Built 1722 Opened 1722 Added to NRHP 18 July 1974 | NRHP Reference # 74001287 Area 4 ha Nearest city Middletown | |
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Location 183 County Route 51, Campbell Hall, NY Architect William Bull and Sarah Wells Similar William Bull & Sarah We, Bull‑Jackson House, Edmonston House, Jacob T Walden Stone Ho, Fort Decker | ||
The Bull Stone House is located in the Town of Hamptonburgh, New York. It is a ten-room stone house built in the 1720s by William Bull and Sarah Wells, pioneer settlers of Central Orange County, NY.
Bull, a stonemason, met and married Wells, a fellow immigrant to the Wawayanda Patent (much of the present day towns of Goshen, Hamptonburgh, Minisink, and Warwick) while they were both working for the patent proprietors. Sarah Wells arrived in the area as the patent's first female settler in 1712. She came there to work as an indentured house servant at the age of eighteen. In 1715 Bull arrived in North America from Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England and also came to work on the Wawayanda Patent, where they met.
Their marriage in 1718, was the first between European settlers in Goshen. Building the house was a joint effort between husband and wife. They received the land as a land grant and began building the house in 1722. Sarah carried some of the stones to the site and William cut and laid them, while they lived in a temporary log cabin. It took thirteen years to complete, surviving a 1727 earthquake in the process. (Other sources place the date of the house's construction as 1722 or 1727). The completed building stands 40 feet square (1,600 sq ft (150 m2)) and has walls 2 feet thick.
Their descendants dispersed within the adjacent region, with the houses of Thomas (now a county museum) and William III also on the National Register. The family has lent its name to the hamlet of Bullville and Thomas Bull Memorial Park.
Sarah Wells survived William Bull, who died in 1755. She remarried and lived to the age of 102, leaving 335 direct descendants. The county government has renamed Orange County Route 8, near the house, to Sarah Wells Trail, in her honor. The local Girl Scouts council was named for her as well.
The house and surrounding property have remained in the Bull family's ownership. Today a ninth-generation descendant lives there as the resident caretaker. Tours are available for the general public for a small fee. Descendants from all over the United States have returned to the house every year since 1868 for a family reunion. The house has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1974.
The 120-acre (49 ha) William Bull and Sarah Wells homestead boasts another historical structure of significance, a New World Dutch barn.