The Milford Crossroads School, District #37

The second Milford Crossroads School,
as it looked in the 1920's

It's been a while since we've taken a look at an old schoolhouse, and to the best of my knowledge I've 
covered just about every 19th Century school in Mill Creek Hundred -- except for the one that stood near Milford Crossroads. It was actually one of the oldest schools in the area, and had two different schoolhouses over the years, serving the children of the region. The last school stood until fairly recently and was used as a residence for several decades -- and I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of you had contact with the owners at some point.

The school stood on the east side of Paper Mill Road just below its intersection with Possum Park/Thomson Station Road (aka, Milford Crossroads). The spot is today directly north of the northern entrance into the Shops at Louviers. Designated as District #37, the school was certainly one of the earlier ones established, and appears on the 1849 map. I had assumed that the school and district were likely set up soon after the Free School Act of 1829. However, determining the exact build dates of these older schools can be difficult because there's usually not much in the way of documentation, with the exception of one kind of secondary clue.

I've learned that if you're lucky and know the right names to look up, you might be able to find the deed wherein a farmer sells a small lot to the trustees of a school, for the purpose of erecting a schoolhouse. So, thinking the school was built circa 1830, I tried to figure out who might have owned the surrounding farm at the time and attempted to find the deed, but to no avail. It turns out, I was looking at the wrong timeframe. It wasn't until I attacked it from the other end that I found the answer.

The Brown-Murray Farm, aka The Farmhouse, Part 2 -- The Murrays

The Murray Farm in 1937

In the last post we traced the early history of the farm located due north of Delaware Park, along Old Capitol Trail, where the Murray Manor trailer park and the wedding venue known as The Farmhouse are located today. We saw it go from being part of a large, pre-William Penn era land grant, to an 80 acre mid-18th Century farm, to being incorporated again inside a larger tract, to finally being a 155 acre family farm. It went through numerous families with names like Cann, White, Reynolds, Rice, Brown, and McCallister. Finally, in 1917, it was sold to Levi W. and Kate Murray for $13,000. This was both the beginning of a new era for the Murrays, and the culmination of generations of family work.

Although many of you may know the name only from Murray Manor (Mill Creek Trailer Park until the late 1980's), besides being in that location for more than a century now, the Murray family goes back several more generations and another three quarters of a century in New Castle County. We begin with Levi W. Murray, Jr.'s grandfather, Samuel. Samuel Murray was born about 1809 in Pennsylvania, possibly in Philadelphia. I say that because the first record of him in Delaware is a December 1842 deed in which Samuel, Elizabeth, Ann, John, Levi, and David Murray -- all described as being "of the City of Philadelphia" -- purchase a "Tavern house or tenement and lot of land" in the Village of Glasgow. I've yet to find proof, but I assume that this is Samuel and his five siblings. I don't know why they purchased the tavern, or what their connection was at the time to the area. They only held it for a few months, selling the tavern and lot in March 1843, so it could have just been an investment opportunity. Glasgow was originally known as Aiken's Tavern, named for the colonial-era establishment. The old tavern was torn down in the 1830's and a new one built across the road (where the Arby's is now), and this is presumably what the Murray kids bought.

In any case, if this was Samuel's first introduction to Pencader Hundred, he seems to have taken to the area. He may have even moved down around that time, because a mere two years later, in October 1845, Samuel Murray purchased 17 acres of land, about two miles southwest of Glasgow. In the deed, Murray is described as already being a resident of Pencader Hundred. He obviously knew this farm well, because dated the same day, he sold six acres of it that sat on the south side of the railroad tracks.

A (Much Better) History of the Brown-Murray Farm, aka The Farmhouse -- Part I

The Farmhouse today

More than ten years ago I wrote a post about the property on which the event venue known as The 
Farmhouse, on Old Capitol Trail by Murray Manor and Delaware Park, sits. I did the best I could at piecing together the farm's story, with the resources I had available to me at the time. Aside from a lack of details, I did get most of it right, with one notable exception that we'll address shortly. In the intervening years, though, I've gotten access to property records and cultivated a better understanding of the area. After recent outreach from the owners of The Farmhouse (still members of the Murray family, who have owned the home for over a century now), I decided to take another shot at telling the story, now that I can use more actual facts and fewer guesses.

The last time the 155 acres were sold to a new family as a farm was in February 1917, when Levi W. Murray purchased the property from Helen and James McCallister for $13,000. We'll get to Levi and wife Kate in the next post, and see how they got there and what they did after they arrived. But the story of the land goes back much further, although the central mystery of exactly when the original portion of the house was constructed is still unclear. 

The land that would eventually make up the 155 acre farm was originally part of a larger tract of 570 acres laid out and sold in 1676 by Edmund Andros, Governor of New York (this was even before William Penn's arrival). It was sold originally to two men, then consolidated to one in 1679, then parts of it sold of through the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. Ultimately, at least 270 acres of it was consolidated under the ownership of William Cann, who in 1749 sold a square lot (113 perches, or about 1865 feet, on a side) to Moses White. To the best of my ability to decipher, the image below shows where that 80 acre lot was. Old Capitol Trail now runs though the upper corner of it, Kirkwood Highway is to the northwest, and Delaware Park is to the south.