The Liberty Hall Museum was built as a Georgian-style house in 1772 by William Livingston, a lawyer who would go on to become a member of the First and Second Continental Congress, founding father, a signatory of the Constitution, and the first Governor of the State of New Jersey.

Guests at Liberty Hall included George Washington, Martha Washington, Lewis Morris, Marquis de Lafayette and Elias Boudinot and the house was the site of the marriage of one of Livingston's daughters to John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

In 1798 the home was purchased by George Belasise, Lord Bolingbroke and wife Isabella, who continued the Livingstons' tradition of enhancing the agriculture and grounds of Liberty Hall.

[citation needed] Susan's first husband, John Kean of South Carolina, had been a delegate to the Continental Congress who supported ratification of the United States Constitution in South Carolina, was the first cashier of the Bank of the United States and had been held prisoner during the American Revolution (a consequential respiratory disease lead to his death at age thirty-nine).

Susan Livingston changed the name of Liberty Hall to Ursino, the name of her Polish second husband Count Julian Niemcewicz's Polish estate (Niemcewicz had returned to Poland after Napoleon's successful campaigns, having initially been exiled due to his role in unsuccessfully fighting for independence from the Russians.)

John Kean II lived at Liberty Hall for 60 years and made the most significant changes to the house and property, expanding the house to its current structure as a 50-room Victorian Italianate structure for the main reason of accommodating his large family, and introduced modern amenities such as running water, gravity hot-air heating, and gas lighting.

The floor plan and interior trim of the 18th-century portion of the mansion remain essentially intact within the larger present structure.

While a number of rooms and their furnishings have been restored to their original condition, others have been added to meet the changing needs of different generations of the Kean family, and modifications have been made to add modern heating and plumbing systems.

Liberty Hall houses collections of furniture, clothing, manuscripts, books, portraits, pictures, and other historical artifacts, including a signed letter from George Washington, a pre-census, population count, and an invitation to Abraham Lincoln's inaugural.