HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
1914 Italianate Mansion on the Conn Farm Property, Byram Township
85 Tamarack Rd, Byram Township, NJ 07821
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
B&B room rates apply. Reservations required.
Access
Limited Access
9,000-square-foot, 18-room Italianate mansion with stairs and original interior detailing
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1914 · Italianate Residential Architecture · Sussex County Agricultural Heritage · Conn Farm Property
Franklin Green Colby (b. Brooklyn, August 10, 1858) was a New York importer-exporter who purchased the land known as the Conn Farm around 1901 in Byram Township, Sussex County, New Jersey. In 1914–1915 he and his wife Josephine Wood Colby built an Italian-style mansion on the property, transforming the 18th-century farmhouse into a 9,000-square-foot, 18-room residence which they called 'The Tamaracks.' They had two children, Emily and Franklin Hornor 'Lin' Colby.
The Colbys entertained extensively at the Tamaracks. Franklin Colby lost much of his fortune in the 1929 stock-market crash, and his wife died in 1930. He himself died in June 1941 without realizing his plans to develop his Sussex County land. The property fell into a long period of decline.
About a century after the Colbys built the house, the property was revived and renovated by new proprietors and now operates as Tamaracks Country Villa, a bed-and-breakfast. The earlier Shadowlands description of a 'boarded up house heavily patrolled by police' reflects the property's mid-twentieth-century vacant phase rather than its current operating status.
Sources
The Colby Mansion appears in regional New Jersey ghost-tour writing and aggregator sites, with some accounts describing a lurid nineteenth-century murder narrative involving a 'wealthy railroad millionaire' who beheaded his wife and was killed in turn. The documented history of the property does not support this narrative: the mansion was built in 1914 by Franklin Green Colby, a New York importer-exporter, on land he purchased around 1901, and the family's documented losses came from the 1929 stock market crash and the 1930 death of his wife Josephine from natural causes.
The property's mid-twentieth-century vacant phase, when the mansion sat boarded up before revival as a B&B, contributed to the building's reputation. Tamaracks Country Villa B&B now operates on the site and the property is not heavily patrolled by police; the earlier description in regional retellings reflects the vacant-period reputation rather than current conditions.
Visitors interested in the property's documented history can consult the Conn Farm/Tamaracks finding aid at the Mendham Township Library and the Byram Township Historical Society.
Book a room at the bed-and-breakfast operating in the Italianate Colby Mansion. The Colbys built the 1914 mansion on an eighteenth-century farmhouse footprint and called it 'The Tamaracks,' the name the current B&B continues.
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