Mt. Cuba's Diamond School District #84

Section of an 1860 map showing the Diamond 
School (red circle), and the Mt Pleasant (left blue)
and Walnut Green (right blue) Schools

In the recent post about the District #77 Marshallton School, I mentioned that over the years we had covered "just about every old schoolhouse that does or did once stand in Mill Creek Hundred". In saying that, I did have in mind one school that we hadn't yet featured and about which I've only recently learned. This may well be the last 19th Century MCH school to cover, and although it was open for over 60 years, it has my vote as the most obscure of the old rural schools in the area. In fact, I was a good bit into my investigation of it before I even figured out what its name was.

This old schoolhouse stood on the south side of the bend in Barley Mill Road, between Mt. Cuba Road and the Mt. Cuba Center. As noted it operated as a school for more than 60 years, and stood as a residence for another 60 or 70 after that (I think). The extent of my knowledge of the history of this school has a bit of a gap in it. It basically boils down to -- I know when it started...40 years of almost nothing...a controversy...another decade of nothing...then a 10 year long crusade to close it. Then at the end there's a connection to a business that some of you probably had contact with at some point over the years. But let's start at the beginning...

Since there are rarely newspaper articles about the openings of pre-1900 schools, I've found that the most reliable way to determine the start date for a school is to find the original deed, wherein a landowner sells a parcel of land to a school district. Sometimes it takes a while, having to narrow down a timeframe, often using maps, and then figure out who the property owner would have been at the time. In this case it was a little tricky, because there was a home very close to the schoolhouse location. The 1849 map has a dot for a structure in the right place, but it doesn't label it, so I couldn't tell if the school was there then or not. (Plus, I had confused myself by having an old deed that I thought was this school but was actually for the nearby Mt. Pleasant School on Old Wilmington Road.)

Delaware's First Draft -- August 1863

This post will be a little different than most, as it won't focus on a particular place, person, or family. Instead, it's actually a result of my problem with gift for tending to wander off track while researching. See, I was actually writing what should be the next post, but whilst doing so realized that the deed I had for its origin was wrong -- it was for a nearby, but similar, site. So I went back to find it, and also tried to find the earliest newspaper mention of it that I could. Turns out that was in the August 18, 1863 edition of the Delaware State Journal and Statesman. But while reading the brief mention of my intended site I happened to notice, on the same page, a listing of names. And since the most recent post included two clippings of parties (complete with a list of guests), I thought this might be the same type of thing. It was not.

What I was actually seeing was part of the list of names selected in the first draft done in Delaware, which had been performed the week before. In information you don't need to know but which I'll tell you anyway, I recently found a history podcast I like called History That Doesn't Suck. It's actually been around since 2017, but I just started listening to it a few months back and I've been following through the old episodes, which cover American history chronologically, beginning with the Revolutionary War. As luck would have it, I happen to currently be in 1863, having just listened to an episode about the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place on July 1-3, 1863. A previous episode focused on the draft and the resistance to it (including the New York City Draft Riots). The point is, when I realized what I was seeing on the page it fully resonated with me. I felt like I was reading a current newspaper.

The Robinson-Clark House

Modern view of the Robinson-Clark House

One of the many things I love about our local history is the variety in the historic homes standing in Mill Creek Hundred. In this case, specifically, how some look immediately impressive, while others, at first sight, might seem a bit more, shall we say, utilitarian. However, if there's nothing else you've learned from this site over the years, I hope you've come to see that all these sites have fascinating stories of their own. The particular home we'll look at now is a two story, stuccoed, slightly asymmetrical three bay home, set just a few feet off of Hercules Road, just east of Newport Gap Pike. That puts it on the north end of the property across from Emily Bissell Hospital, which is important, because that's the tract it was historically connected to.

Eventually, and for most of its time, the house would sit on a 12 acre lot, but before that it was part of a larger tract. Actually, the 12 acres were originally on the northern edge of the 239 acres warranted to Bryan McDonald, Sr. in 1689. It was then part of the land willed to his son Bryan, Jr. in 1707, then part of the 286 acres sold to Jeremiah Wollaston in 1746. Wollaston in turn sold the northern 147 acres of it to George Robinson in 1757. Much of this was laid out in the post about the David Graves House, as our 12 acres were part of the original tract that also contained the Graves House. However, with the transition to the Robinson family, we turn our attention to the post detailing the later Henry Clark Woolen Mill. It was in fact the Robinsons who erected the first mill here along Hyde Run, sometime prior to 1781.

We can confidently push it beyond that date because in that year a certain deed specifically referenced a corn or grist mill on the property. But to get the full picture, we have to jump back a few years. I mentioned in the Henry Clark post that information about the Robinsons in general was hard to come by. While that's still mostly true, there are a few things specific to this tract that I've since found. When George and wife Elizabeth moved onto their farm in 1757 (probably building the original portion of the house that would later become Sunnybrook Cottage), they had two sons with them -- John and Jacob. When George died in 1766, he willed his land to these two sons. They owned it jointly until 1781, when they mutually divided the land more or less in half -- John took the portion west of Hyde Run and Jacob took the portion east. This deed dividing the land specifically mentions a mill. Ah, but there was another, younger brother.

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.