An 1751 colonial parsonage relocated to sit beside the 1775 Wallace House in Somerville — where screaming, banging, and moving objects were captured in a 2022 paranormal documentary filmed on-site.
65 Washington Place, Somerville, NJ 08876
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission; part of the Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Site.
Access
Limited Access
Historic building interior with period rooms; grounds are flat.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1751 · Home of Jacob Hardenbergh, co-founder and first president of Queen's College (Rutgers University) · National Register of Historic Places (1972) · Part of Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Site · Center of Dutch Reformed Church life in colonial Somerset County
The Old Dutch Parsonage was constructed in 1751 to house John Frelinghuysen, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church serving the Six Mile Run congregation in what is now Franklin Township, Somerset County. Frelinghuysen died young, and his widow Dinah subsequently married Jacob Hardenbergh, who would become the first president of Queen's College — later renamed Rutgers University. The parsonage thus has a direct institutional connection to one of America's oldest universities.
The building served as a center of Dutch Reformed religious and intellectual life in central New Jersey for much of the eighteenth century. After the congregation built a new facility, the parsonage passed through private ownership. By the early twentieth century it had deteriorated significantly, and local preservationists arranged its relocation in 1913 from its original site to Washington Place in Somerville, where it was placed next to the 1775 Wallace House — itself used by George Washington as his headquarters during the winter of 1778–79.
Both buildings are now jointly operated by New Jersey State Parks and Forests as the Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Site. The Parsonage was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Interior furnishings reflect the mid-eighteenth-century Dutch-American domestic environment of a prosperous minister's household.
The 1913 relocation involved moving the structure more than a mile; photographs from the period show the building mounted on rollers being pulled through Somerville streets, an unusual preservation effort for that era.
Sources
The haunting associated with the Old Dutch Parsonage centers on a young male servant figure, whose identity is not established in any historical record connected to the building. Reports from witnesses and ghost-tourism researchers describe nighttime phenomena: screaming audible from outside the building, loud banging with no apparent source, and objects found displaced from their positions in the morning.
The 2022 paranormal documentary 'The Ghosts of Somerville: Old Dutch Parsonage' (IMDB: tt21232814) was filmed on-site with apparent cooperation from the site's management. The production documented the claims through a formal paranormal investigation, adding a degree of structured documentation beyond the usual anecdote cycle. New Jersey haunted-house researchers cite this documentary as the primary contemporary record of investigation at the site.
A servant-ghost attribution at a colonial house museum is a common pattern in New Jersey paranormal tradition, and the specific identity of this figure has not been confirmed by historical research. The building's eighteenth-century domestic context — housing a minister's household with staff — makes the general category plausible, though the documentary evidence stops at reported phenomena rather than establishing any particular person. The state historic site does not promote paranormal content in its official materials.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Tour the 1751 parsonage alongside the adjacent 1775 Wallace House, both operated by New Jersey State Parks. Guides cover the Dutch Reformed Church history, the 1913 relocation, and the site's Revolutionary War connections.
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