In the early years of Mill Creek Hundred, many of the large plantations were given names by their new owners -- names that would have been well-known in the area in their day. Over the years, most of these monikers -- ones like New Design, Wedgebury, and Cuba Rock -- have fallen out of use and been largely forgotten. However, at least one name in the northwestern corner of MCH, dating back to the 17th Century, has remained attached to a particular house on this tract, being used as recently as this year in a real estate ad. Much of the original Hopyard Tract is now part of White Clay Creek State Park. In fact, the Samuel Tyson House, which came to be known as Hopyard Farm, is one of the few private residences now standing on what was once a tract as large as 1000 acres. Most of the rest of the (much newer) homes stand on land sold by its last "historic" owners.
The early history of the Hopyard Tract dates back to the 17th Century and is, quite frankly, pretty confusing. For our purposes here we'll jump ahead to 1720, when John Chambers purchased 664 acres referred to as the Hopyard. He devised the land to his son William in 1730, and William almost immediately sold 430 acres of it to Joseph Chambers, most likely his brother. Joseph, in turn, sold 221 acres of his land to Henry Geddes in 1738.
Geddes seems to have lived out the rest of his days here, passing in about 1756. In his will he left his property equally to his widow and four children, with ownership eventually being consolidated by his son, William Geddes. In 1763, Geddes (through his brother-in-law James Latimer) sold the tract to David Montgomery, of Lancaster County. Although David was again listed as being of Lancaster County when he sold it in 1802 to William Montgomery (presumably his son), there is evidence that he did live here, at least for a time. David Montgomery served in the Revolutionary War, and was commissioned as Captain of a Delaware regiment in September 1778. Perhaps he moved back to Pennsylvania at a later date. Whether or not Montgomery leased the farm at some point, some of the language used in earlier deeds implies that the Hopyard was leased prior to the Chambers era. However, beginning in 1803, all that would change.
The purchaser that year was also a Pennsylvanian -- Joshua Tyson of Abington, Montgomery County. It doesn't appear that Joshua ever moved here, but in 1813 he sold the land to his brother, Jesse Tyson. In that deed, Jesse is stated as being from Mill Creek Hundred, which leads me to believe that he had been living on the farm before the sale -- and that maybe it was even bought for him. When Jesse died without children (and I think unmarried) in 1822, it went to his siblings. In 1823, siblings Samuel and Mary each purchased a half share of the tract from the others. Samuel may have moved in, but he died in 1828, passing his half to his eldest son, Samuel. The younger Samuel was raised by a cousin in Abington, but in 1842 bought out his Aunt Mary's half of the Hopyard farm.
Samuel Tyson had married in 1840, and moved to the Hopyard after his nuptials. It's at this point that we need to address the question of the age of the house that now stands along Hopkins Bridge Road (we'll get to the Hopkins' in a moment). There is, apparently, an inscription in the cellar that leads one to believe that Samuel Tyson built the home in 1843. If correct (I have not seen the inscription but have no reason to doubt it), then Samuel and wife Mary Fitzwater would have built a new home soon after moving to the farm. There was definitely a house here much earlier, as the deeds going back to at least 1738 all reference one as being present. It's quite possible, and to my amateur eye probable, that Samuel did indeed replace an older house with this new one in 1843.
According to the 1922 work A Contribution to the History and Genealogy of the Tyson and Fitzwater Families, Samuel and Mary resided here until 1857, except for three years when he bought a farm on the Delaware River above Bristol. Mary suffered from tuberculosis, and Samuel had an idea to open a hydropathic sanatorium there, although he never did. Mary finally did succumb to the disease in 1856, and Samuel sold the Hopyard Farm the following year. He sold to yet another Pennsylvania native, Jacob Borten Hayes. Hayes wasn't in MCH long, but he did affect a change while he was.
When Hayes purchased from Samuel Tyson in 1857, he bought the exact same 221 acre tract that Joseph Chambers had carved out back in 1738. However, he would be the last to own the entire amount. In 1860, Hayes sold off two portions of the tract, one to Daniel Thompson (34 acres) and one to Joel Thompson (23 acres). They were a father and son duo who lived just across the creek in White Clay Creek Hundred. Hayes moved back to Pennsylvania in 1864 and sold the remaining 163 acres of the Hopyard Farm to Baltimore-area resident Abel J. Hopkins. The home would finally see some stability of ownership, as the Hopkins family would hold on to the house for more than a century.
Abel Hopkins and Jane Canby had been married in Harford County, MD in 1861 and had two kids already by the time they moved to the Hopyard -- sons John and Caleb. Four more would follow over the next seven years. Although I'm sure they had many good times on their MCH farm, tragedy would strike in the Spring of 1878. In a span of less than two weeks, three of the the Hopkins children -- Arthur, Catherine, and Robert -- died from diphtheria. Three years later Jane Hopkins died at a family home in Philadelphia. As a side note, Jane's maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Claypool (nee Griscom), a seamstress from Philadelphia. She was better known by the nickname Betsy, and her first married name, Ross. Yes, that one.
Abel J. Hopkins was a well-known and successful farmer in his days in MCH, and was even nominated as a candidate for Levy Court by the Prohibition Party in 1890 (he did not win). But by the early 90's he was nearing 70, and was looking to turn the Hopyard Farm over completely to his sons. In 1892, after having purchased another property over the state line in New London Township, Abel sold the Hopyard farm to to sons John and Caleb (who usually went by C. Canby). It was a big time in both men's lives, as Canby got married in December 1892 and John in May 1893.
As you can see in the 1881 map above, there are two houses shown for A J Hopkins. The house that stands today is the westernmost of the two, in the crook in the road. The other stood at what was then the southeast corner of Thompson Station Road and Pleasant Hill Road, although with a later road realignment it would now be on the north side of Pleasant Hill Road. Since nothing is shown here on the 1849 map (during Tyson's ownership), I assume it was built by Abel Hopkins. There are no records as such, but I wonder if perhaps Canby and his family lived here during the next few years.
During that time, it seems the brothers used the Hopyard farm to specialize as dealers of meat. As seen above in the ad in the 1896 Wilmington City Directory, the Hopkins boys sold all sorts of meat, from Stalls 37-38 at the Eighth Street Market House in Wilmington. Knowing what a drive it is today from their home area into Wilmington, I can barely imagine what it was like then. I've found no evidence of it, but I'd guess that they shipped their meats into town via the Pomeroy and Newark Railroad, which ran through the western end of their property.
John A. Hopkins & Bro. came to an end in 1898, when Canby sold his half ownership of the property to John, and moved closer to his wife's family in Milltown. His father-in-law was Joseph W. Derickson, owner of the Spring Grove Mill and active member of the Prohibition Party with Canby's father Abel. Canby would go on to be elected to the Levy Court, eventually serving as its commissioner. At the time of his death in 1917, Canby was a superintendent of one of the Dupont powder mills.
Meanwhile, back on the farm (I always wanted to work that into a post), John continued in the meat business. In early 1901, it seems that he rented the farm and had a sale to unload some of his implements and livestock. The sale, however, turned into somewhat of a brouhaha (or maybe a distillhaha). As the article below states, two men showed up at the sale in a buggy, selling whiskey to the guests. Bearing in mind the Hopkins family's teetotaling tendencies, this did not go over well with John. He broke their jugs, at which point they started attacking him. It doesn't seem like anyone was hurt (except the whiskey jugs), but it seems like it broke up the sale.
I'm not sure how long Hopkins rented the farm, but there's mention about a year later of a dispute over a hay shipment with Edgar A. Vail, who was the tenant at the time. However, there are still ads noting the same market stalls from that time, so Hopkins remained in the business. Subsequent censuses all show him on his farm, and the Hopyard definitely stayed in the Hopkins family. John and wife Ellen Walker (daughter of Little Baltimore's Thomas M. Walker) had three children -- John, Jr., Jane, and Robert. John, Jr. would study agriculture at the University of Delaware and go on to be a professor at Iowa State University. Jane and Robert would remain in the area.
John A. Hopkins remained on his farm until his death in 1932. However, in 1929 about 40 farms in the area were sold to what a newspaper article at the time described as "The Equitable Trust Company, acting for an unnamed client..." That unnamed client turned out to be Samuel Hallock duPont, and one of the farms mentioned was that of John A. Hopkins. It was said that most of the farmers would be allowed to remain on their farms for five years for a nominal rent. Either that article was incorrect, or the sale from Hopkins fell through, because as the sale ad from 1950 (seen below) shows, the farm was still 160 acres then. The family had sold about three acres to duPont in 1937, which I think may have been that stranded bit above Pleasant Hill Road where the other house had been. Perhaps duPont razed it then.
Robert, his family, and Jane remained in the house, with Robert retiring from farming in 1961. It was probably soon after that much of the farm was sold off, a portion to the south developed as Unami Trail. After Robert died in 1978, Jane moved away and sold the remainder of the farm, which was said to be about 50 acres. Jane Canby Hopkins passed away in 1995 at the age of 93, severing the last direct link to the old Hopyard Farm. The house, however, is very much still standing and is in beautiful condition. It itself is its own direct link to Mill Creek Hundred's bucolic past, nestled in one of its last largely untouched regions.
Geddes seems to have lived out the rest of his days here, passing in about 1756. In his will he left his property equally to his widow and four children, with ownership eventually being consolidated by his son, William Geddes. In 1763, Geddes (through his brother-in-law James Latimer) sold the tract to David Montgomery, of Lancaster County. Although David was again listed as being of Lancaster County when he sold it in 1802 to William Montgomery (presumably his son), there is evidence that he did live here, at least for a time. David Montgomery served in the Revolutionary War, and was commissioned as Captain of a Delaware regiment in September 1778. Perhaps he moved back to Pennsylvania at a later date. Whether or not Montgomery leased the farm at some point, some of the language used in earlier deeds implies that the Hopyard was leased prior to the Chambers era. However, beginning in 1803, all that would change.
The purchaser that year was also a Pennsylvanian -- Joshua Tyson of Abington, Montgomery County. It doesn't appear that Joshua ever moved here, but in 1813 he sold the land to his brother, Jesse Tyson. In that deed, Jesse is stated as being from Mill Creek Hundred, which leads me to believe that he had been living on the farm before the sale -- and that maybe it was even bought for him. When Jesse died without children (and I think unmarried) in 1822, it went to his siblings. In 1823, siblings Samuel and Mary each purchased a half share of the tract from the others. Samuel may have moved in, but he died in 1828, passing his half to his eldest son, Samuel. The younger Samuel was raised by a cousin in Abington, but in 1842 bought out his Aunt Mary's half of the Hopyard farm.
Samuel Tyson had married in 1840, and moved to the Hopyard after his nuptials. It's at this point that we need to address the question of the age of the house that now stands along Hopkins Bridge Road (we'll get to the Hopkins' in a moment). There is, apparently, an inscription in the cellar that leads one to believe that Samuel Tyson built the home in 1843. If correct (I have not seen the inscription but have no reason to doubt it), then Samuel and wife Mary Fitzwater would have built a new home soon after moving to the farm. There was definitely a house here much earlier, as the deeds going back to at least 1738 all reference one as being present. It's quite possible, and to my amateur eye probable, that Samuel did indeed replace an older house with this new one in 1843.
According to the 1922 work A Contribution to the History and Genealogy of the Tyson and Fitzwater Families, Samuel and Mary resided here until 1857, except for three years when he bought a farm on the Delaware River above Bristol. Mary suffered from tuberculosis, and Samuel had an idea to open a hydropathic sanatorium there, although he never did. Mary finally did succumb to the disease in 1856, and Samuel sold the Hopyard Farm the following year. He sold to yet another Pennsylvania native, Jacob Borten Hayes. Hayes wasn't in MCH long, but he did affect a change while he was.
When Hayes purchased from Samuel Tyson in 1857, he bought the exact same 221 acre tract that Joseph Chambers had carved out back in 1738. However, he would be the last to own the entire amount. In 1860, Hayes sold off two portions of the tract, one to Daniel Thompson (34 acres) and one to Joel Thompson (23 acres). They were a father and son duo who lived just across the creek in White Clay Creek Hundred. Hayes moved back to Pennsylvania in 1864 and sold the remaining 163 acres of the Hopyard Farm to Baltimore-area resident Abel J. Hopkins. The home would finally see some stability of ownership, as the Hopkins family would hold on to the house for more than a century.
Abel Hopkins and Jane Canby had been married in Harford County, MD in 1861 and had two kids already by the time they moved to the Hopyard -- sons John and Caleb. Four more would follow over the next seven years. Although I'm sure they had many good times on their MCH farm, tragedy would strike in the Spring of 1878. In a span of less than two weeks, three of the the Hopkins children -- Arthur, Catherine, and Robert -- died from diphtheria. Three years later Jane Hopkins died at a family home in Philadelphia. As a side note, Jane's maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Claypool (nee Griscom), a seamstress from Philadelphia. She was better known by the nickname Betsy, and her first married name, Ross. Yes, that one.
Abel J. Hopkins was a well-known and successful farmer in his days in MCH, and was even nominated as a candidate for Levy Court by the Prohibition Party in 1890 (he did not win). But by the early 90's he was nearing 70, and was looking to turn the Hopyard Farm over completely to his sons. In 1892, after having purchased another property over the state line in New London Township, Abel sold the Hopyard farm to to sons John and Caleb (who usually went by C. Canby). It was a big time in both men's lives, as Canby got married in December 1892 and John in May 1893.
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| Hopyard area of the 1881 map |
As you can see in the 1881 map above, there are two houses shown for A J Hopkins. The house that stands today is the westernmost of the two, in the crook in the road. The other stood at what was then the southeast corner of Thompson Station Road and Pleasant Hill Road, although with a later road realignment it would now be on the north side of Pleasant Hill Road. Since nothing is shown here on the 1849 map (during Tyson's ownership), I assume it was built by Abel Hopkins. There are no records as such, but I wonder if perhaps Canby and his family lived here during the next few years.
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| Pages from the 1896 Wilmington City Directory |
During that time, it seems the brothers used the Hopyard farm to specialize as dealers of meat. As seen above in the ad in the 1896 Wilmington City Directory, the Hopkins boys sold all sorts of meat, from Stalls 37-38 at the Eighth Street Market House in Wilmington. Knowing what a drive it is today from their home area into Wilmington, I can barely imagine what it was like then. I've found no evidence of it, but I'd guess that they shipped their meats into town via the Pomeroy and Newark Railroad, which ran through the western end of their property.
John A. Hopkins & Bro. came to an end in 1898, when Canby sold his half ownership of the property to John, and moved closer to his wife's family in Milltown. His father-in-law was Joseph W. Derickson, owner of the Spring Grove Mill and active member of the Prohibition Party with Canby's father Abel. Canby would go on to be elected to the Levy Court, eventually serving as its commissioner. At the time of his death in 1917, Canby was a superintendent of one of the Dupont powder mills.
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| Ad for the 1901 public sale |
Meanwhile, back on the farm (I always wanted to work that into a post), John continued in the meat business. In early 1901, it seems that he rented the farm and had a sale to unload some of his implements and livestock. The sale, however, turned into somewhat of a brouhaha (or maybe a distillhaha). As the article below states, two men showed up at the sale in a buggy, selling whiskey to the guests. Bearing in mind the Hopkins family's teetotaling tendencies, this did not go over well with John. He broke their jugs, at which point they started attacking him. It doesn't seem like anyone was hurt (except the whiskey jugs), but it seems like it broke up the sale.
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| The ruckus surrounding the attempted public sale in 1901 |
I'm not sure how long Hopkins rented the farm, but there's mention about a year later of a dispute over a hay shipment with Edgar A. Vail, who was the tenant at the time. However, there are still ads noting the same market stalls from that time, so Hopkins remained in the business. Subsequent censuses all show him on his farm, and the Hopyard definitely stayed in the Hopkins family. John and wife Ellen Walker (daughter of Little Baltimore's Thomas M. Walker) had three children -- John, Jr., Jane, and Robert. John, Jr. would study agriculture at the University of Delaware and go on to be a professor at Iowa State University. Jane and Robert would remain in the area.
John A. Hopkins remained on his farm until his death in 1932. However, in 1929 about 40 farms in the area were sold to what a newspaper article at the time described as "The Equitable Trust Company, acting for an unnamed client..." That unnamed client turned out to be Samuel Hallock duPont, and one of the farms mentioned was that of John A. Hopkins. It was said that most of the farmers would be allowed to remain on their farms for five years for a nominal rent. Either that article was incorrect, or the sale from Hopkins fell through, because as the sale ad from 1950 (seen below) shows, the farm was still 160 acres then. The family had sold about three acres to duPont in 1937, which I think may have been that stranded bit above Pleasant Hill Road where the other house had been. Perhaps duPont razed it then.
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| Sale ad for the Hopyard Farm, March 1950 |
Robert, his family, and Jane remained in the house, with Robert retiring from farming in 1961. It was probably soon after that much of the farm was sold off, a portion to the south developed as Unami Trail. After Robert died in 1978, Jane moved away and sold the remainder of the farm, which was said to be about 50 acres. Jane Canby Hopkins passed away in 1995 at the age of 93, severing the last direct link to the old Hopyard Farm. The house, however, is very much still standing and is in beautiful condition. It itself is its own direct link to Mill Creek Hundred's bucolic past, nestled in one of its last largely untouched regions.