The Long and Convoluted History of Sugar Loaf Hill Farm -- Part 1

What I believe to be a close approximation 
to the original four Nivin tracts

Over the years here on the blog, we've seen that there are many different paths that the story of a 
property can take. It can go centuries being owned by just a few families, or it can change hands many times. It can start as one big tract and get broken up, or start smaller and get built up. It can be owned by people whose names you know, or by smaller and lesser-known families. In this story, we have pretty much a little bit of everything. This is a farm that has been mentioned in passing a few times before, always with the "I'll have to look more into it later" caveat. Well, it's now later.

The farm in question is often known as Sugar Loaf Hill Farm, although it's unclear when that moniker was attached and by whom. My best guess is sometime in the mid-19th Century, which will be much later in our story (in the next post). That's because the really interesting stuff took place a century or more earlier, and while I don't have every detail nailed down just yet, I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened and when. Our first question though, is where. 

This particular property was both built up, and then later broken apart. The tract lies on the north side of Hercules Road, and at its greatest extent, very generally, stretched from about McKennans Church Road on the west to about halfway down Hercules Road to Lancaster Pike. It then extended up and over Lancaster Pike, over to almost Old Wilmington Road, stepped south and west a few times, ending up on McKennans at about McKean High School. At its largest, the farm included about 420 acres, but it didn't start out that size. Quite confusingly, at the point where I had first jumped into the stream (a few sales in the late 1760's/early 1770's) the property was being sold as four separate (but presumably contiguous) parcels -- of 200, 39, 102, and 80 acres. It was unclear whether they had been acquired simultaneously or cobbled together over the years. I still haven't found all the answers, but I do have enough to piece the story together.

The Surprising Tale of Herbert Singer and his Yearbook

Front of the '46/'47 UD yearbook

I want to tell a bit of a different type of story than we usually have here, and one that I recently stumbled upon quite accidentally. Most of the tale is outside of Delaware, let alone Mill Creek Hundred, but it does begin with a Delaware connection. In fact, it all began simply with me looking down and seeing the word "Hen". It's one of those stories that just kept getting more interesting the more I dug into it, and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

As noted, this all began very simply, with no notion where it would ultimately lead. I was walking around one day and happened to look down in a bin of discarded items (I don't want to bore you with the specifics, but suffice it to say that the item was retrieved very legally and safely). I saw the word "Hen" on what appeared to be a book or certificate of some sort. Thinking that it might have something to do with the University of Delaware (and since my daughter currently attends there and I've recently "reconnected" with UD and Newark) I grabbed it out of curiosity. Once I did, I realized that it was a book, large and hardbound. In fact, it was a UD yearbook -- from the 1946/47 school year! I assume you all know me well enough to know I was excited.

As I looked through the book, I came across one fascinating thing after another. First in the faculty/administration section, I saw several names I recognized from the buildings later named in their honor -- Dr. Wilbur Owen Sypherd, Francis Hagar Squire, and John Fenton Daugherty. And while I didn't recognize any specific names of students, there were plenty of family names I knew -- Duncan, England, Townsend, Winchester, and Hollingsworth, among others. I also had fun identifying the buildings that were pictured. Most looked the same, but with slightly different (and generally sparser) surroundings. Only one building was named differently -- then University Hall, now Hullihen. Well, also Memorial Hall was then the Library.

The Crawford-Rankin Farm

The 200 acre Crawford-Rankin Farm

In the south-central area of Mill Creek Hundred, there lies a farm that for almost 150 years was owned by only two families (although really just one), but now is the home to several hundred. It has a history that reaches back to a colonial business venture which I hadn't (knowingly, at least) run across before, and forward to the biggest family in the state. Part of it now includes street names that wonderfully reflect the history of this region of MCH. 

The property in question lies on the east side of Polly Drummond Hill Road, mostly north of the western end of New Linden Hill Road. However, its story goes back long before the current path of New Linden Hill Road, and even generations before Mrs. Drummond graced the hill that now bears her name. The original tract we're looking at was a 300 acre parcel owned in the early 1770's by something called the Pennsylvania Land Company (PLC). The PLC was a Quaker-owned corporation which bought large swaths of land from William Penn and resold it in smaller parcels. But it was not only Quaker-owned, it was Quaker affiliated -- to the point that there seems to be a discussion among historians as to just how much it was a part of the Society of Friends. I think that most of their land was in the current Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (and I can't recall coming across them before), but they did own this 300 acre property in MCH.

The PLC was founded in 1699 by four Friends in London: Michael Russel, Tobias Collet, Daniel Quare, and Henry Gouldney. The last three of them are named in the deeds I've found relating to this tract. On March 14, 1722, they sold the 300 acres -- bounded on the east by Pike Creek (then called Peck's Creek) and extending likely just past Polly Drummond Hill Road -- to Griffith Lewis. Lewis was a weaver by trade, probably born in the early 1680's (although details about him are scarce). Four years later, in 1726, he also bought 200 acres bordering Red Clay Creek, which will be the topic of an upcoming post. Unfortunately, Griffith and wife Catherine didn't enjoy these properties together for long, as Griffith Lewis died in the early days of January 1731. He willed all his real estate and assets to Catherine (it does not appear that they had any children), and she sold the Red Clay farm in 1738.