HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Washington's 1778-79 Middlebrook Encampment headquarters
38 Washington Place, Somerville, NJ 08876
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission to the Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites; check current open hours and tour offerings.
Access
Limited Access
Historic eighteenth-century home with steps
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1776 · Washington's headquarters 1778-79 · First official U.S. reception of foreign representatives · Second Middlebrook Encampment · National Register of Historic Places (1970) · Largest house built in NJ during the Revolution
The Wallace House at 38 Washington Place in Somerville, New Jersey is an eight-room Georgian-style mansion built in 1776 by John Wallace, who named the estate Hope Farm and planned to retire there. It was the largest house built in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War.
Washington used the Wallace House as his headquarters from December 11, 1778 to June 3, 1779 during the Second Middlebrook Encampment, an extended winter encampment of the Continental Army. He left from December 22 until February 5 to meet with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and on his return brought his wife Martha, who remained at the Wallace House for the rest of the encampment. Visitors during this period included Lord and Lady Stirling, Generals Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox, Alexander Hamilton, and Baron von Steuben.
On May 1, 1779, Spanish emissary Don Juan de Miralles and French minister Conrad-Alexandre Gerard met with Washington at the Wallace House. This was the first official reception of foreign representatives by an American Commander-in-Chief.
The Wallace House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1970. It is now operated as a New Jersey state historic site alongside the adjacent Old Dutch Parsonage.
Sources
Wallace House guides and reenactors have long described a friendly presence in the building, said to pull on gowns and tap shoulders during winter interpretive tours and reenactments. The accounts, summarized in Shadowlands and repeated in regional New Jersey paranormal writing, are consistently described as gentle and playful rather than threatening.
The phenomena are usually framed in the context of the building's social use during the Middlebrook Encampment, when Martha Washington, Lady Stirling, and other prominent eighteenth-century women regularly entertained at the house. Independent paranormal investigation of the site is limited; the headline interpretive content remains the building's documented role as Washington's headquarters.
Tour the Wallace House, headquarters of General George Washington during the second Middlebrook encampment from December 1778 to June 1779. The 1776 Georgian-style home was the largest house built in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. Pair with the adjacent Old Dutch Parsonage.
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