User:JillerMc/sandbox/Ivins-Conover House

The Ivins-Conover house is one of Burlington County‘s few surviving pre-revolutionary 18th-century farmhouses. The building, near the intersection of Cox and Hartford Roads in Moorestown Township, is privately owned and not open to the public.

The brick (now stuccoed) central section was built in 1755 by Samuel and William Ivins. A large addition was constructed to the west in 1820, and a two-story frame section was added to the east around 1905.

The foundation is Jersey sandstone, 16 inches thick. As of the last assessment, in the late 1970s, the basement still retained evidence of both an icehouse and a milk cellar.

The flooring throughout the house consist of random width pine boards, the widest measuring 18 inches across, with 65 annual rings. The joists beneath are of mortise and tenon joinery, secured with wooden pegs. Many doors have hand hammered latches and hinges and quite a few of the window panes show the whorls of the original poored glass. The large English style barn is a mill-sawn beam structure that dates back to 1820. The original section measures 53 feet by 69 feet, and is 44 feet tall. One wall plank is 20 inches wide. There is an attached wagon house.

The Ivinses were plain Quaker farmers who also served as Moorestown constabularies for 78 years. They lived in the farmhouse until 1831. Isaac Conover bought the property from Wesley Horner in 1853. He called it Rambleside Farm. The Conovers were descendants of colonial Dutch settlers and founding members of the Briidgeboro Methodist church (1881). Several generations were born and raised in the house until it was sold in 1926. There is some evidence that the Ivins and Conover families were related by marriage.