Women - Hunterdon County, New Jersey

PRIMROSE WOOLVERTON
The descendant of a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, Primrose Woolverton was born in
Pocomoke, MD on March 7, 1886 and died more than
100 years later. On the celebration of her 100 th
birthday, she maintained that reaching the century
mark was “no big deal.”
She was the daughter of a distinguished
Presbyterian minister, and as a young woman lived in
a house that her family had owned since the
Revolutionary War. Today, that Stockton home is
known as the Woolverton Inn.
She was graduated with honors from Vassar
College in 1906, and went on to work in a physics lab
and then to teaching physics at Vassar. After further
work in Tarrytown, NY, she became an English
teacher at Reading Academy in Flemington.
From 1916 to 1944, she served as executive director of a number of YWCAs on the
east coast -- in Trenton, the Oranges, Manchester, NH, and Hartford, CT where
Woolverton Hall was named in her honor.
Returning to Stockton in 1944, she took up residence at the family homestead. Her
active mind and enthusiasm propelled her into all sorts of activities. Miss Woolverton
was known for her stenciled tinware and dried flower prints. She became president of
the League of Women Voters and the Delaware Council of Church Women, a member
of the Lambertville Kalmia Club, a Sunday school teacher and church trustee. It was
only when she was in her late 80's and could no longer drive, that she moved with her
niece to a small house near Flemington. The once active woman was later confined to
a wheelchair and spent her remaining years in a convalescent center.
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