USA > Delaware > History of the state of Delaware, Volume II > Part 11
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Doctor Tymen Stidden, or Stidham, Delaware's earliest phy- sician, settled first in New Castle in 1654. An account of his life will be found in the chapter on Delaware doctors. Dr.
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James Crawford and Dr. Danie! Wells were at New Castle in 1678. Dr. John Finney practiced there in 1754, and Dr. Henry Colesbury was a prominent physician til! 1830, when Dr. C. B. Ferguson followed him. Among later medical men there may be mentioned Dr. J. H. Handy, James McCalmont, W. H. Hamilton, Charles H. Black, David Stewart, James Couper, Jr., and John J. Black. Among the leading attor- neys early resident in New Castle were Judges James Booth, Sr. and Jr., Chancellors Kensey Johns, Sr. and Jr., Thomas Clayton and John M. Clayton, both Chief Justices ; Judge James R. Black, George B. Rodney, Andrew C. Gray, George Gray, John H. Rodney, A. B. Cooper and Judge William C. Spruance.
In Colonial and Revolutionary times the inn played a con- spicuous role in business, political and social life. Travel, like business in those days, was deliberate, and the want of quick and frequent connections left travelers abundant leisure to meet their fellows at those centers of news and trade, the county inns ; hence their importance in the community. Topp Jansen Outhout was an innkeeper in the town in 1662, and later a magistrate. Ralph Hutchinson, as early as 1677, kept an inn, succeeded in two years by John Darby whose license said " hee will keep a good and orderly house and sell drink by retayle." Again, Robert Furniss, late in the eigh- teenth century, kept an ordinary at New Castle, and the first Methodist meetings were held at his house through his liberal hospitality, when the bigotry of the time had closed even the court house against the new sect. In 1803 Captain Caleb P. Bennett bought the house of the Honorable George Read, on the corner of Front and Delaware streets, and opened the "Delaware House." The Gilpin House, opposite the old court house, is now the oldest hotel in the town, and is thought to be in part as ancient as any structure in the place. Near it is a brick building erected in 1681, in which William Penn, upon his visit in 1682, was entertained by mine host Lagrange. The famous old three-storied tile house, built in
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1687, with its steep roof covered with Dutch tile and its walls of small white brick, was torn down in 1884. The house of George Read, the Signer, on Water street, was removed many years since.
A historical edifice with many associations, is the present old court house, built before 1680, and in part used for state purposes in Penn's time. He met the Court in this building. Some unusually large timbers were used in its construction. Two pillars support the single piece forming the main girder. It was the custom in the olden days to place on these pillars the hands of criminals convicted of manslaughter, while they were being branded with the letters " M. S. A." The red-hot iron was pressed into the sizzling flesh till the fumes filled the room. Jacob Battle, of suggestive name, a colored man sen- tenced for killing one Clark, was the last victim thus branded.
The square upon which the disused public market formerly stood is part of a tract reserved for county uses in the seven- teenth century, but now, by an act of Assembly in 1883, held by trustees for the benefit of the town of New Castle, subject to the right of the county to use the market, if desired. North of the town were certain very old common lands of timber and pasture, which when surveyed in 1704 by Penn's order, were found to contain ten hundred and sixty-eight acres. In 1764 Penn's sons, Thomas and Richard, made the title to trustees for the benefit of the town, who should hold "in free and common socage of us as Proprietors of our Manor of Rockland, paying therefor the rent of one ear of Indian corn if de- manded." In 1791 Penn's heirs formally deeded the lands to trustees who were authorized by the State to lease them for thirty years. In 1850 Dr. Charles H. Black and his co- trustees divided the commons into farms, and in fifteen years their revenue amounted to $70,000, and $20,000 due the Farmers' Bank for the market buildings was paid. During this time, too, the schools had been supported, town taxes re- duced and the farms kept free from debt. In 1887 there were nine farms and two lots yielding a revenue of $8000, which
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was spent by the trustees for the uses of the people of the town. Of late years the income from the commons farms has been greatly reduced.
The earliest secret order established in the town was a Masonic lodge, chartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsyl- vania, under authority of the Grand Lodge of Great Britain, April 3, 1781. St. John's No. 2, A. F. and A. M., was chartered June 27, 1848, and since 1880 has occupied a hand- some lodge-room in the Masonic and Odd Fellows Block, a fine three-story building erected jointly by the two orders at a cost of $31,000, containing business rooms on the first floor, a town hall on the second and lodge rooms on the third for the two fraternities. Washington Lodge No. 5, I. O. O. F., was in- stituted October 16, 1833. In the first fifty years of its ex- istence four hundred and ten members were received, sixty- three died, and the sum of $1,491.50 disbursed to sick and disabled members. Seminole Tribe No. 7, Improved Order of Red Men, was instituted February 25, 1869. In 1881 the tribe built a wigwam costing $8400 on land donated by William Herbert. The first story is used by the city as an engine house, the second as a public hall, and the third for lodge rooms for the Seminoles and other societies. Harmony Castle No. 6, K. of G. E., was formed in May, 1883. It meets in the old Odd Fellows' Hall. Adelphi Lodge No. S, K. of P., was established October 15, 1868, and has a present member- ship of 69. In the same building on the corner of Delaware and Union streets, meets Division No. 3 of Ancient Order of Hibernians with a good membership, the Riverside Assembly, and No. 6146 Knights of Labor, which last order was insti- tuted in March, 1866. Captain Evan S. Watson Post No. 5, G. A. R., was chartered December, 1SS1, with twenty-five members, aud reached a membership of seventy-five, but of late years the membership is small. General David B. Birney Post No. 12, G. A. R., was organized in 1SS3 with twenty- eight members, John T. Gormley, Commander, and Joseph E. Vantine, Adjutant. Their total muster has been thirty-six members.
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Of all the motives that impelled the various nationalities to seek our shores in Colonial days, those of the Swedes were the noblest. With the Spaniards it was the ignoble thirst for gold ; with the English and Dutch primarily commerce and extension of national power through colonization ; and though with the Puritans the noble quest for civil and religious liberty was the leading incentive, yet with the Swedish government the foremost idea underlying their schemes for settling the New World was the devout wish to promote the spread of the Gospel, their great warrior Saint Gustavus cher- ishing those plans even amid the perils and perplexities of the battlefields of the Thirty-Years war.
New Castle figured prominently in the early religious history of the State. In the chapter on " Religious Denominations in Delaware," under their several captions treated in the order of their historical development, will be found a full history of the Swedish and Dutch churches and ministers in New Castle ; also of the Presbyterian movement there as a sort of successor to the Dutch ; and of the Methodist and Protestant Episcopal and Friends denominations together with accounts of the later Baptist and Roman Catholic churches, and those of the colored race. A branch of the W. C. T. U. was organized in New Castle in 1880 by Francis E. Willard and others with Mrs. Mary P. Challenger as president. Not only has this noble society spread widely temperance literature and knowl- edge, but it has also done much religious, prison and char- itable work in the town and vicinage.
New Castle's first schoolmaster was Evert Peterson, in 1658, at which time the pious, knowledge-loving Swedes provided a lot for a school house. Abelius Letscooven, a Dutchman, was the next wielder of the birch. June 13, 1772, the State gave a part of the State House lot for school purposes, and in 1800 a house was built thereon by public subscription, and con- veyed to a permanent body of trustees, composed of the lead- ing citizens of New Castle. For many years Samuel Hood, James Riddle and Samuel Jacquett taught there. The school
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was afterwards known as the "New Castle Institute," with Rev. A. B. Wiggins, principal, followed by William F. Lane, as head of the Free School system, an especially fine teacher, who prepared young men for college. This academy is still used. A building erected as a U. S. Arsenal, etc., has long been employed for school purposes. New Castle now (1906) has three school houses.
So early as 1800 attempts to found a public library were made, and in 1812 the New Castle Library Company was chartered by James Rogers, James R. Black and others, and in 1832 they were authorized by the Assembly to hold books to the value of $8,000. James Couper was the first president, and William Janvier, secretary. A carefully chosen library was placed in the academy building, to which continuous additions by yearly subscriptions have been made till this library now contains 7,000 volumes. It has always been well supported and is open to the public daily, and has been of the highest value to the town and neighborhood as an educational institu- tion. It now occupies an attractive building on Third street, built in 1899, for its especial use.
PENCADER HUNDRED.
Pencader Hundred lies in the western central part of the County of New Castle adjoining the State of Maryland, with the hundreds of White Clay on the north and east, and New Castle and Red Clay on the east, and St. Georges on the south. The old Welsh tract, and a small part of what was early known as the Saint Augustine Manor, compose its territory. The early Welsh settlers around Iron Hill named the Hun- dred " Pen cader," "highest seat," after that elevation. The soil is rich and the entire Hundred, save for its wooded hills, under a high state of cultivation. Several small streams pass through it, and the main line of the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington R. R., the Newark and Delaware City R. R., and the Delaware Division of the P. B. & W. R. R. traverse the Hundred, while the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal crosses it on the south.
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An attempt to unite the waters of the Delaware and Chesa- peake bays by a canal was made as early as 1801, at a point near Glasgow, over four miles north of where the present canal passes, and $100,000 wasted in the building of a reservoir to be fed from Elk river. Some piers and ditches yet remain to mark the early fiasco. The route finally chosen was that which utilizes Back creek, the extension of Elk river on the Chesapeake side, and St. Georges and Big Hamburg creeks on the Delaware side. A small portion of the southern end of the Hundred is land which was granted in 1671 by Lord Balti- more to the famous Augustine Herman. It was styled " St. Augustine Manor," and included the land between St. Georges and Appoquinimink creeks westward to the Maryland line at the Bohemia Manor, forming for the most part St. Georges Hundred. A dispute arose over the land, the English Gov- ernor Lovelace denying Lord Baltimore's title, and protesting against Herman's occupation, who thereupon obtained for the Delaware portion of this Bohemia Manor a warrant title from the Dutch authorities at New Amsterdam.
Matthias Van Bibber in 1714 bought a part of the St. Augustine Manor from Herman and devised some of his pur- chase to two of his daughters, Sarah and Rebecca, the last named receiving the Delaware portion. She married a Mr. Cazier, and at her death left her land to her three sons, John, Jacob and Matthias. John sold his share to his two brothers. A large share of this land came down from Jacob Cazier to his son Henry, and is now owned by the well-known citizen Jacob Benson Cazier, a retired farmer living near Kirkwood. He is the great-great-grandson of the Matthias Van Bibber above mentioned who came from Philadelphia to this penin- sula in 1702, and settled in Maryland. His father was born in Holland and was one of the first settlers in Germantown, Pennsylvania. His son Matthias was a man of high repute in his day, being a distinguished jurist, the Chief Justice of Maryland who presided, March 8, 1719, when the court met at Court-House Point for the first time. He was a man of
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marked intellectuality and great learning, and held that judicial office a long time. Many of his descendants were noted for their patriotism in the time of the Revolution.
The larger part of the Welsh tract is in Pencader Hundred, the remainder being in Cecil County, Maryland. In 1684 Governor Talbot, of Maryland, claiming the land as a part of his territory, drove off the settlers. Iron Hill is the most marked natural feature of the region, and was mentioned by that name in a letter of Vice Director Hinijossa, dated May 15, 1661, in which he recounts the killing of four Englishmen by the Indians. As its name betokens, iron was known to exist there in great quantities in early days. The origin of the name " Welsh Tract," is due to the fact that a large num- ber of that nationality from the iron-manufacturing districts of Wales were drawn to the locality by these iron deposits, and obtained from William Penn, October 15, 1701, a grant for 3000 acres. These settlers, both in Maryland and Dela- ware came from a Welsh settlement made in Delaware and Montgomery Counties, Pennsylvania, where in 1684 Penn had granted them 40,000 acres of land. This was also called "The Welsh Tract."
The Welsh Tract in Delaware was to be located " behind the town of New Castle, northward and southward, beginning to the westward seven miles from New Castle and extending upward and downward as there should be room by regular straight lines as near as may be." There were a few squatters on the land with some improvements, but these were driven away and the land surveyed. John Welsh chose 1091 acres, and in 1727 sold 500 acres to Thomas Lewis. He sold another portion to James Sykes ; and his executors also con- veyed 2812 acres to Robert Faires, an Irishman, who bought land in Red Lion Hundred. His son William, who inherited the land, added 113 acres by purchase. This tract of 394? acres came afterwards to his descendant David B. Ferris, but is no longer in the family. James James selected Iron Hill and land northward to Christiana creek, 1224 acres in all,
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and received a deed from Penn in 1703. Thomas James received by deed 1250 acres ; David Price 1050 acres ; John Morgan 2053 acres ; John Thomas 632 acres; John Griffith 222 acres; William Jones 2747 acres; Howell James 1040 acres, and Philip James 525 acres. This Howell James de- vised the sum of ten pounds payable annually out of his mills and estate to his wife. An opinion as to the character and operation of this devise was obtained in writing from Alex- ander Hamilton. The opinion was brief, announcing the familiar doctrine that annuities are charges upon persons, and not upon estates, but adding that it was " a good devise to Phebe for her life.". Among many others who took Welsh tract lands was John Watkins, 167 acres, and Thomas Johns, 1156 acres, in 1729.
A part of the James James land near Iron Hill, coming to his son Samuel, June 3, 1723, he built a forge there soon after. His success, and the fact that there was a supply of iron ore nearby, attracted the attention of some of the leading iron masters in Pennsylvania, eight of whom formed a com- pany for the purpose of building a furnace to be called the " Abbington Furnace," and to buy lands for the use of the furnace. They arranged for 1000 acres in the neighborhood, and May 28, 1726, erected on the Christiana creek a furnace and a forge which they named the " Abbington Iron Works." It was not a success, and the venture was soon given up by the company, though Samuel James continued the works until they were sold by the sheriff, September 18, 1735. William McConaughey owns the land on which the furnace stood. A bit of the old wall, together with a heap of cinders, on land now in possession of J. Wilkins Cooch shows where the old forge was.
January 4, 1768, Andrew Fisher bought at sheriff's sale the land on which the furnace and forge were built, and erected a grist mill and a saw mill thereon. He died in 1804, and by successive transfers the mills were operated by five or six dif- erent persons until 1863, when the old saw mill was replaced
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by a new one with a capacity of 200,000 feet of lumber per year ; and the two and a-half story grist mill turned out twenty-five barrels daily. After burning in 1883, it was never rebuilt.
The early settlers from 1701 to 1720 formed the first mem- bership of the Welsh Tract Baptist Meeting. One of their most noted preachers was Rev. Morgan Edwards, author of " Materials Towards a History of the Baptists in Delaware State." He was born in Trevethin, Wales, and in 1757 was ordained a minister of the Baptist Church in Ireland. He became the pastor of a Baptist church in Philadelphia in 1761, and resigning after ten years went to Pencader Hundred, near Newark. George G. Kerr now owns land in the Welsh tract, which his ancestor Samuel Kerr, a Scotchman, bought in 1736. Thomas Cooch, an Englishman, bought 200 acres in Pencader in 1746, and on July 8, 1776, had 229 acres surveyed to him. In September, 1777, just before the battle of Cooch's Bridge, the British had their headquarters on his land where J. Wil- kins Cooch's house now stands. The British burnt the mill then on the land.
An old assessment list of Pencader Hundred made by Thomas James, probably about the middle of the eighteenth century, shows that 121 persons and estates, including five widows and " one batchiler," were assessed 1094 pounds. In 1798 there were 376 taxables in the Hundred. Schools were few in Pencader in the olden days, and those mainly private ones. The "Glasgow Grammar School " was incorporated in 1803. In 1829 a big step forward was made by dividing the Hundred into five school districts by an act of the Legislature. School houses were then built, and educational facilities offered to all classes.
Of the common school teachers William Jackson was long and widely known. Mr. Curtis B. Ellison was the pioneer teacher in South Pencader, where he taught in an old-style eight-sided brick building. The public school system in the Hundred has participated in the great advance which the
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modern, systematized methods throughout the State have brought. Pencader's earliest roads, aside from the old trail paths formerly used, were those running from Christiana and New Castle to Elk river, built as state roads. A review of the road from Glasgow to New Castle, which met the Buck Tavern road at Glasgow, was ordered by the Levy Court in 1806. In 1825-5 $539 was voted for a bridge over Shive Run near Glasgow, and in 1832 the Levy Court appropriated $150 for a stone fording at Cooch's mill.
The history of the Welsh Tract Baptist Meeting in Pencader is given at some length in the chapter on Religious Denon- inations. It is the mother church from which have sprung the Pedee River Church in South Carolina, the London Tract, Duck Creek, Wilmington, Cow Marsh and Mispillion churches in this State. Their first pastor was the Rev. Thomas Griffith. The Historical Society of Delaware published in 1904 a com- plete copy of the records of the Welsh Tract Baptist Meeting from 1701 to 1828, with a facsimile of the ancient inscriptions on the tombs made by Miss Winnie Jones. Their present pastor is Rev. John G. Eubanks, but the meeting is not strong in numbers.
The Presbyterians in Pencader Hundred organized their first church in 1710 with Rev. David Evans, a son of one of the grantees of the Welsh tract, and a graduate of Yale Col- lege, for their pastor. Their present church is a two-story brick 60x100 feet, situated in the village of Glasgow, and was built in 1852 at a cost of $5000. Their pastor (1906) is the Rev. T. Chalmers Potter, D. D., and they have eighty-three members with sixty-five in the Sunday-school. The Methodist church at Glasgow was built in 1832, when they had but thirteen members. Their present edifice is their third church, a two-story frame, built in 1884. This church and the Lebanon church, have (1906) 103 members, and 185 Sunday- school scholars and the Rev. F. E. Mckinsey is their pastor. The Summit Methodist Church, costing $5,000, was dedicated in 1876 by the good Bishop Scott. This church and Bethel,
WELSH TRACT BAPTIST MEETING. BUILT A. D. 1746.
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have 109 members and 152 Sunday-school scholars. Rev. W. P. Taylor is pastor for both churches.
About 1702 William James built a grist mill and a saw mill which in 1746 became the property of Thomas Cooch, an Eng- lishman, and were being operated by him when the British burned them. In 1838 his great-grandson, William Cooch, built the present mill at a new location, and his heirs operated it until recent years. It is a five-story brick building fifty feet square. Steam supplements the water-power. The mill makes seventy-five barrels of flour daily and is now operated by John W. Dayett.
Since the failure of the Abbington Iron Works, the Iron Hill ore pits have been twice worked ; once by D. C. Wood of Philadelphia, for a number of years after 1841 ; and again by George P. Whittaker, the owner of the Principio furnace, from 1862 to 1884, when the ore failed. Twenty men were employed. William McConaughey in 1873 employed forty men, and dug twenty-five tons daily from an ore pit on Chest- nut Hill ; but in 1884 he also ceased because of the deposit of ore failing.
Glasgow was formerly called Aikentown after Matthew Aiken, who kept a hotel there during the Revolution. The village has no railroad, and grows slowly, having at this time two churches, a school house, a postoffice, two stores, a hotel, a smithy and a dozen or more dwellings. Kirkwood in the southeast lies partly in Red Lion Hundred and is a station on the Delaware Railroad with a passenger and freight depot, three stores, a hotel, a school house, a postoffice, a smithy and about a dozen houses. Summit Bridge lies south of the Dela- ware and Chesapeake canal, and is so called after a high bridge which once spanned the canal at that point. It has a church, a postoffice, a hotel, three stores and some twenty residences. A small settlement is found at Porter's Station.
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RED LION HUNDRED.
Red Lion, next to the smallest Hundred in the State, takes its name from the creek, which forms its northern boundary. The Delaware river is on the east, St. Georges creek on the south and Pencader on the west. The fertile soil of its fine farms gave the first impulse to the State's greatest farming in- dustry, the culture of that queen of all fruits, the peach, which, however, for the last twenty-five years, has been the prey of some mysterious disease that has baffled the highest expert knowledge and skill of both the State and the Nation. Hopes are now being entertained that this luscious fruit may again be grown in its pristine perfection. Much of Red Lion, like Holland, is reclaimed marsh land, and embankments to prevent the river's overflow, are needed in the eastern section. The Hundred was largely devoted to grazing by the early settlers.
One of the first land-owners in the Hundred was Jacob Young, who, in 1661, ran off with the wife of the notorious Lars Lock, the Swedish parson, and settled on the Bohemia Manor. Young received from Governor Andros in 1675 a warrant for 1280 acres on the north side of St. Georges creek, forming what is now known as " Georges Neck." This land was deeded by Young's two sons to Charles Anderson and John Cocks in 1700. A big tract west of this land was owned by a son of Cocks, and received the name of " Cocks' Neck," which still lingers.
The landed and other history of the Hundred is identified with that of a few leading families who early settled there. The Higgins family is one of these. Their first ancestor to settle in America was Lawrence Higgins, who came from Belfast, Ireland, in 1750. He married Miss Susan Wilson, a Welsh lady, and acquired the land now owned by John C. and Anthony Higgins, lying upon the Delaware and Chesa- peake canal, and adjacent to Delaware City. Mr. Lawrence Higgins was a stout patriot, and as purchasing agent for the Continental army, exhausted both purse and credit in his
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