Revolutionary fight, pacifist dentist, tea room: Wild Matawan history at Burrowes Mansion
MATAWAN - One Sunday in 1933, Thora Thomsen returned to her Keyport home from church and found her husband dead asleep in his favorite chair. Only he wasn’t asleep — just dead. At age 49, in the throes of the Great Depression, Thora suddenly was a widowed mother of five children.
But Thomsen had an entrepreneurial spirit, and a short while later she answered a newspaper ad seeking a renter for the stately house at 94 Main St. in Matawan. The house belonged to the prominent Brown family — today, it’s known as the Burrowes Mansion Museum — and Thomsen pitched an idea of turning it into a tea room and restaurant.
In March 1935, the Colonial Tea House opened, and for three years it was a beacon of high society amid the Depression.
“Elegant, exciting, fun and yes, commercially successful,” is how author and longtime Matawan resident Mary Lou Diecker describes the operation in her book: “The Burrowes Mansion of Matawan, New Jersey: and Notations on the History of Monmouth County.”
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The newly published 187-page work is the second edition of Diecker’s original version from 1978. She updated and expanded it on account of the mansion’s 300th birthday, and on Saturday she and editor Barry C. Orr will hold a book signing there, with proceeds going toward its upkeep.
The chapter about the Colonial Tea Room is new, and the dining room is decorated accordingly, complete with a portrait of Thora.
“It had to be told,” Diecker said Tuesday at the mansion. “It’s something new, something we could show off. This house has had so many lives, and now it has a another one.”
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The Burrowes Mansion is most well-known as the site of a Revolutionary War skirmish, with prominent patriot John Burrowes Jr. narrowly escaping capture out the back window while his wife held off musket-wielding loyalists at the door — and was gravely injured in the process.
It housed plenty of colorful occupants through the centuries, including a pacifist dentist who was hanged in effigy out front because he opposed the Civil War and J. Mabel Brown, a pioneering woman publisher of a local newspaper empire. It was Brown who cut the rental deal with Thomsen — an arrangement that ended in 1938 when other members of the Brown family decided they wanted to move back in.
So the Colonial Tea Room closed, and Thomsen — who was “ahead of her time, she had that flair” — was out of luck.
“Out she goes,” Diecker said. “Where does she go? We’re not really sure.”
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It’s a fascinating historical footnote to a place filled with them. Sales from Diecker’s book will benefit the Matawan Historical Society, which is responsible for maintaining the Burrowes Mansion Museum. Upgrades to the plumbing and electrical system, and structural reinforcement, are needed. The historic home surely will be a focal point of local celebrations of America’s 250th birthday in 2026, and Diecker sees the updated book as “a road map” for that.
“The house is magic,” she said.
The signing takes place from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. Books also will be available for purchase later at www.MatawanHistoricalSociety.org.
“You don’t have to buy a book when you come in,” Diecker said. “There’s no fee at the door. Come in, see the house, walk around and see if you’re enchanted. And if you are, buy a book and help us in keeping the house for the next generations.”
For more information, email info@matawanhistoricalsociety.org.
Jerry Carino is community columnist for the Asbury Park Press, focusing on the Jersey Shore’s interesting people, inspiring stories and pressing issues. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Burrowes Mansion in Matawan book chronicles 300 years of history
