The Saunders-Currinder Farms -- Part One

Nathaniel Bryan's 200 acres, sold in 1776 to Thomas
Shields, later owned by the Saunders and Currinders

Across today's landscape, the features we think most about and use most to describe locations would be our roads. However, throughout most of history and well into the 19th Century the vital features were the waterways. In this post we'll look at farms that today I'd describe as being (mostly) just south of the highway, but in their day would probably be described as being "along the creek" instead. It may not be an area most people think much about -- unless you happen to live there. But this area has taken an interesting journey over the past 300 or more years -- it began as a larger tract, was divided and broken up, then later much of it was re-combined into a large property again, but under a different family.

The property we're looking at this time is located on the south side of Kirkwood Highway (mostly), roughly (although not exactly) bordered by the highway, White Clay Creek, Harmony Road, and Red Mill Road. The earliest deed I have found for this land, then at 200 acres, is a sale in November 1776 from Nathaniel Bryan to Thomas Shields. Unfortunately, this deed does not give any information on when and from whom Nathaniel acquired the land. As best as I can tell, the Bryan family seems to have been primarily from Pencader Hundred, although in 1735 Nathaniel purchased 212 acres from his father John, land which sat just across on the south side of White Clay Creek.

It's unclear if that is in any way related to the 200 acres on the north side. Nathaniel could have acquired the Mill Creek Hundred farm soon after, or not until later. When he sold it in 1776 (about a year before he died) he was described in the deed as being "of Mill Creek Hundred" -- and the sale was for "All that Messuage Plantation and Tract of Land" -- all of which implies that he was living on the property at the time of sale. I'm even more certain that the next owner, Thomas Shields, did not live here. He resided and plied his trade in Philadelphia -- described in the newspapers as a goldsmith, and in these deeds as a silversmith. His shop (and presumably his home) was on Front Street near Dock Street, in the area now known as Penn's Landing.

Description of the unique payment method in the 1784 sale to John Saunders

Shields presumably leased out the farm until selling it to another Philly resident, John Saunders, in 1784. Certainly owing to Shields' familiarity with fine metals, payment of the mortgage he gave to Saunders on the farm was to be in "Pennyweights of fine Gold Coin equal in Value and fineness to the Standard Gold Coin of the Kingdom of Portugal". And you thought pounds and shillings were odd to see!

By 1792, though, it seems that Saunders had gotten behind on his payments and was forced to sell the farm back to Shields. However, they had obviously worked out a deal, because immediately (dated the same day) Shields sold the farm to John's sons, Ellis (age 26) and Amos (age 21) Saunders (or, as the deed says of John, "otherwise called Sanders"). The brothers owned the farm as tenants in common, meaning that they both owned the entire property equally. However, it seems likely that over the years they divided it up between them, which makes sense as both had their own families. Ellis married first to Edith Yarnall (of the Yarnall Tavern Yarnalls), but she died (presumably of complications from childbirth) two weeks after her newborn son, in December 1790. He remarried in 1794 to Hannah Mendenhall, daughter of miller Aaron Mendenhall, Jr. They had two children, one of whom we'll meet in more detail in the next post.

Amos married first to Grace Pennock (of a neighboring family) in 1797, then after her 1809 death to Lydia Barton of Massachusetts (not a neighboring family). Unlike his brother, Amos had a large family. And incidentally, their younger brother Benjamin began buying land in 1813 along the west end of Milltown Road, as documented in a previous post. In addition to farming, Amos also served as a Justice of the Peace. The point of all this is that the Sanders family (and the name seems to have changed from Saunders to Sanders in this generation) was well connected to many of the other prominent clans in the area.

The 41½ acres taken by Amos Sanders in 1819

Whether or not they had come to a functional agreement earlier, in 1819 the Brothers Sanders made the division of their father's farm official. They split it into east and west portions, but not equally so. Amos received the western portion (as seen above), which contained 41½ acres. However, perhaps because he had a larger family, his portion contained an old fieldstone farmhouse which still stands today. If the county-listed build date of 1815 is correct, it would mean that Amos had just erected his new home on what was now his farm alone. These farms would be reunited some half century later, but first let's see what happened to each in the interim.

Amos lived most of the rest of his long life here on his farm. It's a bit unclear how many surviving children he and first wife Grace had -- at least seven born with at least three surviving into adulthood. I think all four children with second wife Lydia survived. In the 1850 Census, 79 year old Amos is listed immediately before sons Nathan and Amos, Jr., who are all shown as separate households. My guess is that either they're all in the stone house or there are smaller homes for the boys. In 1860, he's living across the creek with daughter Phebe and her husband, William Ruth. I believe their house was on the west side of Red Mill Road, just north of what's today the Amtrak railroad tracks (the one the road goes over).

Portion of the 1849 map showing the Saunders area. Ellis' farm is by then shown as G. Fitzwater,
to be covered in the next post. Amos died at William Ruth's home (lower center)

Amos Sanders died the next year, on May 9, 1861, just two months prior to his 90th birthday (July 2). Or to put it another way, he was born five years to the day before the Continental Congress voted to declare Independence and was 10 by the time of the Battle of Yorktown. He died four weeks after Confederate troops fired on Ft. Sumter to begin the Civil War. He saw the entirety of the first part of U.S. history.

In his will, Amos decreed that his real estate should be sold in order to fund the numerous bequests he gave to his children, and finally in 1866 it was. The new owner was 61 year old Jacob Currinder, then of Mill Creek Hundred but previously from Pencader Hundred. I believe his previous farm had been just south of Cooch's Bridge. In 1869, three years after buying the 42 acres from the Sanders heirs, Currinder bought 53 adjoining acres on the west side of it from David Eastburn, owner of the Red Mill. However, the 1866 purchase was not the first that Currinder had made of former Sanders land. In the next post, we'll look at that story, the tale of that farm, and how they were all reunited (and then ultimately broken up again).