HISTORY: Convenience Store Built on Site of Woodbridge 'Tea House'

Ignore the naysayers. The history of Woodbridge gets township residents excited.

A story that asked, "where was this house located?" drew 40 responses and lots of good guesses. 

Many people thought this old building was the Cross Keys Tavern, one of the most popular old postcards of Woodbridge's lost heritage. The Cross Keys Tavern - where George Washington stayed on his journey to his inauguration as the nation's first president - still exists; it was ignominiously moved from the post road at the corner of Amboy Avenue and Main Street where it stood to a lot a block away, to make room for the construction of the Knights of Columbus.

You can still see the historic Cross Keys Tavern: it's behind the 7-Eleven, across from the Reo Diner. It's not a museum, either. It is subdivided into several apartments with only a lone sign to let the passerby know that something monumental happened there.

though, is long gone. The QuickChek on the corner of Green Street and Rahway Avenue now resides on the property of the old, historic, Revolutionary War building that was razed long ago.

(If you look at the picture and the gentle slope of the land down to Rahway Avenue, you can see how the original building and convenience store fit on the same footprint.)

So what was that old building? 

Of the 40 responses, John Smith got it right. The building is what has become known to the few aware the structure ever existed as the "tea house."

A tavern was set up at that site on the corner of Green Street and Rahway Avenue in 1683 by Samuel Moore, a town father. He was town clerk for 20 years and served as a deputy five times, and that's just part of his history in Woodbridge.

In 1730, legend has it that a group of Woodbridge ladies came across this new beverage known as tea. Mrs. Campyon, who owned the building, was entertaining a Mrs. Van Cortlandt and other refined folk. The tea had been brought from New York.

The question arose about how the tea was to be served, and if it should be boiled, brewed or steeped (steeped won.)

Thus, the first cup of tea served in the colony of New Jersey was enjoyed in the old Moore Tavern in Woodbridge - which in the years since had acquired the nickname of the "Tea House."

In its history, the building was pressed into use as the town post office, a general store, and a drug store. In the latter phase, it was run by Woodbridge's town physician, Dr. Ellis Freeman (I believe Freeman Street in Woodbridge has a definite connection to the good doctor.)

The small shop attached to the building to the right also served as a fashionable millinery shop in the 1870s; in later years, it became a butcher shop.

It's unclear when the building was torn down. In "Disappearing Landmarks of Woodbridge," a small book written by Amy E. Breckenridge in 1946, the building was still extant. 

(Both Breckenridge's book and "An Historical Sampler: What's Cooking in Woodbridge," co-authored by Edna Oberlies Jost and Margaret Krewinkel Jost in 1964, were used for the content of this article.)