Awsome Osprey Photo

These two photos were taken behind the Hale-Byrnes house in Stanton and forwarded to me by Kim Burdick.They were taken by Ralph Burdick. I just thought it was to cool not to post. I contacted Kim to ask permission and she said sure. Even though the home is on the White Clay it is a stones throw from where the Red Clay empties into the White Clay and is bordered on the east by Bread and Cheese Island, settled in the mid 1600's. Makes me wonder what kind of Osprey population there is in the Lower Red Clay Valley.

                                                   Photo: Ralph Burdick

                                                 Photo: Ralph Burdick

Intersection of Old Capitol Trail and Newport Road.

You can see Foards Store on the left in photo below

c1932

Civil War Veterans Meet in 1923

Workers Home Fells Mill Historic District

Now that I have reached forty posts I wondered if anyone was following on a regular basis. I know of one, but I ask myself is there anyone else? So I have placed “following widget” in the right hand column to let me know if anyone finds this site worthwhile.

As I said in the blog’s header I am not much of a writer, so I hope the images do most of the talking for me. The entire reason for this blog is to expose and share the amount of resources in The Lower Red Clay Valley along with sharing some older pictures I have come a crossed.

I have recently added a stand alone page related to flooding on the Red Clay. Since the high water of the creek disrupts so many people’s lives and homes I thought it deserved a special place of it’s own on this site.

If anyone has old photos, etc. and would like to share them, please send them along. You can do so by clicking on the contact button and attaching them to the email. Also, if you do not feel comfortable leaving a comment you can also send email via the contact button.

Thank you

Greenbank and Duncan Road.....updated

Looking through my files again I came accrossed some different photos of the store and trolley I posted earlier. These pictures are a little more clear. I really like the delivery truck in the first photo. The bridge wall is a little more visible in the first one also. It gives a better idea where the end of the line was.

Hickman Blacksmith Shop

Entrance to Brandywine Springs Amusement Park .....Now and Then

The photos below show the entrance to Brandywine Springs Amusement Park. The first one shows what the entrance looks like today and second from its hayday. I do not know the date of which the second photo was taken.

Red Clay Flooding at the old Ametek site in 1938

I have had these photos for a while and can not remember who passed them along to me. The first picture appears it was taken from Greenbank Road looking across the Red Clay towards the south end of the bridge in Marshallton. The second is on the old Ametek mill property. That is the concrete bridge crossing the falls at the end of original millrace. You can see in the third photo ( a recent one) how high the water came up. It is obvious the water went over the bridge and Greenbank Road was covered. I can not imagine what downstream was like. You can not tell where the creek is. Documented on the back of one of the older photos is a date of 1938.

Now that this old site (c1765) sits vacant it should be looked at and acquired, from the current owner, by the Federal, State and the County Governments to be used for flood mitigation and recreational purposes like what is being done in Yorklyn and what was done in Glenville.

Scene from Fell's Mill Historic District

What a Shame

Digging through old files and finding photos like this really makes me glad I took it.  Here was a house,c1845, that was lived in until purchased by a developer with the promises to restore it. After so much time had gone by and not doing a thing to it, it fell into disrepair and had to be demolished.

I am sorry I did not take the oppurtunity to go inside and take pictures.

The photo was taken from the Hunter's Den Restaraunt parking lot. People I know that go to the eatery have asked what happen to the house, saying it was a really nice view.

Yes, I did post his house before, but I like this photo.

Trolley at Greenbank and Duncan Road

I was asked on the previous post where the Marshallton Store sat at the intersection of Duncan and Greenbank Roads on property now owned by the apartments. It sat facing the Red Clay Creek, which would have been to the right of the trolley.You can make out the house/store as it sits in the far left in this photo. I was told by some old timers this trolley use to run to Brandywine Springs. If you click and enlarge the image you can make out the Marshallton sign in the trolley window. The milk cans? I have no idea unless it had something to do with the store, if it was still a store at this time. This was the end of the line on Greenbank Road. In the bottom right hand corner of image (top of bridge wall) you can see it stopped at Hersey's Bridge. Again, if you enlarge the image you can see part of the Marshallton Mill in the background. I do not know when this was taken but I am guessing if the trolley car was not there we may be able to see the old Hersey Grist Mill. It stood until about 1920 or so.

Intersection of Duncan and Greenbank Road

I am not expert on postcards but I believe they stopped making undivided back postcards around 1907.

A Short Piece on Oliver Evans and Falkland Mills (Faulkland Rd.) on the Red Clay

Taken From:  Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer's monthly journal,  pub.1873

THE TRUE INVENTOR OF THE
LOCOMOTIVE.

Adrian, Mich., 8ept, 1873. UEssBs. Wilson A Obben:

On Redclay Creek—a tributary to the Christine, running into it parallel with the Brandywine, near the city of Wilmington, a number of mills have seated themselves, attracted by its swift torrent, amid scenery of steeps and rapids, comparable to that on the Lehigh about Mauch Chunk. Of these the most interesting traditions attach to the Falkland Mills. Their name may remind the reader of the first novel of the late Lord Lytton Falkland, written in 1828—but it was given to the spot long before, in designation o f a primitive settlement, Falkland. The association with this site is that of Oliver Evans, the true inventor of the Locomotive, who here worked and dreamed in a mill enriched with his contrivances. Evans, like Fitch, is one ot the world's lost renowns. Had the Legislators of his time possessed sagacity enough to endow his inventions, the advantages of steam transport would have been anticipated by several years, and the glory would have radiated from the Deleware River instead of from the Hudson. His design for a Locomotive was sent to England in 1787, disputing priority with the Steam "Wagons" of James Watt. He built steamboats at Philadelphia in 1802 and 1803, and ran them successfully, antedating by five years the Clermont of Robert Fulton—Fulton whom people are beginning to regard with Mr. Stone, author of the History of New York, as the man who received the greatest quality of undeserved praise of all who ever, lived.

Oliver Evans, born in 1756 of a respectable family, was a miller at Falkland, where his smaller inventions were first put in use. The plank just under the apex of the roof, which he used to resort to, as a private study, was shown until 1867, when the old mill was burned. Up among the swallows, as he lay on the board—to which, as Beecher expresses it, "he brought the softlings" the children of his genius were conceived and delivered. The mill was full of his labor-saving machines,/ which clattered to the babling Bedclay. One of his notions was the mill " elevator," (an improvement of something he had seen in Marshalls mill, at Stanton) by which grain was raised to the top of the building in buckets set along a revolving belt which passed from the roof to the bottom, distributing the wheat with spouts to the bolt. This was set up by contributions among the millers at Shipley's great mill in Wilmington, and also introduced into his own when his other inventions of the "Conveyer " and the "hopper bag" (attracted the stares of the rival mill-rights. Poor Oliver was known to the fat millers of this neighborhood as the inconvenient person who was always wanting the loan of a thousand dollars to carry out a new invention. The " thinking men " among them sagely argued that his improvements would benefit the consumer, by increasing the supply of flour and making it cheap—a clear detriment to the interest of capital.

Then Oliver plunged desperately into his idea of steam motion, losing the faint vestages of his repute for wit, and died poor and heart broken in 1819—the hero of an unwritten tragedy. The happy hours of his life, were the hours on the dusty plank in the mill gable at Faulkland.

The above article was copied from LippincoU't Magazine, as a rare bit of biography worthy to be transfered to the columns of your valuable Journal, which is read by so many mechanics. There is perhaps no journal in the United States the pages of which are perused with greater care and in which a greater interest is felt for its success, than your very valuable journal. Yours, s. w. s.