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The Joseph Ball House In the last post , we took a look at the 19th Century history of what I call the Joseph Ball House, located in the parking lot of the Arundel Apartments northwest of Milltown. The little, stone, two-story house doesn't look like much, but I think it dates back well over 250 years and connects to an important early family in Mill Creek Hundred. The chronology may have been a bit confusing in the previous post, so here is how I believe the ownership/residency of the house went in the 1800's. At the start of the century, it was owned by Joseph Ball, whose son James may have worked the farm with him. After Joseph's 1821 death, James lived here for two years until his death in 1823. James' widow Isabella then had the house until her own passing in 1831. At this point the house went to John Ball, whose relationship to Joseph we'll look at later in the post. When John died sometime in the 1850's, the house went back to James' son, James W. Bal

I was something of a history snob in my youth. My snobbery was entirely chronological. The older it was, the more worthy of study. You’d think this sort of attitude would fit one for a career in Classics, but, like Shakespeare I had little Latin and less Greek. My Latin is of the “Cornelia et Flavia cantant sub arbore” variety (points to you if you recognize the reference!) and my Greek is only useful if you want someone to recite the first verse of the Odyssey or talk about Dikaiopolis's ill-fated attempts to make it to the Festival. So, by process of elimination, I fished up in sixteenth century Britain.  Occasionally, I would go slumming in eighteenth century France, or hang out with Wellesley (not yet Wellington) in India, but on one thing I was very clear: anything after 1815 Just Didn’t Count. Sure, one might read the odd novel set in Victorian England or thrill to M.M. Kaye’s tales of India in the days of the Raj, or, of course, cackle maniacally at the antics of P.G.

I've only been writing this blog for a little less than two years now, but in that time I feel I've learned a pretty decent amount about the history of Mill Creek Hundred (and I hope I've been able to pass along a lot of "new" knowledge, too). But even in a relatively small area like MCH, I'm still coming across things that surprise me -- even in an area of the hundred that I consider to be my "backyard". To be accurate, though, I didn't come across this one by myself. A couple weeks ago, Dave O. (he's commented a few times), in the context of discussing other sites, offhandedly mentioned to me in an email that there was an old house in the middle of the parking lot of the Arundel Apartments (northeast of Limestone Road, just above Milltown Road). Intrigued, and pretty sure I knew which house it was on the 19th Century maps, I went to check it out. As soon as I saw it, I knew there was going to be some frustrating research ahead. I was right.

Hockessin Colored School #107C In my opinion, there are many interesting and significant historical sites in Mill Creek Hundred. Most, though, are significant only in a local context, and not much more. However, one site in Hockessin -- recently almost lost -- bucks that trend. Not only was it born of one of the greatest philanthropic crusades in early 20th Century Delaware, it had a contributing role in probably the most important court case of the century, too. Although it's been in the news quite a bit the past year or so, many people probably don't know very much about the Hockessin Colored School #107C. The story of this plain-looking little brick building -- especially its beginning and its end -- is really the story of a few principled individuals trying to better the futures of children overlooked and mostly disregarded at the time. To fully understand "107C" we have to go back a little, to the 1800's. Beginning in the 1820's, the schools in MCH and th

I just celebrated my first Mother's Day as a mom, while writing a novella in which my heroine is pregnant. While sipping a caramel latte and writing in a café with my daughter, I found myself thinking about mothers in books. So many of them are absent. Jane Eyre, Emma Woodhouse, Anne Elliott, and my own Suzanne all lost their mothers at birth or early in life. When mothers are present in the lives of their fictional offspring, they often create complications. Mrs. Bennet nearly ruins her daughters' marriage prospects. Even the sweet and sympathetic Mrs. Dashwood leans a great deal on Elinor. Percy Blakeney's mother suffered from mental illness and one has the sense she was absent long before she died and took up a great deal of his father's time, so he had an isolated and lonely childhood. My own hero Malcolm had a mother who was an erratic presence in his life growing up and whose death left him scarred in ways he won't talk about. Francis Crawford begins the Lymon

Joseph Jones' 1855 sale ad I wanted to share something here that got forwarded to me while back, and that I'm just now getting around to posting. It comes from the personal collection of Denis Hehman, of the Lower Red Clay Valley blog. Since it doesn't seem to specifically fit into the bounds of his blog, he's graciously allowed me to share it here with everyone. It's not (as far as I know) a particularly historically significant document, but it's interesting nonetheless. I haven't found a whole lot of information about, but I did recently find just enough to give it a bit of historical and geographical context. What Denis has is a handwritten document from 1855 detailing an upcoming sale of personal property. For those who can't read the document (although the handwriting is impressively clear -- this coming from one whose handwriting is often illegible even to himself), I've transcribed it below: Public Sale of personal property. Will be sold at

I'm really excited about my friend Marie Claremont's upcoming book The Dark Lady . I'm especially entranced with her cover. THIS is what romance covers should look like. I want to know where she's going, what she's doing, who she is. Marie agreed to visit with us and talk a little about the inspiration for The Dark Lady :   Back in 2008 I was an aspiring Regency writer. I adored the costumes, the comedy, the houses. What wasn’t to love? And at the time I had every intention of finding my niche in that very popular genre period. I was even on my way, I’d had agent requests and an editor request for my regency. And then it happened. Love at first sight. . . Ahem. . . Or first read. A book that year was getting a lot of buzz at the San Francisco Romance Writers of America Conference. I picked up a free copy of Meredith Duran’s Duke of Shadows, a passionate novel set in India and London during the 1850s. That book gripped me and then it never really let go. It inspire

As we've seen in through the pages of this blog, there are still quite a few historic houses scattered around Mill Creek Hundred. Most of the survivors are still being used for the purpose for which they were erected many years ago -- as private homes. A few, though, have been repurposed over the years and now serve a commercial function for their owners. Several of them -- like the Meeteer House and the Aquila Derickson House -- have been featured already. Another one that some of you may have visited sits on the south side of Old Capitol Trail, west of Stanton, between Kirkwood Highway and Delaware Park. Now a beautiful setting for weddings and other events, The Farmhouse was once, well, a farmhouse. Like a few of the things I've written about recently, I don't know nearly as much about this house as I'd like to (yes, after almost two years I've exhausted most of the "low hanging fruit" -- the things there's a lot written about already). For one

Hi, Rose here! As I mentioned in my last post , I'm doing research for my next book, about a revenue officer, a governess, and a ghost in Orkney (tentatively titled The Ghost and Miss Moore ). I've always liked stories with ghost characters, but real-life ghost sightings have never been much of an interest of mine, so I'm reading The Haunted: a Social History of Ghosts by Owen Davies. It's a fascinating book and it's been giving me lots of ideas for how I want my ghost character to work! He's a murder victim seeking justice (or maybe vengeance...he's not entirely a nice ghost), which has been a popular kind of ghost over the centuries--so popular, in fact, that murder investigations have been opened because of ghost sightings, up through the early part of the eighteenth century. In one case in 1660, a Westmoreland magistrate investigated the death of Robert Parkin because of a report that Robert's ghost had appeared to a man in the parish church crying

The Lang & Sturgis Store At the risk of seeming to be fixated on the topic, I have one more post on the general subject of the Smith's Corner area. After this one, though, I promise you'll never look the same way at a building you probably never gave a second thought to in the past. I know that personally, I'm kind of fascinated with it now. The starting point for all this comes via Denis Hehman (who authors the wonderful Lower Red Clay Valley blog), who got the basic information (and the old pictures) from someone in what started out as a conversation about other historical sites. (You can also read Denis' original post about the store, which also includes a picture of a Wilmington store, mentioned later.) He asked about Smith's Store, and instead of getting information about it , he got a story and photos of what was either a competitor or successor to Smith's. What Denis was told was that there was another store on that same intersection (Old Capitol Tr

Can I get a show of hands -- how many people watched the 4-hour ABC miniseries, TITANIC, penned by Julian Fellowes of DOWNTON ABBEY fame? I vastly preferred this screenplay to Cameron's treacly, overindulgent, and overrated feature film, which strained all bounds of credulity; and I have a number of friends who still maintain that the movie classic, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, has thus far been their favorite retelling of the maritime tragedy of the night of April 14-15, 1912. With this being the centennial year of the unsinkable ship's epic sinking, all things Titanic -related are hot, hot, hot. But even with the fairly sophisticated and laudable Fellowes script, which was very DOWNTON ABBEY or UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS on the high seas, for me, it lacked what the Cameron version lacked as well. I want to see the stories of the actual historical personages on board. John Jacob Astor, who sailed with his wife. At least the Broadway musical version cared enough to care. How can you film the