Many people don’t know this, but the Van Riper House wasn’t originally built by the Van Ripers. As far as we know, a house was built on the current site by the Bradbury family in 1708. John Bradbury, from England, built the first mill on the Third River in 1698 or earlier. It was located almost exactly where Route 3 crosses River Road (big yellow circle below).
Sometime around 1708 or earlier, he used his accumulated wealth from the gristmill to build a stone house on a knoll along the newly-constructed River Road. As an aside, River Road is Nutley’s oldest road, laid out officially on March 26, 1707. See below for a copy of that “road return” mentioning John “Broadbury” being annoyed that Essex County road men were going to mess with the nice hedges he had planted when they worked on the road. To be continued… -DI
Sources & Further Reading
History of Passaic and its Environs, by William W. Scott, 1922 (pp 637-638): https://archive.org/details/historyofpassaic01scot/page/n6
Essex County Road Books A&B (1698-1804) https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/008217641…
