Wallkill Town

Orange County, New York

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Wallkill Town Hall is located at 99 Tower Drive, Middletown, NY 10941.
Phone: 845‑692‑7800.

Neighborhoods

Beginnings [1]

The Town of Wallkill was established April 7, 1772, at the home of Samuel Watkins in Campbell Hall in the present Town of Hamptonburgh. Vast tracts of wilderness, called patent, were acquired from the Indians over the period from 1703 to 1761. The original Wallkill Precinct was created from portions of two of these patents, the Minisink Angle and the John Evens Patent.

Wallkill Precinct originally extended into Ulster County and was much larger than it's present day boundaries. In 1798, by an act of the legislature, the present Orange-Ulster County boundaries were formed.

In 1782, the Congregational Church, at what is now Howells, was organized and has the distinction of being the second Congregational Church formed in the State of New York and the first church group in this area.

In 1787, George Houston of Neelytown settled on 300 acres in the southeastern part of Wallkill. His father James Houston who was a descendent of Rev. Joseph Houston, first minister of the Goodwill Church of Montgomery, bought this land for him. In 1796, a church was organized at the home of George Houston and he donated three acres for a church site and burial ground. Because of the preponderance of Scottish families, it was decided to name the settlement, which grew up around the church, Scotchtown.

The First Congregational Church was organized in 1785 in the settlement not yet known as Middletown. The church acquired 1/2 acre of land from the estate of John Green, to which was added 15-1/2 square rods from the husband of the minister's niece, Jonathan Owen. The Reverend Charles Seelay served as the first pastor and construction was begun in 1786 but not finished until some ten to twelve years later.

In 1792, several families joined to organize the Wallkill Old-School Baptist Church which met at various places for thirty years before building on land donated by Silas D. Horton at Rockville, some two and three quarter miles north of Middletown. A fifth church was organized in 1799 in an area between the present Fair Oaks and Bloomingburg. The meetinghouse was known as "The Old Union House."

  1. Dorothy Hunt-Ingrassia, Town Historian, in Town of Wallkill Comprehensive Plan, 2005, www.townofwallkill.com, accessed December, 2010.

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