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Friday, March 25, 2016

A Boat in a Race

In this post we'll be examining the photograph seen here, which comes to us from the collection owned by the Boulden family. When I first saw this picture, I thought, "OK, nice, it's three people standing in a rowboat." My biggest reaction was to think how brave they were to be standing on a rickety little boat in such nice clothes. However, the more I looked at it, the more it caught my interest.

I decided that I needed to figure out where the picture was taken, if I could. As it turns out, I'm sure that I do know where they are, and you'd never know it today. I can't say the location makes this photograph unique, but I'd be willing to wager that there aren't too many others like it.

To start with, given the context I was sure the shot had to be from the Stanton area. One of the males is almost certainly Harry "Dutch" Boulden, and regardless of which one it would place the date somewhere in the period of 1910-1915. Besides the people and the boat, the most interesting and potentially useful item in the shot is the house in the background. This, it turns out, was really all we needed. With the context of the area and the distinctive three chimneys visible, the backdrop is definitely the Hale-Byrnes House. Here are pictures for comparison, one of the front and one from the same angle as the old photograph.

The historic Hale-Byrnes House

And from the same angle as the historic photo
The next step is to determine what waterway the subjects are on, and where exactly they are standing. Since the Hale-Byrnes House is located on the banks of White Clay Creek, a natural guess would be that they are on the White Clay. However, there are two problems with that. First, White Clay is fairly wide as it goes by the house, much wider than the waterway in the photo appears to be. Secondly, we can use the angle of the house to judge the direction in which the picture is taken. The picture had to have been taken somewhere along this line, and no further, judging from the distance and the absence of railroad tracks.

Red line indicating the direction of the photograph
The problem seems evident -- they were nowhere near the creek, and no waterway exists anywhere along the line. That may be true now, but it was not a century ago. Our line of sight here intersects, right about at the treeline, the mill race that ran southeast across the bend in the White Clay. There were several textile mills located here along the creek, and the race that supplied their power ran approximately along the highlighted route shown in the pictures below. A detailed look at these mills will have to wait for another day, but later in the 19th Century they were part of the Kiamensi Woolen Company, along with the mill on Red Clay Creek south of Marshallton.

A map from 1881 (Hale-Byrnes House indicated by arrow)

Aerial photo from 1937

Current look
In the pictures above, the red circle indicates about where the people and boat are in the old photograph. As you can see, the treeline today runs right about where the mill race was previously. I don't know when it was filled in, but it's clearly visible in the 1937 photo. Nor do I know at this point when the mills stopped operating or when the race was discontinued from use. It seems fairly wide in the picture, but if it was supplying several mills, a larger size would make sense. It seems that even after it stopped powering production, the mill race provided entertainment for the local residents. I don't know if this is the only photograph out there of people in a boat on a mill race, but I can't imagine that there are too many others like it.

15 comments:

  1. Great photo Scott, Thanks for posting. If I am not mistaking the dam for that race was removed from the White Clay in the last few years?....Thanks

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  2. At the rate that area floods, you wouldn't think they removed it..

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  3. Yes, Denis, it was the dam for this race. It was removed in December 2014. http://mchhistory.blogspot.com/2015/01/byrnes-mill-dam-removal.html

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  4. Great story, I think this mill race and old Kiamensi mill race interesting stuff. Kiamensi mill race still very visible today, but this one appears long gone. I used to fish at place we called little falls off old Ogletown road, we had to quickly cross Amtrak line to get there. I think they recently removed this waterfall, but looking at map it looks as though those falls were built at the head of this mill race, never knew that all the years fished there. Wonder if any old pictures survive of the Kiamensi mill race, which ran quite a long way.

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    1. Yes, it sounds like your waterfall was the old Byrnes Mill dam. It was removed in December 2014. I'm sure there are lots of people who have come into contact with old sites without knowing exactly what they were.

      You're right about the Kiamensi race, if you mean the one that started near Kiamensi and ran down to Stanton. I've walked along it in the woods behind Powell Ford Park. I can't say I've ever seen any old photos that show any part of it, but I don't think that's odd. Why would you take a picture (when it wasn't easy to do so) of something so mundane and boring as a mill race? That's why I think this picture is so cool.

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  5. The mill race continued further back towards ogletown rd. where Stanton ogletown rd turned to intersect with old churchmans rd. The falls were right across from the bend in Stanton ogletown rd. There was a stone bridge that crossed the mill race 50 yards east of the falls and by the looks of Google maps it's still there, I too used to fish and bow hunt for deer near the falls, it was a very intriging place to visit, it gave me an eary feeling like someone was right with me when I crossed the old stone bridge over the millrace. Very special place !! I am referring to the current look picture with the yellow line that stops quite a bit short from where the millrace originated north of the damn, great place to hang out as a kid !!! There is a golf cart path that comes down almost to the railroad where the road bed goes thru the woods to the bridge and then on to the falls. I am certain its still there because the woods is undisturbed in that area. I used to hunt and fish all over Stanton and Christiana and have seen a lot of old ruins around the area of forgotten farms !! This site is very informative, thank you for letting me share some of my experience of this history rich forgotten land scape !!!

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    1. Thanks for the info and the memories. It's cool to think that you can still go down there and find traces of something so old.

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    2. I recently returned to the Damn and it is only a part of what it once was, the stone bridge over the mill race is still intact and doing well, it was sad to see the damn in its current condition but I know it’s better for the ecosystem. I had to go back to look at it after talking about it on here.

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    3. I think that's the one that was dismantled a few years back, for environmental reasons.http://mchhistory.blogspot.com/2015/01/byrnes-mill-dam-removal.html

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  6. Here are links to the two sites I've found that have the historic aerial pictures. The first doesn't have as many years, but the images are clean. The second has more years to choose from, but they have watermark/copyright marks on them. Usually you can see pretty well through it, though.
    http://maps.demac.udel.edu/geoexplorer/composer/
    https://www.historicaerials.com/

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    1. scott do you have any idea as to when you might do a post on these mills from the brynes mill dam race

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    2. Frank, good question I think the only mills that ran off of this race were the original Byrnes mill which burned down around 1840, and its replacement that became the Independence Mill later owned by the Kiamensi Woolen Company. I did a little research on it a couple years ago for a talk, but never wrote anything up. Maybe I'll have to do that now. I knew it was later the Delaware Bag Company and burned down sometime in the late 80's or early 90's, but I actually found an article about it March 29, 1990. I also came across a new name for me -- the Stanton Worsted Company. Apparently that's what it was between Kiamensi and DE Bag. Stay tuned....

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  7. thanks scott when you do get around to it i was also looking for location on the mills as to how close to the house and creek

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    1. It was right where the front parking lot is for the medical building next door. I assume the original 18th Century mill was probably on the south end, closer to the house. The rebuilt mill probably was more or less there, and then later was expanded on the north end. The best way to see where it was is the historic aerials. It's there through the '82 photo. If you haven't used this site, it's a lot of fun to toggle between old and new -- https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer

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