Name/Title
Story Sarah WellsEntry/Object ID
001964Tags
William Bull, Sarah WellsScope and Content
Part I: Life in the Wilderness
On the following day the Otterkill was crossed & a log cabin built. Sarah prepared the meals for the workmen & the Indians. In the evening she was treated to a surprise that overwhelmed her with joy. Horses were heard approaching, & the Indians hastening off to investigate returned with — Christopher & Madam Denn. Their first words "Where is Sarah, & is she well?" It appears that when they returned to their home after Sarah's departure, they were impressed by its loneliness, now that "the only cricket that played upon the hearth-stone was gone" & from thinking of the dangers to which they had exposed her, the conscience-stricken couple must needs make arrangements for their immediate departure to join her. In truth, they were off at daybreak the very next morning pushing their way up through the settlements on the west bank of the Hudson. And Sarah, beholding her foster-mother fell upon her neck and wept.
Denn felled the trees & let in the light of the sun upon the virgin soil. He plowed, planted & reaped. Sarah toiled in house & field, & the wilderness for her came to have no terrors. With a faithful dog she would often wander ~~far from home~~, a light-footed child of the forest whom the redmen knew & respected as a familiar friend. At regular intervals she would arise at midnight, when the wild cat & wolf were still abroad &, attended only by her dog take 2 horses loaded with grain over the footpath leading the 20 miles through the woods to the riverside at New Windsor, there to load the grain in a boat — & row it over to the mill at the mouth of the Fishkill in ~~the~~ Dutchess County. While returning from one of these trips, she was once chased all night by wolves.
Her fame as the Maid of Wawayanda spread to the community of Manhattan. To a large extent attracted by it, others came to settle on the patent. Then did the woods ring & crash with the sturdy stroke of the axe. Civilization took a firm foothold, & the Indians fell back. 4 years after Sarah led her caravan into the wilderness, there appeared in Wawayanda a young Englishman named William Bull, who after a disastrous attempt to follow...
Part II: The Marriage of Sarah and William
...his trade of mason & stone cutter in Dublin, had been employed, upon his arrival in New York, by Daniel Cromline a purchaser of an interest in the patent. The stone house that Bull helped to build for Cromline — it long afterwards became famous as the Greycourt Inn — was within 5 miles of the Denns' log cabin. Bull continued to live with Cromline after the erection of the house, & of course met the fair Maid of Wawayanda. 2 years after he came to the conclusion, that she would make a good wife. Sarah was willing & affected no coyness. Those were serious days.
There was too much work to do, to permit of a prolonged love-making; the young couple could not even wait for the banns to be proclaimed in 3 successive weeks in accordance with the canons of the Church of England. So they went to the local magistrate — there was no minister available — & asked him if it would not do just as well to proclaim ~~the banns 3 times on the same day~~.
The magistrate was equal to the occasion. We are told, that contracting parties & the witnesses being duly assembled in Denn new log cabin, he, with a solemnity demanded by the occasion, took up the Book of Common Prayer, proceeded to the front door of the house & there proclaimed the banns to the trees of the forest; that he then strode through the halls to the back door & made a second proclamation to the cattle & outbuildings & that, again at the front door, he made a third proclamation to the wilderness at large.
It is with pleasure that we record that the trees of the forest made no objection, that the cattle did not forbid the banns, that the wilderness seemed to echo back its approbation, and that thereupon the marriage ceremony was immediately performed.
