Now the quaint little story and half frame building is being restored on its permanent site, after having been in several locations around town during its existence for more than two and a half centuries. The history is compiled by records and tradition.

John Clement¹s book First Settlers in Newton Township, New Jersey has Archibald Mickle, an Irish settler, arriving in Philadelphia in 1682. Four years later he purchased 250 acres in New Township, now Collingswood. Samuel, his third son, born in 1711, became one of the first settlers in the village of Haddonfield. John Kaighn sold him a lot adjourning the Indian King in 1736.

Samuel¹s will at his death in 1748 mentioned his properties that included a brick house and a shop standing on a lot in Haddonfield. Undoubtedly the shop was the Hip-Roof house which in every deed was listed as a "tenement".

Elizabeth Haddon purchased the house in 1752 and in 1757 it became the residence of her adopted nephew¹s widow Sarah. Sarah and her husband, Ebenezer Hopkins, who had raised their family in the mansion on the shore of the Cooper¹s Creek in what is now Collingswood. The brick house now is the headquarters of the Camden County Park Police.

When Elizabeth died, Sarah inherited the Hip-Roof house and eventually it was moved to 23 Ellis Street when the lots on which it was standing were sold to John Clement. John built three attached brick homes for his three daughters on the lots.

In 1852 the little Hip Roof house was the home of Mary Allen. She was the town caterer for all banquets and weddings and the house became known as the Cook Mary Allen house.

Tradition has it that the house originally was on the corner of Tanner Street and east Kings Highway and was the home of Elizabeth Haddon¹s butler, although records show that it was on the lot adjoining the Indian King in 1820.

A fable often told is that Dolly Madison, who led the social life at the Indian King when she visited her uncle, Hugh Creighton, the proprietor of the tavern at the end of the 18th Century, often drank tea in the Hip Roof house.