Smithville Mansion

     Thursday, August 5, 2021: I have never been to this Smithville. (Not to be confused with the Smithville in Atlantic County. This Smithville is in Burlington County, New Jersey.) Anyway, Historic Smithville Park, 803 Smithville Road, Easthampton, NJ (609-265-5858), didn’t contain shops. Instead, I toured the Smithville Mansion, a mansion that the brother Jonathan and Samuel Shreve build in 1840. They also built a factory nearby that made thread and printed cotton. They called their workers’ village Shreveville. In the 1850s, they went bankrupt and the village was vacant until 1865 when Hezekiah Smith bought the grounds and renamed the village Smithville. Smith lived here until he died in 1887. On the mansion tour, my guide showed me two floors worth of Victorian interiors and furnishing for a wealthy family as she told us stories about the Smiths. Another area of the mansion, The Annex, mostly stayed unrestored with white walls inside the rooms and displays of artworks painted by local artists. This too, proved interesting! The rest of the area contained a workers’ village with a worker’s house, school house, and other buildings. As for the rest of the park, there was a playground for children, a picnic area, and hiking trails.