More of the Village of Greenbank

The William Elliot House

In the last post we were introduced to the idea that Greenbank (the area around Greenbank Road, 
Newport Gap Pike, and the Wilmington & Western tracks) was primed to grow into a full-fledged village in the 1870's. With the newly-constructed railroad, the turnpike, the Philips (Greenbank) Mill, and nearby Marshallton, the Village of Greenbank was beginning to form. We also met Andrew Jackson Williams - Civil War vet, train station agent, shopkeeper, ladder manufacturer, and all-around busy guy in Greenbank.

We also learned that he may well have been responsible for building not only his own home, but as many as a half dozen houses along Newport Gap Pike, between present-day Kirkwood Highway and Duncan Road. There were two houses on the west side of the turnpike, between the railroad tracks and Kirkwood Highway (which of course wasn't there until about 1940), where a parking lot is now. Williams' house, as detailed in the last post, was directly west of the railroad tracks.

All of this land south of Newport Gap Pike and east of the creek was owned by James Cranston, part of a 17 acre tract acquired in 1865. This was about the time he was moving from his old house in Marshallton (the Springer-Cranston House) to his new one on today's Old Capitol Trail. Whether or not he originally acquired the land with the intent of leasing and/or selling it, by the mid-1870's that's exactly what he was doing. Some of it back along Red Clay Creek was leased for use as Green Bank Park (presumably he got paid for this). Along the road, Cranston sold off lots for housing. 

Andrew Jackson Williams and the Beginnings of the Village of Greenbank

The Andrew Jackson Williams House (1988)

A little while back I was invited to participate in the Greenbank Mill's Folklore Fridays program, and I decided to do a short talk about the short-lived Green Bank Park. As I went back and refreshed myself on it, I became much more appreciative of the history of the Greenbank area of the late 19th Century. There was a lot more going on there than I had known, as well as some interesting characters. The most frequent name that kept coming up was Andrew Jackson Williams, but as I learned more about him I realized that his story and the story of the Village of Greenbank were inextricably linked.

Due to circumstance, I was not able to share these stories that night at Greenbank, but I present them here, now, in two parts. In this post I'll introduce the Village of Greenbank and take a closer look at probably its busiest citizen. In the second post we'll delve more into some of the other residents and residences, and look at the end of the idea of this area as a distinct community.

When we think about “Greenbank” today, we tend to maybe think of Greenbank Mill, the Wilmington & Western station, Greenbank Road, or maybe Greenbank Park. We think of it more as an area with a few things with Greenbank in the name, not really as a Place. But for about 20 or 30 years starting in the early 1870’s, it truly was a Place. There really was a legitimate village growing up there. But why there, and why then? Most of us probably don’t think of that stretch of Newport Gap Pike as much more than just the dip between Kirkwood Highway and Milltown Road.

There are a few good reasons why it made perfect sense for a village to spring up there, and a really good reason why it started when it did. That reason was the railroad. They were the superhighways of the 19^th Century, so when the Wilmington & Western began running in October 1872 and put a station there, it made sense that more might spring up around it. It had not only the railroad, but also a major turnpike, the mill, and a large operation and population not far, in Marshallton. The area seemed primed to explode into a full-fledged village.

The Clarnen-Armor House

The Clarnen-Armor House

One of the things that initially helped to spark my interest in local history was when I discovered how
many old houses were sitting in the middle of mid-to-late 20th Century developments. It's fascinating to me to drive down a neighborhood street and see split level, ranch, split level, ranch, HOLY CRAP 18TH CENTURY STONE FARMHOUSE! And most of the time it's very easy to tell the old houses from the new. Once in a while though, there's a historic house that for some reason seems only slightly out of place amongst its newer neighbors, and I'd bet that most people who pass it by don't realize the history behind it.

One home like this is in the development of Highland West, on the northwest side of McKennans Church Road and Mill Creek Road, across from Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church (and below McKean High School, for all you former Highlanders). With a brick façade on the front covering its frame construction, the house is different from the surrounding 1960's homes, but not too different. Except for the fact that it sits further back from the street, you might not even notice it. But in reality, this home was here, all by itself, a century before its neighbors.

The house's story begins more than 30 years before its construction with a young couple -- one a local native and the other a recent arrival. The new arrival was James Clarnen, and I only know a little about his early life. He was born in Pennsylvania, and it was in a Pennsylvania regiment that he served briefly in the War of 1812. His father presumably had died, because his mother Jemima remarried to William Whaley, who took James on as his son. I can't find exactly when Whaley bought his property, but I know where it was and what he did on it.

The Fredericks of Mt. Cuba and Beyond

Location of Peter Frederick's Mt. Cuba property

It's not unusual for me to be contacted by someone, asking if I have more information about their historic home (and I'm deeply grateful to everyone who's done that). What's less common is for someone to ask about an historic home that used to be on their property, but that's just what happen not long ago in regards to a property near Mt. Cuba. The owners recently moved into a beautiful mid-20th Century home in one of the most scenic sections of the Red Clay Valley. They have a wonderful property with something unusual toward the back -- the remains of a much older house.

The property in question is located in the western edge of Christiana Hundred, in the roughly triangular area between Mt. Cuba, Pyles Ford, and Creek Roads. They knew that the house had belonged to the Frederick family, and that they had been butchers. Turns out that was true. That's all, thanks for reading folks, see you next time!

Ok, actually there was more to the story than that, as I'm sure you were hoping(?) there was. It began with a pair of German immigrants, Georg Peter Friederich and his wife, Catherine. They had come from Hesse-Darmstadt in western Germany in 1857, and were married in Philadelphia the same year. They soon made their way down to Delaware, where their first child, daughter Emma, was born in 1858. The 1860 Census has Peter (as he went by) working as a farm laborer, possibly for Samuel Armstrong on the farm that's now the Delaware Nature Society's Coverdale Farm. The Frederick family (the name was Americanized) is listed directly after the Armstrongs in 1860.

Seven more children would follow for Peter and Catherine over the next two decades or so, but their next big move came in 1862, with the purchase of some nearby land from farmer Otley Vernon. This first purchase was for about 3 acres, nestled along Pyles Ford and Mt. Cuba/Creek Roads, and includes the property that the current owners have. It seems that this was just land carved out of Vernon's larger tract, so the Frederick's house was probably built just after the 1862 sale. Ten years later, in 1872, Frederick purchased another 11 acres from Vernon. This land was across on the north side of  Pyles Ford Road.

The Story of the Newark China Clay Company...Live!

I've already mentioned this on the Facebook page, but I wanted to post it here as well. If you're looking for
something to do this weekend, on Sunday, September 26, 2021 at 1:00 PM I'll be doing my first in-person talk in what seems like forever. The topic of the presentation is the Newark China Clay Company, which mined and processed kaolin clay from 1912 until 1942, on what's now the northeastern edge of White Clay Creek State Park (near the corner of Corner Ketch Road and Paper Mill Road). I did write a post a little while back about Newark China Clay, but I've come up with some new information since then, plus...it's live!

The talk will take place at the Chambers House Nature Center at White Clay Creek State Park (on Creek Road just off of Hopkins Bridge Road). The presentation will begin at 1:00 PM, and due to Covid protocols the current plan is for it to take place outside, on the front porch of the house. Looks like it's going to be a beautiful day (weather, please don't make me have to come back and edit out this part), so come out and join us. Space is limited, so you must call the park at 302-368-6900 to register. Hope to see you there!!!

Behemoth in White Clay Creek: Chambers Rock and Its Complex Legacy

Sign at the corner of Chambers Rock
 Road and New London Road, 1972 

I'm thrilled and proud to be able to share with you another Guest Post by John Whiteclay Chambers II, retired professor and former chair of the History Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. John, a descendant of the Chambers Family of the western Mill Creek/northern White Clay Creek Hundred area, shared with us recently a post on Restoring the Chambers Family Farm in the 20th Century. In this latest article he tells us about the origins of the names "Chambers Rock" and "Chambers' Rocks", how they are actually referring to different things, and how one of the names was used for a wonderful piece of 19th Century history that I had been completely unaware of. I hope you enjoy it, and tremendous thanks go to John for writing and sharing this with us! And note, the extensive and extremely informative footnotes are located at the end of the post.

Behemoth in White Clay Creek:

 Chambers Rock and Its Complex Legacy

By John Whiteclay Chambers II

Excerpt from John Whiteclay Chambers II, “The Chambers Family of Hilltop,” Copyright © 2021.   Do not replicate without written permission from the author. 

* John Whiteclay Chambers II retired from Rutgers University in 2017 as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and a former Chair of the History Department. He welcomes comments on the subject of this article. <john.chambers@rutgers.edu.>

“People say where is Chambers Rock?” says Kathleen Sullivan, naturalist at White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. “They disagree over whether there is one rock, or if that is the name of the farm because there were so many rocks around it.”¹  She was referring to a former farm owned for generations by the Chambers family, a small part of which is now a development called “Chambers Rock Farm.”² 

People also know of the rock from “Chambers Rock Road,” a country road that runs through the old farm located on the state line between Delaware and Pennsylvania. Is there a “Chambers Rock”? There is, but to many people, its name and the name’s complex and varied history remain a mystery. 

The derivation of the name seems forgotten—except by some of those who lived nearby. “It was common knowledge among people who lived on Chambers Rock Road that there was a Rock and there had been a picnic ground years ago,” said Anne Murray, who lived on “Pennview” farm on that road from 1957 to 2000. Growing up nearby in the 1950s and 1960s in a house on Thompson Station Road that is now the Delaware Park’s headquarters, Joe Allmond also recalled it. “I remember the name,” he said, “and I remember hearing, ‘Oh, it’s called Chambers Rock Farm because of the Rock.’”³ 

The Marshalls and National Vulcanized Fibre

National Fibre & Insulation Mills, c.1912

I'll begin this post with a bit of a confession -- While we all know that there have been lots of mills and factories that have operated in MCH over the past few hundred years, there are only a few that stayed around long enough that there are people in the workforce today who were employed by them (Haveg/Ametek in Marshallton and Curtis Paper, for examples). One of the big sites, though, had had me so confused and intimidated that I avoided digging into it for the first decade of doing this blog (yes, I've been around that long). That site is the National Vulcanized Fibre Company in Yorklyn, and my hope is that if you're as confused by it now as I was, by the end of this post you'll have a pretty good idea of what was there, where it was, who built it, and what they did there.

The story really starts in England in 1856 with inventor Thomas Taylor and the creation of a new material – vulcanized fibre. Originally know as "indurated paper" and considered to be one of the first plastics, it had the misfortune of coming about at the same time as another material, celluloid. Celluloid was seen as the more useful of the two, and Taylor's creation was largely ignored in his native England. Eventually he made his way to the United States, and in 1871 patented his invention here. With its strength, flexibility, and thinness, vulcanized fibre soon caught on. And with its machinability, resistance to solvents and oils, and ability to be made in colors, many uses were soon fund for the material.

Through the 1870's and 1880's Wilmington became a hub for the manufacture of vulcanized fibre, and it's with this that we get our first connection to the Marshall family. If you'd like a full refresher (or lesson) on the Marshalls, I strongly suggest checking out Robert Wilhelm's two earlier posts about them. (To be found here and here.) And incidentally, much of the information for this post came from his excellently-researched Marshall Timeline, found on the Friends of Auburn Heights website. For our purposes, know that in 1856 Robert Marshall's youngest son, Thomas S. Marshall, was allowed to convert the family's grist mill at Marshall's Bridge (on the Red Clay just north of Yorklyn) into a paper mill.

Oversee Farm and Shangri-La

I'm proud to present another guest post, this time from Robert Wilhelm. It's about two properties -- Oversee Farm, (mostly) in Christiana Hundred and now part of Auburn Valley State Park, and Shangri-La in New Garden Township, Chester County. It's a fascinating look at a property that will hopefully become more well-known, and I thank Bob for his work.

Oversee Farm property in 2020 with trails indicated
Note the meadows in 1937 (below) now wooded

--Written by Robert E. Wilhelm, Jr.

Israel Way Marshall and his brother Ellwood would never have guessed their rag papermaking business expansion in 1890 would eventually create the world’s largest vulcanized fibre manufacturer producing more than 75% of the world’s fibre during much of the 20th century. They might have thought it improbable that in the 21st century, the then 19th century burned-out Auburn Factory, and hundreds of acres of property surrounding the soon-to-become paper mill, would be donated by Israel’s great-grandchildren forming the core of a 600+ acre Delaware state park.

Throughout much of the 18th and 19th centuries, what would eventually become the 121.8-acre Oversee Farm property was owned by generations of the Chandler, Green, and Sharpless families. The earliest tax and planning maps of the area, dated 1849, show Samuel M. Green as owner. Handed down through generations, the Ellwood Green property would eventually be purchased by Henry Doud while the nearby Sharpless farm transferred to the Kane family. These properties would further be subdivided into smaller parcels to be owned by the Cloud, Cross, Davis, Mullin, Murray, and Wilkinson families among others. In 1927 Urey W. Conway began purchasing those smaller land parcels belonging to Chandler, Doud, and other families in the acreage bounded by Ashland-Clinton School, Center Mill, Snuff Mill, and Creek roads. By 1939 Conway had purchased fourteen land parcels totaling approximately 175-acres. Four additional parcels were added over the ensuing years bringing Conway’s total ownership to more than 200 acres.

When Urey W. Conway passed away on July 1, 1951 (born 1890), his last will and testament decreed his collection of contiguous Yorklyn properties go to his cousin, Adele Conway Mills of Tulsa, Oklahoma with Wilmington Trust Company serving as executor. Eleanor Annette Marshall (January 8, 1924 – August 25, 1999) was well acquainted with Urey’s property. Urey’s property was located on the opposite bank of the Red Clay Creek which was a common border with J. Warren Marshall’s (1881-1953) Woodcrest property; her father’s home where she grew up. Preferring the name Bonnie, Marshall bought the 206.48-acre property at auction for $80,000 on May 29, 1952 with financial assistance from her mother, Bertha T. Lamborn Marshall (1883-1962). Bonnie’s intent was to see the untouched stretches of forest, freshwater marshes, open fields, a free-flowing Red Clay tributary, and scenic views of Red Clay Creek preserved for future generations’ enjoyment. Bonnie moved into the former Greene family stone farmhouse that Conway once occupied. Bonnie promptly named her large property ‘Oversee Farm’.

The Greenwalt Quarry

Notable sites in the Greenwalt area

In the 19th Century, most of the US population lived in rural areas, and most of them were engaged in farming. However, it was always a difficult life and farming alone rarely made anyone comfortably wealthy. For that reason, farmers were always looking for other ways to supplement their income. It might have been doing handyman-type work, carpentry, helping out on neighboring farms, or pretty much anything that someone would pay them for. They also might look around and try to utilize whatever resources they had available to them. This is a both a story about such a situation, and about how it took a few strokes of luck to uncover it.

In the course of my research over the past decade, I've come to appreciate how fluid it is and how often one investigation flows naturally into the next. In no small part, this is because in an area like MCH the lives of the residents are so interconnected that it's almost impossible (and in my mind, undesirable) to separate them and try to fully understand anything cordoned off and in a vacuum. The chain of events that lead to this particular story began a few posts ago, with the Italian community at Roseville. In trying to understand that tale better I ended up with the story of the first trip along the B&O line, and how they stopped to admire the new bridge over White Clay Creek and its stonework.

This in turn led Newark-based historical researcher Jim Jones to take a trip to the bridge himself, just to see what the area was like today. While there, his keen eye detected what appeared to him to be an old quarry, just a couple hundred feet southwest of the bridge. There was a sheer rockface wall that looked very much like it had been quarried. The questions then became...Who created this, when, and for what reason? With the close proximity of the railroad, my first thought was that it might have been a B&O operation, perhaps quarrying stone for use as ballast along the tracks. That would have dated it back as far as the 1880's.

Fair Field on Polly Drummond's Hill

North side of the Fair Field barn

Although farms in the 18th and 19th Centuries were awash in all kinds of structures, both large and small, the two most important were the dwelling house and the barn, just not always in that order. In fact, it was not unusual for a family settling on a new piece of ground to first build a small log home while they worked on the larger, permanent barn, then only several years later replace their home with a larger, more permanent stone or frame house. For while the family could make due with a smaller home for a while, they still needed a place for their livestock and equipment, without which they'd be looking at some very hard times.

As the 19th Century gave way to the 20th and the landscape of MCH changed, many of these farms ceased operating. Some were abandoned, leaving all the buildings to fall into ruins. On a lucky few, both the house and the barn were saved, either because some farming was still done or the families worked to save the barn. But because they are large and require a lot of upkeep, most times the barn was left to fall into disrepair or be torn down, even if its accompanying farmhouse was still in use. On most MCH properties where a historic home still stands, either the barn is completely gone or at best, a few walls stand in testament to its existence.

There are very few instances, however, where circumstances allowed for a barn to survive where the house did not (I should mention that the house and barn were usually built very near each other, no more than a quick walk apart). In one such instance, an old fieldstone barn is now in the hands of  a non-profit organization that, while having nothing to do with history, is nonetheless working to upkeep and continue to utilize the historic structure. The group is the Drummond Hill Pool, and the beautiful barn is the last remnant of the estate once known as Fair Field.

Mary Jane Chambers and her sons (L-R):
Samuel Kemble, George R., Richard
McCausland, Charles, John Jay

I am proud and honored to present another Guest Post to the blog, this one written by someone who not only has done a great deal of research on the subject, but who also has a unique insight into it. John Whiteclay Chambers II is a retired professor and former chair of the History Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He also, as his name would suggest, is a member of the Chambers family that has had a presence in northwestern MCH and northern White Clay Creek Hundred for over 300 years. Much of their former land is now part of White Clay Creek State Park (DE) and White Clay Creek Preserve (PA), and if you've ever driven along Chambers Rock Road you've gone right through the middle of Chambers land. My great thanks goes out to John for sharing this with us, and for allowing me to share it. (The words are his, only the photo captions are mine.) I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Restoring the Chambers Family Farm in the 20th Century

By John Whiteclay Chambers II

Copyright © John Whiteclay Chambers II, 2021; excerpt from the author’s manuscript, The History of the Chambers Family of Hilltop.

Do not reprint without permission of the author.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The author, a member of the Chambers family, who retired from the History

Faculty at Rutgers University in 2017, welcomes corrections and additional relevant material on the subjects covered. john.chambers@rutgers.edu.

After nearly two hundred years of farming the rich land along White Clay Creek near the Delaware-Pennsylvania boundary, the Chambers family faced a crisis when the matriarch died at age 89 in 1906. For the past forty years, after the death of her husband, strong-willed and able Mary Jane Kemble Chambers had managed the Chambers farm.¹ Now with her demise, would the farmstead continue? It had begun in 1715, when English Quakers John and Deborah Chambers and their four children started farming there. Five years later, they officially bought 664 acres from William Penn’s family in 1720.²

The death of the matriarch threatened an end to the Chambers family farm. The property was down to 168 acres with the manor house “Hilltop.” None of the five surviving children of Mary Jane and John W. Chambers wanted to be farmers. Still she left the farm to them.³ After helping to work the farm summers between school, each of these five young men had left for the booming towns and cities of industrializing, late nineteenth century Pennsylvania. They had done well. Despite the sons’ aversion to farm work, three of them, Samuel, John J., and Charles, decided, after their mother’s death, to reacquire the land that had been sold over the previous two centuries: The Thompson and Evans farms on Chambers Rock Road and the Pyle farm on Creek Road. Within a decade, together their late mother’s 168 acres at Hilltop, they had reassembled 508 acres of Chambers farms, and hired tenants to work them.

The Italian Community at Roseville and the Bloody Section

A while back we looked at the "Italian Colony" that grew up near Wooddale, on the very eastern edge
of Mill Creek Hundred. It was comprised of Italian immigrant workers (and some of their families) employed at the stone quarry there. They were doing dangerous manual labor -- the kind often offered to immigrants. There was another kind of dangerous work common in the 19th Century, and when it came rumbling through New Castle County in the 1880's it gave rise to another Italian enclave on the other end of Mill Creek Hundred. This one was in some ways similar and in other ways different than the Wooddale community. Sadly, it also shows that the way immigrants are treated in this country has not changed much over the past 140 years.

Without question, one of the great engineering feats of the 19th Century was the construction of the railroad system. Being difficult, dangerous, mobile work, the building of the railroads was often given to immigrant workers, often Chinese in the western states and European (such as Irish) in the east. There were two major railroad lines that came through New Castle County in the 19th Century. The first was the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore, constructed in the 1830's (this line is now used by Amtrak). That was it for the next 50 years or so (with the exception of the smaller more local lines like the Wilmington & Western and the Wilmington & Northern), until the Baltimore & Ohio decided it wanted a northeastern route to compete with the Pennsylvania Railroad.

When the B&O came building their line through NCC in 1883/84, it seems that their workforce was primarily Italian. It's kind of funny -- I don't know about you, but when I think of railroads being built by teams of workers, I really only picture it in very remote places. Like through the prairie, or across mountains, or through forests miles from nowhere. I never really thought about a large cohort of men traveling slowly, working through a populated area like White Clay and Mill Creek Hundreds. Where would they stay while they did their work in an area?

Oak Hill Farm, aka Breidablik

Oak Hill Farm, 1927

One of the aspects of history I find interesting is how many different "lives" a given property can have over the years, even if some of it is just different variations on a theme. A tract can go from virgin woodland, to family farm, to tenant farm, and back again. It can be owned locally or by wealthy "outsiders". Then, with the changes brought by the 20th Century, it can have a whole new life. Such is the case with a farm on the western bounds of Christiana Hundred, just a stones throw from Mill Creek Hundred.

On the east side of Centerville Road, just south of Lancaster Pike, sits the office complex known as Little Falls Center. Named for the creek that runs behind it, this building is a product of 1980's development. However, on the property stands a fieldstone house that is considerably older. Although hundreds of American office workers now spend their days there (well, they used to, and will again sometime soon), the history of the property goes back to before there were "Americans", to when deeds here included phrases like, "[…] and in the fourth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third of Great Britain France and Ireland King […]". 

That particular gem appeared in the 1764 transfer of 200 acres from Mounce Justis to Peter Paulson for the sum of 50 Pounds. The tract spread from Little Fall Creek (named as such in the deed) all the way over to Red Clay Creek. Paulson would eventually sell the section west of Centerville Road to his son John. Peter's widow Ann would sell his home farm of 89 acres John Caldwell in 1808. When Caldwell died in the 1830's, he passed the farm to his nephew, also named John Caldwell. This Caldwell held on to the property for about ten more years, until selling it in 1843.

Hockessin's Disappearing, Reappearing Road

Meeting House Road area today

Over the course of the centuries, it's not unusual for roads to come and go, or for them to change in some way through the years. On the back of the recent post about Benge Road, a question was raised about Meeting House Road, and about Lee Road, which looks like an extension of it north of Auburn Mill Road. When I started looking closer at the old maps of the area, I saw an interesting evolution of the roads in this area, north of Hockessin.

We'll start with the current configuration, seen to the right, and then go back and see the progression through time. As you can see, today Meeting House Road runs up from Old Wilmington Road to Auburn Mill Road, then Lee Road extends as a residential road up to about the state line. Auburn Mill Road comes west from Benge, goes past Meeting House for a short bit, curves north, then sort of peters out.

The two oldest maps we have - Heald's 1820 map and the 1849 Rea & Price - are basically identical to each other in their layouts. (There actually are a few older, Revolutionary War era maps that show roads, but they're not particularly precise and were drawn by people literally passing through the area, so not real helpful to us here.) They both show the Old Public Road (now Old Public Road and Benge Road at the north end) heading to the northeast and Old Wilmington Road continuing to the northwest. Meeting House Road is shown heading north from the Hockessin Friends Meeting House up into Pennsylvania. This makes clear the road's original purpose, which was as a pathway to the Marshall Mill on Red Clay Creek. Although much of this length is long gone, if you look again at the current map above you can see the original end of the road, now part of Marshallvale Lane.

The Origins of Benge Road

Location of Benge Road, north of Hockessin

Normally when we think of traces of history around us or historical sites, what comes to mind are things like houses, churches, mills, or battlefields. However, some of the most interesting and instructive artifacts are the things we use every day, but rarely give much thought to – our roads. Most people have at least a vague notion that some roads are new, while others have been in place for a long time. This is certainly true of the roads in and around Hockessin.

Anyone familiar with the roads today would recognize many of the same ones on a map from, say, 1868. Readily visible are most of the main thoroughfares like Limestone Road, Valley Road, Lancaster Pike (although along what’s now Old Lancaster Pike which was actually the Newport and Gap Turnpike), Old Wilmington Road, Meeting House Road, and Yorklyn Road, among others. Some were very old, like Limestone Road, and likely started as Native American paths used by the earliest European settlers in the area. Some were created for a specific purpose, like Yorklyn Road’s path from Old Wilmington Road to the Garrett Snuff Mills, laid out in 1863. Once in a while we’re even lucky enough to have some of the details as to the when, why, and how of a road’s coming to be. Such is the case with Benge Road.

The Family of William and Mary Eastburn

Without question, one of my favorite things about doing this whole history thing is when people are kind enough to share with us old photographs from their family's collection. We all know that there are lots of these types of pictures sitting in shoe boxes and old photo albums, in attics and basements everywhere. Most people, though, don't think anyone would be interested in their old family pictures, especially when they themselves may not know who some of the people are, or when or where they were taken. But believe me, we're interested!

The amazing picture shown here came from one of my "history friends", Ray Albanese, and it was shared with him by an extended family-member named Lois. Lois' maiden name was Jones, but her mother was from one of the most prolific of MCH families - the Eastburns. This is a picture of her grandfather Herbert S. Eastburn's family.

More accurately, it's the family of William M. and Mary (Baldwin) Eastburn, and their 10 children. They were married in November 1863 (exactly one week after the Gettysburg Address was delivered, FWIW) and had 11 kids over the next 22 years (one died young). This is their family in about 1905. That estimate comes from the fact that one of the sons (William) died in 1907.

An Immigrant's Story -- Raffaele Di Guglielmo, a.k.a. Rafael Julian

Pasqualina and Raffaele
di Guglielmo

This should be obvious, but pretty much every local resident ever mentioned on this blog was either an immigrant, or the descendant of immigrants. Almost all of them were products of the so-called First Wave of immigration, arriving anywhere from the 17th Century through the mid-19th Century. In MCH we have 17th Century Swedes, Fins, and English; 18th Century Scotch-Irish and English; and 19th Century Irish, English, Germans and others. These were all from northern and western Europe.

The Second Wave consisted of late 19th and early 20th Century immigrants (think Ellis Island) from more "exotic" locales in eastern and southern Europe -- Poles, Slavs, Eastern European Jews, Greeks, Russians, and, probably most impactful to their new country, Italians. Since most of these Second wave immigrants stayed in cities (often the ones they first arrived in), Mill Creek Hundred did not see very many of these new arrivals. There is, however, one major exception that was noted in the post a few years back about the Abner Hollingsworth case -- the Italian Colony at Wooddale.

The colony was a community of over 100 Italian immigrants, comprised of stoneworkers at the Wooddale Quarry and their families. It seems to have been a fairly self-contained community, and because there were many single men there, a pretty raucous one. Wild Wooddale, as I call it, had an array of illegal saloons, gambling houses, and places catering to other pleasures. I still don't know very much about the community itself, but I have been able to gather information about one of the apparent leaders of the community. He was mentioned briefly in an article from the time about the Hollingsworth case, noting only that he ran a saloon and was accused of having tried to scam one of the local farmboys. Separating fact from fiction about this era can be tough, but I did find at least part of this man's amazing story.

The Hand Family of Brandywine Hundred

The Isaac Hand house, shortly before
demolition in 1962. Inset shows a family
 headstone at Newark Union Cemetery

One of the running themes of this blog is the idea that every place and every family has a story, and that they are worthy of being remembered. While I believe that to be true, the reality is that like individual people, some families are more interesting than others. A little while back I was contacted and asked about the Hand family, who owned a couple of farms in Brandywine Hundred, around the Shipley Road/Silverside Road area. Although this is certainly outside of Mill Creek Hundred and might not be as familiar to some, I know that area pretty well. I found the necessary information to determine where the Hand farms were, but it wasn't until I started finding more stories about the people themselves that I realized just how interesting this family was.

The family's story in America seems to have begun with Gilbert Hand, who in 1808 purchased 53 acres on the south side of what would become known as Silverside Road, about a three quarters of a mile east of Concord Pike. Gilbert sold the farm three years later to Alexander Hand (almost certainly his son), who in turn divided the property in 1846 between himself and his oldest son, Isaac. Alexander kept the western 30 acres, while Isaac got the land (at first, 20 acres, then a few years later another 3) on the eastern end. Shipley Road does not seem to have been in existence in 1846, but was built a few years later and positioned along the boundary of the two lots. Alexander's farm was sold out of the family in 1866, a few years after his death. Isaac's property would stay in the family until 1962, when the development of Delwynn was built on it -- but we have a few stories before we get there.