To the Editor:
In seeing the signs of “Defend Historic Princeton,” I would like to bring attention to a road that I lived on for many years in Princeton, Mt. Lucas Road, that had so much history that has now been lost. Early on, the road was full of farms — that meant so much hard work hauling away rocks and growth to clear enough land to raise crops and animals. Then, at the corner of Poor Farm Road and Mt. Lucas Road, a “Poor Farm” was built — a large stone house with a huge barn and crop fields. That is where people went to live who were “poor.” They raised food and livestock, went to the Pest House down the road a bit when ill, and then died and were buried somewhere.
It was the street where Mr. Habada lived for many, many years — a solitary man who asked Miss Campbell, a teacher in the Princeton schools, to marry him when her father died because he didn’t want her to be alone. She declined and lived in her house down the road from him until her death. He came to my house for tea and stories.
Mr. Green, my neighbor, told me that the road was the first place where a Black person could buy a property, so he built his house there years ago.
The house that I owned was originally a one-room schoolhouse that had been moved three times until its final Mt. Lucas Road destination. Those were the days when houses were not wasted. Rather, they were moved to a new destination. Imagine — rolling a house down the street on logs or by whatever means was available. Materials to build meant hard work to get them, so they could not be wasted. Now we would just casually tear it down!
Ironically, at one point, the Poor Farm beautiful stone house was occupied by a commodities corporation and now, both the old house and barn have been destroyed to create another commercial structure. Think of the history of all the people that once found shelter — living and working and dying. That is the pathos — if history is not spoken of, it dies.