Notes
Ref#51:
"...removed to back of Camptown just before the Revolution. He lived and
died on his father's homestead..."
Served in the English Army & assisted at the capture of Martinique. He
was afterwards a soldier in the War of the Revolution & assisted at the
capture of Stony Point under Gen Anthony Wayne.
source: MAPLEWOOD PAST AND PRESENT
SOME EARLY MAPLEWOOD HOUSES - The Amzi Ball House
A distinguished stone house known as the Amzi Ball house
stood until 1929 on Parker Avenue near Boyden. It had been
built in 1787 by ** Joseph Ball **, son of Aaron and grandson of
Thomas Ball. Aaron Ball was a brother of Timothy who built
what is now Washington Inn, and of Ezekiel, who built Tuscan
Hall in North Farms. Either the Balls as a family had a tradition
of substantial houses behind them, or they were emulating each
other in brotherly rivalry. In any event they built solidly and well.
An earlier stone house had stood on the site of the one built in
1787. It is not known whether Aaron Ball, who was the original
sett1er among the Balls in the Parker Avenue section, built this
earlier house himself or found it standing on the tract of land
when he took possession in 1741. An earthquake is said to have
weakened its walls so that Aaron's son Joseph tore down the
house; and, planning a larger one, he used thc original stones for
the ends and back wall, but laid up the front with new stones
carefully matched as to color, and sought out from quarries at
considerable distances. The stone part of the house was fifty feet
across the front, with an ell of wood at one end. The house stood
well back from the road on the north side of Parker Avenue,
reached from the road by a country lane. This lane is now Briar-
cliffe Court and is solidly built up with recent new houses.
Until 1927 five generations of Balls lived in this house, all
descendants of Joseph the builder. In that year it was sold by the
Ball family, and subsequently it passed through a short period
of neglect, finally ending with a fire which did considerable
damage to its interior. Being deemed by the owner in too bad
condition to salvage, it was sold in 1929 to a company that was
developing Wychwood, an early American residential section, in
Westfield. The purchasers, with an appreciative eye on its
quality as a fine old house, carefully removed all the undamagcd
woodwork and hardware, which proved to be considerable; took
down the walls stone by stone, marked each one, and transported
them to Westfield where the house was rebuilt in Wychwood
Drive as a handsome example of early American architecture. It
stands among apple trees, with a split rail fence between it and
the road, and with the original well curb and sweep in the garden
at the back. Within, although considerably modernized, especially
in the second stoy, it retains most of the features of its early
floor plan, and much of its early charm.
As it stood on Parker Avenue, its interior woodwork was made
of walnut from trees that grew on the farm of seventy acres that
surrounded the house. It had at that time two parlors at the west
end with a diagonal fireplace in each room opening into a massive
stone chimncy, an arrangement found in the Timothy Ball house,
in the Old Stone House, and in the Littell house. A wide and
handsome front door opened into a spacious hall that extended to
the rear wall of the house where a second door opened out toward
the back. The staircase on the right-hand side of the hall was of
walnut with slender spindles and a graceful handrail tbat curved
down to the bottom step without a newel post. The double parlors
were entered by doors on the left side of the hall, with the dining-
room opening on the right. In the dining-room there was also a
fireplace on the east wall, its chimney, which served the kitchen
in the ell, being of brick instead of stone. The stone chimney at
the west or parlor end of the house had a stone set into it bearing
the date 1787. Nowadays chimney and date look down on West-
field apple trees.
The Littell House
The house at 455 Ridgewood Road, sometimes called the Littell
house, stands diagonally with relation to the street, and is
fortunate in still having about it an acre of the land which was
formerly the farm to which the house belonged. A modern front
entrance and dormer windows somewhat belie its early age. It has,
however, two fine stone chimney-bases set flush with the clap-
boards at either end of the house, and they, together with the wide
gables of which they are essential parts, give definite testimony
to its early origin. Inside, it has the unique distinction of twin
fireplaces set diagonally so as to use the same chimney, at both
ends of the house, making four diagonal fireplaces on one floor.
This, as has been said elsewhere, repeats a structnral arrangement
that its locally much used in the day when the fireplace was the
only way to heat a room and rooms were therefore of small
dimensions with low ceilings, and carefully closed off. The broad
central hallway runs from front door to back. The staircise was
originally enclosed with a door at its foot for conservation of heat,
but is now open with the wide handrail and heavy newel post of
the middle 1800's. Hand-hewn oak beams in the basement and the
original wide floorboards retain their solid strength.
The date of the house is thought to be about 1800. Sometime
after 1806 Noah Littell was living in this house which, however,
he is believed not to have built. On the map of 1815 there are two
houses on "Grub Street," or Ridgewood Road, marked "N. B.
Little," and "N. Little," either one of which may be the Noah
Littell house. Noah Littell's wife was Jane Gildersleeve, one of
the same Gildersleeve family to which "Elder" Joseph Gilder-
sleeve belonged.
A much smaller house belonging to the same farm stood op-
posite on the east side of Ridgewoood Road. It still stands at right
angles to the road as it did then, but now close to the sidewalk
behind a white picket fence. It early comprised only the part
toward the road, the rear being of a much later date, as is also
the fan-like carving over its front door and windows.
The Big GEDCOM / Revision 2.0 - created on
Wed Jul 23 22:17:58 1997
/ Copyright ©1996-1997 Descendants of Edward Ball of New Jersey Interest Group.
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