The original stone farmhouse dates to the 1730s. Sean Skeuse’s parents had added on, as had prior residents. Sean and his wife, Megan, brought in the design teams of Eastridge Design Home (interiors) and Lasley Brahaney Architecture + Construction to modernize the home, letting in more light, though staying true to its historic integrity.

The Skeuse Homestead is Reimagined for Today’s Living

By Ilene Dube | Eastridge Design, Interior Design; Lasley Brahaney, Architecture and Construction; Interior Photography by Pam Connolly; Exterior Photography by Tom Grimes

Sean Skeuse spent his formative years on a 200-acre property in the rolling farmland surrounding Stockton, New Jersey. Growing things was in his blood. When he and his wife, Megan, were living in Boulder, Colorado, he became immersed in the cannabis industry, learning about the cultivation, extraction, and retail side of medical marijuana from the ground up.

Upon legalization of hemp farming in New Jersey in 2019, Skeuse returned to the family homestead – his parents had relocated to Houston. Skeuse’s firm, Headquarters Hill Hemp (HHH), has dedicated 14 acres to growing Berry Blossom Flower, an organically grown product containing less than .3 percent THC, as monitored by the state of New Jersey. (THC is the psychoactive component of cannabis, and hemp growers typically market their non-psychoactive product as CBD.) The self-described modern-day farmer, who earned a degree in business administration at Rider University, also raises corn, soy, rye, and apples.

Megan, who teaches at Princeton Montessori School, always loved animals. Her childhood pets included a pony, a horse, birds, guinea pigs, bunnies, turtles, and dogs and cats. Today, Sean, Megan, and two daughters keep goats, pigs, silky chickens, rabbits, and geese. The animal theme continues inside on the wallpaper. more

Untitled, 1982 by Grif Teller. From “Crossroads of Commerce.” (Courtesy of Dan Cupper)

Ghost of a Town

By Anne Levin

At the bottom of Alexander Street where Princeton meets West Windsor, joggers, walkers, cyclists, and nature lovers gather — especially in fair weather — along the banks of the Delaware & Raritan (D&R) Canal. The leafy site known as Turning Basin Park has a parking lot on one side of the road, and a popular kayak/canoe launching site on the other. A few houses line Basin and Canal streets, which hug the narrow waterway. It is peaceful and quiet.

There is little, if anything, to suggest that, nearly 200 years ago, the area was a bustling center of commerce and industry. Princeton Basin was a thriving small town along the 65-mile canal, a mile south and worlds away from quiet, academic Princeton proper.

Princeton Basin took its name from two inlets, or basins, which opened off the north bank of the canal on either side of a turn bridge. These were small ponds where barges could moor overnight, unload their freight, and turn around. Vividly documented in historical publications written in 1939 and 1983, the Basin boasted coal yards, a lumber yard, a hotel, a tavern, and some 20 residences. The general store was a popular meeting place. A school was built as a mission by Princeton’s Trinity Episcopal Church. Pulled by mules along the banks, barges carried coal, hay, produce, quarried stone, and more between Bordentown and New Brunswick. The Princeton Steam Mills and the New Jersey Ironclad Roofing and Mastic Company were located at the Basin. It was busy, busy, busy — but the Basin’s heyday was short-lived.

“Settlement of the Basin dates from the early 1830s, when a railroad building furor was sweeping the eastern seaboard of the United States,” reads Old Princeton’s Neighbors, a 1939 publication of the Federal Writers Project. “And to Commodore Robert F. Stockton, United States naval officer and member of one of Princeton’s pioneer families, belongs much of the credit for building the canal and railroad which served central New Jersey. To his initiative, also, Princeton Basin owes its origin.”

Finished in 1834, the canal had four locks at Trenton, and another at Kingston. It wound through the smaller communities of Rocky Hill, Griggstown, Millstone, and Somerville. The Camden and Amboy Railroad ran a line next to the waterway. But as the railroads began to dominate the transportation industry, the canal, and its town, went into a steady decline starting in the 1870s. more