85 Kings Highway, Moorestown
The house on the corner of Kings Highway and Lenola Road was built c. 1742 by Thomas Cowperthwaite. It would have been one of the first that British troops encountered as they marched from Haddonfield up Kings Highway towards Moorestown. The brick exterior is laid in common bond on the front and back elevations, and in Flemish bond on the southwest end.
Historic American Buildings Project, 1938
Thomas was active in the community and served in Chester Township’s civil organizations including: overseer of highways, constable, and collector. When Thomas passed the house on to his son Job in 1771 the house was on a plantation of some 250 acres.
Chester Brick School on Schoolhouse Lane c. early 1900s.
Job sold off 1-1/4 acres of this property to the Friends of Chester Meeting for the erection of the first school building in Moorestown. It was built in 1785 and was known as the Chester Brick School on Schoolhouse Lane (in what is now Maple Shade, where the Holman Corporate HQ is). Local tradition holds that before that time, school was held in a room on the second floor of the Cowperthwaite home, with the student coat pegs remaining around the perimeter of the room until well into the 20th century.
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Job Cowperthwaite’s daughter, Anne, was born in this house January 23, 1784. At the age of 23, Anne Cowperthwaite voted along with her grandfather Peter Vickers, her father, Job, and her uncle, Hugh Cowperthwaite, in October 1807 to choose members for Council, General Assembly, Sheriff, and Coroner for Burlington County.
Women voted in Revolutionary America, over a hundred years before the United States Constitution guaranteed that right to women nationally. The 1776 New Jersey State Constitution referred to voters as they; and statutes passed in 1790 and 1797 defined voters as “he or she”. This opened the electorate to free property owners, Black and white, male and female, in New Jersey. This lasted until 1807, when a new state law said only white men could vote. Anne was one of 38 women in Chester Township who voted out of a total of 260.
The other Cowperthwaite claim to fame, besides owning this historic home, is the fact that the famous 19th century, Philadelphia artist, Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins was the great-great-grandson of Thomas Cowperthwaite. The house remained in the Cowperthwaite family until 1855.
Historic American Buildings Project, 1938
Cowperthwaite House, present day