North Main Extension

The Ware Law Office

1850 · 53 North Main Street

Extension stop N4 of 5 · Old Town Hall Museum 12 min · Map · About 2 min read

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Mullica Hill managed without a resident lawyer until 1842. When one finally came, he was the seventh son of a chair-maker.

The chair-maker was Maskell Ware of Roadstown, down in Cumberland County, whose rush-seated ladder-backs were famous enough that a "Ware chair" still means something to collectors. The family's chairs sit in South Jersey museum rooms today.

Richard Moore Ware, born there two days after Christmas in 1816, chose statutes over seats. He studied law in Trenton, where the tutor who examined him privately was a former governor of New Jersey, Peter Vroom. Ware settled in Mullica Hill in 1842, and by 1850 had raised this house with a tiny office beside it. The town had its first lawyer.

Ware's fingerprints are all over this end of the village. He sat on the building committee for the stone church next door. An early parish sketch records that its fine bell was "secured for the church through the noble efforts of R. M. Ware, Esq."

The office is the part to look for. Late in the 19th century the one-room law office was done over as a cottage and set at the side of the house at 53 North Main. The historic district survey found it there a century later, fretwork porch and all: a small office preserved like a keepsake beside the family home.