Indian King Tavern Museum

Story

The Indian King Tavern was a colonial American tavern in Haddonfield, Camden County, New Jersey, United States, which was the site of a 1777 meeting of the New Jersey General Assembly that officially ratified the Declaration of Independence and adopted its Great Seal. It was the first State Historic Site, adopted as such in 1903. Its original structure remains largely intact. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. HistoryIn 1745, Mathias Aspden, a Quaker merchant and ship owner purchased property in the center of the village of Haddonfield, cleared the poorly constructed brewery buildings and began constructing the largest tavern on the village's main road, Kings Highway. The structure was completed in 1750.Taverns such as Aspden's were centers of commercial and social life, and in the increasing tensions between the British Empire, represented by Loyalists, and the Patriots, forums for heated debate that put the lives of both those arguing and the owners of such places in jeopardy. As tensions piqued because of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the tavern's owner, Mathias Aspden, Jr., had gone to England for his education and returned a staunch Loyalist. He sold his tavern to Thomas Redman, who ran the village apothecary shop. Aspden, Jr. sailed for England for good as the Second Continental Congress was convening in Philadelphia in 1776. He was tried and convicted of treason in absentia; his properties in southwestern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania were seized and sold, with the profits going into the Continental Treasury.