Selbyville
RG# 7210 Shortly after Mason and Dixon carried out the survey that would establish the boundary line between Maryland and Delaware, a community began to develop near the location of a grist mill and sawmill on Sandy Branch at the headwaters of the Bishopsville Prong of the St. Martin’s River. Its name, Selbyville, dates to […]
Ocean View
RG# 7170 The 1800s Around 1800, W.S. Hall opened a store on farmland he owned near White’s Creek, a tributary of the Indian River Bay. A village began to form around the store which served the needs of the nearby farmers and also became home to many watermen. Originally known as Hall’s Store, legend […]
Newport
RG# 5090 Newport is one of Delaware’s oldest communities. In the 1730s, building lots were laid out along the Old Kings Road from Philadelphia to Baltimore at a place where the road neared the Christiana (Christina) River. The village became a stage stop along the road and before the end of the eighteenth century, […]
Milton
RG# 7160 In the early eighteenth century, a grist mill, a sawmill, and a cotton mill were established at the head of navigation of the Broadkill River. By the 1760s, a village had been laid out near the mills which in 1807 would change its name from Head of Broadkiln to Milton, after the […]
Millville
RG# 7165 Located in the southeast quadrant of Sussex County, in an area that once contained a great deal of marsh and swamps, Millville is one of several towns along a ridge of high ground in this part of the state. A sawmill, established near the headwaters of Mill Creek in the late nineteenth […]
Millsboro
RG# 7160 Late 1700s – 1849 Around 1792 the headwaters of Indian River were dammed at a place called Rock Hole to establish a grist mill and a sawmill on the northeast side of the river. Originally called Rock Hole Mills, the name was changed in 1809 to Millsborough.1 Additional mills were soon established […]
Milford
RG# 6140 Milford was formed from two communities, one on the north side of the Mispillion Creek and one on the south linked by a bridge over the creek near its headwaters. On the north, the establishment of a town was spurred by the Reverend Sydenham Thorne who had built a dam and established […]
Middletown
RG# 5060 The name Middletown first appears in a 1678 warrant for land patented to Adam Peterson. Near this tract was the intersection of Augustine Herman’s Bohemia Cart Road and the Upper King’s Road, the post road between Philadelphia and Virginia. This road crossing was midway between navigable waters of the Bohemia River and […]
Magnolia
RG# 6130 Magnolia is located within a large tract of land which was once owned by the Duke of York and these large land holdings were maintained through most of the first half of the nineteenth century. There were major roads that bisected that land and it was at the intersection of two such roads […]
Lewes
RG# 7140 Settled in 1631 by the Dutch, Lewes was the site of Delaware’s first European settlement. In 1681, the land that would become Delaware was part of a land grant by the King of England to the Penn Family. Upon William Penn’s arrival here, he would re-name the southernmost county of what would […]
