A Farm Rooted in History

Long before it carried our name, this land formed part of a rural landscape shaped by generations of people who lived and worked along the Millstone River.

Before European settlement, the Millstone and Raritan valleys were part of the homeland of the Lenape people. The rivers, forests, and fertile soils provided places to hunt, fish, travel, and cultivate crops. Their relationship with this landscape represents the earliest chapter in the story of the land we now call The Red House Farm.

The recorded European history of the property begins in 1701, when Cornelius Wyckoff and several associates purchased approximately 10,000 acres in what would become Franklin Township. The land was divided into large farm tracts, and Wyckoff left portions of his holdings to four of his younger sons. According to Franklin Township historian Bob Mettler, the land that later became the Wyckoff farm occupied the westernmost portion of these holdings.

The property remained associated with the Wyckoff family for generations. By the nineteenth century, the Millstone Valley had become one of central New Jersey’s most productive agricultural regions. Its farms supplied grain, livestock, and produce to surrounding communities and, increasingly, to the growing cities beyond them.

The opening of the Delaware and Raritan Canal in 1834 transformed life throughout the valley. Running alongside the Millstone River, the canal connected local farms with markets in New Brunswick, New York, and Philadelphia. Agricultural products, coal, and manufactured goods passed through East Millstone for nearly a century, helping the village grow into an active agricultural and commercial center.

The Wyckoff family prospered during this period. In 1872, William Wyckoff built an imposing early Victorian home overlooking the canal. A local historian writing the following year described it as an elegant new building. Sometimes called a “Civil War wheat house,” it reflected the prosperity enjoyed by successful central New Jersey grain farmers during and immediately following the Civil War, when international demand caused grain prices to rise dramatically.

William Wyckoff eventually left the property to his daughter. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, she sold it to the Rupert family, who operated the house as a country boarding establishment. At a time when crowded cities were often considered unhealthy, visitors traveled from New York and elsewhere to spend time in the countryside, seeking fresh air, quiet, and rest along the Millstone Valley.

In 1926, the estate was purchased by Anders Olsen Jordahl, a Norwegian-American engineer, inventor, businessman, and artist. Jordahl had already led an extraordinary international life. After emigrating from Norway, he worked in Europe and the United States and helped transform modern construction through his development of the anchor channel—a system for securely joining structural components to concrete that remains widely used today.

Nearly a century after Anders Jordahl purchased the property, our family is still caring for and working this land. Today, we farm it under the name The Red House Farm—growing flowers, raising heritage livestock, keeping bees, and continuing to work the land.

For us, this is more than the history of a property. It is a family story that has unfolded on the same land across generations. We see ourselves not simply as its owners, but as its present caretakers—honoring what came before us while building a working farm for the future.