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History of Orange County
Towns of Goshen, Hamptonburgh and Chester
Page 12
The tradition in this vicinity and among the family descendents of William Bull and Sarah Wells, from the earliest settlement of the town of Goshen down to this day, is that “Sarah Wells was the first civilized white woman, and Madam Denn the second, who placed a foot upon that part of the patent of Wawayanda, which laid in the town of Goshen!“ How this came about we have now explained. We are aware that there is a tradition also, which has come down to the present time, through a reputable course of descent, that there was at an early period, and at the time the corps of surveyors ran out the patent, a woman in their employ as a cook and housekeeper, who went with them from station to station, and occupied the cabins of which we spoke in the early part of this article, and that the one in which she continued to reside after the patent was run out and the surveyors had left, was nearly opposite to that erected by Christopher Denn, and on the other side of the Otter Kill.- We admit there was such an erection there, and tenanted too by a woman during the residue of her life, such as is pointed to by the tradition, but deny that she was there before Sarah and Madam Denn, and that her cabin was erected before that of Christopher Denn. On this question of priority, and as connected with the early settlement of the patent, it is proper to suite, that after Penn had located and erected his new double log house, which was shortly after the wigwam was put up, as previously stated, the surveyors were engaged completing the running out of the patent into small lots or divisions among the owners. This, as we are told by an old surveyor well acquainted with the surveys and their dates, was not earlier than 1715, extending down perhaps as late as 1720, during which time the house in question was erected, with others of the same character. The fact that Denn's house was there, on one end of the patent, was the reason why the other one was put up in the vicinity, and why that woman elected to reside there. Doubtless, there were several others in various places on the patent, but which soon went into decay by non-using. This woman lived to a great age, which contributed to preserve hers.
By this time the shades of night, like a murky and solemn gloom, had enveloped the cabin, and the light of its feeble taper, like some lonely but friendly star, threw its maiden and modest rays upon the wilderness of Wawayanda.- That group of civilized and uncivilized individuals, of gentle and simple, the representatives of nature on the one hand, and of high civilization and art on the other, as they sat in a log cabin in the midst of the wilderness, doubly shrouded in darkness by the trees of the forest and the gloom of the night, was one of the most interesting collections of individuals, ever gathered together in the old town of Goshen.
The presence and maiden energy of Sarah Wells were soon followed by the footsteps of thousands-the sound of the woodman's axe, as it resounded along the silent banks of the Otterkill and through the vallies and hill-tops of Wawayanda, was soon succeeded by the multiplied blows of the hardy settlers, as they came in and planted their dwellings. The clearings made by Denn opened the thick foliage of the forest, and the sun in noontide glory lit up and warmed it by the blaze of his beams-the furrows which followed his ploughshare, marked out the boundaries of a thousand locations, upon which frugal industry, with her thrifty hand-maids, garnered up wealth and reveled in domestic happiness. The seed then cast into the virgin soil, vegetated, grew up, ripened and has since been widely disseminated over the broad, rich bosom of the patent, and now gracefully waves in every passing breeze. The offspring of the cattle, which at that early day, grazed among the wild herbage in the shade of the forest, and slacked their thirst in the gentle waters of the stream as it flowed on, kissing the gay flowers which adorned its banks, are now seen to wander and heard to low on a thousand hills-the red men of the woodlands have departed, and the cultivated, indomitable children of Shem possess their dwellings. The fires of the war-dance and wigwam are extinguished, and Christian temples as they send up their tall spires to heaven, are lit up by the mild and benignant beams of the Gospel.