This Berkeley farmhouse has stood for three centuries. Soon it could be gone forever.

BERKELEY - A 320-year-old monument to American history is crumbling on Sloop Creek Road, windows boarded, siding sagging, roof pockmarked.

The Anderson Farmhouse, the reputed site of a Revolutionary War assassination, is on its last legs.

“I think it was worth saving,” Steven Baeli said. “Now it’s pretty far gone.”

Baeli is a local historian who grew up in this Bayville section of Berkeley. As a student at Monmouth University, he wrote his master’s degree thesis on the farmhouse.

“The fact that it’s still standing is amazing to me,” he said Tuesday.

Not for long, most likely. Preservation New Jersey, a nonprofit advocacy group, has ranked the Anderson Farmhouse as No. 3 on its annual list of the state’s 10 most endangered historical sites.

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“New Jersey is losing a lot of its 18th-century fabric and the Anderson House is one of those examples,” Kelly Ruffel, executive director of Preservation New Jersey, said by phone. “It’s a very easy target for someone to come in and demolish it and rebuild on the land there.”

That appears to be imminent. The property and adjacent lots, all wooded at the moment, are owned by a developer who plans to build 11 single-family homes there, Berkeley Mayor John Bacchione said.

“It (the farmhouse) is in such disrepair, that when someone from the developer’s crew walked into it, he fell right through the floor,” Bacchione said. “It’s not something that makes financial sense to renovate.”

If only that floor could talk.

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A murder and a mantlepiece

In his master’s thesis, which he completed in 2007, Baeli theorizes the oldest portion of the farmhouse was built in 1696. The earliest record of sale is from 1704, for 60 pounds of silver. He documents the legend that during the American Revolution, a Tory occupant named Richard Bird was shot and killed by Patriots, who fired through the window as Bird was “sitting on a woman’s lap” in front of the main fireplace.

“I’d like to get a look at the mantle,” Baeli said. “Supposedly from when they shot Dick Bird there’s a musket ball or two in the mantle.”

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Baeli explored the tale, published in a 1975 book commemorating Berkeley’s 100th anniversary, that the house served as a stop along the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape the South. There is no proof, though scholars' most recent map of Underground Railroad towns in New Jersey includes Toms River.

“There’s a hole in the wall up the stairs, which led people to believe they were hiding people,” Baeli said, adding that at least one person was enslaved there during the colonial period.

The house was a residence until 1996, when owner Irv Nobles died at age 84. Baeli said he last set foot inside about 20 years ago. He said Joe Nobles, Irv’s son, wanted to restore it but didn’t have the means. Neither did the Berkeley Township Historical Society.

“It was still stable back then; you could still get around,” Baeli said. “There wasn’t any interest.”

At that time, the preservation boom was not quite in full swing. There are more resources today in terms of grants and interest groups, but it might be too late.

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Demolition imminent?

The property last sold in 2021 to a land-management firm for $600,000 and was transferred a few months later for $1. In 2022 Toms River-based Leone & Daughters Realty Management advertised “10 residential building lots approved” for the nearby land with the "adjacent existing farmstead sold separately."

Bacchione said the developer has demolition permits but “there’s a development going on across the road, and he’s waiting until that’s a little more developed as a courtesy” before acting.

“It could happen anytime soon,” Bacchione said.

“We’re restoring a one-room schoolhouse (in another section of town) and it’s been on the books to restore for nine years, so it takes forever to move that needle,” the mayor said. “With (the Anderson Farmhouse), I made an agreement with builder that when he builds there, it will be with a similar-looking house. It won’t be a replica, but it will have a similar feel.”

Ruffel of Preservation New Jersey said now that the Anderson Farmhouse is listed as endangered, “we will connect with the mayor and the owner and see if we can come up with a solution.”

She cited last year’s endangered list success story, Grace Episcopal Church in Plainfield, as a model.

“We were able to save the church,” she explained. “The land around that church was redeveloped and is going to be housing, but the church was actually saved and is going to be incorporated as it stands and restored. We’re hoping to have that conversation (in Berkeley) and maybe we can save the Anderson Farmhouse in that same fashion.”

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If that fails, Baeli has one request.

“What I would like to see happen if they have to tear it down, don’t just tear it down — do it in pieces historically and see what’s in these walls,” he said. “Joe Nobles told me he found a rifle in the wall with a bayonet that was not period to the rifle. It could have been in there for 150 years.”

Baeli is a historian, but he’s a Berkeley taxpayer, too. He knows the cavalry might be arriving a couple of decades too late.

“It’s really a shame,” he said. “I grew up in this neighborhood and have seen houses come and go in 20 years, and this thing’s been here forever.”

Jerry Carino is community columnist for the Asbury Park Press, focusing on the Jersey Shore’s interesting people, inspiring stories and pressing issues. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Anderson Farmhouse in Berkeley on endangered history list