A (Much Better) History of the Brown-Murray Farm, aka The Farmhouse -- Part I

The Farmhouse today

More than ten years ago I wrote a post about the property on which the event venue known as The 
Farmhouse, on Old Capitol Trail by Murray Manor and Delaware Park, sits. I did the best I could at piecing together the farm's story, with the resources I had available to me at the time. Aside from a lack of details, I did get most of it right, with one notable exception that we'll address shortly. In the intervening years, though, I've gotten access to property records and cultivated a better understanding of the area. After recent outreach from the owners of The Farmhouse (still members of the Murray family, who have owned the home for over a century now), I decided to take another shot at telling the story, now that I can use more actual facts and fewer guesses.

The last time the 155 acres were sold to a new family as a farm was in February 1917, when Levi W. Murray purchased the property from Helen and James McCallister for $13,000. We'll get to Levi and wife Kate in the next post, and see how they got there and what they did after they arrived. But the story of the land goes back much further, although the central mystery of exactly when the original portion of the house was constructed is still unclear. 

The land that would eventually make up the 155 acre farm was originally part of a larger tract of 570 acres laid out and sold in 1676 by Edmund Andros, Governor of New York (this was even before William Penn's arrival). It was sold originally to two men, then consolidated to one in 1679, then parts of it sold of through the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. Ultimately, at least 270 acres of it was consolidated under the ownership of William Cann, who in 1749 sold a square lot (113 perches, or about 1865 feet, on a side) to Moses White. To the best of my ability to decipher, the image below shows where that 80 acre lot was. Old Capitol Trail now runs though the upper corner of it, Kirkwood Highway is to the northwest, and Delaware Park is to the south.

Approximate outline of the 80 acre tract
sold to Moses White in 1749

Moses White's lot encompasses most of what's now Murray Manor and, crucially, the site of The Farmhouse. This tract seems to have been divided off of the larger one, however the 1749 deed does say that it was "now in the possession of James Bailey". I believe that means that Bailey was the tenant farmer on the land at the time, so it does mean it was occupied then. Whether Bailey was living in the original section of the Murray House or an earlier structure is unclear. And since the next deed does describe Moses White as being "late of Mill Creek Hundred", it's logical to assume that he and wife Ann lived on and worked the farm.

Moses White likely died in early 1783, leaving his widow and four children. A year later, eldest son James White sold the 80 acres to Alexander Reynolds, whose family had been and would be in the area for a number of years. I have to admit that this is one of those situations where I have to just give an overview, leave the details of the story for another time, and walk away with what's left of my sanity. This whole area west of Stanton passed in and out of a few families, with tracts being combined and split apart. I will come back to this at some point because another old house on the Delaware Park property (nearer to the Rt. 4 entrance) was also owned by Alexander's father, William Reynolds, and may have been the family home. For now, though, we'll leave it with Alexander acquiring hundreds of acres, which mostly ended up with his son, Dr. William Reynolds.

After Dr. Reynolds' death in 1827 his children divided, and divided up, his holdings. These holdings encompassed about 460 acres, including lots in the Village of Stanton. The lands west of Stanton were divided by the children, and in 1833 children Alexander W. (also a doctor) and Ann sold three parcels to William W. Rice -- a 155 acre tract and two lots in Stanton. The figure below shows the approximate outline of the 155 acre tract, which as you can see includes the old Moses White farm along with more land to the northeast. Like the Reynolds family, the Rices were no newcomers to Mill Creek Hundred.

Approximate outline of the 155 acre farm partitioned out of
Dr. William Reynolds' estate in 1833 and sold to William W. Rice 

The family is a bit hard to pin down and trace, but I believe that William was a descendant of the Evan Rice (or Riis) who owned land near Corner Ketch dating to the early 1700's. He was born in 1806, possibly to Wilmington merchant Washington Rice or one of his brothers (one of Washington's sons, Thomas B. Rice, would be executor of William W.'s estate). In 1828 he married Mary White, and the way things were interconnected in MCH at the time, I would not at all be surprised if she were related (granddaughter, maybe?) to Moses White. 

William W. Rice seems to have had some money, either from his family and/or from his own toil, because in addition to the Stanton-area farm, William owned a tract along Old Coach Road near Polly Drummond, as well as several houses in Wilmington. He may have split his time between MCH and Wilmington, but was listed here in the 1850 Census. After William's death in 1851, his properties were sold off (by executor Thomas B. Rice -- also, one of William's sons was named Washington, further convincing me he was closely related to the more prominent Washington Rice), including the 155 acre farm. It was sold in January 1852 at public auction for $6410 to Christiana Hundred farmer James Brown.

James Brown was an English immigrant who came to this country in 1842. He was married in Philadelphia in 1845, but quickly made his way to Delaware. He settled in Christiana Hundred, eventually buying a farm on the southwest corner of New Road and Dupont Road, in what would become Elsmere. He and wife Ann would raise seven children, and I think he had those children on his mind when he purchased the Rice farm in 1852, even though the oldest was but six at the time. He certainly was thinking of his sons when he purchased the adjacent Pritchard farm in 1865 (this farm comprised most of what's now the race track property, with the farmhouse standing just south of the track itself).

Sometime between 1860 and 1870 the Brown boys moved onto their Stanton farms, and this is the one point I got wrong in the original Farmhouse blog post. To be fair, there are a few points of confusion. The Reynolds/Rice farm was likely rented out by Brown at first, with either Genner Wingate or Joseph Ross as tenant in 1860 (guessing by the census). The 1868 map shows the farm as "Jno. Brown", so it's possible that John (who was 22 at the time) first moved onto this property. Family stories from a descendant of his (where I got some of the information for the original post) also place him in the Reynolds/Rice house. However, John married in 1869 and seems to be listed with his wife and daughter Ella on the Pritchard farm in the 1870 Census. On that same census, James, Jr. is shown, presumably on the northern farm, with his brother Isaac and sister Annie.

10th Anniv. party for James and Mary Brown
in May 1882, held at their home. Sounds like 
a great place to hold a celebration, huh?

What is clear and undeniable is that after the death of James Brown, Sr. in 1884, the two farms were officially sold by the other children in 1886 to James and John -- James bought the 155 acre former Rice farm and John purchased the 177 acre former Pritchard farm. There's no reason to think that they didn't live on the farms they bought. John's farm was sold at a sheriff's sale in 1891, eventually purchased by William F. Smalley. John Brown and family moved to a home in Stanton. After changing hands several times, the farm was purchased in the early 1920's by Wladyslaw and Aniela Samluk, and sold by them in 1936 to the Delaware Steeplechase and Race Association. The racetrack was built on their land, and the house seems to have been razed in the 1950's.

Races at James Brown' track, Oct. 19, 1908

Meanwhile, back on the James Brown, Jr. farm, he and wife Mary were busy raising five children of their own. He farmed his land and lived there until selling it in 1909. During that period, there was one subject that I came across and wrote about years ago, and that I'd still love to know more about. As early as 1901 and running through 1909 there are mentions in the newspaper about events at "Brown's track at Stanton". Horse racing was very popular at the time (not surprisingly, since everyone outside of, and many inside of, the cities dealt with horses regularly) and there were races held often. It seems that there was such a track on James Brown's farm, possibly maintained by the "Stanton Driving Club" or "Stanton Association". Although in the old post about the track I mistakenly thought James lived on the southern (Pritchard/John Brown) farm exactly were Delaware park would be built, I now know his farm was directly north. Still pretty close though, which still makes me wonder if that legacy had anything to do with why William du Pont, Jr. and Donald P. Ross chose the site for their endeavor in the 1930's.

On May 5, 1897, the Browns held a
25th Anniversary party at their home.
Were any of your relatives there?

Although the racing continued at Brown's Track through the 1909 season, Brown himself had moved away. In March of that year, James Brown had sold the farm to Helen Ruth McCallister, wife of James Leslie McCallister (that's how she was referred to in the deed). James and Mary Brown, incidentally, moved in with daughter Lizzie and her second husband, Chandler Mendenhall. Interestingly, in the 1910 Census they're listed only six families away from that of then 16-year-old LaPenne Guenveur, who 22 years later would buy the house almost across the road.

J. Leslie McCallister was originally from St. George's Hundred, then moving with his family to New Castle Hundred. He married Elizabeth Helen Ruth in 1907, and is listed as a farmer in 1910. The McCallisters only resided on the farm for about eight years, before selling and moving not far away, just south of White Clay Creek. Eventually they moved to Wilmington and Leslie worked as a carpenter for McCallister Brothers builders, a firm owned by his nephews. The new owners of the old Reynolds-Rice farm were Levi and Kate Murray, descendants of whom still own The Farmhouse and, until recently, the rest of the farm. They and their family have their own fascinating stories, which we'll dive into in the next post.