By Jeffrey V. Moy, North Jersey History and Genealogy Center
At the intersection of modern-day Routes 46 and 202 in Parsippany, Cobb’s Corner was the center of town dating to the early 19th century.
In Cobb’s heyday, each corner was defined by one of four landmark buildings: The Parsippany Methodist Church, the Morris County orphanage, the Parsippany Hotel, and a schoolhouse.
Throughout its history, the property variously served as site of a large dairy and horse farm, base of operations for a family-run iron mining business, and a tranquil resting point for weary travelers.
The Cobb family holds deep roots in American history, tracing its lineage to Henry Cobb and Patience Hurst Cobb. They emigrated in 1631 from Kent, England, to Plymouth Mass., where Henry became a Congregationalist and senior deacon. Among their children was Ebenezer Cobb, who settled in Hanover, NJ, and married Mehitable Robinson in 1717.
COLONIAL ERA ECONOMY
Beginning in the early 1700s, settlers from Newark and Elizabeth arrived in Morris County seeking ore for iron production and woodlands for lumber and charcoal manufacturing. By 1728, Obadiah Baldwin’s iron works was established along the Rockaway River in Old Boonton.
Samuel Ogden took over its operation in 1765 and installed a rolling and slitting mill, which he concealed from the British to evade laws against manufacturing finished goods in the colonies. High taxes on imported goods were a significant revenue stream for the British, and a contributing factor to the Revolutionary War. Historical documentation of the Troy forge dates to 1758; it operated until 1860, with the Cobb family eventually running it.
The American colonies produced great wealth with the hands of paid, indentured, and slave labor. Parsippany’s Beverwyck mansion resided on 2,000 acres that held New Jersey’s largest plantation, with cabins for more than 100 enslaved men, women, and children.
New York merchant William Kelly built the plantation and estate in 1759, and by the time it was sold in 1772, some 20 enslaved persons still lived there, many working as skilled blacksmiths, masons, and shoemakers.
Following the American Revolution, northern New Jersey became more affluent and Parsippany’s scenic landscape attracted those eager to acquire property on which to build homes and businesses. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Howell and Baldwin houses were completed, as was the Benedict house.
POST-REVOLUTIONARY WAR TRANSPORTATION HUB
On Nov. 14, 1809, Lemuel Cobb was one of several men who incorporated the Parsippany and Rockaway Turnpike Company. It constructed a private road from Pine Brook through Boudinot Meadows, Troy, Parsippany, Denville, Rockaway, and across the mountain to Mount Pleasant, joining the Union Turnpike.
The demand for well-maintained roads grew during the early 19th century, to efficiently transport ore and agricultural products originating from northern New Jersey.
When abandoned in 1822, the Parsippany and Rockaway Turnpike became a public road and by 1838 it was renamed Route 6. The thoroughfare then was widened in 1853 to make Route 46. When the Morris Canal opened in 1831 it drove additional traffic and commerce through the area, and by 1857 the Husk stagecoach route delivered passengers and cargo from Boonton to Parsippany before continuing to Newark.
For much of the 19th century, Parsippany’s downtown was originally known as Smith’s Corner, for the family who owned large tracts of land nearby. The first of three hotels built on Smith’s Corner was constructed in 1853 to accommodate the growing number of travelers, some of whom were merely passing through to Pennsylvania or New York. Others sought Parsippany for its tranquil countryside, clean air and water. Generations of Newarkers and New Yorkers raised their children on milk and dairy products made in Parsippany; industrializing cities no longer had sufficient pastoral acreage.
PARSIPPANY’S 19TH CENTURY HOTELS, CHURCHES, AND HOMES
Cyrus H. Righter built the Parsippany Hotel in 1835 along with two others, which he sold to Andrew Bell Cobb in the 1860s. Once Andrew purchased the land, the intersection became known as Cobb’s Corner, a location well-known to residents and those doing business in the area for the next century.
In addition to the hotels and nearby farmland, Cobb’s Corner also included the Parsippany Methodist Church, the schoolhouse, and orphanage, making it a busy confluence of the town’s social, commercial, religious, and charitable life.
The Righter family joined the Cobbs by marriage and several members also ran successful business ventures in the county. Along with his hotels on Cobb’s Corner, Cyrus Righter ran a sizeable farm in town. His uncle, John Righter, operated a grist mill in Old Boonton from 1842 to 1872. During the 1880s, Peter Righter ran a saw mill around the Troy Brook.
The Righter House, at the corner of Route 46 and Vail Road, served as a stagecoach stop along the Newark-Bloomfield Turnpike. At one point, this Federal-style wood clapboard house included a tavern on its west end. It was removed in 1936. The structure now sits on the 10-acre 1745 Presbyterian Cemetery that borders its west side. A puddingstone wall encloses half the property, which also has a 2 ½ story cross-gable barn.
SPLIT ROCK MINE
Mr. Farrand built the Split Rock forge in 1790 to process iron extracted from a mine 1,500 feet east of Split Rock Road. Around 1802, Lemuel Cobb purchased the mine along with 3,000 acres of land in Rockaway. Lemuel’s son Andrew B. Cobb inherited the forge and mine and continued their operation. Workers descended to a depth of 120 feet, and followed the vein of ore to a horizontal distance of 1,700 feet.
The mine’s surface operations extended from the southern edge of the valley to the hill’s northeast crest. Split Rock was inactive for five years between 1873 and 1878. When production resumed, it generated up to 400 tons of ore per month.
During its last year in service, the mine produced 1,300 tons of ore, which constituted about half of the material excavated. Surface equipment processed the ore before going to the forge. However, by the end of the 19th century, vast iron deposits discovered in Minnesota were easier to extract, and advancements in steel production made New Jersey’s iron industry less competitive. While a few of Morris County’s mines functioned into the early 20th century, Split Rock closed in 1881.
FINAL YEARS OF COBB’S CORNER
Development and infrastructure projects left an indelible mark on Parsippany’s downtown. Starting in the late 1800s, construction of the Jersey City Reservoir placed Old Boonton and portions of Parsippany underneath 60 feet of water. Much of the land selected for the reservoir consisted of former iron-making sites and farmland. This stretch of the Rockaway River was prone to flooding, and by the 20th century, most of Old Boonton’s population already had moved north and uphill, to the town’s current location.
During this period several lake communities formed in the Parsippany area, as affluent city dwellers sought vacation homes in the countryside. Following World War II, many of these seasonal properties became permanent residences, and the surrounding farmland was subdivided into suburban housing.
By the 1920s, several growing communities decided to break away from Hanover Township, including Parsippany-Troy Hills, Littleton, Mount Tabor, Lake Hiawatha, and Lake Parsippany. At the time of Parsippany’s incorporation as an independent municipality in 1928, the 250-acre Cobb farm had transitioned away from dairy production and was in the business of boarding and breeding horses.
Socialite and philanthropist Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge purchased the land from the Cobb family, along with all the property along Route 46 from Intervale Road to the Boonton Reservoir. Initially maintaining the property for its investment potential, Mrs. Dodge eventually gifted the portion of land that the Cobb mansion resided on to the town of Parsippany for use as its new Town Hall. Unfortunately, the mansion itself was demolished in the process.
Later construction of Interstates 80 and 287 leveled entire swaths of town – including Parsippany Methodist Church, which stood directly in the path of Route 287. So too were many single-family homes along Littleton Road. Those that remained ultimately were replaced by apartment buildings in the 1960s.
Among structures that remain of Parsippany’s historic downtown are the Righter House, the Benedict House, and the Presbyterian Church and graveyard. Throughout the mid and late 20th century, the area gained considerably more residential subdivisions and retail centers as demand for housing and commercial space grew.
The turnpikes and roads that once ran through old Parsippany in the 19th and 20th centuries helped generate the municipality’s wealth by quickly and efficiently moving its residents’ goods and services to larger markets in Morristown, Newark, and New York City.
As residential and commercial subdivisions overtook the surrounding farmland during the 1940s and 1950s, quaint enclaves like Cobb’s Corner slowly disappeared. Much of today’s passenger and retail traffic through Parsippany now take place along Routes 287 and 80, at rates of speed and volume that would have been inconceivable to the carriage drivers and small hotel operators of 200 years ago.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of enslaved persons living at Parsippany’s Beverwyck mansion plantation when it was sold in 1772. The correct number is 20.
RESOURCES:
- Andrew Bell Cobb Family Papers, NJHGC Collection.
- Acroterion, Morris County Historic Sites Survey: Parsippany – Troy Hills, Morris County Heritage Commission, 1986/1987
- The Black Freedom Struggle in Northern New Jersey, 1613-1860: A Review of the Literature, Montclair State University Anthropology site (accessed 12.9.2024).
- Vincent Bello, Patricia Flavelle, Lora Geftic, ed., None Outsings Parsippany, The Daily Record Inc. and Parsippany-Troy Hills Board of Education; Parsippany, NJ, 1976
- Edmund Drake Halsey, et al., History of Morris County, New Jersey, W.W. Munsell & Company, 1882
- Thomas Shea, Abandoned Iron Mines of Jefferson & Rockaway Townships, Morris County, New Jersey, Trenton, N.J.: State of New Jersey, Department of Labor, Division of Workplace Standards, Office of Safety Compliance, 1992.
- Julia Peterson, The Days of a Town Center, Two-Lane Roads and Dairy Farms in ‘Percipany’, Patch.com article, 2011.
- Ancestry.com
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