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.

But enough with the generalities, let's get specific about what and where we're talking about. The story of these two houses begins in the early 1870's, and may be tied to the newly-built Wilmington & Western Railroad. As the original post stated, John G. Jackson was closely tied to the venture, as both an a surveyor of its route and as a major investor. It's this second part that got him into trouble. Largely due to a worldwide economic downturn in the 1870's (it was called the Great Depression, until 1929), the Wilmington & Western went into bankruptcy just a few years after being built.

May 1875 ad for sale of John G. Jackson's
property, ultimately bought by his son

Jackson seems to have lost a good deal of money from this, and it might be why, in May 1875, two of his real estate holdings were put up for sale by the sheriff. However, in what might have been some sort of family financial maneuvering, they were purchased by his son William B. Jackson. In December of that same year, William sold 5-3/4 acres of the land back to his mother Elizabeth (not to his father) for "divers (sic) good causes and considerations and especially for and in consideration of the sum of one dollar". Always take care of your mother.

Approximate outline of the 5-3/4 acre lot "sold" by
William B. Jackson to his mother Elizabeth in Dec 1875

The lot was a triangular piece of land on the southwest corner of Valley Road and Southwood Road, although in this deed it was called the Dixon Road (in later deeds it would be called Peet Road and Sunset Avenue, and on the 1910 Census Dr. Ball Road, before becoming Southwood Road). Recall that at this time, John and Elizabeth were residing in their 1848 home just a few hundred feet north on Valley Road. However, John was by this time 57 years old, and looking forward to his retirement years. In 1880 they sold 1-1/2 acres of the tract to Annie Golding, wife of Golding and Sons kaolin company executive Edwin Golding. (They were together and both lived there, so again there must have been a reason it was done in her name.) We'll come back to this lot and house in the next post.

Lot sold in 1880 to Annie Golding (left), and lot kept
by the Jacksons to build Sunset Cottage (right)

The Jacksons kept the 3-1/2 acres immediately west of (and wrapping a bit around) the Golding lot and here, John G. Jackson built his retirement home. Jackson was a scientific-minded and forward-looking man, and his new home reflected that. In a time when most housing was wooden frame construction (some brick, but few stone houses by then), he made his from poured concrete. Thomas Edison was considered ahead of his time when he was doing similar things almost 30 years later. The lime, sand, and stones that made the concrete all came from Jackson's own quarries across the road.

As for the date of construction, there appears to be some confusion, but I might have an answer for it. Jackson's 1897 obituary states that the house was built in 1887. That date is repeated elsewhere, but I think it all stems from that one statement. It's also clearly not accurate. My guess is that it might have been a simple typo, and was supposed to say 1881. I've found newspaper reports from as early as September 1881 mentioning the house, for the reason that is most often mentioned about Sunset Cottage.

September 1881 article stating Jackson
had completed his observatory

Among John G. Jackson's many interests, one of his most passionate was a life-long fascination with astronomy. So when he designed Sunset Cottage, he fulfilled what must have been a life-long dream and had a fully-functioning observatory included. (When I was younger my dream was to have a tv in the bathroom, but to each his own.) It's a little hard to see, but the dome of the observatory is visible at the top of the tower in the photo at the top of the post. The dome was about seven feet in diameter and mounted on rollers with a hand crank to rotate it. For those to whom this would mean anything, the telescope had a six inch concave mirror with a focal length of five feet.

Article detailing J.G. Jackson's planned power-generating windmill (12/23/1886)

But for my money (not that there's much of that), neither the walls nor the telescope were the most interesting, ingenious, and forward-looking feature on the property. Something else was, if the mechanism ever actually worked. The December 1886 article above explains the details of a power-generating windmill that Jackson built on his Sunset Cottage property, next to his office (which we'll get back to later). It sounds clear that the 50 ft. tall windmill structure was complete by then, as it also talks about a sundial that he built on the south side of it facing the railroad tracks nearby.

The article also details a mechanism that Jackson invented to solve what is still the primary challenge for renewable energy sources today -- energy storage. These days we use batteries, but in 1886 'Squire Jackson designed a system whereby the wind turbine would raise two large weights (yes, large -- 15 tons each!) which would then slowly lower and power a dynamo that would provide electricity for his home. I'm sure this would have been decades before any other home in Hockessin had electricity. Frustratingly I can't find any later reports about this, so it's unclear as to whether Jackson ever got this system up and running.

The Jacksons did get to spend the rest of their retirement years at Sunset Cottage (with or without electricity), with Elizabeth passing in 1894 and John in March 1897.The house passed to the Jackson sons, William and Thomas. Although Thomas had years before moved away and was at the time residing in Fort Wayne, IN, he bought out his brother's share of Sunset Cottage. Thomas and his family did spend the summer of 1897 there. In the Fall they rented it to Fred Golding, a family name that will come up again in the next post.

I don't know how long Golding lived there, but Thomas died in 1898 and the following year the house was sold to a member of another prominent MCH family -- Dr. John Ball. Ball was raised on his father's farm in Milltown and was the brother of doctor and soon-to-be US Congressman and then Senator Lewis Heisler Ball. Dr. Ball (John, that is) owned the property for ten years, before selling it to another man with a political resume and a last name familiar to readers of this blog -- John M. Walker. 

John McCabe Walker was the son of Thomas Walker, and grew up on the family farm on Little Baltimore Road. In fact, the Walkers were responsible for the name Little Baltimore. John was at times in his life a farmer, but also had other interests. He ran, with his brother Thomas, the Walker Kaolin Company, which mined both kaolin and feldspar (geologically related). John is also credited as being the first to discover kaolin at the site that would later be the Newark China Clay Company. Interestingly, Dr. Ball didn't move far away after selling Sunset Cottage to Walker. In 1906 he had purchased the Chamberlain (formerly Dixon) Farm just west on Southwood Road. There had previously been kaolin mining done on the Chamberlain farm.

Walker was also, as noted, a political man. He served three terms as a State Senator, one of those as president pro-temp of the senate. Although Walker was not an astronomer himself, it seems that in the late 1920's he gave access to the observatory to J. Stanley Kirk, a research chemist who was living in the area. Dr. Kirk resilvered the mirror and repaired Jackson's telescope and dome, after 30 years of disuse. Sadly, it would not be used for long. In 1933 (another report says 1922, but I think that's wrong), a fire destroyed the observatory and did great damage to the house. 

Since the walls were concrete, it's not surprising that even a large fire would not completely destroy the home. The Walkers did rebuild Sunset Cottage, but it really wasn't Sunset Cottage anymore. The house was restored in such a different fashion that it's almost unrecognizable today, as compared to the 19th Century photo. By this time, the Walkers were either not residing at the house, or at least not exclusively. They're found in Georgia in the 1930 Census, as John had re-entered the kaolin business and was running a mining operation down there (actually, by that time the kaolin business in general had migrated away from here and toward places like Georgia).

John M. Walker died in 1939 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and his widow Anna (maiden name Thompson, which will come up again in the next post) sold Sunset Cottage in 1942 to Elizabeth and Walter Francis, an executive with a paint company. The Francises later moved to Florida, and sold the home in 1950 to Archie and Lieanna Barkdoll. Dr. Barkdoll was a Harvard-educated chemist with Dupont who lived in the home for 58 years, until his passing in 2008. Mrs. Barkdoll had passed three years earlier.

Archived Google Streetview (2012) shot of what may have been John G. Jackson's office

In recent years part of the lot has been subdivided for new housing, which brings us to one final, interesting note. Until about 2015, the structure seen above stood along Southwood Road directly west of Sunset Cottage. Judging by the style, I'd say it's likely to be about the same age as the house. It's too big to be a shed or garage, too small for a barn. It looks like a house, but I'm not aware of there ever being any sort of tenant housing on the property. My guess as to its identity takes us back up the page a bit.

In the article about the windmill, it states it was "by the side of his office and 'gimcrack' department." "Gimcrack" (as I recently learned) refers to something that looks nice but is cheaply or shoddily made. In a longer version of the article, Jackson refers (I think with good Quaker humility) to his creations as his gimcracks. I think (and if anyone knows for sure, feel free to prove me right or wrong) this structure was John G. Jackson's office and workshop. He strikes me as one of those serial tinkerers, so he would have wanted somewhere to work. I think this might have been it.

From its construction in the 1880's through today, whether in its original astronomical configuration or today's beautiful look, Sunset Cottage has been a part of Hockessin history for over 140 years. However, the house next door to it (which I originally thought was Sunset) has a history just as interesting and very much intertwined with its neighbor. In the the next post, we'll take a closer look at the Golding House.