Proprietary House

Perth Amboy’s Proprietary House was built between 1762 and 1764 to a design by the builder John Edward Pryor, intended as a governor’s residence, and is the only such proprietary governor’s mansion from the original thirteen colonies still standing. The Chief Justice, Frederick Smyth, lived there from 1766 to 1773, after which it was refitted as the royal governor’s residence. In 1774 it became the home of William Franklin, the last royal governor of New Jersey and the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin.

The house’s great drama is the political split that divided a famous family. William Franklin remained loyal to the Crown, and when the Revolution came the New Jersey provincial authorities placed him under house arrest in the mansion in January 1776. In June of that year he was ordered arrested and taken to Princeton, where he was tried for treason; he was imprisoned in Connecticut until a prisoner exchange in 1778 and later settled in England, where he died in 1813. During the war the house was occupied by troops of both sides and served as headquarters for Generals Hugh Mercer and William Howe. It was badly damaged, probably by fire, and was restored by John Rattoon after 1794.

From 1808 it was a seaside hotel called the Brighton, then a private home, a boarding house and apartments. Preservationists began to campaign to save it in 1914; the Proprietary House Association took over in 1966, the state bought the property in 1967 and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. It opened to the public on 19 June 1976 with a bicentennial re-enactment of Franklin’s arrest, and it is now preserved as a state-owned historic house.

Ghost stories attach to this layered history. Popular listings describe three apparitions: a Revolutionary War soldier, a woman who stands in a dining-room window, and a small boy in blue who is said to have let a delivery man in and led him to the third floor. A writer for the local news site Perth Amboy Now, who once worked in an office on the attic floor, described finding an unexplained old-fashioned toy there, a Halloween tour led by a psychic on which a friend felt a child’s hand tug his shirt, and a visit by Ghost Hunters producers who interviewed people with stories to tell. Jersey Digs adds a bathroom door that locks and unlocks by itself and a legend that William Franklin himself walks the halls. The Proprietary House Association has run Halloween “haunted history” tours that mention a former dungeon and a staircase where a murder is said to have taken place, though the sources do not document either event.

Reported are a soldier in colonial-era boots on the stairs, a woman at a dining-room window, a small boy in blue (seen and heard in the yard and indoors), a bathroom door that locks and unlocks itself, cold spots, a tugging child’s hand and an attic toy of unknown origin.

The dining room window, the third floor and attic (used as offices at times), the bathroom and the front yard; activity is reported by tenants, office workers and tour guests.

The house hosts seasonal “haunted lantern walks” and history tours, appears in New Jersey haunted-house listicles, and is linked in Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here to the site’s history. A local writer says Ghost Hunters interviewed office workers there.