James Caldwell was no ordinary clergyman. A Presbyterian minister at Connecticut Farms (now Union Township), he was an outspoken supporter of the Patriot cause - vocal enough and influential enough that the British considered him a legitimate target. His church and home became symbols of resistance in a region where Loyalist and Patriot sympathies divided neighbors and sometimes families. Caldwell served as a chaplain in Washington's army, putting himself in the field rather than confining his support to the pulpit. His activism made him enemies on both sides of the conflict, and it made his family vulnerable to a violence that was as personal as it was political.

The original parsonage, dating to around 1730, was burned by a Loyalist mob in 1780 - an act of targeted retribution against a minister who had made himself conspicuous in the Patriot cause. Later that same year, during the Battle of Connecticut Farms on June 7, 1780, British soldiers swept through the village. Hannah Caldwell, James's wife, was sitting in the house with her children when a nervous British infantryman fired through the window, killing her. Her death became one of the most widely reported atrocities of the war in New Jersey, galvanizing support for the Patriot cause. Just sixteen days later, at the Battle of Springfield, Caldwell appeared on the front lines with an armload of Isaac Watts hymn books to serve as artillery wadding, shouting his famous exhortation: 'Give 'em Watts, boys!'

James Caldwell survived the battles of 1780, but not the suspicions of his own side. In 1781, he was shot and killed by an American sentry under circumstances that remain disputed. Some accounts suggest the killing was politically motivated - that Caldwell had made enemies among Americans as well as the British. Whatever the truth, his death completed a family tragedy that had begun with the burning of his home and the murder of his wife. The Caldwells became martyrs of the Revolution in New Jersey, their story inseparable from the history of the community they served.

In 1782, with the fighting over, Connecticut Farms Presbyterian Church built the present parsonage to replace the one destroyed in the war. The building served as a home for the church's pastors well into the twentieth century, when a newer residence was built closer to the church. Today the Caldwell Parsonage operates as a historical museum, owned and run by the Union Township Historical Society. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, it is open to the public on weekday mornings and afternoons. The structure is a well-preserved example of late-eighteenth-century farmhouse construction - modest in scale, practical in design, and carrying a weight of history that far exceeds its physical dimensions. Several state grants have funded renovations and maintenance over the years, ensuring that this quiet building on Caldwell Avenue continues to tell the story of a family that gave everything to the cause of independence.