USA > Delaware > History of the state of Delaware, Volume II > Part 7
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The Friends were the first to engage in religious work in Christiana Hundred. A number of the early members of the Newark Meeting in Brandywine Hundred lived in Christiana, and regularly went thither to worship until 1687, when George Harlan and others petitioned for a meeting in winter on the Christiana side of the creek, because of "the danger- ousness of the ford " they had to cross. By 1690 the meeting thus established, known as the Center Meeting, became per- manent, and in 1708 a small house was built to accommo- date the members at the place now called Yorklyn. They also held monthly meetings alternately with Newark until its abandonment, when they continued them in connection with the Kennett Square Meeting in Pennsylvania, and still later, with the Hockessin Meeting. A larger and better meeting- house, a brick building thirty by forty feet was built in 1796 on six acres of land given by Alphonse Kirk, and the sum of £247 was subscribed by twenty-two members to pay for the building. In 1857 and in 1873 the yard was improved, and now both building and yard are in good condition. This Center Meeting is now one of the four Friends' Meetings which have been continuously maintained in the state, and the only one, except that in Wilmington, which keeps up its monthly meetings.
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A log school house was erected on the meeting grounds prior to 1800, and in 1818 a stone building took its place and was used until 1854, when the existing structure was built, which is said to have been one of the finest school buildings in the State. Antonia Bidderman, an enlightened and generous- hearted Frenchman, out of love for the cause of education and because of his pride in this section, gave the liberal sum of $1000 towards the school's erection. The Center Meeting was for many years largely attended, having in 1831 thirty-nine families included in its membership. But year by year, from deaths and removals, their numbers have decreased till now but a few families remain, though the Meeting has never been formally raised.
The first Presbyterian church in Christiana Hundred had its origin in the old congregation formed in 1720, whose little log church stood on Bald Hill on the Pennsylvania side of the Brandywine until 1773. The building becoming decayed, and also too small to house the growing membership, it became necessary in 1770 to rebuild. Factious differences arose as to the site for the new church, and their numbers greatly declined ; when in 1774, to preserve the remainder, some of them erected on the Delaware side, the present Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church, a small log building, though large enough to accommodate, for a term of years, the three dozen odd members. No means was provided to heat the church, the people " having nothing but the fervor of the minister's discourse to keep them warm," says the historian! This building was supplanted in 1860 by a commodious brick edifice seating four hundred people, with a basement arranged for Sunday-school and lecture-room purposes. This structure cost $5000 in money, and the labor of a number of the mem- bers, who, by the way, were about twenty in all ! Mrs. Gamble's liberal gift greatly furthered the finishing of the Sunday-school rooms which agency largely assisting in build- ing up the church, whose membership in 1887 numbered one hundred and fifty-nine, with a Sunday-school enrollment of two hundred and ninety-eight.
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A parsonage with three acres of glebe land was added later near the church. The Rev. Robert Cathcart in 1730 was the first pastor of the original church, serving also the Middle- town, Delaware, congregation for eleven years. The Rev. Joseph Smith was the first preacher of the Lower Brandywine church for about six years, till 1778. Alternate successes and losses marked its history for many years; frequently there would be no pastor for a period of several years, or only oc- casional supplies, till the coming, December, 1825, of the Rev. Thomas Love to the pastorate of this church in connection with the Red Clay congregation. His long and signally useful ministry of thirty-one years, was the golden age of the organi- zation. In 1831 the church was blest with a great revival which doubled its numbers. The courageous temperance women of the church made in 1828 a departure not less suc- cessful than notable, when, upon the occasion of their enter- tainment of the New Castle Presbytery, they substituted tea for the customary strong drink. The effect of this advanced position, in promoting the cause of temperance, was thereafter very marked. The Rev. David W. Moore, their minister from 1861 to 1872, also was a blessing to the church in its spiritual and in its temporal affairs. They are still prospering and today (1906) number 138 members with 190 Sunday-school attendants. The Rev. J. Newton Kugler is their pastor.
The New Castle Presbytery organized the Green Hill Pres- byterian Church, June 5, 1849, although before that time the Rev. Samuel M. Gayley and others had held religious services in the neighborhood. The church, a commodious structure of brick standing on three acres of ground near the Kennett pike, a half-mile beyond the limits of the City of Wilmington, was dedicated September 14, 1851. Rockland Church was attached to it and the same pastors served both churches. Among the longer pastorates may be mentioned that of Rev. Gaylord L. Moore from 1869 to 1883. In 1884 a revival was experienced which added fifty-four members, and in three years afterwards the church numbered one hundred and sixty
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members. There is a parsonage. This progressive, active congregation now has one hundred and thirty-three mem- bers and is without any pastor.
About seventy-five years ago the Ebenezer Baptist Church was built in the southwest part of the Hundred, but it has be- come extinct, and the building has been removed, although the graveyard is still used. In 1847 the Mt. Salem M. E. Church was organized at Riddle's Banks on the Brandywine, Revs. James Riddle and Frank Supplee, local preachers, being among the first members. An employee of Harlan and Hol- lingsworth, a shipwright named Kirkman, often preached for them. The church became an independent member of the Philadelphia Conference in 1865, with Rev. W. S. Pugh as its pastor. On a beautiful hill site overlooking the City of Wilmington they built, in 1847, their first church, a two-story stone building, which they happily christened "Mount Salem." A new edifice which in 1878 replaced the old one, was burned three months after erection, but though the fire caused them a loss of $12,000, the present handsome structure was dedicated June 14, 1879, truly a memorial to their piety and to their courage. The Conference Minutes for 1906 credit them with 237 members, and a Sunday-school enrollment of 445. Their pastor is the Rev. Frank F. Carpenter. The Riddle's chapel, built at the Riddle Banks by the Rev. James Riddle, the proprietor of Riddle mills, for the convenience of those unable to attend at Mt. Salem, was perpetually endowed by Mr. Riddle in the sum of $100 annually, and attached to Mt. Salem, also thus endowed.
A Sunday-school in which both secular and religious in- struction was given by E. I. Du Pont, and his daughter, Mrs. Bauduy, was the germ out of which at length grew Christ P. E. Church, the only one of that denomination in the Hun- dred. A building was erected near the powder mills for thus usefully training the youth of the vicinity, and the school was incorporated January 29, 1847, as the " Brandywine Manu- facturers' Sunday-school," with E. I. Du Pont, Robert McCall,
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John D. Carter, and others as trustees. Though not originally contemplated, regular church services under the forms of the Protestant Episcopal Church were finally adopted in 1852, with the Rev. S. C. Brinckle as rector, and upon the occasion of his first sermon, May 2, of that year, Bishop Alfred Lee confirmed the first seven members. A church was built on the Du Pont property in 1856, and greatly improved in 1876. A rectory was also provided by that family, and a regular parish created. At his death in 1863 the Rev. S. C. Brinckle was succeeded by the Rev. William A. Newbold. The Rev. Dudley D. Smith was rector from 1873 to 1899. The present rector is the Rev. John S. Bunting. The church numbers (1905) 152 members, and a flourishing Sunday-school of 130 is maintained.
Father Patrick Kenney, the zealous Catholic missionary priest, said masses over eighty years ago on the Brandywine banks, and in 1828 his first mass at Mrs. Victor Du Pont's house. In 1841, through the efforts of Peter N. Brennan and others, with the help of the Du Ponts, the present St. Joseph's Church was built, followed shortly by a school-house and a pastor's residence. The grounds have been enlarged until they contain several acres, a part of which is set apart for the Sisters of St. Francis, who have charge of the school. Father J. S. Walsh was the parish priest from 1846 to 1867; and since that time Fathers Peter Donaghy, William J. Birming- ham and W. J. Scott have been in charge. The parish is in a fine condition and has a large membership. The church was repaired and the cemetery enlarged in 1887.
The St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church, a neat frame building 34x60 feet, with basement, was dedicated October 10, 1881, near Ashland, in the southwest part of the Hun- dred. The church and a dwelling for the priest are worth $8,000, and are the outcome of the labors of Father Peter Donaghy, who began holding Catholic services in the locality in 1880, and served as their first pastor, and St. John's at Hockessin. Over fifty families support the church.
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Delaware exploits no nobler charity in all her borders than the Ferris Reform School, beautifully situated in Christiana Hundred, about four miles southwest of the City of Wilming- ton. Its founding is due to the kind and wise heart of John Ferris of that city, who at his death, September 2, 1882, left a large estate principally devoted to benevolent purposes. The residue of this estate was devised to Dr. Caleb Harlan, the celebrated homeopathie physician, to be used as he thought best, "to aid in establishing what is known as a House of Refuge, or place for bettering wayward juveniles," and proved to be $83,823. Dr. Harlan in carrying out his friend's bene- faction secured the advice and co-operation of a number of the foremost citizens of the State. Judge Wales prepared a charter for the school, and it was duly incorporated March 10, 1885, as the "Ferris Reform School," forty-eight prominent men being named as incorporators. April 10, 1885, Caleb Harlan, M. D., was made president of the Board, Judge L. E. Wales and J. Taylor Gause, vice-presidents ; Henry C. Robinson, treasurer ; David W. Harlan, secretary, and eighteen leading citizens of the State, together with the Mayor of Wilmington, the resident Judge of the Superior Court, and the President of the Levy Court of the County, ex-officio, as managers. " Woodside," the country seat of Philip Quigley, containing one hundred and ninety acres of fine land with large build- ings thereon, fitted to accommodate fifty inmates, was bought, and other buildings erected. The institution was opened January 1, 1886, and by the close of that year sixteen lads, black and white. ranging in ages from nine to sixteen years, had been admitted. Newton Chandler was made superin- tendent and Mary E. Chandler matron, and their administra- tion was successful. The boys are taught ten months in the year, and given such light manual labor as beneficially aids their physical development, while the merit system tends to awaken in them the innate manliness of their natures, thus promoting the purposes for which the school was designed. It has turned out many lads in the past two decades of its oper-
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ation, most of them to become good citizens, and not a few to find very successful careers. The past success of this noble benefaction, and the high promise it gives of still expanding future usefulness, must ever redound to the fame of its generous founder. In a diviner sense might he exclaim, in the words of the great Latin poet boasting of the immortality conferred by his lyric muse, " Exegi monumentum aere perennius !"
In 1735 John Justis laid out Newport, as " Newport Ayre," on the two hundred acre tract patented to Conrad Constantine, one-half of which Henry Parker had in 1731 conveyed to him, and sold eighteen acres to Samuel Marshall, who plotted his tract and sold lots to various persons, as also did Justis in suc- ceeding years. John Latimer, the son of James Latimer, a lot buyer, grew rich in China in the tea trade, and returning be- came Newport's most active citizen in his day. The place where he dreamed to found a city which should rival Wilming- ton is yet known as " Folly Woods." His elegant mansion is now occupied by his descendants. Newport began to de- cline when turnpikes and other improvements more and more diverted trade to Wilmington, the coming metropolis. Be- fore the day of the Lancaster pike hundreds of Pennsylvania farm teams brought grain and produce to the Newport wharves and warehouses on the Christiana busy with the traffic of their half-score or more of sloop freighters.
Chief among the shippers of this now vanished commerce was John McCalmont. Lewis Stone had two bark mills and did a big tanning business. Thomas Seal also had a tannery. A line of packets daily left the wharves for Philadelphia. A part of the keel of the "Hannah," one of these forty-ton packets, is still visible in the creek. The old building on Market street is gone where from 1800 a market was kept. Newport had five good stores and six inns in 1825, the period of its greatest activity. The completion of the railroad in 1837 witnessed their final decay.
A duel was fought on the Peter Derrickson farm about a mile from Newport, April 5, 1823, between General Cadwal-
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lader of Philadelphia and Dr. Pattison of Baltimore, in which the general's pistol missed fire, but he himself was shot in the arm; whereupon Pattison thanked God he had not killed his antagonist, and the two parted with better feelings, the latter recuperating awhile at the " Yellow Hotel " in Newport. A Dr. John Morris, a generous but erratic man, located at Newport before 1837. He committed suicide by shoot- ing himself, and according to his dying request, was buried in a standing posture facing the proposed railroad, to whose building he was opposed. He was later elsewhere properly re- interred. Drs. Alexander Irons, Isaiah Lukens, J. Paul Lukens and M. A. Booth were subsequently physicians there and Francis L. Springer is now the resident physician. New- port has the high honor of having been in 1755 the birthplace of Oliver Evans, the great inventor whose many ingenious and useful inventions entitle him to high rank among early American scientists. He was the first to use high-pressure steam, i. e., steam having a pressure greater than that of the atmosphere, 1,488 pounds to the square inch. The great Watt strangely overlooked this most important fact, and when it was brought to his knowledge utterly refused to the end of his life to recognize it, though Trevithick (1771-1838) had availed himself of Evans' great discovery.
The Newport National Bank became the successor, May 9, 1865, of the old Real Estate Bank of Delaware, chartered in 1859. Franklin Q. Flinn was the first president of both banks .. The capital of the new bank is $75,000, and it has a large surplus. Charles M. Groome is its president and Daniel Green its cashier. Joseph W. H. Watson was for many years cashier. A number of new manufacturing companies have located in Newport in recent years. The J. A. Cranston Phosphate Works, occupying five acres of ground, now owned by John Richardson of Wilmington, Delaware, are operated by the Delaware Barytes and Chemical Company, of which J. M. Enocho is president. They employ ten men. The Delaware Glue Company, a firm from Cincinnati, Ohio, A. E.
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Kruse president, manufacture all kinds of glue and sell the refuse by-products, grease, etc., for fertilizers. They employ fifty men except during the summer when about half that number is needed. The Excelsior Manufacturing Company makes a new substance used in paint, called "lithophone." F. F. Briggs operates the works and employs ten men. The Krebs Pigment and Chemical Company, owned and operated by Henry S. Krebs, of Wilmington, Delaware, manufacture all kinds of paint, and employ thirty-five men. The Kiamensi Clay Company, started in 1902, Oscar L. Young president, grind the clay into various forms, and also sell the crude kaolin itself. Justa G. Justis keeps a large lumber-yard. The Marshall Iron Company, formerly the J. Marshall Com- pany, manufacture bar and sheet iron, etc. John M. Mendin- hall is president. The mill employs eighty men the year around.
Since its incorporation in 1883 Newport has been much im- proved as a town. Its population is (1906) one thousand. Armstrong Lodge No. 26, A. F. and A. M., was organized June 27, 1870. Audastake Tribe No. 14, I. O. of R. M., was organized September 28, 1874, and has prospered from the start. The David L. Stryker Post No. 8, G. A. R., was formed in 1883 with twenty-three members, afterwards increasing to thirty-three members, but within the past few years has been forced to disband. Active Lodge No. 11, A. O. U. W., was organized May 27, 1885, and continues a live organiza- tion.
St. James' P. E. Church at Newport was built from the pro- ceeds of a lottery held in 1767; but the completion of the building was delayed by the breaking-out of the Revolution- ary War. It was at last finished and meetings held therein for a few years from 1800 to 1802 by Rev. William Pryce, rector of Old Swedes at Wilmington. After 1810 the Stone church was abandoned, in 1857 regular services were held in the Methodist Protestant Church and continued until 1859, when the new St. James' Church having been refitted, it was
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received into diocesan relations. The new church was conse- crated September 5, 1877, by Bishop Alfred Lee. The church now (1906) has twenty-two communicants, and the Rev. Alex- ander M. Rich is rector for this and St. James' Church near Stanton.
The Rev. Ezekiel Cooper preached to a little Methodist flock in Newport in 1797. The society built a small church in 1810 on land given by Thomas Latimer, and in 1864 re- placed it with their present brick edifice. In 1842 Sybilla Ann Stone donated the brick house on the lot adjoining the church for a parsonage, and an acre of ground across the street. Though built before 1800 the parsonage has been modernized and affords a comfortable home. The church has a present membership of 143, and property valued at $6,500. It has been a station since 1865, several of the leading min- isters of the Wilmington Conference have served the charge. A small stone building north of Newport originally, built for a society of white Methodists which disbanded fifty years ago, became the property of the Newport African Methodist Church. They have a membership of fifty-one, and within the last few years have erected a new church building. The Simpson M. E. Church, a congregation of colored people, have a good church building about one mile north of the village on the Gap turnpike. Rev. W. E. Hilton is the present pastor.
MILL CREEK HUNDRED.
The westernmost of the three circle hundreds, is Mill Creek, quite surrounded east and south and partly west, by Red Clay and Christiana creeks. As its name implies, the region abounds with good mill seats and its whole economic history, past and present, is linked with the many mills and manufac- tories which these water powers have invited. Christopher Daniel Ebeling in his interesting work "Geography and His- tory of America, 1799," says p. 103, MSS. copy in the his- torical societies of Pennsylvania and Delaware, " There are in New Castle County sixty flour mills, two snuff mills, four
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paper mills and several fulling and saw mills." Again p. 84 he says, " The most important industrial sources of wealth to the state are the mills, of which there are various kinds, par- ticularly on the Brandywine, more than in any other district of the United States. They are not only numerous but also remarkable for their ingenious mechanism."
The land, which was settled at an early date, is fertile and well cultivated, and traversed on the north by the Landen- berg branch of the B. and O. R. R. and on the west by the Pomeroy and Newark R. R. and on the east by the B. and O. railroad's main line. In 1804 the assessment lists of Robert Montgomery returned 463 taxables, seven of whom were " black men "; and that there were 99 log houses, to 48 of stone and 21 of brick, plainly attests the simple life of the in- habitants. Many high hills diversify the landscape, "Meet- ing House Hill " being the highest of these. On its top, fifty years ago, a corps of engineers built an observatory eighty feet high, and mounted instruments thereon for the purpose of surveying the Atlantic coast from New York to the mouth of the Chesapeake, signals being erected on poles at ranges from ten to one hundred miles apart. The engineers and their guard of United States soldiers remained there three or four months. Some years later another corps built an observatory for like purposes on Polly Drummond's Hill.
March 25, 1676, Governor Andros granted 570 acres of land on White Clay and Red Clay creeks to Charles Rumsey, Wal- raven Jansen and others. In December, 1679, Rumsey re- ceived 200 acres and Arient J. Vanderburgh owned other land in the Hundred, part of which William Guest, bought, though most of it became vested in John Cann, who also received by survey a tract of 300 acres on White Clay creek. October 2, 1677, Broor and Andreas Sinnexson received a 600-acre grant called " Claesburg " situated on the north side of White Clay creek near Mill brook. In 1685 Broor Sinnexson conveyed to Humphrey Bert and Edward Green 220 acres, and to Christian Juriansen 100 acres of a tract called " Water Land."
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October 14, 1683, " Hop Yards," containing 430 acres, on the north side of White Clay creek, was surveyed for John Ogle ; and December 11, 1683, a warrant for 1,000 acres on the same side of White Clay, was given William Welsh.
John Moll, the President Justice of the Court at New Castle from 1676 to 1682, when not engaged at court, lived in this Hundred on land bought from Charles Rumsey. In 1683 John Moll, Peter Bayard, Arnoldus de La Grange and others bought 3,750 acres on the Chesapeake called the "Labadist Colony," but Moll's after career is unknown. June 6, 1684, William Penn granted William Guest a tract on the " Millin," about two miles from "Bread and Cheese " Island, called " Wedgebury," containing 500 acres. Guest also bought 200 acres more from Charles Rumsey. In 1695 Guest, in an agreement with Thomas Sawyer, was to have the right "to dig upon a certain hill, containing two or three acres, for ising-glass or other metal for his own use," etc. In 1702 Guest got 530 acres on Red Clay creek near "Bread and Cheese " Island.
The first settler in the Hundred was Thomas Wollaston, who lived there until his death in 1686. February, 1666, a warrant was granted to Sergeant Thomas Wollaston and three others for 300 acres on White Clay Kill. Wollaston also received from Governor Lovelace various warrants, from 1668 to 1680, containing about 700 acres of land in this Hundred, and also bought land there. February 7, 1677, after the reorganization of the Court at New Castle, Sheriff Edward Cantwell appointed him under-sheriff of New Castle and its precincts, and also marshal and crier of the Court, which offices he kept for two years. John Crampton got judgment against him in a suit over 200 acres of land sold by Wollaston, but it was reversed on his appeal to the higher Courts at Philadel- phia. He was one of the signers for the mill seat at Stanton in 1679. He left two sons, Jeremiah and Thomas; and two great-great-granddaughters of his, Catherine and Elizabeth Wollaston, married Elwood Garrett and Albert W. Smith, of
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the City of Wilmington. His grandson, Joshua Wollaston, was a large landowner in Wilmington.
" Bread and Cheese " Island, after various ownerships from Olle Poulson's in 1668, came into the possession of Edward Robinson in 1737 and was owned by him till 1755. Late in that century Barney Harris, William Woodstock and Simon Cranston had a shipyard on the island. The British drove them out in 1812 and they went to Jones' creek, Kent County, and there built a brig. David Lynam owned the island for many years.
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