History
Roger Morris and Mary Philipse lived in the mansion for ten years. It was from 1765 to 1775, when the war started. They got married in the parlor, which can be seen today.
Between September 14 and October 20, 1776, General George Washington used the mansion as his temporary headquarters after he and his army were forced to evacuate Brooklyn Heights following their loss to the British Army under the command of General William Howe in the Battle of Long Island.
This house is one of the major remaining landmarks of Battle of Harlem Heights, after which it became the headquarters of British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton, and the Hessian commander Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen. The Morris-Jumel Mansion later hosted many other distinguished visitors, including dinner guests John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and John Quincy Adams.
Stephen Jumel and his wife Eliza Jumel purchased the house in 1810. After Stephen's death, Eliza married the controversial ex-vice president Aaron Burr who lived at the house briefly in the 1830s. After Burr's death in 1836, Eliza lived in the house alone until she died in 1865. In 1882, the Morris heirs broke up the 115 acres (0.47 km2) of the estate into 1058 lots.
On a rocky eminence overlooking one of the rivers, Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote his famous lines on the Greek patriot “Marco Bozzaris.”
The house was purchased by New York City in 1903.
The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)