Marshallton School, District #77

Marshallton School #77, 99, 99½ in 1930

Over the years, I think we've covered just about every old schoolhouse that does or did once stand in Mill Creek Hundred. However, there's one schoolhouse we've mentioned only in passing, which technically stands in Christiana Hundred, but which served many MCH schoolchildren during its tenure. And because it looks very different from all the other area schools of its day, it's likely that many of you who have seen it may not have even realized that it was a school, let alone its age. I guess you can say that its design was very forward-looking, since to me it looks like a small office building that could have been built at just about any time in the second half of the 20th Century. It is, however, a product of the late 19th Century.

The schoolhouse in question stands in Marshallton, and it's the second of three that have served the children of the village and surrounding area. It's not surprising that the first school didn't come around until a little later, because the Village of Marshallton itself didn't exist until about the 1830's, when the Marshall brothers built the first iron mill there. Originally, any children living in what would become the Marshallton area would have walk up the road to the District #33 Brandywine Springs School, located on Duncan Road just south of McKennans Church Road. I haven't found any direct documentation for when the Marshallton School opened, but I have a pretty big clue.

On July 15, 1854, James and Eleana Cranston sold one acre of land at "the forks of the old New Port Road with another road leading towards Wilmington" for $100 to School District Number Seventy-seven. This, of course, today, would be the southeast corner of Newport Road and Old Capitol Trail. If we assume the schoolhouse was simple and quickly-built, it likely opened for classes in September 1854. It was also likely a small, one-room schoolhouse, probably of frame construction. I've never found a photo that states it was this school, but I have a hunch about one we'll get back to later. This was the primary schoolhouse in the area for the next 40 years.

The Saga of William Bell

"William! William! William Bell! Are you here?" The erudite-looking 25 year old walked in and out of the wards, up and down the aisles, calling out for the man he had known all his life. There were over 1,600 vagrants currently lounging on benches in the Kings County Almshouse in Brooklyn, on this January day in 1899. The searcher and his target were both far from home, and Horace Greely Eastburn walked into a 50 x 30 foot room packed with benches. On the benches were sleeping "tramps", and Horace went to each one of them, lifting their hats, checking to see if it was the missing man he sought.

Finally he found a man with eyes he thought he recognized. "William, is that you?", Horace asked, shaking the man awake.

"Hello, Horace!", replied the man on the bench. It was impressive that he was even recognized. The last time that young Horace G. Eastburn had seen William Bell (several years before), the older man had had his long, curly hair styled in the pompadour fashion, and wore a full beard. Now he was clean-shaven with short hair, and his gentlemanly outfit had been replaced by shabby clothes. He looked like a physical wreck.

Eastburn asked Bell a few more questions, to make sure he knew who he was. "Of course I know you, Horace. You're Samuel's nephew -- Oliver's son -- from Pleasant Hill.", replied Bell.

The Burnt Mill Road House -- Part 2

The Burnt Mill Road House in 1982

In the last post we took a look at nearly a century and a half's worth of history of a house and farm 
located on Burnt Mill Road, tucked along the PA/DE state line in central Christiana Hundred. We followed it from a part of Letitia Penn's Manor of Stenning, to a 335 acre farm sold to John Cloud in 1713, to it's sale in 1726 to John Baldwin. We saw it divided in 1784 by John's son Francis, and given to his sons Levi and William. Levi had the northern half (and for a while, the southern) until his death in 1825, but his children finally sold it out of the family in 1843.

The next owner of the now 73 acre farm was 28 year old Pusey Phillips. Phillips did reside on the farm, but there's not much written about him, likely because he died relatively young (in 1855 at the age of 40) and with no children. No descendants often means no one is looking for your story. It looks like his father Evan had a farm on Old Kennett Road, near where the Greenville Country Club is today, and that they were connected to the milling Phillips family of, among other things, the Ashland and Greenbank Mills.

After sorting out the estate, Pusey's Administrator (and brother) Harvey Phillips sold the farm in 1856 to Thomas Harlan of Chester County. He was born near Centerville in 1825 to Thomas and Beulah Harlan, and just earlier in 1856 had married a recent widow named Mary Ann Martin Pyle. Her first husband, James Bayard Pyle, had died in 1852, leaving Mary Ann with three young daughters and a son. The 1860 Census shows Thomas and Mary Ann in their Burnt Mill Road farm, along with the four Pyle kids and the first three (of eventually six) Harlan children. They remained on the farm until 1868, when Harlan sold the 73 acre farm in two sections, to two different buyers.

The Burnt Mill Road House --Part 1

The Burnt Mill Road House

Some old houses are on old roads that are still well-used today, making the homes easily visible. Some are "hidden" back in the middle of 20th Century developments, making them less well-known -- unless you happen to be a neighbor. But a few historic houses are so off the beaten path and out of the way, that most would never know they were there. One of this type, with an interesting history, is tucked right below the PA state line in central Christiana Hundred. And it's one of those odd properties with a very uneven turnover rate -- it was home to only two families in its first 130 years, then nine different owners in the next 60. Some of the last names you might recognize, even if you don't know the individuals. We'll take a look at that first era in this post, and delve into the second in the next.

The house and farm in question are on the south side of Burnt Mill Road, about three quarters of a mile west of Kennett Pike (good thing, because the north side of Burnt Mill, and I think the road itself, are in Pennsylvania), and are the only one of the several historic homes on the road to be on the Delaware side. Like most estates in the northern reaches of middle and western NCC, its history (at least its European-owned history) begins with the Penn family. The land was originally a part of the 15,500 acre tract known as the Manor of Stenning, given by William Penn to his daughter Letitia in 1701. On June 29, 1713, Letitia's attorneys in America, Samuel Carpenter and James Logan, sold 335 acres on the eastern edge of the Manor to John Cloud, for the price of a yearly rent payment of three shillings. (There's still a stone marker along Burnt Mill Road identifying the Manor Line.)

In 1726, Cloud sold 154 acres of his land to a cordwainer (a maker of leather shoes) named John Baldwin. I think that Cloud might have been the uncle of John Baldwin's wife Sarah. My approximation of that tract can be seen below - Burnt Mill Road is on the top edge of it, Snuff Mill Road runs through the bottom potion, and Old Kennett Road is just south of it (Kennett Pike (Rt. 52.) is to the right). I believe it was basically the eastern half of Cloud's property, although I don't have either the 1713 deed or the original of the 1726 sale (what I do have, and why, will be explained in a moment). Through subsequent generations, the Baldwin family would hold all of the land for the next 111 years, then about half for another six years.