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. 

The lot next to A.J. Williams was sold in 1875 to William Elliot, an English immigrant tinsmith who had been living and working in Wilmington. He probably moved to Greenbank to work at the Marshall's rolling mill, as tinplating was an important part of the process there. In fact, he was probably just the kind of buyer or tenant Cranston was looking for. Around the same time, James Cranston was also selling lots of land (and lots of land) in Marshallton for worker housing. In fact, most of Marshallton was originally Cranston land.

Bowen Pyle hurt while building a house at Greenbank,
very possibly the William Elliot House for his step-father

Although there's reason to believe that A.J. Williams built some of the houses around Greenbank, the article above seems to tell us that at least one was constructed by a carpenter named Bowen Pyle. The article appeared on September 2, 1875, just one month after William Elliot's purchase of his one acre lot. That's not the only connection, though -- Bowen Pyle also happens to have been William Elliot's step-son. For those reasons, I think it was the Elliot House that Pyle was working on, perhaps even along with Andrew Williams. They may very well have worked together building the houses of Greenbank. 

The Greenbank area on the 1881 map

When Elliot died in 1885 at the age of 76, the house was sold to Bowen Pyle. About the same time, Pyle purchased a half acre adjacent to the one acre house lot. And as a side note, one of the Green Bank Park ads says the grove was leased by "Clark and Pyle". Along with James Clark, I think Bowen Pyle was involved with the park (which was right behind the Williams and Elliot houses) and may have built some or all of the structures there.

Separate from these homes and across the turnpike, there was another house located about where the entrance to the train station parking lot is now. This was owned by John J. Flinn, who owned the farms up the hill along both sides of Greenbank Road toward Prices Corner. Flinn leased the house to tenants, and in 1911 it was sold to Enos J. Hollingsworth, founder of the E.J. Hollingsworth Company (and organizer of the Marshallton Building and Loan). Hollingsworth also rented out the house. It was intentionally burned in a fire company exercise in the 1960's, presumably about when Historic Red Clay Valley purchased the property.

Greenbank in 1893

But the turnpike is not the only road through Greenbank, and it wasn’t the only road with new houses on it in the 1870’s. During this era, the Greenbank Mill was owned and operated by brothers Isaac D. and William G. Philips, and used to produce wooden products (wagon wheel parts, croquet mallets, ladders, etc.). Isaac and family resided in the Philips House overlooking the mill. In the 1850's, William built a new Italianate style home on the high ground on the other side of the turnpike and gave it the name it would in turn give to the whole area - Greenbank. But if you go a little further up Greenbank Road, the ground goes up a bit more, and in 1874 William sold about an acre of his land to Wilmer Atkinson.

Noting the sale of Atkinson's first Greenbank
home to William Perkins, November 1875

Atkinson was the publisher of the Wilmington Daily Commercial newspaper, and he built a nice little country home on his new lot. I imagine that the area was more cleared then, so the view over the creek would have been really nice. A year later he bought another 3 acres or so, in between his first house and Philips’ Greenbank. Here Atkinson built an even bigger country cottage and sold the first one to William P. Perkins, a hardware dealer from Wilmington. Since no respectable country home would be complete without a name, the first house was called Birchlawn and the second one was named Maple Hill. There’s even a story (yes, it made the paper - see below) of a guys versus girls croquet match in July 1875 at Birchlawn between Sallie Mendenhall and Allie Philips, and John C. Philips and Wilmer Atkinson. John C. Philips was Isaac’s son, and I think Allie was probably John’s aunt (Isaac and William’s sister Albina). The ladies won two of three from the guys. Also interestingly, I imagine that the croquet equipment was probably made by the Philipses at Greenbank.

The July 1875 croquet match at Birch Lawn

Atkinson tried to sell Maple Hill in 1877, but he didn’t find a buyer until 1879, in Isaac V. Lloyd. Lloyd was a lumber merchant and former carriage manufacturer from Wilmington. He held the property as a country home until 1904, when he sold it to another prominent figure, Daniel O. Hastings. At the time, Hastings was the Deputy Attorney General of Delaware, and would later move on to serve as Delaware Secretary of State, a state Supreme Court Justice, and as a US Senator.

But business owners and legal/governmental figures were not the only ones who found it desirable to spend time at Greenbank, even as late as the early 1900's. The next resident at Maple Hill links us back to a post from several years ago, but with a bit more context this time. In March 1907, Hastings rented the house for a time to none other than William L. Edison, son of the famous inventor. W. L. Edison was an inventor in his own right, and also dabbled in the car business. In 1907 he had a Premier Car dealership, which he may have basically run from the house at Greenbank.

So even though there were "important" people still coming to Greenbank in the early 20th Century, the village itself was pretty much done. After the railroad came through, as we covered, there were some houses built, Andy Williams’ chair and ladder factory, and the amusement park/picnic grove. There was talk of building a Friends school (probably spearheaded by the Quaker Philips family), but that never happened. There was also a big push to try to establish a post office at Greenbank. (They were often set up at railroad stations at the time.) That never happened either, because it was too close to other post offices, probably meaning Marshallton and Faulkland.

And even the original backbone of the area, the mill, was in decline. The Philips family seems to have been very well loved and respected, but William died back in 1876, and Isaac and family moved away when they sold the mill to James and Ellis Clark in 1888. (This was the same James Clark who had operated the Green Bank Park.) The Clarks don't seem to have done much with the mill, and it took a few more owners before the mill was really running well again. But perhaps the final blow was due to the same force that probably doomed Green Bank Park – Brandywine Springs.

Closing of the Greenbank and Brandywine Springs
railroad stations, November 20, 1901

In 1901, the Peoples Railway began trolley service from Wilmington to Brandywine Springs. Being quicker, cheaper, and more frequent than the train, the trolley ended up taking away most of the railway passengers heading out this way. Because of that, the B&O (which owned the Wilmington & Western line by then) discontinued stops at Greenbank and at Faulkland in November 1901. The Greenbank station was boarded up and removed not long after. The station there now was moved down from Yorklyn in the 1960’s. The original Greenbank station would have looked almost identical, and sat closer to the road, about where the water tower is now.

But after 1901, most newspaper references to “Greenbank” were for the County Workhouse that stood up the hill -- not for the mill, the station, or the village. The mill stayed in operation until the 1960’s, until the fire in 1969 finally shut it down (but thankfully not completely out, and we’re very fortunate to have it still here). The workhouse closed in the early 1970’s, but then it too was gone, replaced by a new Greenbank Park. Two of the last vestiges of Old Greenbank, the AJ Williams House and the William Elliot House, were torn down in the 1990’s when Newport Gap Pike was widened. That didn’t leave much more than the mill property, the revived train station, and mostly forgotten memories of the village that almost was.