> T he Van Campen Inn
THE STORIED VAN CAMPEN INN By Marie Liu Photos Courtesy of Marie Liu
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n elegant and austere home, fashioned from the stone and timber cleared from its surroundings and assembled by strong, determined hands of early Dutch settlers, the Van Campen Inn was one of the first permanent homesteads in the wild frontier that was Northern New Jersey in the early 1700’s. In its time it has played a role in two wars, saw the birth of a nation, pandemics, survived catastrophic hurricanes and floods, sheltered many who sought safety within its sturdy walls, witnessed births, deaths and all the joys and sorrows in between as they were played out under its roof. Pivotal to the growth of a community called Walpack Center, then bearing witness to the painful abandonment of that community and region. Like a sentinel it stands strong, and alone again, nearly three centuries later. Located on Old Mine Road, one of the oldest commercial roadways in the U.S., which connected the Delaware River
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to the Hudson River at Kingston NY; the Shapanack Flats, made fertile by the flooding Delaware, would be settled by the Rosenkrans family in 1736. Leaving what seemed to be an established, comfortable life in the settlement of Kingston, the elderly Alexander, wife Marretjen (sister of Nicholas DePue), and their five offspring make the arduous journey with their belongings to this rough and wild territory to make a new start. Self-sufficiency was possible in the rich valley, but a hard task. Relocating to the heavily forested, sparsely populated Walpack would surely be an epic undertaking, and with three sisters and a young brother, the bulk of the work would be on the twenty year old son Harmen Rosenkrans. Much about their beginnings in Walpack is shrouded in mystery and continues to be discovered. The following is what has been surmised by clues left in scant documents from that time and
