Name/Title
Wilderness Marriage Bore Local Bull LegacyEntry/Object ID
000599Tags
William Bull, Sarah WellsScope and Content
Wilderness marriage bore local Bull legacy
Times Herald-Record, Tuesday, February 8, 1983
GOSHEN — It is 1718. A log cabin stands in a small clearing in the Orange County forest. A man comes to the door and calls out to the wilderness that a marriage is about to take place. Some cattle look up in amazement, as he proclaims his message to the trees lining every side of the clearing. Finally the man, a justice of the peace, returns inside the cabin and joins the hands of the waiting couple in holy matrimony.
This is a description of the first reported marriage in Orange County, between Sarah Wells, the first permanent white woman settler, and William Bull.
The traditional rituals of a more civilized world, including marriage, had to be makeshift in those early settlement days. The nearest church was in New York City and there was no clergyman to proclaim the banns.
But it was a marriage to have far-reaching effects. Sarah Wells is the grande dame of Orange County history. She lived to be 102 years old and many present-day residents of Orange County can claim her as an ancestor.
She was the foster daughter of an otherwise childless couple, Christopher and Elizabeth Denne, from Staten Island. Denne, a carpenter, was also one of the original proprietors of the Wawayanda Patent, a vast land tract granted by the English authorities. Denne was apparently anxious to establish a settlement in Orange County quickly because one of the agreements made among the patentees was that the first man to establish a farm and a family in the area could take up 600 ac. s of land.
The story is that in 1712 the Dennes rushed the 18-year-old Sarah Wells ahead to establish the claim. She traveled up the Hudson in a sloop with three Ind ns and two white men, landing at the mouth of Moodna Creek and making the long trek through forest and rough terrain to a site by the Otterkill in the present Town of Hamptonburgh.
One story has it that Sarah fainted when her foster parents arrived several days later. However, that doesn’t sound like the fiery character described by Samuel Eager, a local historian. He says she was "smaller than the majority of her sex; yet though light and fragile, she was active."
The historian says that "her eyes were neither large nor prominent but dark, playful and sparkling. Although she was not a flippant talker, she was free and conversed with fluency and when excited to reply to some rude remarks or impertinent inquiry, her eyes would flash like fire."
Denne gave his adopted daughter 100 acres upon her marriage. In 1727, the couple finished a stone house on the present Sarah Wells Trail.
Bull died in 1755. Shortly afterwards, Sarah, a feisty 66-year-old, married Johannes Miller.
Miller died in 1782; Sarah in 1796. She left 12 grandchildren, 212 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren.