In the early years of the nineteenth century stage coaches connected Belleville with
New York. Owners of the stage lines were often proprietors of hotels and other places
of lodging and refreshment. Some of these structures became well-known Belleville
landmarks before their demise in the twentieth century.

John Williams and John Dow bought the stage line run by Joseph Sandford. Williams
kept an inn for his coach customers at Main and John (now Belleville Avenue) Streets.
Dow owned a slave named Jacob Robinson who not only drove the coach but also
became a partner in the business.

The Williams-Dow-Robinson stage-coach concern eventually came into the possession
of T.P. Seaman, the owner of the Mansion House at the corner of Main and Rutgers
Streets. This busy place by the bridge over the Passaic was built in the mid-eighteenth
century and lived in by Josiah Hornblower. The Mansion House was later the home of
members of the Joralemon and Coddington families.

Seaman faced competition in the coaching business from Thomas Farrand who owned a
hotel at Main and William Streets. Often called the Van Rensselaer House, it was built
about 1800; William Holmes (grandfather of Mayor Hugh Holmes), who operated a snuff
mill, lived there before it became a public house.

A final place of refreshment, the Belleville Hotel, stood by the intersection of Main and
Mill Streets. Built by Stephen Van Cortlandt, it was torn down in the 1930s to make
room for industrial expansion. By that time, stage coaches and stage stops were distant
memories. But many of the families associated with these landmark
buildings-Hornblower, Joralemon, Van Cortlandt, and Holmes-had streets in Belleville
named for them.

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