MCH History Blog On The Road: Strand Millas and Rock Spring

Strand Millas

It's time to hit the road again, and visit a site outside of Mill Creek Hundred. As I said before, these sites can be selected for a variety of reasons -- they may have some connection to MCH, or they may just be something that I personally find interesting. The particular sites we'll look at now, though, happen to fall into both categories. I first chose the twin sites of Strand Millas and Rock Spring, located just east of Montchanin in eastern Christiana Hundred, because they're on my mind a lot, since I pass them everyday. As I soon learned, however, they do have a direct link to some of the earliest development in our own hundred.

The pair of 300+ year old houses along Rockland Road between Montchanin and Rockland were both built by one of the earliest of the Quaker immigrant families to the area, the Greggs. In 1682, William Gregg (1642-1687) emigrated from Ireland with his wife Ann, and four children -- John, Ann, George, and Richard. They arrived first at Upland, in Chester County, but in 1683 Gregg purchased 200 acres from William Penn on the west side of Brandywine Creek. He added another 400 acres the following year. On his tract William Gregg erected a log house for his family, probably on land now occupied by the Wilmington Country Club. He gave his tract the name of Strand Millas, although I think the original name may have been "Stran Millis". This is derived from the Irish for "sweet, or pleasant stream" (the Brandywine?), and is also the name of a neighborhood in Belfast.

MCH History Event -- Location Obtained!!!

Great news! I got a place for us to have our meeting/gathering/event/whatever this is!!! It's an awesome site, but I'm not going to reveal the location just yet. All I'll say for now is that it is in Mill Creek Hundred, and should be easily accessible for everyone. It seemed like the general consensus was that a weekend afternoon was the best fit for the most people. Because of that, I've tentatively reserved the space for Saturday, February 23, 2013. I don't have a time yet, but I was thinking 2:00? How does this sound to everyone?

If anyone has any thoughts on the time and date, let me know. I hope the 23rd is good for everyone, or at least as close as we can get to everyone. I couldn't be happier with the venue, and I'm sure you all will be as excited as I am. If we get some feedback and the specifics seem OK, I'll post more info over the weekend. Stay tuned.....

MCH History Event

So now it looks like there really is some interest in having a get-together event for readers of the blog and anyone else who enjoys local history. Now we go from hypotheticals to logistics. We need to come up with a time and a place. As far as a time goes, we first need to decide what kind of a time frame would be the best for the most people -- weeknight, weekend day, weekend night. I figure we'll want to have a couple of hours to sit or stand around and talk. That probably means an evening time (7:00, maybe) or an early to mid afternoon if it's on a Saturday or Sunday (1:00, 3:00). That being said, I'm open to suggestions. This our event, not just mine.

And as for a place, I'm open to ideas there, too. I'd say we're probably looking at somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 people, so a smallish room would suffice. I'm thinking large enough that we can mingle around, set up a few tables for those who want to/need to sit, and have a couple tables for displays and maybe some snacks (we can get to that in the next round of planning). I realize that the time and place, to some degree, will probably have to be planned in concert with each other. A great room is no good if no one can make it, and it doesn't work if it's not available when we are. Our other constraint is that my ideal pricepoint for the room is approximately what I make from writing the blog. I don't want to make this a paying event, so I'd like to find somewhere that will just let us use a space for a few hours. We'll clean up, and we won't be too rowdy.

So to move things to the next step, I've replaced the polling question to the right to ask about preferred time frames. Feel free to throw in any ideas or comments here, at the FaceBook page, or by emailing me directly.

The Red Barn Restaurant

Red Barn ablaze, October 20, 1968

I know that this is outside of the normal range for this blog, and that I don't usually write about topics this modern, but I couldn't help myself. Recent comments from Jack Walker in the Nostalgia Forum about the Red Barn Restaurant got me thinking about it, and I came up with a few things I wanted to share, without the chance of them getting buried in another page. For anyone who is not familiar with it, the Red Barn was a restaurant and cocktail lounge in the 1960's and 70's, located on Kirkwood Highway where the Best Buy is now. Actually, it was two restaurants, each one destined for ruin, the first one spectacularly so. The destruction of the first restaurant is probably what most people remember about the Red Barn today.

The original Red Barn was a dining establishment housed in....a big red barn. (Fortunate naming, huh?) It opened sometime in the early 1960's, but after 1961 (anyone know any more specific than that?). The aerial photo below shows the area that year, without even Farrand Drive yet in place. The barn can clearly be seen, with a drive coming back from Kirkwood Highway. [A side note -- the circular shape with something on its west side, about where Smith's Volkswagon is now, may have been, from what I gather, a trampoline park. Anyone remember this?] Who owned the farm (which probably extended north and west before the highway was built) is unclear, but judging by the 1940 Census, my two guesses are either Norman Klair or Jacob Maclary. They seem to be the first two farmers listed coming what I'm guessing to be west out of Marshallton.

The Boggs Family and the Boggs-Jacobs House

Revolutionary War uniform of John Boggs

A few weeks back a very interesting comment was left on an old post, a comment that referenced a Revolutionary War-era anecdote and a family that I had not come across before. I didn't have the chance to write about it at the time, but there was some behind-the-scenes communication and research going on relating to it. My contribution was not much more than pulling it all together. Most of the information came from Bonnie Boggs (descendant of the original settlers) and Walt C. (who deciphered the deed and pinpointed the location of the property). What we uncovered shed light on a family prominent in the early development of Mill Creek Hundred, as well as the new country as a whole. It also provided another piece of the MCH history puzzle, giving information about a house that may have stood for over two hundred years, disappearing at the dawn of the new, suburban MCH.

The clan in question is the Boggs family, and they're one of those that was prominent in the area in the 1700's, but pretty much gone from the region by very early in the 1800's. They do have quite a story, though. The progenitor of the Boggs family in this area was James Boggs (1667-1736), who was born in Londonderry, Ireland and came to America about 1720. James had seven sons and two daughters, all but one of whom either came with him or followed soon thereafter. Where James Boggs originally settled in Mill Creek or White Clay Creek Hundred is unknown, but in 1726 he purchased land from John Chambers in the northwest part of MCH. This property was part of Chambers' Hopyard Tract, a 644 acre expanse he had acquired in 1720. The Hopyard Tract (with that name, but a little smaller) dates back to John Ogle in at least 1683. Thanks to the skill and work of Walt C., we have a pretty good idea of exactly where Boggs' 100 acres was located.

Update on the Spring Hill Brewery

The former Biedermann property, 1933

If you'll recall, back in October I published a post about the Spring Hill Brewery, which was located on Barley Mill Road, between Red Clay Creek and the Hoopes Reservoir dam (which of course was not there at the time). I was able to piece together a fair amount of information about the brewery and its owners, frankly far more than I thought I would. One glaring hole in the story, though, was the circumstances and timing of the demise of the brewery. Since publishing that post I've figured out a little more regarding that issue (as well as a few other things), so I wanted to document all that here. The original post has already been updated to reflect the new findings. Also, how I found it is kind of an amusing and "Duh" sort of story that I'm sure anyone who's done research can relate to (or is it just me?).

I don't even remember what I was originally searching for that day (something else relating to the WW Railroad), when I thought to search using the only words I knew that had to do with it -- Wooddale brewery. When you do a Google news archive search with those terms, you come up with this. The first result is an article from The Baltimore Sun that talks about the brewery. Since it's behind a paywall (and I'm poor and cheap) I never read the whole article, but it gave me the names "Biedermann" and "Spring Hill", and I ran with it from there. I got so excited (sadly, not exaggerating, I think I literally got up and danced with joy) in fact, that I completely forgot/ignored what the article was actually about, which was apparent even from the Google result.

A Meeting of the (Historically-Inclined) Minds

OK, yes. I'm finally getting around to this. This is an idea that has been suggested to me by a number of people over the past couple years --and I've agreed it's a good idea -- but I've never gone so far as to act on it before. The idea is this: Over the past couple years, this blog has drawn together a group of people who share an interest in local history. I didn't create this interest -- just a place to share information and gather the like-minded. So if all of us enjoy sharing our mutual interest, as well as sharing information (swapping stories and asking questions), why not get together and do it in person?

Several people have expressed a desire to see if anyone would be interested in getting together and meeting in person sometime. No set agenda or anything. Less of a Meeting than just a meeting. Just an opportunity, for those who want to, to hang out with other people who share an interest, and maybe put a face with a name for those who’ve been hanging out here for a while. The tricky part is, I have no idea how many people might actually be interested in doing something like this – could be four, could be forty. What form this gathering ultimately takes will be determined by how many people think they might attend. If there’s just a few, we could get together at a bar or restaurant (or I know a coffee shop nearby that would be accommodating). If there’s a greater interest, we’d probably want to look into getting a room or meeting space somewhere.

The Springers of Northern Mill Creek Hundred -- Part 2

Front of the George Springer House

In the first post, we traced the old Swedish family from the kidnapped indentured servant Charles Springer, down to his grandson Nicholas. Through that whole story, though, we only focused on one house -- the Springer-Yeatman House tucked away just below the state line on Limestone Road. In this post, we'll look at four houses -- two built by Nicholas' sons, and two by their sons. Thankfully, like Nicholas' house, all four are still standing, although one has taken a short trip down the road.

The first of these second-generation Springer houses in the area was built (or at least part of it was) by George Springer (1779-1835), the eldest surviving son. George married Esther Johnson of Chester County sometime around 1800, and it's logical to assume that he moved out of his mother's house soon thereafter. He did not, however, move off of the property. Instead, he took his new family and moved into a pre-existing log house situated a few hundred yards south of the family home. The nature of this original dwelling is the biggest mystery surrounding the George Springer House. Joseph Lake, in his Hockessin: A Pictorial History (and again, I can't stress enough how cool a book this is), surmises that George moved into a log home built in the 1760's by John Dixon, from whom Nicholas Springer purchased this part of his property. The DelDOT report (PDF) from the mid-1980's seems to be leaning in a different direction.