Racing to save a New Jersey house where a Revolutionary War patriot was murdered

MIDDLETOWN, New Jersey — The window frames are rotting. The wooden porch is crumbling. The red paint is peeling on all four sides. Holes have emerged in the siding, wide and deep enough to sink a small fist into.

The Joseph Murray farmhouse is a historic treasure nestled in Poricy Park. Built in 1770, its namesake owner was among the Monmouth County Bayshore’s leading patriot agitators during the American Revolution. In 1780, this father of four young children was ambushed and murdered by three unidentified assailants as he worked in his cornfield — shot with muskets, and then hacked with bayonets when the gunshots failed to finish him off.