Port Penn Front Range Light
In 1875, Congress approved funding to build several lighthouses along this segment of the Delaware River. This site was purchased in April 1876, and by December the Port Penn Front Range Light was completed. Constructed under the direction of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, it was a two-story frame structure with a lantern […]
Freedom Lost
By the late 1700s the institution of slavery was declining in Delaware and there was a dramatic growth in the state’s free black population. Demand for slave labor in the Deep South continued to grow and large numbers of free blacks were kidnapped and sent south via networks operated by criminal gangs. The Abolition Society […]
DuPont Airfield
NC-127: Originally Installed in 2003. In 1924, a private airfield was established here by Henry B. du Pont. Charles Lindbergh landed here in October 1927. With Richard du Pont’s purchase of controlling interest in All-American Aviation and Henry du Pont’s establishment of Atlantic Aviation in 1938, the airfield was expanded, becoming one of the most […]
Wilmington Friends Meeting – Burial Place of Thomas Garrett
The first Meeting House on this site was built in 1738. It was replaced in 1748 when a larger building was constructed. The old Meeting House was then converted into a school. Known as Wilmington Friends School, it was relocated to a new facility in 1937, and is the oldest existing school in the state. […]
Church of the Ascension
The roots of this congregation can be traced to 1843 and the missionary efforts of the Rev. Greenbury W. Ridgely and the Rt. Rev. Alfred Lee, who conducted services every other Sunday in the Claymont Stone School. The church was accepted into the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware as an organized congregation on May 28, 1851. […]
Middletown
Beginning in the 1690s, settler Adam Peterson and his family acquired several tracts of land here. One tract, surveyed in 1733, was given the name “Middletown.” The origin of the name is believed to derive from the area’s location at the middle point of a road that led from the head of the Bohemia River […]
Old Union Methodist Church
NCC-117: A log church was built here in 1789 on land donated by Joseph Dickinson. The church was named “Dickinson’s Chapel” in his honor. Francis Asbury and many other pioneers of American Methodism conducted services here. Levi Scott, a native of this area and member of the church, became the first Delawarean to serve as […]
Scott A.M.E. Zion Church
NC-112: Originally Installed in 2001. Zion Church in New York City, organized in 1796, was the catalyst by which the African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination was established in 1821. By the 1870s, a number of Wilmington residents had affiliated themselves with this growing denomination. Formally incorporated as Plymouth AME Zion Church in 1878, the group […]
Gibraltar
NC-108: Originally Installed in 1999. In 1844, John Rodney Brinkle, grandnephew of Delaware patriot Caesar Rodney, built the Italianate core of this Brandywine granite home, named for the high, prominent rocky outcropping upon which it sits. In 1909, Hugh Rodney Sharp (1880-1968) and his wife Isabella Mathieu du Pont (1882-1946) purchased and greatly expanded […]
Wilmington Friends School
NC-107: Originally Installed in 1998. The first Meeting House on this site was built in 1738. It was replaced in 1748 when a larger building was constructed. The old Meeting House was then converted into a school. Known as Wilmington Friends School, it was relocated to a new facility in 1937 and is the oldest […]
