Vacation Local - Morven Museum & Garden, Princeton, New Jersey

     Morven is a colonial home located at 55 Stockton Street in Princeton, New Jersey.  It was built in the 1750s by Richard Stockton.  His wife, Annis Boudinot Stockton, named the home Morven after a mythical kingdom in Ireland.  Stockton family members lived in the home until 1932.  Robert Wood Johnson II, chairman of the Johnson and Johnson company leased the home form 1932 until 1944.  New Jersey Governor Walter E. Edge purchased the home in 1944 and gave it to the State of New Jersey in 1954.  It served as the governor's mansion from 1944 to 1981.  It became a museum in 1982.
     New Jersey's governors still reside in Princeton.  They live down the road at 354 Stockton Street at an estate named Drumthwacket.  We'll have to put that on our list of places to visit.      

This picture of the back of house was taken from the garden.  The odd thing about the house is that it doesn't have a kitchen.  Colonial kitchens were often separated from living quarters because of the risk of fire.  In modern times the kitchen moved from place to place, sometimes in auxiliary buildings, sometimes in the home.  The kitchen was omitted in the museum restoration.   

The garden was swarming with blue winged digger wasps.  We learned that the wasps flying around are mostly males searching for mates.  The males don't have stingers and females won't sting unless handled.  They live underground and eat Japanese beetle larvae.  Knowing this we walked among the insects without concern.  

Every museum has a gift shop.  This is where you purchase tickets.

Mike, taking a breather,

There are two gardens - a pleasure garden and a kitchen garden.  This is the pleasure garden.  The kitchen garden, not so pretty because we are at the end of the growing season, produces about 400 pounds of food each summer that is donated to food banks.

This female torso is dressed in plants.

I'm glad to see they compost the yard and garden waste.

Robert Wood Johnson II built the pool and pool house even though he was only a renter.  The pool was filled in, and the pool area is a fountain now.  

A brick wall built in the 19th century divides the pleasure garden from the kitchen garden.  The wall was my favorite place at Morven.  It was easy to imagine what it must have been like in 1850 to sit, back against the bricks, reading a book  or watching blue winged digger wasps searching for love.