HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
NJ's first governor built this 1772 home, now a 50-room museum probed by Travel Channel's Kindred Spirits.
1003 Morris Ave, Union, NJ 07083
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
$14 adult general admission; $10 seniors, children, and college students; free for members and children under 3
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic house with some interior stairs; grounds and first floor are accessible, call ahead for full accessibility details
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1772 · Built 1772 by William Livingston, New Jersey's first governor · Home to seven generations of the Livingston and Kean families · National Historic Landmark and National Register of Historic Places, 1972 · Hosted George Washington, Lafayette, and other Revolutionary-era figures
William Livingston, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and later the state's first elected governor, purchased 120 acres in what is now Union in 1760 and built a fourteen-room Georgian house there, completed in 1772. His family moved in the following year, and a young Alexander Hamilton lived with them during that first year while studying nearby. Livingston went on to serve as governor from 1776 to 1790 and sign the U.S. Constitution; George Washington, Martha Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and John Jay, who married at the house, were all guests. Continental and British troops both damaged the property during the Revolutionary War.
After Livingston's death in 1790, the estate passed to his son, Supreme Court Justice Henry Brockholst Livingston, and in 1811 to Peter Kean, who bought it in trust for his mother, Susan Livingston Kean Niemcewicz. The Kean family held the house for the next century and a half. Colonel John Kean II carried out the most extensive renovations, adding running water, gas lighting, and additional stories and towers that grew the home into its current fifty-room Victorian Italianate form.
Mary Alice Kean began converting the house into a museum in 1949, and the name Liberty Hall was formally restored in 1974. Both the house and its grounds were listed as a National Historic Landmark and added to the National Register of Historic Places on the same day, November 28, 1972. Kean University now operates it as Liberty Hall Museum, with public tours and a collection spanning seven generations of Livingston and Kean family furniture, manuscripts, and artifacts.
Sources
Liberty Hall Museum runs seasonal candlelit ghost tours where staff share their own reported encounters alongside findings from past paranormal investigations: footsteps in empty rooms, unexplained movement, and responses picked up by devices used to attempt spirit communication. The museum frames these accounts as part of its programming rather than as verified history, and staff describe the reported presences as tied broadly to the Livingston and Kean families who lived in the house for over two centuries rather than to any single named individual.
In January 2022, the Travel Channel series Kindred Spirits, hosted by Amy Bruni and Adam Berry, filmed an investigation at Liberty Hall with the group New Jersey Paranormal. The episode centered on the family whose matriarch, Mary Alice Kean, pushed to preserve the house as a museum in 1949. The museum has since hosted fundraising events where visitors can join Kindred Spirits crew members for guided investigations.
No specific ghost has been publicly identified by name in the museum's own materials, and the paranormal programming runs alongside, rather than instead of, Liberty Hall's primary identity as a Revolutionary-era historic house museum.
Media Appearances
Docent-led tours run hourly through the fourteen-room core of the 1772 house and its later Victorian additions, covering seven generations of the Livingston and Kean families. Tickets must be pre-purchased online.
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