The Surprising Backstory of the Tatnall Gazebo

The Tatnall Gazebo

Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful grounds of the Tatnall School, located on Barley 
Mill Road. There are a number of potential blog post topics related to the school, whether it's the founding of the school and its operation along Delaware Avenue in Wilmington beginning in the 1930, the move out of the city in 1952, or the 1860's house purchased by the school, which is still in use today. All good subjects for sure, but the story I want to tell now is that of a smaller structure on campus. It stands between that gorgeous old house and much newer tennis courts and playgrounds. It looks like a throw-back to a very much older time, and while it isn't quite that old, it does predate Tatnall's Christiana Hundred campus.

The structure in question is what appears to be a concrete gazebo, crafted in the style of a Greek temple. And while it could be just a random piece of decorative architecture on the grounds, its history and significance are quite a bit greater. Of all the things you might guess this cute little building was, I'd feel confident in saying "gas station" would be pretty far down the list. And yet, sure enough, that's what it was. The Tatnall gazebo was built as a gas station in Wilmington, and stood at 11th and Washington Streets for over 40 years. (It was boarded up for a number of years prior to being moved, and it's unclear exactly when it stopped doing business.)

Since most of you are thinking, "I've never seen a gas station like that," a little background and context might help it make more sense. Back in the earliest days of the automobile, car owners had to buy gasoline by the bucketful, take it home, and fill it into their tanks themselves using a measuring can. That all changed in 1905, with the introduction of S.F. Bowser's Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump. The big innovation here was the hose that drivers could use to pump gasoline directly into their car's tank. These contraptions, nicknamed "filling stations", were installed along the sides of public streets outside of general stores and the like. The pumps out front of John H. Foard's Store in Marshallton were typical of what you'd see in rural areas. However, in the cities, these street-side pumps tended to block traffic as motorists pulled in to fill up.

The Hanna-Eastburn Farm

The c. 1908 Ferris Eastburn House

In doing historical research, one of the most frustrating (at times) and exhilarating (at others) things I've run across is the seemingly randomness of what gets recorded and remembered, and what gets lost to time. Very often there's some piece of information that you figure has to be recorded somewhere, or that there's some trace of, but you just can't seem to find. But once in a while, just by chance, you'll find some mention of something that helps other pieces of the puzzle fall into place. This story has both.

The story revolves around two houses -- one likely built over 200 years ago and one erected just over a century ago. The first one we know frustratingly little about, while for the second one I've found a few small clues that seemingly tell much of its tale. This second house seemingly replaced (although maybe not at first) the older one at the same time the property was changing hands from one family to another. In fact, since a descendant still lives on the property (though not in the old house), we can say that at least part of the land has been owned by only two families since 1793!

The land we're talking about lies on the west side of Limestone Road along Ferris Drive in Eastburn Farms, just above the Pike Creek Shopping Center and the Mermaid Tavern. It was actually touched upon briefly and incompletely in a post from 2015 about the Hanna Family, as this property was previously part of a larger tract owned by the Hannas. But long before that, it started out as a portion of a 1000 acre tract laid out and granted on January 29, 1689 to John Champion, John Latham, Christopher White, and John Reynolds. They must have each had a portion, since a later deeds states that a 200 acre part of it belonged to White, and was known as Rosedale.

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.

The Intertwined Histories of the Milltown Road Farms -- Part 2, The McKee (Grendon Farms) Farm

McKee-Johnston-Stephenson Farm - 1952,
with modern streets overlaid

In the last post, we traced the history of the southern portion of the old Ball farmstead, through the ownership of Benjamin and William Sanders, to Robert McFarlin, to Robert Stuart, then to William and Elizabeth Murray, to Ellison Putney, and then finally to the Malmgrens. Now we move to the northern farm, which would eventually become Grendon Farms, and which was originally inquired about. First, we circle back to the time soon after Benjamin Sanders' death in 1860. I've frustratingly not been able to find this particular deed, but sometime between 1861 and 1868, the 78 acre farm (which makes sense -- that's what was left of his original approximately 150 acres after the sale of the southern 72 to son William) was purchased by Andrew McKee, who would have been in his early to mid 50's at the time.

Although a new landowner in MCH, McKee was no stranger to the area, nor was his family new to landowning. He was born and raised in Brandywine Hundred, on his father's farm just north of Wilmington, along the Concord Turnpike. The incline going up from I-95 to Fairfax is to this day known as McKee's Hill, as the family had been there since the earliest days of English occupation. Our Andrew McKee (not his uncle Andrew who the owned the Brandywine Hundred farm at the time) had moved to MCH sometime in the 1840's and leased the farm along Limestone Road directly north of Stanton (later the Satterthwaite farm).

The Intertwined Histories of the Milltown Road Farms -- Part 1, The McFarlin (Heritage Park) Farm

The Sanders-McFarlin House, aka
The Jesus House (since 1975)

It seems to be a recent trend here that I start researching a property that appears to have a relatively straightforward history, but which turns out to be anything but. This has happened again, but this time with the added complication that there are two farms with intertwined histories. It would be incomplete to tell one story without the other, since they started out together and were more or less reunited by a mid-20th Century developer. In this post we'll get a bit of their shared history, and then trace the story of the southern of the two farms (but not the one originally inquired about).

The trip down this particular rabbit hole began with a simple question from a longtime resident of the neighborhood of Grendon Farms (thanks, Tim!), asking about its history. The confusing aspect of all this began right at the beginning, in even defining where Grendon Farms is. For the most part, Grendon Farms is understood to be the small community on the east side of Milltown Road, just down the road from The John Dickinson School and across from Heritage Park. However, those houses across the road are not actually all Heritage Park. From the school down to the Jesus House there are four different developments -- Montclare, Grendon Farms, Heritage Park, and the Village of Lindell -- all built at slightly different dates on different properties. This was the first thing I needed to understand, because it only got worse from there.

The first of the these neighborhoods was Grendon Farms, begun in 1958 on the property previously owned by Joseph Gheen Stephenson. In 1950, Stephenson bought a farm of just under 90 acres, on both sides of Milltown Road, from Samuel and Cornelia Johnston. (We'll weave our way through the centuries to arrive back at that point, in the next post.) However, not long after Grendon Farms began construction, developer Frank Robino purchased the neighboring farm and the burgeoning Grendon Farms, renaming the whole thing Heritage Park in Grendon Farms. So although at the light at Milltown Road and Grendon Drive the signs say Grendon Farms on one side and Heritage Park on the other, technically all the roads around Grendon Drive on both sides are Grendon Farms (at least according to the county's Parcel View site). This includes Gheen Road and Stephenson Drive, in what most would call Heritage Park.

The Rubencame-Woodward Farm

The Rubencame-Woodward House

Very often on this blog, the sites we look at are hidden away on some back road or lightly-populated corner of the hundred, or tucked neatly into the middle of a mid-century, suburban neighborhood. That's mostly because, and I can't stress this enough, I have no control over where they are! However, the farm we'll investigate in this post was located near what's probably (I don't have the exact traffic statistics) the most heavily travelled area in Mill Creek Hundred -- the Kirkwood Highway/Limestone Road intersection. This area is pretty much the epitome of 20th Century commercial suburban sprawl, so much so that's it's almost weird to think of it as having a rural, agricultural past -- but it does. And though they've been gone for more than four and six decades respectively, I'm sure some of you can still recall the house and barn that stood along Limestone Road.

The farm anchored by the house seen above was under the ownership of only one family for more than 150 years (although it might not seem like it from the title of the post), but its history prior to that is rich as well. It gets confusing at times, but does come in contact with some interesting stories and people. I'll do what I can to shed some light on it, without getting too far off track or mired in irrelevant details (admittedly, always a struggle). Much like the nearby and recently featured Reynolds-Brown-Murray Farm (with which it does have a later connection), the acreage of this farm also changed a few times over the years, although not as many times as it might seem.

The earliest deed I have for what would become the Rubencame-Woodward farm is for a sale in 1757 from Duncan Drummond to William Johnson. However, within it, this deed documents another 70+ years of history and sales. The first was dated July 12, 1685, when William Penn's agents granted 110 acres to Aaron Johnson Vandenburg, "near a certain creek known by the name Rum Creek now called Mill Creek". (I think the name may have come from another early area landowner, Charles Rumsey.) In his 1701 will, Vandenburg ultimately left his estate to Rev. Erik Bjorck (spelled differently, but has to be him) and Old Swedes Church. Rev. Bjorck and Vandenburg's widow sold the farm in 1714 to James Robinson, who owned several other tracts in MCH totaling almost 1000 acres. He also built the first mill in what would later become Milltown.

The Milford Crossroads School, District #37

The second Milford Crossroads School,
as it looked in the 1920's

It's been a while since we've taken a look at an old schoolhouse, and to the best of my knowledge I've 
covered just about every 19th Century school in Mill Creek Hundred -- except for the one that stood near Milford Crossroads. It was actually one of the oldest schools in the area, and had two different schoolhouses over the years, serving the children of the region. The last school stood until fairly recently and was used as a residence for several decades -- and I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of you had contact with the owners at some point.

The school stood on the east side of Paper Mill Road just below its intersection with Possum Park/Thomson Station Road (aka, Milford Crossroads). The spot is today directly north of the northern entrance into the Shops at Louviers. Designated as District #37, the school was certainly one of the earlier ones established, and appears on the 1849 map. I had assumed that the school and district were likely set up soon after the Free School Act of 1829. However, determining the exact build dates of these older schools can be difficult because there's usually not much in the way of documentation, with the exception of one kind of secondary clue.

I've learned that if you're lucky and know the right names to look up, you might be able to find the deed wherein a farmer sells a small lot to the trustees of a school, for the purpose of erecting a schoolhouse. So, thinking the school was built circa 1830, I tried to figure out who might have owned the surrounding farm at the time and attempted to find the deed, but to no avail. It turns out, I was looking at the wrong timeframe. It wasn't until I attacked it from the other end that I found the answer.