§6 Country Life

Melius Bently house (V06-17.GIF)

As you have noticed, Charles Clinton mentioned several times the ”south bend of the Roloef Jansen Kill” and the home there, built between 1710 and 1715, of the Melius family. In the July, 1983, Pine Plains Register Herald we read the following detailed history written by the owner at the time, Byrne R.S.Fone:

Melius-Bentley house in Mt. Ross gains national recognition

Not far from what is left of the 18th century hamlet of Mt. Ross, a stone wall, quite well-preserved, snakes across the countryside, running parallel to the Roeliff Jansen Kill.

At the eastern end of the wall stands a house, older than Mt. Ross, a house which was standing when the first George ascended the English throne, when Louis XIV departed from the French, and which had seen the birth and death of many generations by the time George Washington took up his stewardship of the new republic.

This house, which has quietly waited in the valley for over two centuries, has now been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, with the official designation of “The Melius-Bentley House.”

Its name commemorates the two families who built it, and it is included in this register of America’s historic houses because, as the National Register nomination says, it is “an extremely rare, intact example of an early 18th century Hudson Valley frame residence,” to which was later added a Federal wing “significant for its physical integrity and distinctive detail.”

Students of architecture will see that it is indeed two houses. The older, a one-and-a half story Dutch house, homey and informal, is still sheathed with its original wide flush weatherboards, and the familiar "Dutch kick” of the roof is still evident. Inside, wide boards and massive beams remain as they were when Johannes Jacob Melius built the house, sometime between 1710 and 1715. The later addition, aloof, formal, and classic, is in that style we call Federal, and was built sometime between 1790 and 1800 by Henry Bentley, a man of substance and owner of the then thriving Mt. Ross mills. One doubts that either Melius or Bentley would have imagined that the house they built would one day be numbered among those houses which survive as part of America’s historic architectural heritage.

For Johan Jacob Melius, or Johannes Jacobse Millius, or Millis, as his name is variously spelled, a house was a necessity in the raw and lonely wilderness to which he had come in 1710, along with other Palatine settlers. Melius needed a house for his bride, Anna Maria, and daughter of Hans Jacob Dings, patriarch of a great family, who lived a few miles away, across the kill. And he needed a house in which to start a family and to farm the stony acres which bordered the kill and extended up the mountainside towards what would one day be called Mt. Ross.

And so Melius built a house on part of Lot 51 of the Little Nine Partners Patent, perhaps as a tenant of Samuel Broughton, the patentee, or of Broughton’s heirs or assigns who in later deeds are identified as James Alexander and Isaiah Ross.

One room square

The house Melius built was one room square, with a loft to store provisions and house extra children. He built it in the Northern European fashion out of a mortar made from mud and straw, packed in between thick hewn lathe, and sided it with wide weatherboards in front, and with wide headed clapboards on the sides. He extended a porch across the front, and pierced the house with a few small windows and with a low, wide Dutch door, marked on its top half by the cross, and on the bottom by an X, the cross, some say of witches. Inside, he supported the ceiling with huge beams, laid wide planks on the floor, and plastered smooth the walls. All of this remains. But a growing family demanded more space. A son, Johan Jacob, was born in 1722. Two daughters, Anna and Margaret arrived in 1735. More children followed, Andonius in 1746, and Simon in 1751, though it is possible that Simon was a grandson, son of Johan Jacob II, who was 29 in that year, and his wife, the former Catherine Killmer, who may have been the daughter of Simon Killmer, who lived a few miles away on the Roe Jan. To accommodate them, another room was added, with a loft, as was a cellar kitchen, with a huge fireplace for cooking.

Early inn

Legend has it that the Melius house was an inn, or at least a stopping place for travelers. This may be born out by the unusual architectural detail of a separate entrance to the new addition. From the covered porch, one can enter either into the original house or through another door into the wing, as if to allow family privacy in those days when privacy was rare.

Inn or not, Melius did entertain guests, for Charles Clinton, who was surveying land for the Manor of Livingston, records in his field book that on May 10, 1743, he “lodged at the house of Johan Jacob Melius who lives 36 rods from the southernmost bend of the Roeliff Jansen Kill in a northwesternly Direction.

The Meliuses lived in their house until about 1790, when the Melius name disappears from the tax roles. It was at that time that Melius’s son, Johan Jacob, was noted in a contemporary document as one of several who refused to sign a convention in support of the Continental Congress. Thus, the Meliuses may have been loyalists, and like many who remained loyal to the crown in those confusing times, they may have departed for western lands.

In 1802, Henry Bentley became owner of the Mt. Ross mills, which by now were a busy industrial complex, and he needed a house to befit his station as chief magnate of the valley. He then acquired the Melius house, as being the largest house in the neighborhood and close proximity to his business. Shortly after the acquisition he expanded it in the new Federal style, for his wife Catherine and his son Hiram.

Classic Federal wing

For them he built a classic Federal house with a side hall, elegant parlor, and best bedroom, and two smaller rooms. As the national Register describes it, “all interior woodwork survives including a notable paneled chimney breast in the first floor parlor. Built in cupboards and corner fireplaces in the rear rooms, are rare features in houses of similar scale in the region.”

When building the new wing, Bentley apparently remodeled the further wing of the Melius house, for in that room which Melius may have used as his inn, Bentley created a tap-room and installed a tavern barn, enclosed, presumably locked and filled with spirits.

By 1810, the census for that year shows there were eight people living in the house, one male under ten years of age, one between 10 and 16, one between 16 and 26, and one between 26 and 45. Of the women, two were under 26, and one between 26 and 45. History supplies us with some names. Two were, of course, Henry and Catherine. Of the children, two of the sons were Hiram and Milton, and one of the daughters was Antoinette.

Henry Bentley died in 1828. Hiram, and his wife, Hannah Swartwout Bentley inherited the house. In the meantime, Antoinette married Benjamin Wilbur who had come to the neighborhood, became a partner with Henry in the Mills and eventually full owner.

Upon Hiram and Hannah’s death in 1844, the Wilburs inherited the house and by one connection or another, it remained in that family until 1925.

In that year Charles Dionysius bought the house from Charles Carroll, who had inherited it from his wife, Emma Wilbur Carroll, the daughter of Benjamin and Antoinette. And so the house passed out of the Bentley family, which had held it for over a century, and from the Meliuses who had cherished it for a century before that.

According to a newspaper account of the period, Mrs. Carroll used to rent rooms to tourists up from New York who took the train to Mt. Ross. She charged $6 a week.

A succession of owners since then: Lewis, Bonisteel, Wilke, lived in the old house, until the present owners arrived in 1979, well over two and a half centuries since Johan Melius felled the first tree to build his house.

Extensive restoration

The present owners have undertaken extensive restoration and have chosen to restore it to its original appearance in 1800. Old houses survive, if allowed to, if the people who live in them love them. It seems clear that everyone who lived in this house loved it, and it is pleasant to contemplate that for nearly three centuries, the old house at Mt. Ross has seen the continuing works and days of the living, and has been graced by the shades of the friendly dead.

Editor’s Note

As we look at this fine old building we find ourselves firmly connected to the earliest days of the Mt. Ross area. As we let our eyes follow the remnants of stone fences slanting down to the creek, we can easily imagine the activities of the early settlers.

Other fairly long-standing structures also survive in the larger area now known as Mt. Ross. However, we are researching this relatively small area adjacent to the bridge over the Roe Jan because this hamlet history pertains primarily to the early mill site and its immediate neighbors. We do recognize and appreciate that there are more homes and structures in the general area and that they, too, are important in the history of the Mt. Ross community.

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