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 Posts & Pages Tagged With: "Sussex County"

Menhaden Fishing Industry

SC-214: The Atlantic Menhaden is a small herring-like fish found in the coastal waters of the Eastern United States. Used by Native Americans to fertilize crops, these oily fish were also used by European settlers to produce fuel for lamps. In the mid-19th century, technological improvements resulted in more-efficient processing methods and the menhaden fishing […]



Ocean View Presbyterian Church

SC-213: The origin of this congregation can be traced to the late 17th century when this area was settled by people seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. Many were English Dissenters or persons of Welsh, French, and Scottish descent who subscribed to the Protestant Reformed tradition of worship. For many years they were forced to […]



Delaware Breakwater East End Lighthouse

SC-185: Located on the eastern end of the Delaware Breakwater, this brown conical structure was built in 1885. The tower is composed of four tiers of cast iron plates lined with two feet of brick. It is twenty-two feet in diameter at the base and is set upon a circular concrete foundation. When completed it […]



Jacobs School #143

SC-131: In 1863 the Sussex County Levy Court formally approved the creation of a new school district to serve the needs of local citizens. A frame schoolhouse was built on this site on land provided by Thomas Jacobs, measuring twenty feet in width and thirty-two feet in length. A single teacher was responsible for teaching […]



Bethany United Methodist Church (Lowe’s Crossroads)

SC-105: In the early part of the twentieth century, members of the Old Jones’ Methodist Church began to search for a more central location for the congregation to worship. Although the land for the new church was donated by Sarah C. Collins in 1914, construction of the building had already begun the previous year. Incorporated […]



Ocean View Delaware (Birthplace of the Commercial Broiler Industry)

SC-78: In 1923, Cecile Long Steele started a flock of 500 chicks. At 16 weeks, they weighed 2¼ pounds and sold for 62 cents a pound. By 1989, growers produce birds of twice the weight in half the time. Sussex County leads the nation in broiler production, now a multibillion dollar industry. Installed in 1989. […]



Transpeninsular Line

SC-74: This stone monument, erected April 26, 1751, marks the eastern end of the Transpeninsular Line surveyed 1750-1751 by John Watson and William Parsons of Pennsylvania and John Emory and Thomas Jones of Maryland. This line established the east-west boundary between Pennsylvania’s “Three Lower Counties” (now Delaware) and the Colony of Maryland. It established also […]



Pilot Town

SC-66: Pilot Town is the section of the Hamlet of Concord where many free African-American families have lived in harmony with the white families since around 1765. It was so named for the many black pilots who lived in the area and piloted vessels down the Nanticoke River to Chesapeake Bay. Two of the best […]



Milford

SC-26: Town laid out by Joseph Oliver 1787. Village was located on tract then called “Saw-Mill Range.” Named Milford from fording place near mill-dam erected by Rev. Sydenham Thorne across Mispillion Creek, 1787. First incorporated 1807. Old town in Kent County, new town in Sussex County. Home of Governors Rogers, Tharp, Causey, Burton, and Watson. […]



Yearbooks at DPA

The Delaware Public Archives has a small collection of yearbooks researchers can use to learn about academic life through the 20th Century.