Governor Henry Bull House, in

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, ...

was purported to be the oldest house in Rhode Island, with parts of the house dating to 1639. It was destroyed by fire in December 1912. The Henry Bull house was located on the eastern side of Spring Street in Newport near modern-day Bull Street and Broadway. According to turn-of-the-twentieth-century research by

Norman Isham Norman Morrison Isham (1864–1943) was a prominent architectural historian, author, and professor at Brown University and RISD. He was an ardent preservationist and a pioneer in the study of early American architecture. Biography Norman M ...

, the back part of the stone house was built around 1639 by Henry Bull, a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

leader and one of the original settlers of Portsmouth and Newport. Bull served as a colonial militia officer and jail keeper. The original Newport jail may have been part of the house. Henry Bull died at the house in 1694 and was the last survivor of the original founders of Rhode Island. Large modifications were made to the house in later decades. Henry's son, Jireh Bull, constructed a large fortified house in

South Kingstown, Rhode Island South Kingstown is a town in, and the county seat of, Washington County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 31,931 at the 2020 census. South Kingstown is the second largest town in Rhode Island by total geographic area, behind New ...

which was demolished during

King Philip's War King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between indigenous inhabitants of New England and New England coloni ...

. A fire burned and destroyed the Henry Bull House on December 29, 1912.

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