Name/Title
1972 Bull Stone House article - Michael BrownEntry/Object ID
000846Tags
Bull Stone HouseScope and Content
… And there’s still life in the house
HAMPTONBURGH
“Late at night after my wife and children are asleep, I read about my ancestors or I just think. Here I am living in this house that so many others have lived in, and I meditate about the life that has gone before.”
Michael K. Brown was sitting in a lavender-painted bedroom with his three daughters on the third floor of the Bull Stone House. When he was a child, it had been his bedroom.
“I slept in a sleigh bed right here,” the handsome, bearded redhead said, pointing to the middle of the room. “The bed is up in the attic now, but I think I’ll resurrect it when some of the children go out on their own”
Brown is the 36-year-old father of seven, ranging in age from 7 to 17. He is raising his family just he was raised, in the oldest house in Orange County.
The house is larger inside that it appears from the outside. It dominates 100 acres that haven’t changed very much since Sarah Wells and her husband, William Bull, built it 250 years ago.
There was a stirring air of excitement Friday as everyone was preparing for Saturday’s annual Bull Family picnic. Because of the anniversary, a pageant was being planned along the lines of one performed 50 years ago during a bi-centennial celebration.
The Browns are the seventh generation off-shoots of the first white marriage in the county.
Brown was explaining the attitudes of many of the hundreds who visit the house annually: “When people drive down that lane to the house, they expect another world, and they get that, at least partially.
“Yes, there are modern convivences, but the spirit of the house is constant.”
The house is a lived-in museum. There are portraits, fine fireplaces, family Bibles, artifacts, letters leftover from other times, and a splendidly-preserved wedding gown (white, decorated with flowers and figures), that Sarah Wells wore when she married William Bull 254 years ago.
What is it like running a modern family in a very old house?
The first ting that impresses a visitor is the complete sense of order, both in surroundings and people. The Browns are a Christian family, and live each day “accordioning to God’s mercies.”
Breakfast, as every other meal, begins with the family holding hands, and praying. “That is one way we express our community as a family.” Brown said.
And that in itself, is enough to set this family apart from many others.
As Mrs. Betty Brown cheerfully served a sumptuous breakfast of bacon and eggs and juicy coffee cake, she said she performed the housework “one floor at a time
“I do everything that needs to be done, starting at the top. You see when you live in a historic place, you have to be ready to open up your house everyday. People are always knocking at the door and asking to look through.”
As if on cure, an elderly couple from South Dakota came a short while later. They had timed their vacation to coincide with the picnic and pageant.
Mrs. Brown said one of the few problems she encounters comes in buying curtains. The windows are longer and narrower than those found in most modern houses.
But she is cheerful, displaying an earthy Irish wit. Brown says her wit gives balance to the family living, because “life for me is serious, sometimes too serious, and her wit helps me.”
For the children, living amidst history doesn’t faze them. “It’s home,” is the way Mike, Jr, 15, summed it up.
And there are visible delights: woods and fields to run through, trees to climb, and a pond to explore.
There are cows grazing across the way, belonging to Mayjack Kobylarz. Brown says “They look just like they did when I was a boy growing up here: odd configurations, crumpled horns.”
Brown and his three brothers grew up with their father and grandfather, mother and Aunt Amy Bull Crist “always telling us stories. We bit our teeth on the old flintlock over the fireplace. We used to play in that tree way over there. We called it ‘the swinging tree.’”
Brown’s children call it “the horsey tree.”
Brown has “a vision” about the stone house he’d like to become reality. “I’d like to have the money so that there could be a part-time or full-time person here as a curator. To answer questions, to research the past.”
He seems to fit his own description. As a visitor was leaving, he said “I have a great sense of responsibility about the privilege of living here.
“I grew up to understand life here. Others stretching far into the past grew to understand life here.
“I don’t like common cliches. I don’t think any of the Bulls did.
“We’ll die. The house will survive. This is the link from the past to the future.”