Early Houses

We do not know that there was a house built in all this region before 1695. John Baldwin, Sr., in 1670, was to have one extra acre, by vote of the town, added to his "second division, of upland" for "his staying on his place the first summer." This seems a special inducement for him to remain somewhere on the outlands of the Newark tract, whether within or without the present Bloomfield.
Thomas Davis had "liberty to set up a saw mill" in the summer of 1695. It has been supposed that this was the saw mill on a site near the pond above Wheeler’s paper mill, in Montclair. The existence of a saw mill points to coming houses. Thomas Pierson’s "fence" appears below Watseson Hill in 1695. Anthony Olive’s house, on the border of Orange, near Wigwam Brook, makes its appearance in 1712, and the same year a saw mill, near or on "Bushie Plain Brook," which brook crossed the road "from the town to the mountain."

The first authentic dates of dwelling-houses are two,— the house of David Dodd, afterwards occupied by his son, Amos Dodd, still bearing in the corner-stone the initials of himself and wife, "NOUM 10, 1719, D.S.D." (Nov. 10, 1719, Daniel Sarah Dodd), the present dwelling-house (1884) of Chester Gilbert; and a dwelling-house of Abraham Van Geisen, on the east bank of Third River, near "Canoe Swamp." There was also a "mill lately built" (a grist mill, probably) in 1720 on the Third River, on Capt. John Morris’ plantation, and also a dwelling of one Vannevklor, near Toney’s Brook, in 1724. Among other ancient houses without authentic dates are the following: the Joseph Davis mansion, opposite the Baptist Church, supposed to have been built before the Revolution; the Abraham Cadmus house, on Montgomery Street; the Moses Farrand house, below Watseson Hill, Washington’s temporary quarters (now an inglorious unused cider mill, with honorable bullet scars in the old shell); the Thomas Cadmus house, on Washington Street, since known as Washington’s headquarters; the old house far down on Belleville Avenue; the Ephraim Morris house, removed some years since from the grounds of Mr. Thomas; and the old Crane houses, in Montclair.
A good number of these ancient houses were built of stone, for in 1721 the freestone began to be quarried for the market. The chimney and the big oven built outside the house indicated the Holland family.
Samuel Ward’s mill (a woolen mill) was in existence in 1725; and George Harrison’s saw mill, at Montgomery, either in 1728 or in 1740.
With mills to saw and a mill to grind and a mill to card the wool, and abundance of field-stone or even quarry-stone, the houses multiplied henceforth.