of Mill Creek Hundred. It was comprised of Italian immigrant workers (and some of their families) employed at the stone quarry there. They were doing dangerous manual labor -- the kind often offered to immigrants. There was another kind of dangerous work common in the 19th Century, and when it came rumbling through New Castle County in the 1880's it gave rise to another Italian enclave on the other end of Mill Creek Hundred. This one was in some ways similar and in other ways different than the Wooddale community. Sadly, it also shows that the way immigrants are treated in this country has not changed much over the past 140 years.
Without question, one of the great engineering feats of the 19th Century was the construction of the railroad system. Being difficult, dangerous, mobile work, the building of the railroads was often given to immigrant workers, often Chinese in the western states and European (such as Irish) in the east. There were two major railroad lines that came through New Castle County in the 19th Century. The first was the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore, constructed in the 1830's (this line is now used by Amtrak). That was it for the next 50 years or so (with the exception of the smaller more local lines like the Wilmington & Western and the Wilmington & Northern), until the Baltimore & Ohio decided it wanted a northeastern route to compete with the Pennsylvania Railroad.
When the B&O came building their line through NCC in 1883/84, it seems that their workforce was primarily Italian. It's kind of funny -- I don't know about you, but when I think of railroads being built by teams of workers, I really only picture it in very remote places. Like through the prairie, or across mountains, or through forests miles from nowhere. I never really thought about a large cohort of men traveling slowly, working through a populated area like White Clay and Mill Creek Hundreds. Where would they stay while they did their work in an area?
