Boxwood Hall
in Elizabeth, United StatesCategory: Attraction
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40 Morrell St, Elizabeth, NJ 07201, USA Print route »
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Boxwood Hall State Historic Site, located at 1073 East Jersey street in Elizabeth, New Jersey, is a five bay middle-Georgian wooden structure with a tripartite Palladian window. In its original configuration ca. 1750 the house had two wings bringing the number of rooms to eighteen. The main block is a classic four over four center hall construction.The property has had many owners and uses in its 250 plus years. Originally it was built by Samuel Woodruff, a merchant and onetime mayor of Elizabethtown. After Woodruff's death in 1768 it passed to his son, but was eventually sold at public auction to Elias Boudinot in 1772. Boudinot lived here with his wife Hannah Stockton Boudinot and their two daughters and also offered shelter to the teen aged Alexander Hamilton who was studying at the Elizabethtown Academy. The Boudinots remained in the house until the outbreak of the Revolution, when for safety reasons Hannah moved to a family property in Basking Ridge, NJ, and Elias assumed his duties as Commissary General for the Continental armies. It is currently not known how the house was used during the war. In 1783 the Boudinots returned to their mansion and remained there until they sold it in 1795 to Jonathan Dayton, then a Congressman.
Jonathan Dayton and his wife Susan, son Elias Jonathan and daughter Hannah moved into the house in 1795. Soon after Dayton redecorated the front two rooms on the main floor; installing an Adamesque mantelpiece in the East parlor and a Federal mantelpiece in the West parlor. The financial reversal that was caused by his association with Aaron Burr and by extension with the Burr Conspiracy, forced Dayton to sell the mansion to his son in law Dr Oliver Hetfield Spencer with life-rights for the remainder of his and Susan's lives.
