Parks 1-10 - Monmouth County

88—————— ———— ——holmdel parkLongstreet FarmTHE LONGSTREET FARM homestead is one of the best preservedhistoric farmsteads in New Jersey and one of the Park System’s mostpopular sites, attracting over 100,000 visitors a year to see how farmfamilies lived in the 1890s. When English and Dutch immigrants establishedMiddletown around 1680, the Longstreet Farm land was part ofan 1,800-acre plantation settled by Richard Stout, an Englishman, andPenelope Van Princis Stout, his Dutch wife.The central portion of the Longstreet House is the oldest existingstructure on the farm, and was built as a one-and-one-half story Dutch-American House in the mid to late 18th century, probably by Hendrickand Lydia Hendrickson. Their daughter, Williampe, married Aaron Longstreetin 1778, and they built the two-story section before 1798, whenthe Federal Direct Tax assessment for Middletown Township recordedits dimensions and number of windows. They also built the massiveDutch Barn, which the Park System dated through dendrochronologyto 1792. The farm passed down through five generations to MaryLongstreet Holmes, who was born on the farm in 1901 and lived thereher entire life. She and her husband, William Duncan, sold the farm to theCounty. Mary Holmes Duncan lived there until her death in 1977.Park System staff decided to interpret Longstreet Farm to the 1890s,which older members of the County’s Agricultural Committee rememberedas a period of major transition as farmers switched from horsesto tractors. Tom Kellers, who was in charge of the interpretation in the1970s, recently recalled that, “barn doors opened up all over the county”and farmers dropped off tools and equipment they had been savingfor decades. The staff opened the Longstreet barn complex in 1971with farm animals and costumed interpreters, and it quickly became apopular attraction for families and school groups. The Park System subsequentlyrestored the Longstreet House to the 1890s and opened it in1983. As farming has continued to disappear, Longstreet Farm provideschildren and adult visitors with an increasingly valuable glimpse into theway people lived off the land in Monmouth County’s agricultural past.Holmdel Park is on the cuesta or gently-sloping ridge that runs fromHartshorne Woods Park in the northeast corner of the County to theClayton Park area in the southwest. It has the largest height variation ofall the County Parks—from 300 feet above sea level in the Hilltop area,to 70 feet above sea level at the lowest point on the Ramanessin Brook.The park contains the headwaters of the Ramanessin Brook, whichdrains to the Swimming River Reservoir.