The Bellew-Cain Lot and the Yarnall Survey Map

The 1850 Yarnall Survey Map

This story all started when Marshallton-area historian Denis Hehman posted an image of an old survey map that he has in his collection. To be honest, he'd shown it to me before, but I never really looked at it very closely or did any research on it before. That was a regrettable error, because when I saw it this time, this little hand-drawn map kicked off a very fun and surprisingly in-depth investigation. And to top it all off, thanks to the wonders of social media it even connected to several descendants of players in the story, something that would never have happened with just an email between friends.

Everything starts with the map. It's very simple, but tricky to understand without any context, of which it gives very little. As its title says, it's a "Draught of Jacob Yarnall's Lots, Surveyed Oct 19, 1850 by I. Lobb." Once I took a good look at it, I knew about where Yarnall's lot was, but I was curious to see if I could determine exactly where it was/is. The biggest clues as to its whereabouts are the roads and watercourses shown. Red Clay Creek is at the bottom, with Ham Run coming down the middle of the map and the west edge of the lot. The road heading off to the right labeled as New Port Road is what we know as Duncan Road today, while the Stanton Road at the bottom is our Greenbank Road. Since Ham Rum does not extend very far, this places our lot somewhere on the left hand side of Duncan Road, if you're driving up the hill from Marshallton to Kirkwood Highway.

The next thing I did was to consult the New Castle County Parcel Search website to see if I could find any properties that might still look like this today. The fascinating thing I've found over the years doing this is that you can often find traces of property lines hundreds of years old still evident on the map today. And when I looked at the current parcels, I couldn't help but notice the highlighted one below, about halfway up Duncan Road between Greenbank and Kirkwood Highway. When I measured the area of the now three lots, they totaled just over 2½ acres -- the same as Jacob Yarnall's lot from 1850. A quick glance at the old maps showed the same name there in 1868, 1881, and 1893, but not Jacob Yarnall's. These were enough clues, however, to get me started in telling the complete history of this lot.

Current location of Jacob Yarnall's 1850 surveyed lot. Kirkwood Hwy is at the top,
Old Capitol Trail at the bottom, Duncan and Greenbank Roads in the middle

Not surprisingly, this 2½ acre lot started out as part of a much larger one. In fact, it goes back to a 294 acre tract surveyed for Thomas Gillet in the 1680's. The details that far back don't concern us now, but if you'd like a complete early history of the land, read Walt Chiquoine's post about the Origins of the Greenbank and Marshallton Mills, and the second post specifically about the Hersey Mill. The important point for our purposes now is that the lot later surveyed for Jacob Yarnall was part of the property associated with the original Hersey Mill and owned by the Hersey family.

In 1819, due to the repayment of outstanding debts, New Castle County Sheriff John Moody sold the Hersey's 260 acres to one Jesse Trump, Jr. (no relation). Two years later, Trump sold 90 acres of that land to Dr. John Quinby. Although Quinby made several purchases in the area, I believe this is the one that contains our lot, as it's the only deed that specifically mentions the Old Newport Road and Ham Run. When Dr. Quinby died in 1838, his property, which was comprised of three tracts totalling 156 acres, was sold at auction and purchased by Elizabeth Hill.

I wish I knew more about this Elizabeth Hill, but for now I'm unable to find anything more than she lived in Mill Creek Hundred, and was probably the Elizabeth Hill (1787-1853) buried at the Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery. I believe she's listed on the 1849 Rea & Price map in the house that was located in what's now Sherwood Park (the county park on Milltown Road). That would have been toward the northern end of one of the Quinby tracts.

In October 1845, Hill sold the 90 acre tract to James Cranston and Abner Hollingsworth. Cranston and Hollingsworth sold six months later (at a profit of $119.40) to Benjamin W. Duncan, owner of the Hersey-Duncan House which still stands on the road named for him, just north of Kirkwood Highway. The 90 acres would have been contiguous with the land Duncan himself bought in 1839, and which was also originally part of the Hersey/Trump property.

And now, finally, after this grand tour through southeastern MCH land transfers, we make our way back to where we started -- Jacob Yarnall's 1850 survey. Jacob Yarnall was a mason, and member of the Yarnall family that owned property in the Brandywine Springs area. He was the son of Ephraim Yarnall, Jr., and nephew of the Holton Yarnall who operated the Conestoga Wheel Tavern, located where Brandywine Springs Park is now. With Jacob being a craftsman and not a farmer, a small, 2½ acre lot makes sense for him, and that's what he bought from Benjamin Duncan on April 4, 1851, for $140.25. So, obviously, the document in Denis Hehman's possession was made for Yarnall to map out the small portion of Duncan's land he was buying.

The 1851 sale from Benjamin Duncan to Jacob Yarnall

One thing one notices after reading a few of these old deeds is that they are specifically for the land -- any structures like houses that might be on it are seldom mentioned, except in passing with stock legal phrases. Interestingly, however, the 1851 transfer to Jacob Yarnall does make mention of a messuage, or house. That may mean that there was a house on this part of the property at that point, although another clue makes me doubt it. In 1857, Yarnall sold the same 2½ acre lot (with messuage) to Calvin Highfield for $1000. That's a big increase in six years. Possible explanations are that: 1) There was actually no house there in 1851 and Yarnall built one before '57, 2) There was an old house there in '51 and Yarnall replaced it with a larger one, or 3) Perhaps Yarnall paid for the construction of a house himself shortly before the sale. I should note that the survey map does not make note of any house.

As Highfield and family are shown in Marshallton in the 1860 Census, it does appear that they lived on the property. In 1862 he purchased the Robinson-Highfield House at Loveville, and moved there. The Highfields have shown up in several other posts, too. Calvin's brother Morris married into the Derickson family of Kiamensi, owned land nearby in Marshallton, and eventually moved onto Duncan (former Hersey/Trump) land on the south side of Milltown Road. Calvin's son William married Sally Pierson and bought the house with the Montgomery Family Cemetery.

In 1864, after moving to Loveville, Highfield sold his Marshallton home to George Pickering. Pickering was a house carpenter who grew up near Brandywine Springs. Since Calvin Highfield was a plasterer, I have to think they knew each other professionally, and perhaps even worked together sometimes. Pickering only stayed for two years, though, as he sold the lot in 1866 to William Bellew. Like his predecessors in the hillside lot, Bellew was not a farmer. He's listed in both the 1860 and 1870 Censuses as a butcher. He didn't move far, as in 1860 he's listed directly before William G. Philips, owner of the Greenbank Mill.

William and wife Elizabeth had three daughters -- Mary, Margaret, and Sarah. A year after moving to their new Marshallton home, Mary and Margaret had a double wedding, on July 3 in Chester. Mary and husband Franklin Jones lived next door to Mom and Dad in 1870, along with sister Margaret. Sadly, as seen below, Margaret's first marriage didn't turn out so well, but she did remarry in 1873. Youngest sister Sarah married Thomas Cox in 1874.

Unfortunately, William Bellew was not around to see these last two weddings, as he had passed away in 1872. Elizabeth remained in the house, listed with daughter Sarah and her family in 1880. After Elizabeth Bellew died in 1898, Sarah and Thomas Cox stayed with the house, and in 1901 officially bought out her sisters' share of the property. They stayed there until 1905, when they sold the lot and house to Edward W. Clouser.

Clouser was born just north of Harrisburg, but moved with his family to Marshallton some time before his tenth birthday. His father, William Clouser, was listed as a miller in the 1880 Census. It's possible that he could have run the old Hersey grist mill, which was still operating next to the Marshallton Iron Works. Edward himself (like many of us now) had several jobs over the years. He worked in the iron mill, as a teamster (probably hauling stuff for the mill), and later as a shopkeeper and postmaster. The last two he did after moving from Marshallton to Elsmere in 1919, keeping a shop on (what's now) Kirkwood Highway between Bracken and Clifton Avenues, where Jack's Country Maid Deli, Nature's Way, and Dollar General are now.

We've covered quite a few different owners of these 2½ acres so far, but I can assure you that the rate slows way down at this point. Because on July 7, 1919, Edward Clouser sold the lot and house to Eugene and Mary Cain. (Incidentally, every deed since the 1851 sale to Yarnall had the exact same metes and bounds basically word for word, down to the 1919 deed including mention of the cherry tree seen at the bottom of the map. I'm guessing the tree was long gone by then.)

Cain was a woodworker, who on various censuses was listed as a picture framer, cabinet maker, and laborer in a boat yard (where he could have been doing woodwork as well). Eugene, Mary, their sons Eugene, William, and Joseph, and Eugene's father Ludwig moved in in 1919. A century later, the family is still there. As of the writing of this post, the Cain family is just a few months away from celebrating a century of ownership of Jacob Yarnall's lot. In this day and age, I think that's remarkable.

I want to thank Denis Hehman again for sharing the map with us, it certainly spurred more information than I had originally expected to find. And in one of the real joys of the social digital age, when Denis shared it on a Facebook page we had comments from descendants of the Yarnalls, Clousers, and Cains. Truly, every area of Mill Creek Hundred has a story.