented in Mannington Township, Salem County.


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options in the minds of eighteenth-century Delaware Valley builders and one that dates back to the time of William Penn. 13

The earliest documented example of a double-pile house in Salem County was built in 1742.14 The 1760s is also cited as the period of double-pile construction in Salem County.15 Corner fireplaces were known to the Swedes who settled in the Delaware Valley prior to English settlement, and were common in seventeenth-century England, as well. They were going out of fashion by the late eighteenth-century in Salem County. The Period I house therefore could easily date from the decades 1740s-1760s, or even earlier.

The south end wall no longer exists due to the additions built later. The material was probably reused elsewhere for foundations. The upper floor plans show a void the thickness of a stone wall between the houses. Here the enclosed staircase to the second floor appears to be a later alteration but could have been the location of an earlier stair. The current second floor was the Period I garret, which was probably one large, unfinished room. The floor here consists of wide floorboards secured by wrought nails, consistent with the colonial period.

The door and window oppose each other. The east window retains an eighteenth-century set of wood sashes—the wide, low muntin profile and small lights are diagnostic of the period (Photo 10). The six-over-six, double-hung sashes contain seven by nine-inch lights, some of which are old, wavy glass. On the exterior window frame is a set of wrought iron pintels for a single wide shutter, which is gone (Photo 11). The pintel design has a distinctive angular base, instead of the usual round base, under the pin, which may be diagnostic for a particular blacksmith. The third window reported in 1798 was probably in the missing south wall. The east doorway contains a beaded-edged frame and a hinged door with beaded-edged panels which appear to date from a later renovation (Photo 12). A colonial period door would have hung by strap hinges mounted on pintels spiked into the frame, but there is no evidence of pintels in the frame. The west window and doorway open into the kitchen shed. The window has been robbed of its window frame, but the door frame is extant and has the same construction as the east door. The door frames and door probably date from the early-nineteenth century, and the door was modified with an upper window in the late nineteenth-century, according to the two-light, central muntin configuration. The floor joists above were originally exposed, planed smooth and finished with a double beaded-edge. The underside of the floorboards above is planed smooth as well. A later lath and plaster ceiling conceals all but one joist, next to the stair. Such an open, finished and decorated joist system was in keeping with post-medieval architectural taste practiced in eighteenth-century Salem County.16 The outer joist at the south wall was whitewashed in keeping with the local practice of whitewashing the perimeter beams of a room to match the plaster walls.

13 Ibid. William Penn promoted this plan, often termed the “Penn Plan,” to Pennsylvania settlers in 1684. 14 Sheridan, 93. The frame Joseph Shinn House in Woodstown is dated by a cast-iron fireback in the parlor. 15 Rebecca L. Culver, “Souvenir Map of Historic Sites in Mannington Township,” Mannington Bicentennial Commission, n.d. 16 The alternative was the more classically-inspired plastered ceiling and no visible framing which appeared first in houses of elites. The author has seen many examples of such exposed, finished joists in the county, some built as late as the early-nineteenth-century.


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Notably absent among the architectural evidence is the Period I kitchen noted in the 1798 tax list. The kitchen was probably attached to the house, as a kitchen could not have been included within the given dimensions unless it was in the basement. However, there was no evidence found for a basement kitchen.17 It would have contained a large cooking fireplace. Evidence for one may be in the ground somewhere or it was obliterated by the many additions built over time.

Period II – 1815-1840 (Upper story B, House C, and Shed E)

A major change occurred some time in the first half of the nineteenth-century in keeping with the wave of rebuilding during the early national period. A second story was added in frame, and a two-story frame addition was added on the south side, evidently at the same time. This afforded a new, larger hall that may have been a kitchen, with one or more chambers above, and a three chambers and garret above the original house—a substantial enlargement. The old corner fireplaces were converted into a single fireplace for a new “best room,” and the ceiling was plastered in modern taste. This change could have been made by Reuben Cuff, Soloman Dubois before 1821 or his son Richard after 1821. However, related finishes such as the enclosed stair, the creation of three chambers in upper story B, and the fireplace alteration were probably done by Richard Dubois, as the sawn lath and mantel would post-date the beginning of his ownership.

The first floor of House A contains a single room with a fireplace and wood mantel with centered against the north gable wall (Photo 8). The Grecian-style mantle closely matches a design found in other local houses of this period, one of which is dated 1839.18 The ceiling joists are covered with sawn lath and plaster, so at the earliest could be circa 1840 when lath was beginning to be sawn instead of riven (hand-split). The enclosed stair and stair hall is from this period according to sawn lath and plaster on the partition and the circa 1840 door trim. These finishes are consistent with the second floor partitions. The floor patches at the second level (Drawing Sheet 4) may be a consequence of re-framing the floor around the altered chimney stack.

The second-story frame addition (B) appears to have been built in the first half of the nineteenth-century. The sawn, braced English box frame rests on the stone walls of House A, except at the south wall, where it rests on the basement foundation. Six-over-six window sashes with eight by ten-inch lights, a muntin profile typical of the early nineteenth-century, and raising hardware are extant in the second floor, kitchen (Shed E) and garret. The roof framing consists of a mix of six hewn and four sawn, bridle-jointed and pegged common rafters on a board false plate. The hewn rafters are probably reused from the first period house (A). The shortage of hewn rafters may mean that they were spaced further apart when they formed the roof of House A. Over House B they average two feet on center, but for House A with stone gable ends, six rafters at a common eighteenth-century spacing of three feet would have fit. The western portion of the south end gable of House B was exposed to the exterior as evidenced by extant cut nails that fastened cladding to the wall studs of House A/B, also visible from the garret. The nails date from the period 1815-1830s according to the technology of

17 Bernard L. Herman, personal communication May 11, 2008. Surviving evidence in the Delaware Valley points to enumerated kitchens being attached additions versus detached buildings.. 18 Ronald Magill, personal communication, May 14, 2008. The Abel and Mary Nicholson House, 1839 addition.


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their manufacture.19 There are no nails on the gable end wall where it joins House C. Therefore, House C either predated or was contemporaneous with the construction of House B, that is, the raising of House A to two stories.

The easterly portion of the front block (C) is an earlier construction than the westerly section (D). It appears to have been a rectangular, two-story frame house, shorter in height by about two-and-a-half feet than presently, with an end chimney, built before or at the time of the raising of House B. The dividing wall between Houses C and D was the west end-wall of House C. Two different ground sills abut at the first story at the front wall, visible from the front porch. The first floor joists in section C are sash-sawn and placed on twenty-one to twenty-four inch centers over a crawl space, versus circular sawn joists on sixteen-inch centers over a full basement in section D (Drawing Sheet 2). Attic framing varies, as well. Traditional mortised and pinned rafters roof House C, whereas butted and nailed rafters roof House D. The original northwest corner post of House C is extant and visible in the space between the houses seen from the garret of House B. The sawn post has robbed mortises from a former plate and brace, and terminated at the level of the end girt of House B. Therefore the height of House C roughly matched House A/B when it was built, and was raised in Period III. The false plate at the front of House C/D is continuous under the roof framing across both sections versus being butted at the end of the house. This attests to the resetting of the roof framing of House C at the same time as building House D.

The first floor framing at the west end-wall of House C defines a bay four feet wide by six feet long in the center of the wall suitable for a chimney (Drawing Sheet 2). A four-by-six foot fireplace could have been a cooking fireplace as it compares well with other Salem County examples from the nineteenth-century. A floor patch at the east end of the second floor room suggests a former staircase in the southeast corner of the house (Drawing Sheet 4). The patch suggests that the rest of the floor in this room dates from the Period II construction. If so, this story, at two-and-a-half feet shorter than present, was actually a half-story. In addition, the range of floorboard widths (five to eight-inch) is different from that of House D (three-and-one-half to nine-inch).

The kitchen shed (E) may have been built or renovated in this period (Photo 5). The 1984 survey cites a brick incised with the date of 1829 (location not specified), and a resident of the 1970s remembers a dated brick in a kitchen chimney that was removed.20 The location of this chimney was against the west wall of House A, between the door and window (Drawing Sheet 3). Its location is evident from an area of missing asphalt siding at the second floor and brick debris in the basement underneath. The 1829 brick may have commemorated a time of construction or renovation. From the fragments and the space occupied by the chimney, it was built as a stove flue, not for a cooking fireplace. The shed kitchen’s foundation is peanut-stone with failed areas replaced by brick and cinder block. A brick well eight feet in diameter sits under the north wall (Drawing Sheets 1 and 2). The original crawl-space was dug out in recent times to almost full-height and connected to the house basement. Five 19 Henry C. Mercer describes heads of cut nails stamped thin and lopsided as this one from 1825-1830 in The Dating of Old Houses (Bucks County Historical Society Papers, Vol. V. ([n. c.]: [n. p.], 1923), 10. Lee H. Nelson in more recent scholarship dates early machine-headed cut nails as 1815 to the late 1830s in “Nail Chronology As An Aid To Dating Old Buildings,” American Association of State and Local History Technical Leaflet 48, History News Vol. 24, No. 11, November 1968. 20 Personal communication with a former resident, April 5, 2008. The chimney location shown on the drawing is from her recollection and confirmed by physical evidence.


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unbarked sleepers of various lengths with tenoned ends are arranged with other sawn timbers to form the floor framing (Drawing Sheet 2).21 Such sleepers are typical of either houses or additions, tending to be over crawl spaces, up through the early-nineteenth century. These could be from either an earlier, smaller kitchen shed or a completely different structure.

The floor plans at each level, in addition to measurements taken from the garret, indicate a slight angle between Houses A/B and C/D. This taper could be a construction error in laying out House C perpendicular to House A. This angle is measureable in the north ground sill of house C in relation to the south wall of A and in the distance between studs of House B and Houses C/D measured from the garret of House B, and is visible in the tapered tread nosing at the door of garret B.

The conversion of this small, stone, three-room colonial house to a much more spacious frame house in the early nineteenth-century indicates a number of trends: (1) a shift to building in frame, which may be a comment upon the economics of building and/or a shortage of stone, (2) a shift in methods of cutting timbers from hand-hewing to mill-sawing, though traditional methods of joinery persisted, (3) a shift in the preference and/or economic ability to build two-story houses, and (4) the persistence of the hall/parlor form, which was the norm through the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries (see discussion of the Georgian form below). 22

Period III – 1870-1890 (House C and D)

In the late-nineteenth-century, House D was added to C, which was raised about two-and-a-half feet and remodeled, creating a balanced, five-bay façade in the Italianate and Gothic-Revival styles (Photo 3). Romantic revivals in domestic architecture had dominated the nineteenth-century. The Italianate is seen in the eave brackets and the square porch columns; the Gothic in the sawn porch brackets and the pointed gable-end windows. An open staircase with a decorative newell post, handrail and turned balusters rises to the second floor in a central hall from which a parlor on both sides can be accessed (Photo 14). A door at the rear of the hall connects the hall to house A/B. There are two bedrooms on the second floor above the parlors, and an enclosed staircase leads from the stair hall to the garret. The garret has a plastered room over House C, but not over House D. The windows are uniformly two-over-two double-hung sashes. As evidenced by framing methods using nails instead of joinery as mentioned above, House D was built after traditional joinery had died out of house carpentry and after circular saws were introduced for cutting timbers—in the second half of the nineteenth-century. The foundation is stone with brick above grade with a full-height basement under House D. The finishes that survive from this period include the central staircase, window sashes, four-panel doors, some window and door trim, and flooring. The house has been otherwise gutted of plaster and wood trim with the exception of the center hall, which is intact. The style of the stair newel post and balustrade suggest a construction date of circa 1880. Reflecting a change in heating technology, the new house was fitted with brick flues for parlor stoves in both end gables instead of fireplaces. The foundations for these survive, though the east chimney is gone and the west chimney was rebuilt in 21 Sleepers refer only to first floor joists typically on or near the ground surface, and are minimally worked, often simply trees split in half and hewn flat. 22 In this township, 58% of the A List houses in 1798 had one-story, 7% were one-and-half stories and a minority of 35% were two stories.


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cinder block to serve a furnace in the basement, where a furnace pit survives in the concrete basement floor (Drawing Sheet 1).

The porches on the front of main block and east façade of the rear wing appear to be of this period, with their chamfered square posts and sawn Victorian brackets. At the front porch, only the roof structure and the engaged pillars at the building wall are original. On the back porch, there are some original posts and fragments of brackets remaining, but in a collapsed condition. The original clapboard is intact under later asphalt siding, as are the eave brackets and window trim.

Richard Dubois’ conversion of the house to a closed, or Georgian, plan brought modern ideas of organizing domestic space to this property. Starting with two earlier houses on the traditional open plan in which one entered directly into a heated, occupied room, Dubois joined an architectural trend away from one’s domestic spaces being so public, toward more privacy, gentility and increasing specialization of spaces. The new, closed plan created an unheated stair passage as a mediating space in which a visitor was greeted upon entry and directed to another room. The staircase is no longer simply performing a practical function behind a partition, but a decorative one for the display of one’s wealth and status. Bedrooms are no longer in first floor parlors, but are in more remote, private chambers upstairs. These Renaissance architectural ideas were increasingly adopted by middling classes of people by the late-seventeenth-century in England. They gradually spread to the American colonies, first expressed by elites, and later becoming more widespread. Here we see the idea being expressed in late-nineteenth century rural Salem County, where Georgian ideas were generally resisted through the eighteenth-century. 23 This significant shift in the evolution of this house signifies the progressiveness and prosperousness of Richard Dubois and represents the pinnacle of its architectural life.

Period IV – Twentieth century (Shed F)

The last addition to be built was the small one-story frame shed (F) on the west side of the main block. It is built over a crawl space on a cinder block foundation. It appears to have been built as a laundry room, and connects to the kitchen shed. The interior of Shed E was modernized for kitchen use. The interiors of the parlors and chambers in the main block (Houses C and D) were gutted, insulated and walled with thin, wood paneling. The front door was replaced with high-quality, fifteen-light wood door. The exterior was clad with asphalt shingles of an early-twentieth-century vintage which have extended the life of the house, as has a new roof in recent years.

Linking Reuben Cuff to his Landscape

This property is within a geographical locus of a historic Cuff family presence. The Cuff name is anchored to the landscape by the Cuff Cemetery in Canton two miles down the Harmersville-Canton Road, and by Cuff Road two miles in the other direction. Descendents still own land in the area. 23 Michael J. Chiarappa, “’The first and best sort’: Quakerism, Brick Artisanry, and the Vernacular Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century West New Jersey Pattern Brickwork Architecture” (PhD diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1992), 207.


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Reuben Cuff is significant for his role in preaching and organizing the earliest known black church in New Jersey, the “United Society for Religious Worship” in 1800, and for his role in the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.24 It is likely that Cuff knew and was inspired by Richard Allen, who preached in South Jersey in the 1780s. Allen later invited Cuff, the sole New Jersey representative, to the organizing meeting of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia 1816, whereupon Cuff established Mt. Pisgah A. M. E. in Salem, the first one in New Jersey.25 Mt. Hope United Methodist Church in Salem also grew out of Cuff’s early society, but continued in the original Methodist Episcopal movement.

According to a history published in 1913, Reuben Cuff, who lived from 1764 to 1845, was the son of Cuff, a man who was enslaved to the Padgett family, which had three daughters. The Padgett couple’s names are not recorded in the account. Mr. Padgett died while a soldier during the French and Indian War, and Cuff looked after Mrs. Padgett. Cuff and the widow Padgett eventually married and had sons Reuben, Mordecai and Seth. The story goes on to say that “Cuffee” and his sons first went by the surname Padgett, but ridicule in school caused them to change their name to Cuff.26

Finding a marriage record to confirm this story may not be possible. This event would have taken place between 1756, the beginning of the war, and 1764, when Reuben was born. A racially mixed marriage was not illegal at that time, but no church authority would have sanctioned it—therefore it would not have been recorded. Such a marriage would have been more like a common-law marriage.27

The will of one Rebeccah Padgett of Lower Alloways Creek Township, recorded March 28, 1780 supports the Cuff-Padgett linkage and the use of the Padgett surname by Cuff. She left her lands and estate to three sons—Amos Padgett, Clement Street Padgett and Ephraim Padgett—two daughters—Sarah Street Padgett and Rachell Street Padgett—and a grandchild Hannah Padgett. Of her bequests, she left to her son Clement “sixteen acres on which Cuffeth Padgett lives.” 28 From their eighteenth-century Anglo point of view, Cuffee was “Cuffeth,” and he was a Padgett. This record puts Cuffee in Lower Alloways Creek on Padgett land, but Rebeccah and Cuffee did not live together, and neither he nor his sons inherited any of her property. Rebeccah herself lived on a different parcel of fifty acres that she willed to her son Amos. Is his Padgett surname a consequence of a marriage or his then or formerly enslaved relationship to the Padgetts? Is Rebeccah even the widow that Cuffee allegedly married? She is at least a widow, but her identity and their relationship are unresolved. Did Cuffee stay on the Padgett land, though it was not his? Was this the same land that Reuben occupied in 1798? Were there perhaps other, unofficial agreements regarding ownership and occupation?

24 “Mt. Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church” flyer, Mt. Pisgah A. M. E. Church, Salem. 25 GilesWright, Afro-Americans in New Jersey, A Short History (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1988), 30. 26 William Steward and Theophilus G. Steward, Gouldtown, A Very Remarkable Settlement of Ancient Date, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1913, 114; Salem County Inventories Book E Page 322. 27 Timothy Hack, Ph.D. candidate in History, University of Delaware, and Assistant Professor, Salem Community College, personal communication, March 4, 2008. 28 Elmer T. Hutchinson, ed., Documents Relating to the Colonial Revbolutionary and Post-Revolutionary History of the State of New Jersey, First Ser.-Vol XXXV, Calendar of Wills, Vol. VI—1781-1785, (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish & Quigley, 1939), 296.


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Other records contest Cuffee’s name. The Christian Recorder, the newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia and a voice of the black community since 1854, reported in the obituary of Rev. Burgoyne Fremont Cuff that his grandfather Reuben was the son of “Padgett Cuff.”29 In this record, the Padgett linkage is affirmed, but in reverse, showing a different memory of his name. In 1793, Reuben, Mordecai and Seth all appeared in the Lower Alloways Creek census with the name of “Cuffe.”30 The legendary name change from Padgett to Cuff may have therefore occurred between 1780 and 1793. What did Cuffee call himself? Though he is reportedly buried in the Cuff Cemetery in Canton, there is no marker to answer that question, nor an indication on the cemetery map.31

Property may also have been contested. In 1798 at the age of thirty-four Reuben asserted his name as Cuff and that he owned and occupied the only stone house in Lower Alloways Creek, thirty-eight acres of land and a barn. But connecting Reuben’s 1798 property to today’s only colonial stone house in Lower Alloways Creek with land records is an unresolved issue. The deeds for this parcel could only be traced back to Solomon Dubois whose land was divided among his heirs Richard Dubois, Susanna Stretch, Jacob Dubois and Ann Irelan in 1821.32 The house under study appears to be within Richard’s parcel No. 4 in the 1821 division of land, though no house was referenced in the description. The trail stops there. How Solomon Dubois acquired this parcel, whether the Padgetts ever owned it, and how Reuben Cuff acquired the house and land he owned in the 1798 tax record are open questions.33

Reuben Cuff was a free man who preached and asserted ownership over land, a barn, and a house. As suggested by the land and barn, the collection of farming tools, livestock and crops listed in his probate inventory of 1845 confirms that in addition to his well-known preaching and church organizing activities, he was also a farmer. Several land transactions through 1845 and a modest inventory worth $416.51 may suggest that he did better than most persons of color, even loaning money to others.34

1798 he and his family occupied an uncommonly arranged house—the three-room house on the “Penn” plan. It was small, but finished with the highest level of craftsmanship. There was one open hall and two very small parlors with corner fireplaces with a one-room, unfinished garret above and an attached kitchen. Having a separate kitchen for the dirty daily business of cooking and other industries would have kept the hall and parlors free for display, entertaining and sleeping. But this small house would have been very crowded for Reuben Cuff’s family. Reuben Cuff fathered eleven

29 The Christian Recorder, January 8, 1891. 30 Ronald V. Jackson, Accelerated Indexing Systems, comp. New Jersey Census, 1772-1890 [database on-line] (Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 1999. Original data: Complied and digitized by Mr. Jackson and AIS from microfilmed schedules of the U. S. Federal Decennial Census, territorial/state censuses, and/or census substitutes.) AncestryLibrary.com (accessed March 4, 2008). 31 Steward and Steward , 113. Donald Pierce, personal communication, June 25, 2008 32 Division of Lands Book D, Page 66, Salem County Clerks Office. 33 Deeds searched were those at the Salem County Courthouse, which begin at 1796, the unrecorded deeds in the collection of the Salem County Historical Society, and Dubois papers in the collection of David A. Fogg. 34 Inventory Book E, Page 322, Salem County Clerks Office. Deed Indexes, 1796-1845.


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children and raised at least one other child, Phoebe Gould, born in 1789.35 In 1798 Reuben was thirty-four years old with four children by his first wife, Hannah Pierce. By 1804, he and Hannah, who died that year, had born four more children. With his second wife Lydia Iler he had three more children starting in 1806.36 A one-story, 400 square-foot house with a garret and a kitchen is a small space for that many people to occupy by today’s standards. There would not have been much privacy. It is likely that the parlors were used for sleeping but the hall also contained beds as well as chairs and tables for entertaining visitors. As a preacher, Reuben no doubt had a very active social life. The garret above is where most of the children probably slept as well as where a myriad of household items and provisions were stored. The kitchen, wherever it was, would have been used for not only cooking but for household industries such as cloth-making and food processing.37 The picture of Reuben Cuff and his family in this house is one of very crowded living conditions in a small but finely crafted house, and also of a middling, landowning economic status perhaps unusual for a family of color of that time. Reuben was, after all, a literate preacher, a man of high standing in his community. It is possible that he added the one-and-a-half story frame house as a response to the burgeoning size of his family.

In 1797, as he was preaching and organizing black Methodist congregations at the end of the eighteenth-century, he subscribed to the establishment of a township school, contributing one pound, ten shillings, one of the lesser amounts. But despite his known leadership qualities, his name never appeared among elected trustees from 1797 through 1842, throughout the time he lived in the township.38 As a mixed-race person, was he regarded as black or as white, and did this affect his status in the larger community? The 1798 tax enumerator noted “(black)” next to only one person on the B List, William Davis, but did not note anything next to Reuben Cuff or his brother Mordecai. Yet Reuben Cuff obviously identified with the black community as attested by his church activities.

Sometime before 1830, Reuben Cuff left the homeland and moved to Upper Alloways Creek Township. In the 1830 census he was there with a family of five, and his son Burgoyne was also there in a separate household with a family of three.39 Why he left and just where he lived is not known, but in 1876, a cluster of “colored” people, including “J. Cuff Col.,” were living in Quinton Township (formerly part of Upper Alloways Creek) in the vicinity of Berry’s Chapel, and “E. Cuff Col” occupied a house in Pentonville, Upper Alloways Creek.40 Berry’s Chapel and Pentonville were two of numerous free black settlements in Salem County, so one of these may have been his new home.41

35 The Christian Recorder, May 31, 1877; Steward and Steward, 113. 36 Steward and Steward, 114 37 Julie Riesenweber, “Order in Domestic Space: House Plans and Room Use in the Vernacular Dwellings of Salem County, New Jersey, 1700-1774.” (Master’s Thesis. University of Delaware, 1984), 84-87. 38 “David Stretch’s Book,” List of subscribers to a school in Lower Alloways Creek, January 24, 1797. Collection of David A. Fogg. Solomon Dubois contributed two pounds, 5 shillings. Contributions ranged one pound to sixteen pounds. 39 Jackson, Ibid, 1830 census image. Accessed January 10, 2008. 40 Combination Atlas Map of Salem and Gloucester Counties, NJ (Philadelphia: Everts and Stewart, 1876; Reprint, Gloucester County Historical Society, 1970), 34. 41 Robert Craig, New Jersey Black Historic Places Survey, 1982-1984, 53. In the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office, Trenton.


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Reuben Cuff’s relocation may be related to the trend of the establishment of free-black settlements in Salem County and elsewhere in the free North in the early nineteenth-century.

Conclusion

This small study was a beginning to understanding the life of Reuben Cuff as evidenced by his house and by a limited number of documents. It recorded and analyzed a Salem County farmhouse that grew over parts of three centuries according to the ideas and resources of its owners. The limited scope of this grant project did not permit an exhaustive search of all record types or the creation of all possible drawings, but it does provide initial documentation and analysis of the house and a basis for further study. It establishes the cultural significance of this house and land by its association with Reuben Cuff. Thus, its preservation can be justified and encouraged.

A number of unresolved issues include: who built the house and when, connecting Reuben Cuff to this property with deeds, determining when he moved from here, confirming the Period I house as a three-room plan, finding the Period I kitchen, finding the identities of the Padgett couple who owned Cuffee, and understanding the nature of the marriage of Cuffee to the widow Padgett and its implications for their children and inheritance. The enormous size of the stones in the Cuff House and around the property and the apparent local abundance of this stone are curiosities and bear further investigation into their origin.42 The move of Reuben Cuff and family to Upper Alloways Creek may tie in to the trend in the formation of free-black settlements in the American North, which one scholar has likened to the “maroon” communities of the American South, the Caribbean and South America.43 The numerous free-black settlements and the known Underground Railroad activity in Salem County are important areas of future study.

42 Former residents say the foundation of the former barn adjacent to the house also utilized the very large stones that now sit in front of the house. 43 Richard Hahn, keynote speech, Atlantic Emancipations Symposium, Philadelphia, April 4, 2008.


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Figure 1. Location of Cuff-Dubois House in relation to the Delaware Valley Source: GoogleEarth.


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Figure 2. Salem County map.


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Cuff-Dubois House

Figure 3. New Jersey 2002 Ortho aerial photo. Source: New Jersey Geographic Information Network http://njgin.nj.gov/OIT_IW/index.jsp


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http://njgin.nj.gov/OIT_IW/index.jsp

Photo 1. Setting of the Cuff-Dubois House, looking south.

Photo 2. Cuff-Dubois House, looking west. The five-bay front section is the Period III (House D) which extended House C laterally by two bays and upward, in the late-nineteenth-century. The rear wing is Period I (House A) and II (Upper story B).


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Photo 3. Cuff-Dubois House, looking northeast. The shed addition in the foreground is Period IV (Shed F).

Photo 4. Cuff-Dubois House, looking southwest. The stone portion is Period I (House A). The second story and shed additions are Period II (House B).


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Photo 5. Cuff-Dubois House, looking southeast. The shed addition in the foreground is Period II (Shed E).

Photo 6. Elevation of Periods I and II, looking south.


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Photo 7. Detail of the stone gable end of Period I (House A), looking south.

Photo 8. Period II hall in House A, looking east. Note Greek Revival-style mantel and adjacent triangular floor patches where original fireplaces were.


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Photo 9. View of underside of Period I flooring from basement, showing the gauging of the edges and the adzing of floorboard to the gauge over the joist.

Photo 10. Interior view of Period I window, looking east. Note wide muntins.


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