When Gov. Mikie Sherrill and her family moved into Drumthwacket on Stockton Street in Princeton on Aug. 14, they became only the third full-time residents of the Governor’s Mansion in more than 20 years.
Sherrill and her husband, Jason Hedberg, and their four children moved from their home in Montclair to Drumthwacket. Two of her children are midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland., and the younger children are in high school and middle school.
“We are thrilled to call Drumthwacket ‘home.’ It is more than the Governor’s residence. It is ‘The People’s House.’ We are excited to bring it to life with our family and open its doors to New Jerseyans,” Sherrill said.
Former Govs. James McGreevey and James Florio were the last New Jersey governors to live in Drumthwacket full time.
Florio and his wife occupied the Governor’s Mansion from 1990 to 1994, and McGreevey and his wife and daughter lived there from 2002 to 2004.
Former governors, from Thomas Kean to Christine Todd Whitman and Richard Codey to Jon Corzine, Chris Christie and Phil Murphy, lived there part time and used it for official functions.
Drumthwacket has served as the Governor’s Mansion since 1992. It was built in 1835 by Charles Smith Olden, who lived there during his term as governor from 1860 to 1863. It was his personal residence, not the Governor’s Mansion.
The land on which Drumthwacket stands was owned by William Penn, the Quaker who founded Pennsylvania, according to www.drumthwacket.org. William Olden purchased the land from Penn in 1696.
Olden, who built Drumthwacket, was born in 1799 in the small white house that sits inside the fence surrounding Drumthwacket. He became a wealthy man from business ventures in New Orleans and an inheritance from an uncle.
Olden may have chosen the name “Drumthwacket,” which is a Scots-Gaelic name that means “wooded hill,” for his estate after reading one of Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels. It was the name of an estate of a hero in one of Scott’s novels.
The core of the 1835 house that Olden built consisted of a center hall with two rooms on each side, in addition to the portico with Ionic columns. The house was expanded by subsequent owners.
Moses Taylor Pyne, who was an industrialist, banker and a graduate of Princeton University, bought Drumthwacket from Olden’s widow for $15,000 in 1893. He enlarged the house and added hundreds of acres to the property.
Drumthwacket changed hands again in 1941, when Abram Nathaniel Spanel bought it from Pyne’s granddaughter. Spanel founded the International Latex Corporation, which later became the International Playtex Corporation.
Spanel sold Drumthwacket to the state of New Jersey in 1966. It was intended for use as the Governor’s Mansion, but it took until 1981 for the New Jersey Historical Society to raise enough money to complete the task.
The Drumthwacket Foundation was formed in 1982 to accept the responsibility of restoring and preserving the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Drumthwacket today has 12 private rooms on the second floor for the governor’s family. Six rooms on the first floor are dedicated to official functions.
Drumthwacket is the second property to be dedicated to housing the governor’s family.
The first Governor’s Mansion was Morven, down the street from Drumthwacket on Stockton Street near Bayard Lane. It became the Governor’s Mansion in 1954. Until that time, New Jersey’s governor did not have an official mansion.
Morven was built in the 1750s by Richard Stockton, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. It remained in the Stockton family until it was sold to Gov. Walter Edge in 1943, according to www.morven.org. He served as governor from 1944 to 1947.
Helen Hamilton Shields Stockton agreed to sell Morven to Edge with the proviso that it would always function as the Governor’s Mansion or as a museum.
Edge offered Morven to the state of New Jersey in 1951, but lived in it until 1954, when it was transferred to the state of New Jersey to become the Governor’s Mansion.
Morven served as the Governor’s Mansion for four successive governors until 1982. The New Jersey Historical Society opened it to the public in 1983.
The New Jersey State Museum took over operations in 1986. After Morven underwent a Historic American Buildings Survey in 1987, Historic Morven Inc. raised money to restore the house.
Morven Museum and Garden opened to the public in 2004.
