Name/Title
Story of SarahEntry/Object ID
001963Tags
Sarah Wells, Elizabeth Forbes, Ann OliverSubject
Transcription: Page 1 (Image 1963.jpg)
And it is with still more pleasure that we cite our historian
as authority for the statement that, "though this was a new &
hazardous experiment on a delicate subject," its legality was never
questioned, "not even" says that naive gentleman, by those who were
most personally interested in the matter. Sarah was 24 years old and
her husband 29 when they were married. At that period "race suicide"
had not yet been invented. Sarah in truth, was a lady after Mr.
Roosevelt’s own heart. The wild, free life she had lived in the open
enabled her to give birth to children with the frequency & facility
of her savage red sisters. In the first 24 years or so of her married life
a child was forthcoming at least every 2 years. She was a Spartan as
well as a prolific mother. If a baby had to be kept out of mischief
while she did her work, she tied him to a bedpost. This she did
once for several hours while she went out to search for & bring in her husband
who had been delayed in returning from the mill across the Hudson. 4 years
after his marriage, Bull built for his rapidly growing family a stone house
of 2 stories. It was situated a little way from Denn’s log cabin & he called
the place Hamptonburgh, after Wolverhampton his native town in England.
It is a remarkable fact that the Hamptonburgh house was never molested by
the Indians, even when their aggressions on the other white settlers were the most
frequent. Sarah lived there, and she & hers were sacred in the eyes of the
children of the wildwood. During the French & Indian wars which lasted from
1756 to 1763, the Bull house was a place of refuge at night—for the inhabi-
tants of the neighbourhood from miles around. Time passed, & along
the streams of Wawayanda the campfires of the red men were extinguished
forever. Back into the mountain fastnesses of Sullivan County the Indians
retreated before an incursion of the toughest & most vigorous stocks
Transcription: Page 2 (Image 1963a.jpg)
that the world has ever known. Came the liberty-loving English, the
hardy & stubborn Scotch-Irish, the freeborn Scots of the Highlands,
grave Dutchmen, serious-minded German Protestants & Hugue-
nots of French extraction. They formed a like-minded, did these various
races, a people who toiled terribly in the fear of God, & the fires of hell.
All lived lives of rude, strenuous muscular effort, for the most part in
the open air, & even their pleasures savoured of work. It was with these people
that the children of William Bull & Sarah Wells intermarried; & their children’s children, growing
up, knew only one ambition, namely; to have better farms & raise more crops than
parents or neighbours, & they waxed exceedingly prosperous, and multiplied as the
sands of the sea. William Bull died in 1755 at the age of 66. His widow buried
him in the family graveyard at Hamptonburgh & went on living. Childbirth
pains, the cares of a numerous family, hard, incessant toil in house & field—these
could not age her; she lived to see the country aflame with revolution, to be present at
the birth of the new nation & witness it well started on the road to its [future?]
greatness. She lived long beyond the allotted time of man—lived to see 12 of
her children grow up & marry & lived to have surrounding her at her death 98 grand
children 212 great-grand children & 13 great-great-grand children or the grand
total of 335 descendants. She, Sarah Wells the pioneer maid of Wawayanda,
died on April 21, 1796 aged 102 years and 15 days.
They buried her beside her husband near the stone house that was her home for 74
years. Times have changed & are changing, but her memory is still kept green.
Once a year her descendants picnic near the old home which after the lapse
at this writing of 185 years, still is standing in excellent condition, being the residence of
a Bull of the fifth generation. Thus the old traditions are kept living, the old
ideals preserved. Eventually they put up a monument to Sarah Wells, their ever-beloved
mother.
[Signatures and Notes at Bottom]
Ann Oliver, Elizabeth Watkins Miller Forbes
325 Cherry St. Elizabeth N.J.
Thanksgiving 1908
[List of names]: Wells, Bull, Eager, Watkins.
Ann Elizabeth Watkins Miller Forbes, 1927 / 1908
