The Eastburn Homestead -- Part 2

The Eastburn Homestead today

In the first post about the Eastburn Homestead, we looked at the early years of the Eastburn family in
Mill Creek Hundred, beginning with David Eastburn's purchase of about 150 acres of land near Milltown in 1804. Twelve years later, along with his brother-in-law Abel Jeanes, Eastburn purchased about 200 acres near Pleasant Hill, south of Corner Ketch. The property basically sat on the south side of Paper Mill Road, between Polly Drummond Hill Road and Upper Pike Creek Road. In addition to having a brick house, an inactive grist mill, and various other structures, the property contained several working limestone quarries and lime kilns.

Two years later, in 1818, the men divided their joint property between them nearly in half, with Eastburn taking the northwestern portion and Jeanes the southeastern. Eastburn's part was slightly larger, but Jeanes' section included what's now the Eastburn-Jeanes Lime Kiln District and seemingly all the existing structures at the time. The real question for us is whether the Eastburn House was there when the tract was purchased, and when the house was built. If "probably in the early 1800's" is good enough for you, feel free to skip the next section. If not, read on and be prepared to be frustrated.

As far as I know (and this includes talking to the new current owners), there's nothing definitive in or on the house that gives an exact date. The county lists it as 1810, but the older picture further down in the post had a date attached to it of 1813 (for the house, not the photo). Both of these dates would slightly predate the arrival of the Eastburns, and both (or even an earlier one, which we'll get to later) are certainly plausible. If new information arises to corroborate one of these dates I'll be perfectly willing to accept it, but when I read the evidence, my money (disclosure -- I have very little money), is on a slightly later date.

As we saw in the first post, the 200+ acres acquired by Eastburn and Jeanes in 1816 were part of a larger, 470 acre tract that had been owned by Capt. James Black. After he died, his widow Mary leased his former properties, which not only included this tract but also the Roseville Mill site on White Clay Creek east of Newark. The 1809 ad below lists both. And as the ad states, the "Valuable Plantation" had been leased as two separate farms, each with a dwelling house. Although nothing states this explicitly, I feel like Eastburn and Jeanes probably bought one of these two farms. And since the other farm likely extended eastward to Limestone Road, these two houses (Eastburn and Jeanes) seem too close together to be on separate farms. Assuming that, it would make sense that there would be only one substantial dwelling on the tract the brothers-in-law bought (the Eastburn House, in my opinion, is way too big and substantial to have been a tenant house, with one possible exception we'll discuss in a moment). The Jeanes Mansion is older and adjacent to the other structures, so it was likely the dwelling on this one of the original two farms.

1809 ad for the Black properties. Eastburn and Jeanes would
buy part of the 470 acre plantation. This ad also proves for
sure that the lime quarries and kilns predated them

John Kinsey acquired the land from Mary Black in 1811, and while it's possible that he built the house before selling in 1816, I think that's unlikely as he would have had no reason to do so (Kinsey did not live on any of the Black lands). Therefore, I believe that David Eastburn had the house built after the 1816 sale. Another possible clue to that (at least in my mind) as noted in the last post is that he did not sell his former property in Milltown until early 1819. Was that because he was unable to sell it, because he leased it for a couple seasons, or was it because the family remained in Milltown until their new home was finished at Pleasant Hill? I have found no evidence either way, but my guess is the later.

It should also be noted (thanks, Chris, for calling this to my attention) that in Samuel Eastburn's (more on him below) entry in Runk's The Biographical and Genealogical History of Delaware it specifically states that after acquiring the property, David Eastburn, "...turned his attention to improving his property, on which he built a dwelling house and a large barn, both of stone." This was published in 1899, so it's well after the fact, but the information would have come from the family. Plus, the 1810's were smack-dab at the height of the era of stone home building.

There is, though, one possible curveball to the story. A 1963 article about a tour of notable Newark-area homes says of the house, "The more recent section of the house was built in 1813 and the another [sic] section is about 25 years older." This was during the ownership of the Flinns (who we'll meet shortly), and though they did a lot of renovations to the house I don't know where they got those dates. The 1813 date matches the photograph, but that might be because it may have come from them. If I find more reason to believe that the house long predates the Eastburns, I'll return to it in another post and try to dig back farther.

After patriarch David Eastburn's death in 1824, the 14 children of that first generation slowly moved out over the next few decades, as they became adults and started their own families. Of course, most didn't move far and Joseph oversaw the lime business first from his farm on Pleasant Hill Road and then from the Abel Jeanes mansion next door. By the 1850 Census, only David, Samuel, and Margaret were living with mother Elizabeth. They were joined by Amos' nine year old daughter Mary and Isaac's four year old son Oliver. I don't know why, except that with large families it might have been a matter of spreading out some of the children.

By 1860, only Samuel (who had not yet married) and Margaret (who had not yet married her brother-in-law John Mitchell) remained with Mother, joined now by Isaac's eighteen year old daughter Sarah, the now fourteen year old Oliver, Isaiah's seven year old Martha, and Isaac's twenty-six year old son Samuel. However, with so many family members nearby, I have a feeling the old homestead saw its fair share of visitors.

Elizabeth Jeanes Eastburn died on January 30, 1864, and in her will (which was probably written several years before) gave the home farm to David, Margaret, and Samuel. Since both David and Margaret were married and in their own homes by 1864, they sold their shares of the property to Samuel in late 1864. As far as I can tell, Samuel Eastburn had a long, productive, and relatively quiet life, spending all 88 of his years living in the family home. The one newsworthy incident I found regarding Samuel is one I'm sure he would rather have done without.

The rear of the Eastburn Homestead, probably how
it looked the morning Samuel and Ella set out

On the morning of April 25, 1894, the 75 year old Samuel set off from his home to go to market in Wilmington, which was his normal routine (I have to say it still amazes me that people regularly did treks like this in a wagon, at horse-walking speeds -- I would consider Pleasant Hill-to-Wilmington to be a long drive in a car today). With him was his 18 year old grand niece Ella Collins. As they came down Newport Gap Pike below Marshallton/Price's Corner, they approached the B&O crossing just south of Old Capitol Trail. Apparently the partially deaf Eastburn didn't hear the train a-comin', and the locomotive smashed into the wagon, destroying it and throwing both passengers -- Ella more than 40 feet.

Samuel suffered a broken arm and a broken leg, and was in the hospital for nearly three months. Poor Ella did not fare so well. Immediately after the accident the train crew did not think they were allowed to move her(?!?), so she laid on her back, on the embankment, bleeding with two broken legs for 40 minutes before being taken to a nearby house. She eventually made it to the hospital, but died of her injuries later that night. I imagine this was a devastating blow to Samuel, as Ella was the daughter of his niece Martha, who had lived with him as a girl.

Samuel had remained a bachelor until finally marrying Emma Bane in 1884, when he was 65 and she 36. I have no way to know if this was a union of love, a marriage of convenience, or somewhere in between, but the couple never did have any children. When Samuel died in 1906, he left his home and farm, which by then contained 79 acres, to Emma. With no use for it and no children to pass it to, late in 1906 Emma sold the farm to Levi Scott Townsend, ending 90 years of Eastburn ownership of the land.

Mr. Townsend was not a farmer, however, but a banker, and this was probably some sort of procedural sale because six days later he resold the farm for the same ($7000) amount. Although the property was now out of the hands of the Eastburn family, it was still owned by a family -- this time the Peaches. The new buyers of the farm were siblings Margaret, William, Edmund, and John Peach, and their brother-in-law Lewis Derickson. They were the owners of the McDaniel-Peach House nearby, on the other side of Paper Mill Road.

They were also the owners of the Peach Kaolin Company. They mined the clay on their property, and this is probably why they bought the Eastburn Farm. Although I'm not sure exactly where on the property they were, a later newspaper article from 1935 stated that the Peach Kaolin Company owned the farm and operated two clay mines there. The limestone quarried by Jeanes and Eastburn is not the same as the kaolin clay, but the two are geologically related. I do know of one place on the property where kaolin was later mined, and we'll get to that in a moment.

As for the house, I don't know if any of the Peaches resided there during their tenure or if they rented it out. My guess is that there was a tenant farmer there for the ten years they owned it. The Peaches (and Derickson) finally sold the farm in 1916 to Thomas Dwyer. Dwyer was a 50 year old Irish immigrant who had come to the US in 1889. At the time of the sale, he and wife Nora had about seven kids in the house -- not Eastburn level, but still crowded.

1881 map showing some of the properties that were (or had been) in the Eastburn family (circles)
The star indicates the Eastburn Homestead. The line is the c.1927 section of Paper Mill Road

Today, it would be easy to think of the Eastburn land as stretching from Polly Drummond Hill Road eastward to Upper Pike Creek Road, and from the Jeanes-dividing lane up to Paper Mill Road. The problem with that is that this stretch of Paper Mill Road didn't exist until about 1927. Paper Mill Road coming up from Newark and Milford Crossroads veered northeastward just below Paper Mill Park, and the section coming southwest from Limestone Road continued straight, ending as today's Pigeon Hollow Road.

I haven't traced the exact metes and bounds of the tract, but in addition to extending all the way up across the modern road to Pigeon Hollow Road (with the exception of lots along the road sold to family members), the Eastburn (now Dwyer) tract also included the field at what's now the southwest corner of Paper Mill and Corner Ketch Roads. This corner happens to be adjacent to the property of the Newark China Clay Company and to the fields where they were actively mining kaolin. Not surprisingly, Newark China Clay did not have access to the Eastburn property while it was owned by the Peaches, a competitor.

But unlike the Peaches, Dwyer was by then just a farmer and had no interest in mining clay (although he had been listed as a clay worker in the 1900 Census in Hockessin). Less than three weeks after acquiring the farm Dwyer gave Newark China Clay access to his entire property for the purpose of clay mining (for 15 cents a ton of raw clay extracted), so long as they did not damage any of his crops. I don't know if any mining was done beyond what's now that corner field, but the option was there.

April 25, 1935 notice of the sale to Dr. Flinn

Thomas Dwyer, wife Honora and family farmed the property for almost 20 years, but by 1935 they were getting older, Thomas was looking to retire, and Honora had been sick. They agreed in the spring of 1935 to sell the farm to Dr. Irvine M. Flinn, Jr., although the transfer did not take place until the fall. Honora Dwyer died in early September, and the rest of the family moved to Hockessin a few weeks later. Thomas passed in March 1942.

Dr. Irvine M. Flinn, Jr. was a prominent orthopedic surgeon, and the son of a physician. His father was a well-known doctor, first in Newport and then in Wilmington. His brother Lewis was also a doctor, and was one of the founders of, and the first president of, the Delaware Academy of Medicine. Dr. Flinn, Jr. was deeply involved with charitable causes, including the Red Cross, polio, and other children's causes. He also served almost three years in the Army during WWII, first in Iceland then in England.

As best as I can tell, the Flinns split their time between Wilmington and Pleasant Hill, but they were listed here in the 1940 Census. I haven't found it elsewhere, but a 1950 article about their daughter Fairfax's debutant ball calls their home "Ingleside". They were understandably proud of their home, on which they had done a lot of restorative and renovation work. In 1963 they were featured in that tour of Newark homes that gave us the 1813 and "about 25 years older" dates discussed earlier.

In December 1969, the Flinns sold the property to a couple with a name well-known in Delaware history -- Shipley. As far as I can tell, even though Massachusetts native Samuel L. Shipley was unrelated to the Delaware Shipleys, he definitely made a mark on the area. While living in the old Eastburn House, Shipley founded advertising and public relations firm Shipley Associates, was a Congressional candidate, and served as the chairman of the Delaware Democratic Party. 

Today, the house is in the hands of new owners who are very aware, interested in, and respectful of the property's history and significance. Sitting in a beautiful section of MCH, the Eastburn Homestead is certainly one of the most important and impactful sites in the last 200 years of the area's history.