Behemoth in White Clay Creek: Chambers Rock and Its Complex Legacy

Sign at the corner of Chambers Rock
 Road and New London Road, 1972 

I'm thrilled and proud to be able to share with you another Guest Post by John Whiteclay Chambers II, retired professor and former chair of the History Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. John, a descendant of the Chambers Family of the western Mill Creek/northern White Clay Creek Hundred area, shared with us recently a post on Restoring the Chambers Family Farm in the 20th Century. In this latest article he tells us about the origins of the names "Chambers Rock" and "Chambers' Rocks", how they are actually referring to different things, and how one of the names was used for a wonderful piece of 19th Century history that I had been completely unaware of. I hope you enjoy it, and tremendous thanks go to John for writing and sharing this with us! And note, the extensive and extremely informative footnotes are located at the end of the post.

Behemoth in White Clay Creek:

 Chambers Rock and Its Complex Legacy

By John Whiteclay Chambers II

Excerpt from John Whiteclay Chambers II, “The Chambers Family of Hilltop,” Copyright © 2021.   Do not replicate without written permission from the author. 

* John Whiteclay Chambers II retired from Rutgers University in 2017 as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and a former Chair of the History Department. He welcomes comments on the subject of this article. <john.chambers@rutgers.edu.>

“People say where is Chambers Rock?” says Kathleen Sullivan, naturalist at White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. “They disagree over whether there is one rock, or if that is the name of the farm because there were so many rocks around it.”¹  She was referring to a former farm owned for generations by the Chambers family, a small part of which is now a development called “Chambers Rock Farm.”² 

People also know of the rock from “Chambers Rock Road,” a country road that runs through the old farm located on the state line between Delaware and Pennsylvania. Is there a “Chambers Rock”? There is, but to many people, its name and the name’s complex and varied history remain a mystery. 

The derivation of the name seems forgotten—except by some of those who lived nearby. “It was common knowledge among people who lived on Chambers Rock Road that there was a Rock and there had been a picnic ground years ago,” said Anne Murray, who lived on “Pennview” farm on that road from 1957 to 2000. Growing up nearby in the 1950s and 1960s in a house on Thompson Station Road that is now the Delaware Park’s headquarters, Joe Allmond also recalled it. “I remember the name,” he said, “and I remember hearing, ‘Oh, it’s called Chambers Rock Farm because of the Rock.’”³