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I'm not a fan of horror movies---you know the chase-em and chop-em up kind of scream/shock movies that are just violent for the sake of being violent. Hate em in fact. Boring, abusive, and I admit I've never seen a whole one. I do, however, enjoy a good Gothic romance, with a big old haunted mansion and ghostly dead (or sometimes not so dead) first wife in the attic. I also like the spooky grave side scene in Wuthering Heights (poor, crazy Heathcliff), and I even quite enjoyed the oldie "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." Truly, a love story like no other. I am also always interested in the history, the ghostly history, of battlefields, old houses and castles, maybe because the ghosts are from long ago and there is a human element to the story I can relate to as a historical writer---great loves and losses, tragedy and triumph, with heroes and heroines who were real. Civil war ghost stories draw me in. Civil war and Victorian ghost and sightings are so sad (particularly of wom

There are, as you can see on this site, many beautiful, old homes in Mill Creek Hundred, but there are very few that are open to the public. One of the few houses that is open for public view (at least sometimes) is the Judge Morris Estate, also known as the Andrew Gray House. Thanks to the loving restoration carried out earlier last century by a man whose name is very familiar to University of Delaware alums, the house is in excellent condition, especially considering that it's at least 220 years old. In addition to its architectural beauty, few other houses can boast a roster of owners whose record of public service rivals this one. Like almost every house of its advanced age, the Morris House is comprised of several sections built by various owners over the years. There is no clear consensus on when then oldest section of the house was built, or by whom. According to Francis Cooch in Little Known History of Newark, DE and Its Environs , there are several dates inscribed on ston

 Alan Wood's House, built 1826  Although there were a fair number of mills and industries along Pike Creek, Mill Creek, White Clay Creek and various smaller tributaries throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the greatest number and widest variety of mills in the aptly-named Mill Creek Hundred were powered by the swiftly-falling waters of the Red Clay Creek. At various times, the Red Clay Valley was home to grist mills, saw mills, textile mills, paper mills, spice mills, and snuff mills, just to name a few. Along side all those were two iron rolling mills -- one at Marshallton, and the other, the focus of this post, at Wooddale. There are a number of potential post topics revolving around Wooddale -- Alan Wood, the forgotten community of Wooddale, the mill owner's and workers houses. All of these will no doubt be covered in due time, but right now I'd like to focus on the mill and company at the heart of it all. The first use of the millseat here at the oxbow on Red Clay

I just got back from an idyllic weekend at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival . I soaked up crisp air and brilliant autumn leaves, caught up with friends, ate some great meals, did some productive writing and plotting. And–the point of my trip–I had the chance to revisit two of my favorite productions from the 2010 OSF season. An enchanting, delightful She Loves Me , directed by Rebecca Taichman, and a riveting, electric Hamlet directed by Bill Rauch, with Dan Donohue in the title role. Two truly phenomenal productions with amazing casts that left me with the rush of exhilaration and wonder I get from really spectacular theater. The night I arrived in Ashland, I picked up my tickets, then ducked out of the rain into the Member Lounge where I had a chance to read the fascinating Hamlet production notes by Judith Rosen. I’ve always seen Hamlet as a Renaissance man caught up in the warrior’s world of the older generation (the conflict between the older generation of warlords and

When I posted about Newfs, Diane asked about Pappillons. From what I can tell, there were certainly tiny toy spaniels around the courts of Europe that could have been the ancestors of today’s Pappillons. You see plenty of them in art dating back to at least Titian in the 15th century (detail of his Venus of Urbino to the right). The upstanding “butterfly” ears of the modern dog however are Victorian, and I don’t see the name used until the early 20th century (OED: 1907 R. LEIGHTON New Bk. Dog XVII. lxi. 536/1 A very engaging little dog is the Papillon, or Squirrel Spaniel). Before the late 1800s, all the spaniels have floppy ears (what are now called Phalene [moth]). Both Phalene and Pappillons are still born in the same litters, so it would seem the Paps area are a Victorian sport that caught on. From Wikipedia: " The history of the papillon is traced through works of art. The earliest toy spaniels resembling the papillon are found in Italy. Tiziano Vicelli painted these small do

 Beers 1868 Map, with the Loveville area circled  Whenever you're trying to tell the history or story of an area, whether it be a city, county, state, or a hundred, one of the most important aspects will always be the communities in that area. As you know, Delaware, unlike many states, is not carved up into countless towns, villages, and townships. In fact, Mill Creek Hundred does not currently contain any officially incorporated areas. Probably the closest we have to any towns now would be Hockessin and Marshallton, but in most areas residents would identify more with their neighborhood than with any nearby community. This, of course, was not always the case. Through the years, Mill Creek Hundred has been home to numerous small communities. Over time, most of these communities have faded from memory, their names kept alive in some cases only by road names or vague, general area designations. Some of these have been gone so long that it's hard to remember that they were at on

Have you ever wondered how the slow, measured, graceful steps of the English country dances portrayed in Pride and Prejudice morphed into the raucous, stomping, ya-hooing square dances of the American West? The English ancestor of the modern square dance was probably the Morris dance, an exhibition dance by teams of six men in two rows of three. In fact, country (contra) dancing became popular in 17th century England; some believe the word “contra” derived from a mispronunciation of “country”. Dances were done in two opposing lines, facing each other. The French modified the English country dance and introduced the quadrille - which is the likely source of modern square dancing, done in a square formation with eight dancers (4 couples). “Dull Sir John” and “Faine I Would” were popular, and John Playford’s “The English Dancing Master - Plaine and Easy Rules for the Dancing of Country Dances, with Tunes to Each Dance” enjoyed 17 editions between 1650 and 1728. Square dancing grew o

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, hellions and rogues, and whatever that person in the purple pith helmet wants to call him-/her-/itself. Your regularly scheduled Diane couldn’t make it today. I’m your substitute hoyden. My name is Jean Marie Ward. I write in many genres, including historical fantasy, and it’s a pleasure to have the chance to discuss some of the odder byways of historical research. Long ago, at a mystery convention far far away, Sharan Newman opined that the hardest thing about writing historical mysteries was getting her characters across the room. In other words, it’s the simple things that trip you—and your characters. She’s so right. About a year ago, I started writing about a (relatively) young Asian dragon named Lord Bai. His first appearance was in a story so short and simple, historical period was irrelevant. There was Bai, there was his traveling companion and there was a pig, and ev erybody was stuck in a field by the side of a dirt road. It could’ve been

The Springer-Cranston House today  Tucked away just south of Marshallton on the east side of Stanton Road, close to the street but almost hidden from it, quietly sits one of the oldest houses in southern Mill Creek Hundred. The Springer-Cranston House is a perfect example of how even a smaller home can change fairly radically over time, seemingly with each new owner who takes control. Presently, the house is a four-bay, two-story fieldstone structure, facing south, with a two-story ell on the south-east end and dormers on the north-facing roof. However, this is nothing like the original core of the house dating back well over two centuries. The first owner of what would become the Springer-Cranston House was a miller named John Reece, who also happens to have been the first owner of the millseat that would eventually be occupied by the Kiamensi Woolen Company . I have to admit another instance of "not-understanding-the-report" here, as the National Register form both states

Gap and Newport Turnpike near Avondale, PA, 1896 Houses, schools, churches and factories are not the only man-made constructs vital to the growth of a community. There is one other piece of engineering that is crucial to every aspect of our economy, but which is often overlooked until it is in disrepair -- our roads. And while we often think of road-building and upgrading as a 20th century phenomenon, they were just as vital in the 19th century. In fact, the first two decades of the 1800's saw a flurry of road-building in the area, and for the most part, the roads put down then are still our major thoroughfares today, two hundred years later. One of the first of these new roads to be laid out was the Newport and Gap Turnpike (or, the Gap and Newport Turnpike). This road, now known as Newport-Gap Pike (Rt. 41), is still one of the major routes though Mill Creek Hundred today. At the end of the 18th century, the state of our nation's roads was, well, not good. The war was over, t

As we count down the days to that unofficial national holiday, Halloween, I thought it might be fun to share some of the facts about the life of the man who inspired that old roasted chestnut of the horror genre, Count Dracula. In 1897 London stage manager–turned-author Bram Stoker had an international bestseller on his hands with his novel about a vampiric Transylvanian count named Vlad Dracula. The inspiration for Stoker’s doomed romantic antihero was a fifteenth-century Romanian prince. But the real Vlad was far more of a monster than any Victorian gothic novelist could have imagined. Vlad III of Wallachia (1431-76), known in his day as "Vlad the Impaler," is one of the unsavory characters I profile in ROYAL PAINS: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds, coming to you from NAL on March 1, 2011. He is one of the few royals in the book who scores the perfect trifecta of nouns referred to in my subtitle. Capricious, vicious, and malicious, Vlad Dracula was born

 John McDaniel House    A few posts back, when we took a look at the McDaniel-Peach House , I mentioned that it was one of two related, historic houses in the area. Now, we'll focus on the other house -- the John McDaniel House. Unfortunately, like its older companion, there is frustratingly little information available about this house and the family that built and occupied it. The house is included in the large, thematic National Register entry that deals with agricultural buildings in MCH, but the main focus of that report is the barns in the area, not the houses. Where a house does exist, it is included and given an architectural assessment, but usually only a very cursory historical background. For the McDaniel House, the entry runs four pages , but only one paragraph deals with the house (even then, it doesn't even give the first name of the builder, only calling it the J. McDaniel House). The rest describes the large, tri-level barn that used to sit next to the ho