One of the most iconic historic properties in the Somerset Hills is an English Tudor-style estate that sits atop a high ridge in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township. Built in 1912, this Basking Ridge landmark was the home to four families: Owen, Lee, Bissell, and Astor, before being acquired by Bernards Township in 1968. The property is known locally as the Astor Estate because the Astors were its last private owners. However, the resident who had the most impact on the town was George Ludlow Lee, who, out of community pride, donated land on which Ridge High School, War Memorial Park, and Cedar Hill School sit. The school’s mascot became the “Red Devil”. Enjoy the story.
1912- 1940
Samuel Owen and the Cedar Hill Fruit Farm
This estate on the ridge, built of brick laid in Flemish bond, was the dream of Samuel Owen of Newark, President of Kress & Owen Pharmaceutical, for he and his wife Alice. Samuel longed to be a gentleman farmer.
The English manor contained 20 rooms, had an attached servants’ quarters for the groundskeeper, an unfinished third-floor storage and servants’ quarters, an attached three-stall garage, and a small building for garden equipment.
It became obvious that Samuel built the house in the likeness of those from Alice’s English roots. The Owens named their new home “Cedar Hill,” where they spent their summers. For the rest of the year, the Owens lived at 279 Roseville Avenue, Newark, New Jersey. Their home is no longer there. It’s now a funeral home.
Samuel Owen was born on December 25, 1850, in Doldrich, Ontario, Canada. and he died in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Jan.7, 1936, at the age of 86 from pneumonia. Owen’s claim to notoriety came as Owen worked with Sir James Horlick, the English inventor of malted milk. Samuel married Alice Burford Owen, an Englishwoman related to Sir James Horlick, the British Representative of the British Malted Milk producers. So you could say they were all bound by malted milk. The Owens had no children.
Peaches Peaches Everywhere
What many people new to the area don’t notice is that Basking Ridge and the surrounding area have some of the largest peach and apple orchards in the state. Cedar Hill Farm literally had thousands of peach and apple trees. Longtime resident Mr. Bruce McArthur noted that what is now Astor Fields was 35 acres that showcased over 5,000 peach and 1,500 apple trees.
The fruit farm was one of the largest orchards in the Somerset Hills, all planted by Owen and his farmhands. People would come from all over when the orchards were in bloom. “The peach crop would earn as much as $50,000/year,” noted resident John McArthur. ” I also remember that people would come and, rather than pick fruit, we offered dropped peaches (those that fell on their own) at 3 baskets for $1.”
Samuel died, leaving the property in an estate that his nephew took over, which was finally sold in 1940.
Orchards were so big in the area that the Bernardsville news would publish weekly crop updates in the paper. Another was the 1932 freeze, which destroyed peach and apple crops for the following two years.
1940 – 1946
Red Devil’s George & Dulciena Ludlow Lee
Trustees of the Owen estate sold the property to Mr. and Mrs. George Ludlow Lee, Sr. in 1940. Mr. Lee was owner/treasurer of the Red Devil Tool Company of Irvington from 1937 to 1950. He later became chairman of the Board, renamed the company Red Devil, Inc. The company is now based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is run by CEO William (Bill) S. Lee, who is the 4th-generation Lee to lead the company. George was also an avid philatelist.
Mr. George L. Lee, Sr., his wife Dulciena Harrison Smith Lee, and his son George L. Lee, Jr. were from Maplewood, New Jersey. The family, along with John Landon Lee, the second of George and Dulcinea’s four children of Montclair, moved into the estate the week of June 4, 1940.
Mr. Lee served on the Bernards Township Planning Board and was its Vice Chairman in 1944. He and his wife, Dulcinea Harrison Smith Lee, continued the operation of the flourishing fruit farm, supplying local markets and roadside stands with its produce.
George L. Lee Jr. lived in the house as a teenager. “We never knew who would be in the kitchen,” Mr. Lee said in recalling the problems his mother had in keeping cooks during World War II.
George Sr.’s daughter Dulciena Green remembered a particular ghost while growing up in the house. “What I do remember is that I don’t want to go back ever to see her”. She was referring to her visit back in about 2012, when she again saw the ghost of Alice Owen, the wife of Samuel Owen and the estate’s first owner. “She often scared me as a child when walking the 2nd floor up the stairs to the third floor servants’ quarters.” Dulciena joined a local program where she told stories about growing up on the legendary peach farm (see at the end of the story). Ronda Pisano, the Bernards Township Deputy Clerk, noted that Dulcy told her a story about Alice, the ghost. “My mother actually came into my bedroom and talked directly to Alice and told her that she would place a tea setting outside my bedroom for her, and asked Alice not to disturb me anymore.” Dulciena also noted that the Lee family had ties to the Civil War General, Robert E. Lee, but not the General Lee who was captured in Basking Ridge in 1776.
The Lee’s grew felt that the taxes in Bernards Township were becoming outrageous, so in 1946, the Lees moved to a bigger home called Dunleigh on the Bernardsville Mountain. The home was on Mine Mount and owned by William Stamps. The Lees then sold Cedar Hill to the Bissells in 1946.
Lee Did a Great Thing for the Community
Lee had held on to many parcels of land around the Cedar Hill Farm. He chose to break up the land into various sections. In the mid-50s, Lee donated 60 acres of land to the Bernards Township Board of Education to build both Cedar Hill School (Opened October 27, 1957) and Ridge High School, along with their associated athletic fields. He also donated the property in the Township, where the War Memorial Park stands today.
Locals know Lee by the Ridge High School field, named after him, and the high school mascot, the “Red Devil”. While the Red Devils are named after George Lee’s company, the color green was chosen because rival Bernardsville had red uniforms.
The Red Devil Company was actually founded as Smith & Hemenway Company, Inc. While the founder was on a trip to Sweden, Landon P. Smith heard a blacksmith remark, “those little red devils,” after sparks from a forge singed his arm. The name stuck in Smith’s mind, and upon his return to the States, he began to label many of the tools he sold with the RED DEVIL® trade name.
George Ludlow Lee, Jr. died on August 10, 1966, in Portland, ME, at the age of 65. His wife Dulcinea died in a terrible fire at their Bernardsville Mountain Dunleigh estate in July 1961.
1946 – 1950
Eugene & Zita Bissell’s Maple Way
On June 3, 1946, the property again changed hands. George Lee sold the property, including 17 acres, to Eugene Van Name Bissell, Jr., son of Captain Eugene Bissell. Interesting, though, that the deed was made out to his wife, Zita Gatlin Bissell.
Mr. and Mrs. Bissell renamed the estate “Maple Way” and lived there from 1946 to 1950. Mr. Bissell was executive vice-president of the Continental Grain Company in New York City and was a member of the NY Produce Exchange (noted in 1922). The Bissells did not acquire the peach and apple orchards. Those stayed with George Lee.
It was noted that in 1947, John Jacob Astor bought an 11.3-acre tract from the Lee’s in 1947. There was a map showing a dirt road running from the back of the estate towards what is now Ridge High School. This road was called “Maple Way.” In August 1950, the Bissells sold their Maple Way home and moved to Plainfield, New Hampshire. Eugene, born March 26, 1894, died in June 1965 at the age of 71 in Vermont. His wife, Zita Gatlin Kaye Bissell, also passed away in 1965. Both are buried in Brooklyn, NY.
1950 – 1968
The Astor Estate – The Son of the Man Who Died on the Titanic
The last private owner of the estate was John Jacob Astor VI, also known as Jack or Jakey, whose father, John Jacob Astor IV, perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Mr. Astor, who also lived in Miami Beach, Florida, and was a former resident of New York City, Astor VI owned the Basking Ridge estate from 1950 to 1968, yet left the estate for his other homes in 1960. For those who don’t know, the Astors were German immigrants who made their fortune in the fur trade and in Manhattan real estate.
John Jacob Astor VI acquired the estate from the Bissells in mid -1950 along with an additional 17 acres from the Bissells, adding to the original 11.3 acres that the Lees left. It’s noted that the 1950 estate purchase was Astor’s third purchase in the area. Elsworth Dobbs Realty in Bernardsville is said to have handled the sale.
Back in 1943, Astor purchased the 85-acre Charles Baker Farm, called Bakehaven, and a 14-room 18th-century home and dairy farm, which is the current Lord Stirling Park. Then, in 1947, he purchased the orchards from George Lee. So he had been acquiring property for years before the estate purchase.
Jakey lived in the mansion infrequently, along with his sister Jacqueline Astor, as he also had residences in Miami Beach and New York City, but employed a full staff to run the mansion and the farms. The estate was often referred to as the “John Jacob Astor Farm. “
Astor the Gentleman Farmer
Jakey Astor VI was often referred to as a gentleman farmer as he managed the approximately 150-acre farmstead. He was very proud of his dairy farm, originally called Bakehaven, or Baker Haven Farm, named after Dr. Charles Baker, a Newark radiologist and owner of a milk-delivery business. Astor had over 60 cows in the barn. Astor renamed the farm New Haven Farms and worked for years breeding cows and selling his milk to a Bernardsville Creamery.
As a working farm, it saw frequent visits from the area’s Cub Scouts and Brownies in the late 1950s. On September 11, 1952, it was reported that over 700 children went on hayrides on John Astor’s tractor, driven by Clyde Swensen. Also noted in the local Bernardsville News on November 10, 1955, was that someone broke 15 windows in the estate with a slingshot. The Astors weren’t home at the time.
The Titanic Connection
The story goes that John’s parents were on the Titanic when the ship met its fate in 1912. The newlyweds were returning home aboard the Titanic after three months of honeymooning in Egypt and Europe. His mother, Madeleine, was five months pregnant with Jakey when her husband put her in one of the ship’s lifeboats. She was rescued eight hours after her husband went down with the ship. Jakey has also been referred to as the “Titanic baby.”
John (Jakey) Jacob Astor V1
John Jacob Astor VI was born on August 14, 1912. While sometimes articles refer to him as Astor V, he is not. John Jacob Astor V was John’s English cousin who died in 1991.
Jakey first married Ellen Tuck and had two children, William and Jacqueline. After a divorce, he married Gertrude Gretch, and after they divorced, he married Sue Sandford. That marriage endured until Sue’s death. John J. Astor, VI, died in Miami Beach, Florida, on June 26, 1992, at the age of 79, and is buried in the Trinity Church cemetery in New York City with other members of the Astor family.
There are stories about how little money Jakey received in the wills of his father, stepfather, and mother, which led to a 1959 settlement for $250,000. While a $3,000,000 trust was created for Astor at his birth, he was in the running for as much as $250,000,000 inheritance when his stepfather died. But in 1959, the same settlement that gave Brooke Astor her fortune gave Jakey only a pittance.
Astor married his fourth and final wife, Sue Sandford, in 1956. They remained married until she died in 1985. Astor died in Miami Beach on June 16, 1992, at the age of 79. He was married four times and had one son and one daughter.
Astors Knew the Somerset Hills Before Cedar Hill
What many people forget is that the Astors had a history in the Somerset Hills before they purchased the estate in Bernards Township. The infamous Brooke Astor (born Roberta Brooke Russell on March 30, 1902) first husband was J. Dryden Kuser, scion of a prominent family who would serve on the original Bernardsville Borough Council and later become a state senator. Her stay in Bernardsville ended when she and Kuser divorced in 1930. Kuser was the son of Col. Anthony Kuser, a renowned naturalist, and a grandson of former U.S. Senator John F. Dryden, who founded the Prudential Insurance Company. They lived in the Colonel’s Faircourt estate off Mountaintop Road in Bernardsville.
In 1922, Col. Kuser renovated a former tenant’s house on the estate and gave it to the young couple. The house, later named Denbrooke, had 12 master bedrooms and a 12-room servants’ wing, Mrs. Astor recalled. “It was a luxurious life,” she wrote. On a typical day, she would play piano, have lunch with a friend, play golf or tennis at the Somerset Hills Country Club, go for a drive, have tea, and spend the evening playing bridge with her husband before finishing with cocktails.
Brooke Astor’s longtime friend, Annette de la Renta, the wife of designer Oscar de la Renta, was also later named Brooke’s temporary legal guardian. Mrs. de la Renta grew up in Far Hills in the 1950s, a daughter of the late Jane and Charles Engelhard. “Worst years of my life” is how she characterized her marriage to Kuser in a 2002 interview with The New York Times, saying he hit her, drank too much, and cheated.
Strangely, Brooke later married Vincent Astor, John Jacob Astor VI’s half-brother. Vincent Astor died in February 1959 at age 67, leaving his entire $120 million estate to his widow, Brooke. In July of that year, Vincent Astor’s half-brother, also known as Jack Astor, who was born shortly after the Titanic disaster, sued to break and received $250,000.
1968 – Present
Bernards Township Municipal Hall
After the house had been vacant from 1960 to 1968 and avoided demolition, Bernards Township purchased the hilltop house and 28 acres for $140,000 in 1968. In a 4-1 vote, the Township Committee approved the $140,000 purchase under the leadership of Mayor Frank S. Fagundus. The only dissenting vote came from Claude Valentine Jr., who stated that Township Township already had enough property. Negotiations had been going on for almost two years. Renovations and the new addition brought the total cost to more than $580,000, and a series of snags delayed the complex’s completion.
The former residence, with its crystal chandeliers, mahogany paneling, marble mantels, and a new wing housing Police Headquarters and an auditorium for public meetings, was dedicated as the new Town Hall and municipal complex for affluent Bernards Township on September 21, 1975. The first to move in was the police department, which was met by a strange welcome – a fire bombing (that’s another story).
“All the floors, even in the attic, are 14‐to‐18‐inch‐thick poured concrete,” noted Mr. McArthur, a Township official. “This made it very difficult to install the air-conditioning conduits and electrical wiring needed by the township.” The Police were the first to move in in 1970. A police wing was added to the back in 1974. The Municipal staff moved into the building in July 1975 after leaving the Brick Academy, where they had been since 1946.
Death to the Orchards – The San Jose Scale
Stories written over the years indicate that the 35 acres of orchards were gone by the time Astor purchased the estate in 1950. What happened to the orchards? In the 1920’s, the parasite known as the San Jose Scale, named for where it was first found in 1881, was traced to China and showed up in New Jersey orchards. The effects were big enough to see with the naked eye, but you needed a lens to see the parasite. The scale could destroy a tree in as little as one season. A lime-sulfur spray mixed with water helped.
However, the largest impact on the orchards was home development. The Homestead Village, just south of the Cedar Hill School, was the first in 1937 and had a massive buildup through the 1940’s. Developed by the Homestead Corporation, the area covered from the Cedar Hill School property south to Cross Avenue. Homestead Village was the first large residential development in Bernards Township, followed by the post-WWII Spencer Road development. The Township Clerk of record was W.B Craig in 1939.
Elsworth Dobbs was the realtor for the development. The Holmes Estates section was first established in early 1937, with a price range of $10,000 to $20,000 for a new home. Nine homes were built in the development. Mr. & Mrs. Wesley T. Huether on Forest Trail were its first residents. Cedar Hill School followed in 1957, and lastly, the Ridge High School in 1961.
The Farm Goes Too
In 1966, the Somerset County Board of Freeholders purchased John Jacob Astor VI’s dairy farm on the eastern side, across from the Astor Estate on S. Maple Avenue, opposite the Somerset Hills Airport. The property actually goes all the way North to the Basking Ridge County Club to the North, and the Great Swamp to the East. The estimated $900,000 purchase consisted of 400 acres of the total 750‐acre purchase, which later became Lord Stirling Park. Mayor John Drew of Bernards Township, who was in the audience when the purchase was announced, said open space is what the residents want.
The original 450+ acre parcel had served as the dairy farms and already contained various barns, box stalls (some with individual paddocks), silos, and even a residence for the stable manager. June Kennedy, former township historian, noted that the horse stalls are larger than regular horse stalls because they are actually dairy stalls for cows, dating back to when they were part of the Astor dairy farm. (Warren Echoes Sentinel – February 24, 1966).
Towne Hall Today
The mansion’s former dining room is now used as a conference room; the study, with its curly maple paneling and mantle of green marble, is a reception room (complete with switchboard), while what was once the living room, with its mantle of rare red marble, now accommodates the Township Clerk and other municipal employees. In 2014, the original dining room was officially named the “Owen Conference Room” in honor of Samuel Owen, the gentleman farmer and pharma manufacturer who built the estate in 1912.
The main bedroom is the Township Engineer’s office, and the adjoining solarium is the drafting room. Other former bedrooms and servants’ quarters accommodate additional township officials. On Monday, May 5, 2003, the Bernards Township Municipal Building received a Somerset County Cultural & Heritage Commission Historic Preservation Award at the tenth annual History Awards Ceremony.
Unanswered Questions
There are still several rumors or conjectures about the great estate on the hill. If you have information that can help build out the story, contact us. Our research will continue. It was noted that Cedar Hill Avenue, Oakwood Avenue, and extensions to Cross Avenue were approved in 1946. Cedar Hill Avenue didn’t pass as there was already a Cedar Hill Street (renamed Collyer Lane –
Named for the John Collyer family, large land owners on South Maple Avenue in the 19th Century.
Holstein heffers sold at Far Hills, June 11, 1953, by J.S. Johnson’s Cedar Hill Farm. (Who is he?)
Additional References
Check the 5-minute mark for the overview of the Astor Estate.
Below is a video of Dulcinea Green duPont, who grew up in what was then the Cedar Hill Farm. In this one-hour session, she discusses her childhood, the house, the farm, and her life.
- The Astor / Titanic story – Click Here
- John Jacob Astor VI – New York Times 1912 – Click Here
- The Astors – Biography Video Show – Click Here
- The Kusers and Drydens – Click Here
- Learn about the Astor / Titanic story – Click Here
- Faircourt – The Kusar/Russell home in Bernardsville
Note: There have been mentions in past news articles that Eugene V. N. Bissell might have been part of the Bissell sweeper/vacuum-cleaning family, tied to the originator, Melville Bissell of Grand Rapids, MI, back in 1876. No relation has been identified as of this posting.
Thought it was interesting if you wanted a Bissell carpet sweeper, you could pick one up at G.T. Gianquiti & Son at 33-35 Claremont Road, Bernardsville. The sweeper was invented and patented by Melville R. Bissell in 1876. Following his death from pneumonia in Grand Rapids in 1889, his wife, Anna Bissell, took control of the company, becoming America’s first female corporate Chief Executive Officer.
She eventually passed the reins to her son, Melville Bissell, Jr. Melville Bissell III, a nephew of Melville, Jr., took over leadership of the company in 1953. John M. Bissell, a cousin to Melville III, assumed leadership of the company in 1971. Bissell remains the most popular brand of carpet sweeper to this day.
