The Baileys of Faulkland, Revisited

The 68 acre farm sold by Ephraim Yarnall
to Amor Bailey in 1829

After not having really updated many old posts in a while, I seem to be on a bit of a roll now. This one is especially exciting because after revisiting an old topic after a question about a certain house, I ended up answering questions about not one, but three different properties and houses! They were all in the same family, the Baileys, although one of the houses I had no idea had been in that family until I followed along the family's trail of deeds. All three houses are in the Faulkland area, just north of Faulkland Road near Brandywine Springs Park. The original post about the Bailey family was written more than ten years ago, and while I believe all the information in it is correct, I can now add a good deal more and fill in some holes along the way.

While that original post focused more on James Bailey and his farm on the east side of Newport Gap Pike (it was sparked by questions about his granddaughter, who still lived there in the 1950's), here I want to look closer at what was going on earlier and on the west side of the turnpike. I still haven't really been able to clear up much more about the Baileys' history prior to moving into the Faulkland area. What I can elaborate on is exactly when they moved and what the farm was that Amor Bailey purchased.

In the old post I had said that it appeared Amor Bailey and family had moved to somewhere north of Brandywine Springs between 1820 and 1830. I've now found that on March 24, 1829, Amor Bailey purchased 68 acres of land from Ephraim Yarnall. This was on the west side of the Newport and Gap Turnpike, which had opened only 11 years earlier. Even more recent in the area was the Brandywine Chalybeate Springs Hotel, which had opened less than two years earlier just below Bailey's new farm, also on land formerly owned by the Yarnall family.

Sunset Cottage and the Golding House -- Part 2

The lot sold to Annie Golding in 1880

In the last post we took a close look at Sunset Cottage, the Hockessin retirement home of John G.
Jackson. We learned how the property came to be acquired by the Jacksons, some of the unique features of the house, who owned the home after the Jacksons, and how the look of the house changed after a serious fire. We also learned that just before Sunset Cottage was built, John and Elizabeth Jackson sold off 1-1/2 acres of the original 5-3/4 acre lot. This acre and a half was on the corner of Valley Road and Southwood Road, and like its neighboring lot would have a house built on it in the early 1880's.

From a distance these homes looked similar to each other, and even though this house didn't have the unique features that its neighbor Sunset Cottage had, it has its own interesting history. In a small town like Hockessin (heck, I often think of MCH in general as just a spread out small town), it's no surprise that there were some connections, both professional and familial, between the residents of the neighboring homes. This starts right off the bat with the first owners of the lot, and the couple responsible for the building of the Golding House -- Edwin and Annie Golding.

In January 1880, the Jacksons sold the 1-1/2 acres to Annie H. Golding for $375. That price would seem to imply that there was no house there yet (when Annie sold just 9 years later, the price was $2200), but the home must have gone up very soon after. In the 1880 Census, taken June 10/11, the Goldings are listed right beside the Jacksons. (Incidentally, this could either mean that Sunset Cottage was completed by then, or that the Jacksons were still residing in their old home with no one between them.) So who were the Goldings?

Sunset Cottage and the Golding House -- Part 1

Sunset Cottage

If you've paid attention to these posts (and no judgement if you haven't, that's between you and your conscience), you'll have noticed that once in a while I say something about going back and revisiting or updating old posts. This isn't because history has changed, it's more an issue of my having better resources now and being able to do more in-depth research than I could ten years ago. And while this is an honest and well-intentioned thought, between you and me, I rarely actually do go back and revisit old topics, mostly because people keep bringing great new topics to my attention.

However, in researching an offshoot of a recent story I came to the realization that a few years back I had made an error in identifying a particular house. Although I didn't actually state it in the post (so the original post is not technically incorrect), the house I was talking about was not the right one. Now I have a lot more information about both of the homes and their relationship to each other.

The post in question dates back almost ten years, and was about "the most famous Victorian to live in Hockessin", John G. Jackson. Towards the end of the post there are three paragraphs that talk about Jackson's final home, which he called Sunset Cottage. To the best of my knowledge, all the information in those paragraphs is correct. The house was built by Jackson in the 1880's on Southwood Road, it had a telescope in it, there was a fire in the early 20th Century, it was rebuilt in a different style, and it still stands today.

But if I'm being honest, although I didn't specifically say which one it was in the post, the house I thought at the time was Sunset Cottage... is not. It was in generally the right place and looked a lot like the house in the one photo of Sunset Cottage, but maybe that should have told me it wasn't since we know the house was restyled. As I started researching the property records it became clear which house was which, and though the house I had originally thought was Sunset was not, I came to realize that it was intimately linked to John G. Jackson's retirement home.