Stoops and Settles
Raised porches are so common throughout America today that it’s hard to imagine a time when they weren’t around. But the Dutch settlers of the 17th and 18th century brought this building style.
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Out of wax that day!
The Delaware Public Archives is my home away from home this year. Yes, they have a ton of stuff scanned and searchable online. But when you’re talking about hundreds of years of history and hundreds of thousands of documents, the scanned material is just a tiny fraction of what’s available. And so you’ve got to…
The demon Fence Rail Dog
You didn’t think I’d let October slide by without a good Delaware ghost story, did you? This is the Bonwell House in Frederica, DE. It was built sometime between 1747 and 1792, when Michael Hall Bonwell bought it. He soon added a grist mill, a saw mill, and a tannery. “Quaker” Bonwell, as he was…
The mortar that saved lives
It’s called the Manby mortar, but unlike the kind that takes lives, this mortar was built to save them. George Manby (1765-1854) designed his device to fire a cannonball, with a line attached, over the deck of a floundering ship. The rescue crew onshore lashed a small boat to the other end and paddled out…