Sloat House - History

History

There may have been a house on the site in the late 1730s, when Isaac Van Deursen became the first European settler in the upper Ramapo River valley. The current wing may actually have been this house or part of it, since it is very primitive.

Traditionally, histories of the area have dated the house's original wing to 1755, when Stephen Sloat received the land as a wedding gift from his father-in-law. An early frame front was probably on the front of the house through the Revolution, which had an impact on both the house and the Sloat family.

In 1774, a local meeting at the house, the General Meeting of Committees of Orange County, chose two delegates, Henry Wisner and John Haring, to the Provincial Convention of the First Continental Congress. Five years later, in 1779, George Washington spent at least one night at the house, according to one historian.

Tragedy struck the Sloats in 1781 when their son John, a captain in the local militia, was accidentally shot and killed in the doorway by one of the sentries his father had hired. The marks left in the doorway by the shots remain. The infant son Sloat left behind grew up to be John D. Sloat, a celebrated U.S. Navy commodore and the first governor of California.

Isaac Sloat, John's brother, later built the front of the house around 1813-14. He ran it as a public house, also hosting annual meetings of town supervisors and judges from Orange and Rockland counties through 1821. His son Stephen ran the house as an inn along the Orange Turnpike, renowned for its food but serving no alcohol. At this point the large barn was also built. Stephen's brother Jacob developed a mill along the creek and later built his own house in the village.

In 1905 the Sloat descendants sold the house to Benjamin Moffatt Jr., an English immigrant who later became president of the nearby Sterling iron works. It remained in the Moffatt family throughout the 20th century and is still a private residence.