History of Walker Combs Hartshorne (Oakley) Farm (cont.)


1842-1911
The farmstead was sold by Rulif R. Schanck in 1842 to Richard S. Harsthorne, Jr., a New York businessman engaged in the selling of oil under the name Van Vorhees and Hartshorne. A native of Matawan where he was born January 6, 1814, and a descendant of Richard Hartshorne, one of the original Monmouth patentees, Hartshorne bought the Freehold property in the spring of 1842. He moved in with his family and took up commercial farming. He remained there with his family until April 1, 1871, when he moved to Freehold, still carrying on his farming business. Around July 1, 1872, while stowing away hay in the barn, he slipped and fell 20 feet to the floor, receiving substantial injuries, from which he died on July 29, 1872. His son, Acton Civil Hartshorne, a prominent member of the Monmouth bar, bought the farm from the estate of his father in 1873.

Acton Civil Hartshorne was born October 12, 1843, on the homestead farm. From 1859 to 1866, he was employed by Holmes W. Murphy, esq., Clerk of Monmouth County, as a copyist, acting as deputy clerk and attending chiefly to searching and preparing abstracts of title. In 1866, Hartshorne entered the office of the Honorable Governor Joel Parker, where he served a regular clerkship as student-at-law, and, at the February term of 1870, was admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New Jersey as an attorney-at-law and solicitor in chancery; in 1876 Hartshorne was admitted as counselor-at-law. On May 1, 1875, he formed a law partnership with the Honorable Chilion Robbins, former judge of the court of common pleas of Monmouth County, under the name Robbins and Hartshorne. Hartshorne also served as special master and examiner of the court of chancery and that of Supreme Court commissioner. He married Georgie E. Bibb granddaughter of Governor and U.S. Senator Bibb of Alabama. Hartshorne attended the World’s Exposition in Vienna as a Commissioner from New Jersey appointed by the Governor, under an act of the legislature. Due to his prominence as a public figure, Hartshorne maintained an office and home in Freehold and leased the farmstead to tenant farmers. In 1911, Hartshorne sold the farm to Charles Oakley, Jr. a general purpose farmer from East Williston, Long Island, NY.


The following is the chain of title to the property now called that Oakley farmstead.