The Samuel Stroud House

Part of the original log house
(Photo courtesy Ruth Clancy)

This story might seem like a follow-up to the recent guest post from Charles Stroud Gawthrop documenting the Stroud family. But, in one of those little coincidences I love, I had actually been thinking about and looking into this property before Charles reached out to me. In fact, when he did, it took me a moment to even realize they were connected. And I wouldn't have even known in the first place that this house had survived into "modern" times if it weren't for information passed on to us a while back from Ruth Clancy.

We'll get to the end of the line for the house (and Ruth's recollections of it) shortly, but frustratingly I know a good bit more about its end than I do its beginning. I found details about the creation of the particular farm that the house anchored, and about its ownership for more than a century. What I've been thus far unable to find are specifics about the early ownership of the land and about who might have built the house and when. But let's start with some basic facts, like just what the heck I'm talking about and where.

The 120 acre farm owned by Samuel Stroud and his descendants is now (and has been since 1950) a part of the grounds owned by Delaware Park. More specifically, most of the farm is now a part of the White Clay Creek Country Club golf course. The property is bordered on the south by the railroad tracks (which were new at the time the tract was laid out), on the west by a small stream, and on the north by a combination of White Clay Creek (the western part) and the Byrnes Mill race (towards the east). The farmhouse stood just above the railroad tracks in the middle of the larger, western portion -- right where the clubhouse and At the Rail Restaurant is located.

Approximate outline of the 120 acre Stroud Farm

According to Ruth Clancy, when part of the house was torn down in the early 1970's it was discovered that a portion of it contained an 18th Century log house. Reportedly, a date of 1737 was etched on a window pane. While I have detailed information about the history of the farm from the 1830's onward, I've yet to be able to find out for sure who owned it earlier. I do know that the 120 acre Stroud farm was originally part of a larger tract, and wasn't broken off until 1836. Before that (way before that), it may have gone back to a tract of 340 acres patented to John Nummers by Governor Edmund Andros in 1676.

I don't have a very good grasp on the metes and bounds of this and subsequent lands, but Nummers did sell 187 acres of it to John Bentley in 1704 (although it wasn't recorded with the county until 1752). Bentley sold two tracts totaling 280 acres to Robert Nivin (or Nevin) in 1742. Eight years later, Robert and wife Margaret sold it all to Jennet Nivin (his sister, I believe). I've yet to find what Jennet did with the property, and it's not until 1835 that I pick up the trail again (with reference to a sale a few years earlier). If there was a house erected in the 1700's, I can't be sure who was responsible for it. I'm not even sure that the sales and properties mentioned above contain the 120 acre Stroud farm.

However, when the story picks up in 1835, Wilmington businessman James Canby is purchasing two tracts from James R. Black (a prominent attorney) and James Rogers (another lawyer). They consist of a 300 acre section between White Clay Creek and "the Road leading from White Clay Creek Mills to Ogletown" (today's Ogletown Stanton Road) and a 100 acre portion on the south side of the road. Black had acquired the land in a Sheriff's sale in 1820, buying the former property of George Reynolds Massey. This sounds a like a simple case of then linking the properties back from Massey to, hopefully, Nivin, but I haven't been able to find anything helpful to that in between -- not even the 1820 Sheriff's sale, which I only know of from its mention in the 1835 deed. I am at this point just assuming that the Massey lands include the farms owned earlier by Nummers, Bentley, and the Nivins.

And while we're at it, another thing I can't say for sure is whether any of these owners actually lived on the property. The 17th and 18th Century owners that I know of all had other holdings, and may have used this land as rental property. I believe that Massey did as well, and neither Black, Rogers, nor Canby were farmers. Neither, for that matter, was the next owner, the first to own the 120 acre farm. In 1836, Canby sold that portion of the larger tract to a man named George Craig. 

Craig was born in 1798 (I think in Wilmington) and by the 1830's is described in deeds as living in Stanton. He was a successful businessman, and in 1835 was named (along with James Canby) to a ten man committee overseeing the surveying of the route through Delaware for the new Wilmington and Susquehanna Rail Road. In 1837, Craig was elected General Superintendent of the line. When Craig purchased the 120 acre portion of Canby's land in 1836, its southern boundary was the newly-built railroad track. Sometime before 1840, Craig moved to Wilmington and became a lumber merchant (though he may have been in the business before that). He was very successful, later moving himself and his business to Philadelphia. When died in 1886, his fortune was estimated at $400,000 -- equivalent to about $12.5 million today.

Outline of the Stroud property on the 1881 map

George Craig sold his White Clay Creek Hundred farm in 1840 to the first man I'm comfortable saying was a live-in owner of it -- Samuel Stroud. (One interesting note -- although the southern boundary is still the railroad, on the 1840 deed it's now the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, and not the Wilmington and Susquehanna that it was in 1836). This is the Samuel Stroud (b.1803) shown in the Stroud Family post as the son of Samuel and Elizabeth Richardson Stroud. The elder Samuel had briefly lived in MCH and likely built the Milltown-area home later owned by the Lindell family.

By the time Samuel, Jr. purchased his farm, he had been married to the former Mary Jones for 11 years and the couple had four children (with two more to follow shortly). The next child to come, Hannah in February 1841, is the direct ancestor of our friend Charles Stroud Gawthrop. And if the later information is correct, their home (or at least part of it) was already more than 100 years old. Samuel Stroud lived the rest of his life in the house, farming his land between the tracks and the creek. By 1860, only son William J. and daughters Ann Elizabeth and Hannah remained with Samuel and Mary.

He must have been doing well, because in March 1864 Samuel purchased another farm of 166 acres, which also happened to be directly along the north side of the same railroad tracks. This farm, however, was at the west end of the line in Delaware, partially in Pencader Hundred and partially in Cecil County, Maryland. This farm, purchased from John A. Reynolds, lies between Elkton Road and the tracks, and part of it is now the home of the Newark Charter School. After Samuel died in September 1866 (without a will), this farm was sold by the family to eldest son Edward.

Report of the Stroud barn fire,
printed August 20, 1873

The home farm near Stanton was sold in 1868 to the youngest son (or maybe the only other -- another son, Jeremiah, seems to disappear after 1850 and may have died), William J. Stroud. William and wife Clara (Pennington) had three children by then, with another one to come (sadly, their first and last-born sons both died in childhood). In August 1873, his large barn was struck by lighting and consumed in the ensuing fire. William was quite active in the community serving in several organizations, as well as serving terms on the Levy Court. Upon William's death from pneumonia in 1909, the Diamond State Grange posted the resolution below in the newspaper.

In memory of William J. Stroud,
published November 10, 1909

After William Stroud's passing, the three remaining unmarried children -- S. Clarence, and twins Ella and Anna -- remained on the farm (along with their niece Clara, who was brother Alfred's daughter). They probably all lived there until about 1918, when in January of that year Clarence got married, to Hettie Klair (daughter of Jonas Klair). Clarence and Hettie then bought their own farm, just south of Newark on South Chapel Street. (And ironically this farm, too, was bounded by the same railroad tracks, albeit on its north side.) Ella and Anna moved into a home in Newark, along with a few nieces and nephews, where the sisters got jobs with the university.

The home farm, now with no Strouds to occupy it, was sold by the rest of the family to brother Alfred G. Stroud. It's likely that Alfred then leased the farm out, at least until 1936. In that year he sold the property (which by then had been in the family for 96 years) to H. Emerson Eastburn of Mt. Cuba. Eastburn was a farmer and livestock dealer in the Mt. Cuba area until the late 1970's, and also likely rented out the White Clay Creek-bordered farm. He only owned it for nine years though, selling the 120 acres (and the private driveway) in 1945 Charles and Sarah McCall. 

Charley McCall was a long-time farmer in the area, and was already 68 years old when he purchased the property from Eastburn. However, it seems that the McCalls had already been leasing the farm, as the 1940 Census appears to show them there. They're listed directly after brothers William and Frederick Taylor, who owned the farm more or less directly across the tracks from them, where Christiana Hospital is now (those Taylors also happen to be my wife's great grand-uncles). So, the McCalls were likely farming the 120 acres from at least 1940 until 1950, when they sold it to The Delaware Steeplechase and Race Association (aka, Delaware Park). Incidentally, Charley McCall next bought a farm south of Newark, then soon sold it to developers, who then made it part of the new Brookside development.

Part of the old section of the Stroud home removed in the early 1970's
(Photo courtesy Ruth Clancy)

Since 1950, the old Stroud Farm has been a part of the Delaware Park property, and more recently (since 2005) home to much of the length of the White Clay Creek Country Club golf course. Although, as mentioned near the top of this post, a portion of the rear section of the farmhouse was removed in the early 1970's, the rest of it seems to have survived until sometime between 1982 and 1992. (Some of the removed section apparently ended up in the new home of the son of the owner of Delaware Park.) When the country club was being built in the early 2000's, its clubhouse and restaurant were erected on the site of the old homestead.

One more, because why not?
(Photo courtesy Ruth Clancy)

[On somewhat of a side note, and maybe someone who knows the racetrack's history better than I do could comment, I think at least one of the motivations for the purchase of the farm in 1950 was for the construction of the entrance to the park from Route 4. It was built soon after, and newspaper articles of the time note that it was key to making a direct connection to the "main arteries of Routes 40 and 13 and the New Jersey Turnpike." From what I see, I think that connection was primarily Churchman's Road. It did exist previously in parts, but in the early '50s was enlarged, rerouted and lengthened to connect the park with Rt. 273, just off of Rt 13. And the New Jersey Turnpike? That connection is made by the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which was opened in 1951.]

It may not even be obvious to most that this oddly-shaped tract crammed between the railroad tracks and the creek ever operated as a private farm, but it did for maybe as much as nearly 300 years. From its time as part of a large early patented tract, to its stint as a leased farm, to the long tenure of the Stroud family, then back cycling between a rental and a private farm, then finally as a 21st Century golf course, this 120 acre expanse has seen quite a bit of history.