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| General location of the Mendenhall-Pierson farm |
The trail begins when, on January 20, 1725, a tract of 214 acres is surveyed for John Huey. It was sold to him by Reece Thomas, attorney for William and Letitia Penn Aubrey (William Penn's daughter). The tract was roughly vertically rectangular, lying to the west of the Peoples farm and south of where Sanford School now stands. It extended south of today's Graves Road, which did not exist at the time. At some point very early on, 80 acres on the north end were sold to a John Laugherty, leaving 134 acres for Huey. I've tried and tried to follow that 80 acres, so far to no success.
When John Huey, Sr. dies in the 1750's, his land is left to his son John, Jr. I think John Huey, Jr. moved away from the area, and he sold the 134 acres in 1753 to James Philips. James Philips also didn't stay long, as he sold the property in 1763 to Uriah Blue. (The Philips name would stick around through James' brother William, who owned Ocasson (The Cox-Mitchell House in Hockessin) and whose descendants would later own the Greenbank Mill.) I haven't found much about Blue, except that his wife's name apparently was Mary Jordan. A James Jordan owned an adjacent tract to the original property, so if she was perhaps his daughter, that could be a link to the area. (I admit to being oddly obsessed with trying to figure out why people bought particular pieces of land.)
However, Uriah Blue owned the property for an even shorter period than Philips, as he sold the same 134 acres to John Wat in 1767. Here's one of the many confusing points -- in 1762, Wat also bought 80 acres from William Tate, which Tate had previously purchased from a Thomas Sheeran (I think it says Sheeran). I don't know if that was the same 80 acres sold from the original Huey tract or not. What I do know is that John Wat, in his 1783 will, gave one half of his 134 acre plantation to Robert McPherson and one half to John McBeath. I think they were his grandsons. I'm not sure if that means that each got 67 acres or if they each had a one half share of the whole thing. In the end it makes little difference, because in 1794 McPherson willed his half back to McBeath, giving McBeath control over the entire 134 acres.
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| William Mendenhall on the 1849 Rea & Price map. J Bowman is the Peoples Farm. Note the absence of Graves Road |
After having changed hands numerous times in the 18th Century, the property would begin a period of stability starting in 1808, when John McBeath sold 108 of his 134 acres to James Mendenhall for $1625.63. (My guess is that it was the 63 cents that really sealed the deal. He would have been a fool to let it go for a paltry $1625.) James Mendenhall was the builder of the 1826 Mendenhall Mill, just down the road on Mill Creek. It's unclear whether James Mendenhall resided on this property or not, but upon his death in 1839 the farm passed to his son William Mendenhall. It appears that William did live here, and he appeared on the 1849 Rea & Price map (seen above). Oddly though, it seems like his house is shown due west of the Peoples (then, John Bowman) house, not southwest where it should be. I blame this on the map and the fact that Graves Road is not yet there to help align the houses.
The reason I know which house was William's and the place in which this story intersects the recent story about the Mill Creek Hundred tax books comes with the next chapter in our tale. When William Mendenhall died in 1866, he left only two surviving children -- Edwin and Hannah. Edwin had already moved to Cecil County, Maryland, while Hannah stayed close by and married....George W. Pierson, son of our 1839/40 tax collector William C. Pierson. George and Hannah raised five children in their house on the south side of Graves Road, each with their own stories that we don't have time now to delve into too deeply. Unfortunately for George W. Pierson, he didn't have much time, either.
George and Hannah likely moved in with her father soon after their marriage in the early 1850's (they're shown with him in 1860), but George only survived his father-in-law by five years. He passed in May 1871, leaving Hannah with five children ranging in age from 18 to 5. They probably had some help, but I'm sure the kids did all they could to keep the farm running. The first to leave was Willard, who trained to be a blacksmith. Hannah purchased a few acres for him along Limestone Road, and he set up shop there, just north of where the Summit retirement community is now. The next was Sarah (or Sally, as she went by), who married William Highfield in 1881. It was she who later lived in the house adjoining the Montgomery Family Cemetery, and from whose children the Drejkas purchased their home.
Edwin Pierson married Ella Reese in 1893 and moved to a farm on Little Baltimore Road, next to all the Walker Farms. That left sons John Taylor and Hiram. In 1900, Taylor is listed with his family (back to them in a moment), while Hiram is listed in a separate household with his mother. This leads me to believe that the now-lost house on the north side of Graves Road (seen in the background of the picture below) was built either for Taylor or Hannah. In 1904, Hiram married Alice Ogram, and bought a farm from her father along Old Wilmington Road. That left only Taylor and family on the home farm with mother Hannah.
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| "New" Pierson house on the north side of Graves Road, seen behind members of the Joyce and Lawrence families |
John Taylor Pierson (who usually went by Taylor) married Carrie Louisa Kemper (daughter of Dr. Jackson Kemper) in 1886. The couple had four children: Elsie, Kemper Bryant, Howard, and Mabel. Sadly, Mabel passed away just shy of her first birthday, in July 1893. I don't know if it was related, but Carrie also passed three months later. Four years after that, Taylor married Annie Kemper, Carrie's younger sister (although this is a phenomenon that may seem odd to us now, was not uncommon at the time). They had one child together, Maurice, in 1901.
I would tend to believe that Taylor and family resided in the original house, still standing on the south side of Graves Road, for several reasons. First, the bulk of their farm along with the barn were on the south side of the road. Secondly, it was only two years after Hannah Pierson's 1911 death that Taylor sold 38 acres of the family farm to Lewis Colmery. The sale represented the portion of the property north of Graves Road, including the "new" house". However, that part of the Pierson tract would return to the family in 1954, when Kemper Pierson's daughter Helen and her husband George Houchin purchased the house and some surrounding land.
The main, southern, portion of the old Mendenhall, now Pierson, farm was sold by Taylor in 1924 to William H. Whiteside. All the children were grown and with their own families, and Taylor moved in with daughter Elsie and her husband William Oesterle in Wilmington. Whiteside doesn't appear to have lived on the property, but it looks like he leased the farm to his brother John. In 1940, the property was seized by the sheriff and sold to pay the mortgage that Whiteside owed to Kemper Pierson. The new owner was Matthew F. Judge, a VP with the Equitable Life Insurance Company. He turned around and sold it to a lawyer named Henry Wise, who it seems may have been the one to break up the land.
In 1941, he sold five acres including the old house, to H. Willis and Ellen Pyle Lawrence. Ellen was the niece of artist Howard Pyle, and was a noted artist in her own right. (Don't worry, there will be more Pyles in the next post.) The Lawrences converted the old barn into a studio for Ellen to work in. The house the Lawrences bought has several different build dates associated with it, all dating back pretty far. The county lists it as 1734, which is a very specific date (as opposed to the 1800 or 1900 that usually just means "really old"), leading me to put more than the usual amount of creedence to it. Someone, sometime, must have had a reason to give that date. Dick Joyce, whose sister was friends with the Lawrences' daughter, says he was told the house dated to 1780. The way old houses were regularly added to and enlarged, both could well be true.
If the 1734 date is even close to accurate, it would put the construction of the oldest section during the ownership of John Huey, perhaps as a permanent replacement for an original temporary home. It would also make it one of the oldest houses in Mill Creek Hundred. But, it might not even be the oldest house within a 1000 foot radius. We'll tell the story (or, at least, as much of it as I could straighten out) of this other historic home in the next post. And again, there will be more Pyles.
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| The Graves Road area in 1961, partially developed |