The Intertwined Histories of the Milltown Road Farms -- Part 1, The McFarlin (Heritage Park) Farm

The Sanders-McFarlin House, aka
The Jesus House (since 1975)

It seems to be a recent trend here that I start researching a property that appears to have a relatively straightforward history, but which turns out to be anything but. This has happened again, but this time with the added complication that there are two farms with intertwined histories. It would be incomplete to tell one story without the other, since they started out together and were more or less reunited by a mid-20th Century developer. In this post we'll get a bit of their shared history, and then trace the story of the southern of the two farms (but not the one originally inquired about).

The trip down this particular rabbit hole began with a simple question from a longtime resident of the neighborhood of Grendon Farms (thanks, Tim!), asking about its history. The confusing aspect of all this began right at the beginning, in even defining where Grendon Farms is. For the most part, Grendon Farms is understood to be the small community on the east side of Milltown Road, just down the road from The John Dickinson School and across from Heritage Park. However, those houses across the road are not actually all Heritage Park. From the school down to the Jesus House there are four different developments -- Montclare, Grendon Farms, Heritage Park, and the Village of Lindell -- all built at slightly different dates on different properties. This was the first thing I needed to understand, because it only got worse from there.

The first of the these neighborhoods was Grendon Farms, begun in 1958 on the property previously owned by Joseph Gheen Stephenson. In 1950, Stephenson bought a farm of just under 90 acres, on both sides of Milltown Road, from Samuel and Cornelia Johnston. (We'll weave our way through the centuries to arrive back at that point, in the next post.) However, not long after Grendon Farms began construction, developer Frank Robino purchased the neighboring farm and the burgeoning Grendon Farms, renaming the whole thing Heritage Park in Grendon Farms. So although at the light at Milltown Road and Grendon Drive the signs say Grendon Farms on one side and Heritage Park on the other, technically all the roads around Grendon Drive on both sides are Grendon Farms (at least according to the county's Parcel View site). This includes Gheen Road and Stephenson Drive, in what most would call Heritage Park.

The boundaries of the four developments on Milltown Road

Directly south is what can more correctly be called Heritage Park (although the county calls the lots Heritage Farm). Northeast of Grendon Farms is Montclare, begun in 1964 on what had been the Lynam Farm, and which prior to that had been part of the farm on the east side of Milltown Road, owned through most of the 20th Century by the Lindell family. The last of the four developments to be built, the Village of Lindell, was begun in 1980. All four of these neighborhoods were built on separate farm properties, but frustratingly, the four don't exactly match up with all of the historic 18th Century property lines. Now we'll go back and try to make as much sense of it as we can.

As noted, the Montclare (Lynam) and Lindell properties were once one, and these were outlined many years ago in a pair of posts (Part 1 here, Part 2 here). Admittedly those posts were done before my access to land records and could use a re-do some day, but for now we'll mostly leave them and focus on the Grendon Farms and Heritage Park tracts. This works out well because these two also began as parts of one larger, four hundred acre holding, called New Design.

For us, the story starts in 1703 when John Cann sold 202 of those 400 acres to John Ball, Sr. The Ball family was already present in the area, as the 1703 deed mentions neighbor William Ball, but their history gets complicated at times. In 1737, John Ball, Sr. sold the 202 acres to his son, John Ball, Jr. The problem is that, try as I might, I can't make heads or tails of what exactly this tract is. It doesn't seem to correspond very well with any old parcels I know of, and all the boundary markers are trees and small branches of Mill Creek. At least one should be Ball Run, but small creeks often change course over the span of three centuries, making it hard to trace metes and bounds. Nevertheless, these 202 acres seem to encompass, generally speaking, the area of Grendon Farms and Heritage Park, extending down to about Old Capitol Trail.

The Ball family held on to the tract after the death of John Ball, Jr. in 1749, through his widow Martha. After her passing in 1789, the land was divided between children and grandchildren. There are two ways that a tract of land like this can be divided between heirs -- either they can all receive shares of the single tract, or it can be divided into smaller parcels with each heir receiving their own smaller lot. The later method is what was used here, with the farm (I don't know if it was still the full 202 acres) being divided into at least six parcels.

They didn't stay divided too long, though, as beginning in 1813 Benjamin Sanders came along and started buying various lots from the Ball heirs. In 1813 he purchased three lots totaling 51 acres, another 12 acres in 1827, and 80 acres in 1841. With another four acres acquired from John Philips in 1830 (and formerly owned by Joseph Eastburn before he moved to his new farm south of Corner Ketch), that brought Sanders' total very close to 150 acres. And incidentally, the southern portion of the original Ball tract was sold in 1817 to John Conner, who sold in 1828 to James Denney. This farm became the Denney-Morrison Farm.

Portion of the 1849 map, showing Benjamin Sanders with two houses on the west side
of Milltown Road. The James Denny farm was originally the bottom of New Design

Benjamin Sanders' land was essentially, if not yet formally, divided into two separate farms, one north (the first lots purchased from the Balls) and one south (the 80 acres bought in 1841). In the segment of the 1849 map shown above, you can see Sanders' name (misspelled as Saunders) with two houses along the west side of Milltown Road. The northern one stood at the current intersection of Grendon and Carl Drives, while the southern one is now part of the Jesus House complex.

In June 1854, the 76 year old Benjamin Sanders sold 72 acres to his 31 year old eldest son, William. This constituted the southern farm, with this 72 acres being the 80 purchased in 1841, minus a bit excluded from the sale. It's unclear to me whether the house on the property now (the Jesus House, seen at the top of the post) was built for William, whether it was an existing Ball house, or whether it was erected by the subsequent owner. In any case, William Sanders did not live on his farm for all that long. When he bought it from his father, William mortgaged the farm with him. After Benjamin's death in 1860, his executor William Bright took steps to collect the as-yet-unpaid mortgage debt, which led to a sheriff's sale of the farm in 1861. The winning bidder at $5000 was Irishman Robert McFarlin.

The Milltown area in 1868. The southern farm is now owned by Robert McFarlin,
while the northern farm (topic of the next post) is owned by Andrew McKee

Robert McFarlin was born in Ireland in about 1820 (as his grave monument implies, or about 1830 as his census ages would), and emigrated to the United States soon after his father's death in 1845. Robert and Jane McFarlin worked their farm for over 30 years, until Robert's death in 1895. Jane remained in the home until her passing in 1906 (when according to a news report she was believed to be the oldest resident of MCH), at which time the farm was sold to cover her debts. The new owner in 1907 was Robert D. Stuart, who in addition to the 72 acre farm also acquired an adjacent 12 acres from William Crossan in 1912. He remained until 1926 when he sold both tracts to William and Elizabeth Murray. The most surprising thing here is that these Murrays seem to be unrelated to the Murrays soon to be south of them (at the Brown-Murray Farm) and northeastward (at the Robinson-Murray House). 

December 1940 notice of the sale of Rippling Brook,
the former McFarlin Farm, to Ward and Putney

The Murrays owned the property, which they apparently called Rippling Brook Farm, until selling it in 1940 to Ellison Putney and his father-in-law, Richard D. Ward. Putney was a graphic artist in Wilmington, owner of Wilmington Blueprint Service and of the firm Audio Visual Arts, both on Tatnall Street. The Putneys, who named the farm (or at least their home) Thymebrook, sold most of the now 75 acres in 1960, reserving about 10 acres for themselves around the house. The new owner of the 65 acres of farmland was a single woman from Wilmington, Ruth J. Eskridge, which confused me at first. It made more sense when I learned she was a secretary for real estate attorney Michael Poppiti (the two would much later wed), and I think he used her name for many transactions.

Introducing, Heritage Park in Grendon Farms, October 1960

The tract was quickly resold to developer Frank Robino, who with his acquisition of the remaining stock in Grendon Farms began building his Heritage Park in Grendon Farms. I don't see any instances of the use of the name "Heritage Farm" prior to this, so I think it was Robino's creation. Meanwhile, the Putneys remained at Thymebrook until 1975, when they sold the 10 acres and the old farmhouse to Chris and Angie Malmgren. The Malmgrens quickly got to work transforming the property and creating the Jesus House Prayer and Renewal Center. Although Mrs. Malmgren recently sold the Jesus House after the passing of her husband, it continues to serve the community with the same spirit, while adapting to a changing world.

So as we've seen, this southern farm was separated from the northern one by the Balls, then reunited by Benjamin Sanders, then separated again by him for about a century, then finally recombined about 1960 to form the current neighborhoods. In the next post, we'll follow the story of the northern portion of the tract, which was (albeit, briefly) retained by Benjamin Sanders. And if you thought the McFarlin Farm story got convoluted, just wait until you meet some of the folks involved with the neighboring farm.