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Sarah Brooks House
Bellevue State Park

History

The Cartmell family bought land around 1725, and the property was willed to Sarah Brooks in 1759.  The original log house was built in approximately 1763, and Sarah Brooks lived there until her death in 1783.  The property was willed to her nephew, George Cartmell, who doubled the size of the house sometime around 1800 by constructing the stone addition on the north end. He is still noted as the owner of the property on the Rea and Price map of 1849, which also shows that, by that time, he had added another house to the north of the Sarah Brooks House and two outbuildings between them. By 1868, the house was owned by William McCully, the two outbuildings were gone, and the house to the north was owned by William Bright.

In the 1870s, Charles B. Lore, a Wilmington businessperson and later Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, bought the property.  He and his family lived on the site of the present Cauffiel estate during the twentieth century.  It was most likely during their ownership of the property that the house received its more recent upgrades, such as the flooring, windows, and systems.