Colonial Trenton
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The William Trent House is located at what was known in early colonial times as the Falls of the Delaware, Prior to English colonization this area had been the site of settlements of the Lenape and their ancestors for thousands of years. The first European colonist in the area was Mahlon Stacy, a Quaker immigrant from England, who built a home on the site circa 1680. After his death, Stacy’s son sold 800 acres to William Trent, a wealthy shipping merchant based in Philadelphia, in 1714. Trent added property to include a large portion of what is now the city of Trenton. William Trent built his country home north of Philadelphia, in what was known as West Jersey, on these lands about 1719. Nearby, there were numerous outbuildings as well as a grist mill built by Mahlon Stacy. Trent expanded that mill and added saw and fulling mills and a bakehouse along the Assunpink Creek. In 1720 Trent laid out a settlement, which he incorporated and named “Trent Town.” By 1721 he and his family had made the House their full-time residence, where his youngest son William was probably born. Living and working on Trent's plantation and in his house were eleven enslaved people of African descent. |
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After Trent's death in 1724, the house passed through owners and tenants in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War, and as the village of Trenton grew, sections of Trent's original plantation were sold. In 1742 the House, then called “Kingsbury,” was leased to the first Royal Governor of the New Jersey, Lewis Morris, who used the house as his official residence until his death in 1746. At his request a separate kitchen wing was added in 1742, which has been the subject of ongoing archaeological investigation in recent years. At the beginning of the Revolution, the House was owned by Dr. William Bryant, a retired British Army surgeon.
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