The Mills of Shellpot Creek -- Part 2

Map of the upper mills of Shellpot Creek

In the last post we set the stage for the earliest mills built along Brandywine Hundred's Shellpot Creek, the three mills (probably two grist mills and one saw mill) built by the early Swedish settlers under their Dutch Masters governors. The first was likely located near today's Colony Boulevard, while it seems logical the think the second was at the same place that Henry Webster would build his mill in the later 1700's. We learned that after it ceased operating around 1890, Webster's Mill was for over 40 years surrounded by the Shellpot Park amusement park. 

For the next mills, we have to move a bit farther upstream. And again, as with the first two Swedish mills, the site of the third is not known for sure. Since there probably wouldn't have been a need for three grist mills so close together, it's likely that either this one, or possibly even the second one at the later Webster site, was a saw mill. This third Swedish mill was built in 1679 by Olle Oelsen, alias Tossen. (You'll often see an "alias" for the early Swedes, as a result of the naming conventions in use at the time. Instead of keeping their father's last name, children would often get a patronym, or last name, ending in -son or -dottir. Not only did it mean that last names kept changing in families, but it often led to multiple people having the same name. Therefore they'd get a nickname, or alias, to help differentiate them.)

It's not known how long Olle Oelsen, alias Tossen's, mill (be it saw or grist) operated or exactly where it was. It might have been only a short distance above the later Webster Mill site, or it could have a little farther up where the next mill would be built. This one -- a saw mill --  seems to have been built around 1769 by George Robinson. The 1960 C.M. Allmond III News Journal articles from which much of this information came says that Robinson was the son-in-law of Valentine Hollingsworth, one of the first and largest landowners in that part of Brandywine Hundred. However, there are several George Robinsons, and unless I'm mistaken (always a possibility) this George is Hollingsworth's grandson (his father, also George, was the son-in-law).

The Mills of Shellpot Creek -- Part 1

Etching of the Webster Mill on Shellpot Creek
by Robert Shaw, 1904

For obvious reasons we spend most of our time on this site in Mill Creek Hundred, which we've seen 
over and over again was aptly named. However, Mill Creek Hundred did not, of course, have a monopoly on mills in New Castle County, nor did it have the earliest. Almost two decades before the first MCH mill was built near Stanton in 1680, mills were being built along a waterway in Brandywine Hundred, but probably not the one you'd expect. Although there was early milling along Brandywine Creek, the first water-powered mill was built on Shellpot Creek, now a very unassuming and underwhelming waterway, but one with a deep history. For those who know the area, Shellpot runs north/south, generally in the Shipley Road/Marsh Road vicinity. The region we'll be studying extends from just south of Philadelphia Pike almost up to Foulk Road.

(I should say that much of the information for this post and the next came from a fantastic, three-part series of articles written by Charles M. Allmond III, and published in the News Journal in early 1960. Most of my work here was trying to verify and expand upon it where I could, and just go with his work when I couldn't.)

To fully understand what was going on, we have to go back to the earliest days of European settlement of Delaware, decades before the arrival of the English and William Penn. It's a little confusing, with control going back and forth a few times between the Swedes and the Dutch, but by the 1660's the Dutch had control over the area, with many Swedish farmers (and some Finns thrown in) who had sworn loyalty to them. The main settlements were at Fort Altena (previously Fort Christina, near The Rocks in Wilmington) and New Amstel (previously Fort Casimir, now New Castle). Unfortunately for the farmers, the only places to grind their grain were a windmill at Fort Altena that didn't seem to work well, a horse mill at New Amstel, and a small tub mill all the way up at Upland, now Chester. They needed something closer.