The Old Tennent Parsonage on Monmouth Battlefield

Period1859

MediumLithograph on paper

Dimensions13.9 × 17 in. (35.3 × 43.2 cm)

InscribedInscribed lower left, "C. Currier's Lith." Inscribed lower right, "33 Spruce St. New York." Inscribed center, "Entered according to an Act of Congress in the year 1859, by Wm S. Potter, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the State of New Jersey." Inscribed below center, "The Old Tennent Parsonage. / On Monmouth Battlefield. / Erected 1706. / Published by William S. Potter Freehold N. J."

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineGift of James P. Welch, 1932

Object number124

DescriptionThree-quarter view of a story and a half dwelling in ruinous condition. It features round butt shingles, two chimneys, a one story wing to the right with one chimney, and two windows in the left gable end. The left rear corner post has been removed with the second floor in that area collapsing, and shingles have been ripped off from the lower courses on the gable end. Other areas of roof and wall shingles are also missing. A carriage drawn by a single horse is arriving in the lower right corner, with a male in the driver's seat and a woman and child in the carriage behind him. Two males with hats are examining the structure right of center, while a man in a top hat is gesturing toward the structure left of center accompanied by a female carrying a parasol and a young female child. A male wearing a top hat stands in the left second floor window of the gable end.
Curatorial RemarksRavaged by time and weather, the Old Tennent Parsonage was torn down in May of 1860. However, prior its destruction, the building’s owner, William Sutphin Potter, commissioned Charles Currier to produce this lithograph. Although associated with the firm of Currier & Ives in New York, Charles was a talented lithographer who often produced prints independently of his brother’s firm. This portrayal of the Old Tennent Parsonage is unusual in that it shows the structure from the rear. A drawing of the Parsonage with virtually identical details by Carrie A. Bowne Swift may have served as the original artwork on which this lithograph is based.NotesErected in about 1706 and enlarged greatly a few decades later, the Old Tennent Parsonage was a Dutch-framed building with shingled sides that served as the residence and farm of the Reverend William Tennent, minister of the Old Tennent Church from 1732 to 1777. During the late afternoon of 28 June 1778, some of the most intense fighting of the Battle of Monmouth took place at this site when Brigadier General Anthony Wayne and his troops held off a counterattack by the British 1st Grenadiers. During the confrontation, musket balls pelted the walls of the farmhouse and a cannonball struck a room in the attic. In 1835, the Old Parsonage was sold to a local resident. Despite its link with the Battle of Monmouth, the building was never maintained and, as the works in this section of the exhibition demonstrate, it fell into a dilapidated state, remaining so until the demolition of the main section of the house in May 1860 (a back kitchen was moved for use as a barn shed). In addition to suffering from disrepair, the house was subjected to a steady stream of tourists in search of relics; many of them took shingles and other architectural elements as souvenirs. When the historian Benson J. Lossing visited the site in September 1850, he was aghast at what he saw. As he wrote in his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (1851–52): The old parsonage is in the present possession of Mr. William T. Sutphen, who has allowed the parlor and study of Tennent and Woodhull to be used as a depository of grain and agricultural implements! The careless neglect which permits a mansion so hallowed by religion and patriotic events to fall into utter ruin, is actual desecration, and much to be reprehended and deplored. The windows are destroyed; the roof is falling into the chambers; and in a few years not a vestige will be left of that venerable memento of the field of Monmouth.

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