The first people known to have lived in the vicinity of the hamlet of Hurley were Esopus Indians, a northern branch of the Delaware.

Dissatisfied with their treatment by the Dutch, the Delaware attacked the villages of Hurley and Kingston in June 1663 in what is called the Second Esopus War.

During the American Revolutionary War, British led by Generals John Burgoyne and Henry Clinton attempted to split the colonies in two by taking control of the Hudson River Valley.

On October 16, 1777, a British force under the command of General John Vaughan burned the village of Kingston, which was at that time New York's capital.

With the burning of Kingston, the old stone Roosa - Van Deusen House in neighboring Hurley served for a brief time as the state capital.

The grain crop was saved from destruction in part by a four-hour artillery barrage made by the militia of the first Ulster regimen under Colonel Johannes Snyder and Major Adrian Wynkoop, which had delayed the British advance.

He was a loyalist junior officer who traveled in civilian clothes on horseback carrying messages between various units of the British Army.

Lieutenant Taylor was tried in New Windsor by a Courts Martial composed largely of Connecticut officers and was condemned to be hanged "at such time and place as the General shall direct.

[4] On the morning of October 18, Lt. Taylor was moved by horse and wagon to the sweet apple tree on the side of Schoolhouse Lane, where he was hanged.

After leaving Kingston, the British fleet sailed upriver to Saugerties where a raiding party crossed the river and burned the Livingston Estates at Clermont and Belvedere.

Once the British threat had passed, General Clinton left Hurley and moved his troops south to their original base at Little Britain.

Once a year, on the second Saturday of July, the Hurley Reformed Church organizes Stone House Day.