(Located on Upper Market Street and is now occupied by the Cupps-Masters Post of the American Legion.)
One of the most distinctive old-time houses in Bridgewater was
the Samuel Rutherford Dunlap home, now owned and occupied by the
Cupps-Masters Post of the American Legion. Its southern-style
architecture and spacious grounds made it one of the show places
of the town. The house itself was built and originally occupied
by an Arbucle family.
Samuel Rutherford Dunlap was a descendant of the pioneer Rutherford family of Paxtang, Pennsylvania, a town near Harrisburg. His first settlement in Beaver County was at Darlington, Pennsylvania where he conducted a mercantile establishment. lie was living there at least as early as 1836. His wife was Nancy Hemphill, daughter of a pioneer resident of Beaver, Joseph Hemphill, who settled in Beaver in 1796, the year the town was established. In that year, he operated an Inn which stood about on the site of the Beaver Theater, Third and Wayne Streets. By profession, he was a surveyor and very many of the early surveys in and around Beaver were made by him.
About 1850 the Dunlaps moved to Bridgewater. One of their earliest business enterprise& was the Dunlap Hotel, which stood on the corner of Bridge Street and Riverside Drive. It was a two-story structure with a double-tiered porch and overlooked the Beaver River. The main Dunlap business at Bridgewater was an extensive brewery that stood on ground now occupied by the present Bridgewater School House. The "Old Malt House", as it was later familiarly known, was a large brick and stone building, surrounded by an extensive acreage of Dunlap land.
Samuel Dunlap died in 1890. His daughter, Anna, who passed on in 1924 was the last survivor of the Dunlaps to occupy the home.