Hillside School, Dist. #100 (aka, The Park Office) -- Part 2

Colorized photo of the former Hillside School,
now a home, in 1947 (courtesy, Allmond family)

In the last post we looked at the founding of the Hillside School, District #100, in 1891, as well as a few of the challenges it faced in its first few years. We learned that it was always a small district, but by the early 1930's it fell below the state's minimum mandated threshold for attendance and was closed at the end of the 1932-33 school year. While there would be no more classes held in the brick schoolhouse on Thompson Station Road and Chambers Rock Road, its story was not over. (I want to thank the Allmond family for their gracious and wonderful help in putting much of the story together.)

In November 1933, the Hillside School was put up for sale, along with the #29 Hockessin School, the #30 North Star School, the #90 Fairview School, and the #91 Yorklyn School. At the auction, the Hockessin and Yorklyn schools were withdrawn (to be sold later), the North Star school was purchased by the Mitchells of Woodside Farm (who had originally donated the land), and the Fairview school was purchased by Harold T. Little. Finally, the Hillside school was purchased by Elmer J. Leach, Warden of the New Castle County Workhouse, for $550.

Leach sold the schoolhouse and lot the next September to Charles H. Anderson, at a nice $250 profit (over $6000 today). It seems likely that the Leaches never lived there, but instead converted it from a school to a home. Anderson owned it until 1940, when he sold it to Joseph M. Brannan (price undisclosed). Brannan probably didn't live there, as I found multiple sales by and from him of lots in the Newark area (interestingly, this included his purchase of the District #42 school on Red Mill Road near Ogletown). He owned a store near Milford Crossroads, and would later buy a store in Stanton from Dutch Boulden. (I'm told the Milford Crossroads store building is still there, but moved a few hundred yards away.) It's quite possible that Brannan bought the Hillside School out of nostalgia -- it turns out he had been a student there, and that's him (2nd row, 2nd from the left) in the c.1894 photo of students in front of the school seen below.

The students (and I think, teacher -- maybe Blanche Ferguson?) of the Hillside School c. 1894.
My daughter said they look as happy for Picture Day as she and her friends are.

Brannan only owned the schoolhouse-turned-home for two years, selling it in 1942 to Charlotte M. Haskell, who at the time was residing in New York. However, the 37-year old secretary didn't buy the house for herself, but rather for her younger sister Frances and her mother Katherine. Although the family was originally from St. Louis (their father Sprague had died in 1918 of the (presumably Spanish) flu), they later moved to St. Paul, MN. Frances had moved to Wilmington a few years earlier, after having lived with sister Charlotte (in Greenwich Village, as of 1930).

In 1944, Frances married William Stewart Allmond, who at the time was residing in Wawaset Park in Wilmington. Stewart, as he was known, had an impressive lineage of his own. His father was a physician and his grandfather was a prominent citizen, businessman, and former mayor of Wilmington. On his mother's side, his great-grandfather and grandfather -- George G. and William W. Lobdell -- were the founder and second president of the Lobdell Car Wheel Company, one of the largest companies in Wilmington for over a century. William was also a cavalry officer in the Civil War.

Stewart was born in Newark, moved to Wilmington, and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Delaware College (now the University of Delaware). He entered his grandfather's company, and worked his way up to eventually being a Director of the Lobdell Car Wheel Company (they primarily made wheels for trains and trolleys, but also some other iron machinery). Unfortunately, due to a variety of circumstances, the company was in collapse in the mid-1940's, and Stewart retired from the company. After marrying Frances, the couple "retired to the country", taking up residence in the former Hillside schoolhouse. There they raised their family, along with West Highland Terriers -- Stewart had became a dog breeder.

The Allmonds' home in 1957 (courtesy, the Allmond family)

The photo at the top of the page is a colorized view from about the time that the Allmonds moved in in 1947, while the picture above is from a decade later. Below is a view of the kennels at the house. If you look closely behind the house in the 1947 photo, you can see a bell on a post. Questions have been raised about the fate of the school bell that once hung in the cupola above the school, but unfortunately this does not exactly answer the question. The one seen in the picture is a replacement -- it's a bell from a locomotive, mounted on a railroad tie that was salvaged from the nearby, abandoned Newark & Pomeroy RR. My best guess is that the original school bell was removed by the first "civilian" owner, Elmer J. Leach.

Stewart Allmond's "Westie" kennels (courtesy, the Allmond family)

In 1954, Stewart and Francis officially bought the house from Charlotte Haskell. They lived there, and Katherine Haskell (who was a strong and fascinating person in her own right) summered with them and wintered in California. For the first decade or so when she was here, Katherine stayed in a small, pre-fab cottage erected for her -- her own mother-in-law suite. In 1956 an addition was put across the rear of the main house, adding three bedrooms and one and a half baths (one of the bedrooms being for Katherine). Also in this renovation the large windows were replaced with smaller ones, the side doors and porches were added, oil heat was added replacing coal, a basement rec room was built, and the entire house was stuccoed, giving it a uniform appearance. Two last, and very cool additions -- a dog house was built under the front porch for their pet, and Great Pyrenees (opposite end of the size spectrum from the Westies). Also, Frances painted a train mural in the basement, where their young son had his train set.

While the Allmonds enjoyed their country home, other matters were brewing in the White Clay Valley. In a matter that deserves its own post (or go read about it in Timothy Barnekov's book A History of White Clay Creek State Park and Preserve), there was a plan in motion from the 1950's until the early '70s to create a reservoir there by damming White Clay Creek. One of the main proponents of the idea was the Dupont Company, which went about buying up as much of the required land as they could. The Hillside School was in the path of this proposed reservoir, and apparently the Allmonds were pressured for a while to sell their home. Finally, reluctantly, and unhappily, they did so in 1965 and moved out.

A view of the former Hillside School, now the WCCSP Office (2026)

This is the last deed I have been able to find, but what I believe happened is that after the reservoir plan was abandoned (mostly due to fierce local objection), Samuel Hallock du Pont, Sr. purchased much of the land that the Dupont Company now owned but no longer needed. This included the Hillside School lot. In 1996. his son S. Hallock, Jr. donated the school to the state, along with a $100,000 endowment for its maintenance. Luckily for us, this remnant of late 19th Century rural life survives still, and now functions as the Park Office for White Clay Creek State Park. I think it's great that 135 years after it was built, this little building is still serving the public of the White Clay Creek area.