Leaving the Morristown Green and driving north on Route 202 a
little less than a mile, you will pass on your left what was once the
site of the Speedwell Iron Works.
Nothing is left of the forge, the workmen's cottages and the
workshops, but a few stone walls near Speedwell Lake. A little further
up the hill on the right, you will see Judge Stephen Vail's large white farmhouse
with dark green shutters and, below it, the red building where Alfred Vail and Samuel F. B. Morse worked on the
telegraph.
The Vail House and the Telegraph Factory have become the core of Historic Speedwell, which was incorporated in 1966 as a nonprofit historic restoration. It comprises approximately seven and one-half acres and includes three farm buildings which date back to Stephen Vail's ownership or before. Three late 18th- and early 19th-century Morristown houses threatened with demolition were moved to Speedwell - the Gabriel Ford Cottage, Moses Estey House and L'Hommedieu-Gwinnup House.
The preservation and restoration at Speedwell is an exciting example of what can be done when citizens of an area decide to organize and work together to preserve their past. Historic Speedwell, now on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Telegraph Factory, a National Landmark, will stimulate the interest of future generations in the life of an extraordinary Morristown family and in the early history of the Industrial Revolution in America.