The 1767 Bridgeton tavern where New Jersey's first newspaper, the handwritten Plain Dealer, called for revolution in 1775.
49-51 West Broad Street, Bridgeton, NJ 08302
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Operated by the Cumberland County Historical Society. Open July 4th and other special occasions and by reservation; admission is modest or donation-based. Confirm with the Historical Society before visiting.
Access
Limited Access
Small 18th-century frame building with narrow rooms and stairs to a second floor
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1767 · Birthplace of the Plain Dealer, New Jersey's first newspaper · National Register of Historic Places (1971) · Pre-Revolutionary tavern and meeting place · Cumberland County Historical Society museum
Matthew Potter, a blacksmith and innkeeper from Philadelphia, built the frame tavern on West Broad Street around 1767 and ran it through the late 1770s. In the years before the Revolution it served as a meeting place for Cumberland County residents debating the worsening quarrel with Britain.
In December 1775 a handwritten weekly broadside called the Plain Dealer began appearing at the tavern. It is regarded as the first newspaper produced in New Jersey. Its anonymous essays criticized British rule and argued openly for independence months before the Declaration of Independence was drafted. Future New Jersey governors Richard Howell and Joseph Bloomfield are among those associated with contributing to the paper.
The tavern ceased operating around 1788 and the building was later converted into a two-family dwelling. Over the following century and a half it deteriorated and was eventually abandoned, falling into such disrepair that it nearly collapsed. The City of Bridgeton purchased the structure in 1958 to save it from demolition.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1971. It is now owned by the County of Cumberland and leased to the Cumberland County Historical Society, which operates it as a museum. The tavern opens on July 4th and other special occasions and is available by reservation.
Sources
Unlike many of South Jersey's tavern sites, Potter's Tavern carries no large body of formal paranormal investigation. Its reputation rests on age and atmosphere: a small frame building from the late 1760s that survived abandonment and near-collapse, restored and interpreted as the place where colonists read essays arguing for independence.
Visitors and local historians describe the appeal in terms of the building's continuity with the Revolutionary period rather than reported apparitions. The handwritten Plain Dealer, posted in the public room in December 1775, gives the tavern a concrete connection to the dissent that preceded the war. The Cumberland County Historical Society presents the site through that documented history.
The building's long second life as a deteriorating two-family dwelling, and its rescue from collapse in 1958, are the elements most often cited when the tavern is described as atmospheric. For visitors interested in dark and historic tourism, the value here is a genuinely old, genuinely saved Revolutionary-era structure rather than a catalog of ghost reports.
By-reservation tour of the restored 1767 tavern where the handwritten Plain Dealer was posted in December 1775. The Cumberland County Historical Society interprets the building's role in the run-up to the Revolution, its later use as a two-family dwelling, and its 1958 rescue from collapse. The tavern also opens to the public on July 4th and other special occasions.
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