Southwood

The Southwood area in 1881

It was a while back that I stopped thinking about these posts as "reports" and began approaching them more as I see them -- as stories. I try to tell the story of a given person, place, thing, or event, at least to the extent that I understand it. Granted, some of those stories are more intricate and, frankly, interesting than others, but all are worth telling. For example, we recently delved into some of the people, places, and history of the area surrounding the Wilmington & Western's Greenbank Station.

But there were of course other stations with other areas around them, and of all those other stations, one of them was Southwood. And though there was never any sort of defined community around the Southwood Station, there are some interesting aspects to the area. There are also some things that I did not know until I was asked about the area (thanks, Erik!).

First, though, we'll start with where Southwood is, since it's completely understandable that you might not be familiar with it. The area we're referring to as Southwood sits along Limestone Road immediately south of the DE/PA state line, west of Hockessin. Also in the vicinity is the intersection of Limestone Road and Southwood Road, which runs west from Valley Road. The name "Southwood Road", however, seems to be a 20th Century moniker (at least for its eastern end, where it was previously known as Sunset Avenue, among other names).

Prior to the 1870's, there really wasn't much there except a relatively minor intersection and some craftsman shops. The 1820 Heald map shows shops (probably blacksmith and/or wheelwright) on both the east and west sides of Limestone Road below Southwood Road. They're listed under the name of New Garden Township resident Joseph Roman. There may have been a reason for the shops to be (what was then) just inside Delaware, or maybe it was just to have them by the intersection. Also bear in mind that Tweeds Tavern was located not far south of there, also on Limestone Road. For the convenience of the weary travelers, shops like these were often located near taverns (the next one south, the Mermaid Tavern, had shops directly across the road from it).

In 1839, Thomas Yeatman purchased the Springer Farm just below Southwood, on the east side of Limestone Road. Yeatman was a blacksmith himself, and operated a shop there until his death in 1851. After Thomas Yeatman's passing, the property went to his son, Alfred, who was a shopkeeper in New Garden (near the Limestone Road-Newport Gap Pike intersection). Although the blacksmith shop was not run by a Yeatman, it does seem to have carried on (a blacksmith named George Ferguson is shown in the 1870 Census, and may have been running it then). Interestingly, the 1868 map also shows a "Shoe Shop" next to the blacksmith shop. I haven't yet found any more information about the show shop or about who might have run it. Maybe you could get a Two for One "Shoe your horse, Shoe yourself" deal? OK, maybe not. In 1871 Alfred Yeatman sold the property to Thomas Ector, a blacksmith. He worked there for a while, but by 1900 it seems that William Haggerty was the local blacksmith, and probably was the last.

The biggest change, though, came in 1872 with the construction of the Wilmington & Western Rail Road. The line, of course, ran from Wilmington to the Red Clay Creek at Marshallton, up the Red Clay Valley to Yorklyn, then headed west through Hockessin to Landenberg. In that "Hockessin to Landenberg" section, the line crossed Limestone Road at Southwood. With the building of the railroad came the erection of a station, located on the north side of the track a short distance west of Limestone Road. Unlike the Greenbank Station, which sat very near to Newport Gap Pike, the Southwood Station was not placed to handle traffic and freight from the nearby (Limestone) road.

Announcement of American Kaolin building a
branch line to Southwood Station, May 1873

Instead, it was created primarily to service the works of the American Kaolin Company, located a short distance north along Broad Run, where Somerset Lake is now. In fact, the company brought so much material to the railroad that they actually installed their own horse-drawn railroad line in 1873 and added their own freight sheds latter that year. Their line, just like the Wilmington & Western itself, ran through the property of Evan Brown, whose farm sat mostly in Chester County but which extended south into Delaware. The land for the station was also purchased from Brown, and it seems like it provided the name.

When a railroad station is established, it needs to have a name. Sometimes the name is easy and obvious (Marshallton, Greenbank, Hockessin), but other times there's a bit of thought and searching that goes into it (Wooddale, Yorklyn). With really not much of anything in the immediate vicinity, it seems the name Southwood came from Evan Brown's farm. Although I don't see it listed on any map, numerous sale ads beginning in 1875 state the name of the property as "Southwood Farm".

Sale ad for Evan Brown's Southwood Farm,
September 23, 1875

At the top of the post I said there were new things I learned about Southwood, and the most surprising to me had to do with how the railroad crossed Limestone Road. When the line was laid out in the early 1870's, it was decided that Limestone Road was too busy a thoroughfare to have a grade crossing, which would involve blocking the road every time a train passed. Instead, a cut was made and a bridge built, and the railroad crossed underneath Limestone Road. As far as I can tell, this bridge remained until this section of track was officially abandoned by the B&O in 1957.

The photo above, taken by the B&O in 1927, shows the track at Southwood, looking east (towards Hockessin). You can just make out the distinctive flat roofline of the station up on the left and what I assume is the station sign (bright rectangle). The bridge carrying Limestone Road can be seen in the background (thanks go out to Bob Wilhelm for clearing that part up for me).

The station was indeed a full-sized station and looked almost identical to the only remaining original Wilmington & Western station, the former Yorklyn Station now situated at Greenbank. Southwood even had a telegraph installed in early 1873. While I don't have a complete list of station agents for Southwood, there have been a few names that have surfaced. It appears that the first agent may have been Jethro Thompson, who resigned to go to school in October 1874 and was replaced by Irwin D. Wood. By 1897, the agent was Miss Anna Dixon, who also served as postmistress. Southwood had been previously granted a post office, which had been moved down from Kaolin. Because of the ease in transporting the mail, many post offices were located at or very near railroad stations (but not all of them, as you'll recall from the Greenbank story).

Except for the farms and shops in the area, honestly not a lot seems to have "gone down" in the Southwood area over the years, but I did find two interesting, if not almost diametrically opposed, stories to share. The first involved Methodists....the second, pugilists. In the post-Civil War years, the camp meeting movement took off within the Methodist Church, the most notable local example being the Brandywine Summit Camp Meeting off of Concord Pike, just over the PA state line (which I only just realized is still an on-going thing...Brandywine Summit, not the state line).

Two reports of Methodists looking for a new camp meeting site, four days
apart in 1873. Although they liked what they saw, they did not buy the land

However, as early as June 1873, the Methodists of Wilmington began looking for an alternate location for a camp meeting site. Among the reasons they did so was the "difficulty of access, the high charges and the unnecessary Sunday traffic at the Brandywine Summit Camp". So yes, people have been complaining about the Concord Pike traffic for well over 140 years now. One of the places they kept coming back to as a possible site was a wooded area on the McIntyre farm, just below the Southwood Station. This is the Hadley-Dennison Farm written about many years ago (and overdue for an update).

Two more instances of Methodists considering, but ultimately not buying,
land near Southwood. The first article is from 1879, the second from 1897

Methodist representatives came back to the McIntyre farm several times (I found reports from 1873, 1879, and 1897), but for various reasons never seem to have actually followed through and purchased the grounds. The first report stated that the asking price was too high, so perhaps that continued to be a sticking point. I imagine that had the camp meeting actually been set up there, it would have significantly increased the passenger traffic through the Southwood Station.

So while the gatherings of pious and virtuous religious campers never actually happened near Southwood, another, very different sort of gathering did. On September 12, 1895, almost 100 men gathered on the farm of John Speakman to watch a well-organized (but possibly illegal?) boxing match. The turf fight (which I think just means it took place on grass, as opposed to a canvas ring) was between Strech and Kelley, both pseudonyms but apparently both well-known fighters in Wilmington at the time.

The site of the fight, a "well-hidden from view" area near a clump of woods on the Speakman farm, was just over the PA line, a short distance along Southwood Road west of Limestone Road. When the organizers got permission from farmer Speakman to use his property, they told him it was for a baseball game. He became skeptical when he saw them setting up the 24 foot ring, but somehow they briefly convinced him they were now playing football. Shortly after two men walked out of the woods, into the ring, and began punching each other, the wily agriculturist figured out what was going on. He was none too happy about it, but by then it was too late to stop the proceedings.

Article detailing the "turf fight",
in September 1895. Click on the
article to read the full account

The bout was well-organized and attended, with experienced personnel all around. And although it seems to have been done in a professional manor, the way it was carried out makes me think it was a less-than-legal event (Free life advice: If you're ever doing something and you're concerned about being "just over the state line", you probably shouldn't be doing it). That being said, it sounds like it was a fun and eventful afternoon, and possibly one of the last that sleepy Southwood would have.

Early in the 20th Century, the clay veins dried up for the American Kaolin Company and they ceased their operations. With the exception of special events like the ones detailed above, I don't think that there was a lot of passenger service in and out of the Southwood Station. The B&O's Landenberg Branch ended passenger service in 1930, and finally abandoned the track between Hockessin and Southwood in 1957. I don't know exactly when the bridge over the track was removed, but it was probably either immediately in 1957 or maybe when widening work was done on Limestone Road in 1964. (I'm pretty sure I can see the shadow of the bridge in a 1951 aerial photo, but I'm not sure about one from 1958.)

The Southwood name now lives on mostly through things like Southwood Road and Southwood Estates (built on land formerly owned by Tim Buonamici, who also owned a mushroom business and Tim's Liquors). Southwood Estates encompasses the land that once housed the Southwood Station. The area is now little more than a few names and the memory of when it was a stop on the railroad.