February 2024: The Seward Family Homestead

The Seward family were important people in the early days of Hardyston. Just a few years after Hardyston became a township, John Seward came up from the Black River area in Morris County and started a farm. John was a freeholder in Sussex County. When the Revolutionary War came about he was involved in a large way serving in the Battle of Long Island and White Plains and others. He was captain and became colonel and commanded the Second Sussex County Militia Regiment that had barracks in Wallings (today’s Hamburg). His extended property included a dammed reservoir, animals and pastureland and the essentials to continue a commercial operation as well—often considered a plantation. His son was a doctor from Kings College (Columbia University) and grandson was William H. Seward—, New York governor and Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State who acquired Alaska for the United States.  Their home was described as a reinforced log cabin, as Colonel Seward had a bounty price on his head by the British. The home was near the Old Paterson – Hamburg Turnpike, a section that doesn’t exist anymore and runs behind Deer Trail Lakes. The home was rebuilt as shown in the photo and owned by the Margarum family and burned down. Today the property is vacant and is on the slow turn of Route 515 just north of the long straight away on the road to Vernon.