Images(2)

Old Tennent Parsonage

Artist Carrie A. Bowne Swift

Period1859

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensions14 × 18.5 in. (35.6 × 47 cm)

InscribedInscribed at bottom, "The Old Tennent Parsonage / on / The Monmouth Battle Ground / July 26, 1859."

SignedSigned center left, "Carrie A. Bowne."

ClassificationsDrawings

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Rulif V. Lawrence, 1937

Object number1012

DescriptionPencil drawing of a dilapidated story and a half dwelling with a large section to the left, and a small extension to the right. The structure has three chimneys, worn round butt wood sidewall shingles, and a wood shingle roof. The left rear corner post is gone, and much of the wall has collapsed. Shingles have also been removed from the lower courses of the left hand gable end. The house sits in an open grassy area. A piece of paneling appears in one of the wall openings right of center.

Curatorial RemarksDated 26 July 1859, this rendering of the Old Tennent Parsonage demonstrates the “careless neglect” that Benson J. Lossing found so shocking when he visited the site. It is the earliest work by Carrie A. Bowne (Swift) in the Association's collection, executed while she was still in her teens. The composition is almost identical to the lithograph of the Parsonage engraved by Charles Currier and published by William Sutphin Potter in 1859. However, Swift’s drawing contains printer’s marks and several details not found in the Currier lithograph, suggesting the possibility that the lithograph may have been based on Swift’s sketch. An early 1850s stereo card photograph of the Parsonage confirms some of the details in the sketch, such as the removal of shingles from the lower courses of the historic building by souvenir hunters. But the sketch shows how far advanced the decay had become by the time demolition occurred in May of 1860.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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