PARCELS AND MARSHALLS

October’s Q&A discussed the number of acres that the Garrett family owned at one time or another in New Castle County. The answer of 694.77 acres gives rise to the question of how much land did one or more members of the Marshall family own at one time or another, from the arrival of William Penn into the 21st Century? Who was the bigger landholder of the two families?

Answer
The map at left indicates four major locations within New Castle County where the Marshall family-owned significant land holdings over the past three centuries. Not shown is a plethora of properties owned in and around Wilmington by members of the Marshall family. There was the T.S. Marshall & Sons paper store of the later 1800s, the automotive parts store run by Clarence’s daughter’s husband, and there was Clarence’s Packard dealership. Tom Marshall owned a pair of Holiday Inns, one on Concord Pike and Route 92 and a second off Route 273 in Newark. Tom once owned the property the HRCV office complex sits on in Marshallton. These miscellaneous holdings amount to perhaps 10 acres total.

We noted in the October Q&A that John Garrett originally purchased 133 acres (green area in map – center-left) when he settled in the area (1726) and constructed a grist mill. 114 acres of those 133 acres (19 acres being in Kennett Township) now serve as the core property of Auburn Valley State Park and were what was sold to the Marshalls more than a century later. The 114 acres immediately around Auburn Heights have seen quite a few owners in nearly 3 centuries! The land surrounding Auburn Heights was mortgaged several times, seized once, and sold to various mill-owners before it embarked on more than a century of Marshall ownership.

After passing in 1757, John Garrett’s considerable land holdings passed to John Jr. who later transferred the mill, millrace, dam, and 114 acres of surrounding mill property to his son Horatio Gates Garrett (1804). Horatio soon mortgaged the property to his brother Levi in 1809 most likely to pay for the conversion of the mill from a grist mill to a paper mill. After paying off the mortgage to Levi, a few years later, Horatio mortgaged the property to Samuel Brooks (1812). When Horatio defaulted in 1812 on the mortgage, Sheriff William Moore took possession of the property and auctioned the papermaking operation and land to Joseph Bailey (1813), a Wilmington banker.

The mill’s century-an-a-half textile milling era began when Bailey sold the mill to Thomas Lea (1822), a well-known Brandywine Creek miller. Lea’s nephew, Jacob Pusey, desired to operate the mill as a cotton textile mill manufacturing cotton hosiery. In poor health in later years, Lea signed over the property to three administrators. After Lea’s passing, Jacob Pusey purchased the property and mill in 1826. In 1827 Pusey mortgaged the property and mill to Francis James until 1829. Relocating the operation to a bigger steam-powered mill in Wilmington in March 1866, Pusey sold the mill to William & James Clark who promptly converted the mill from cotton to woolen manufacture. While the mill had been known as Pusey’s Mill, under Clark ownership it became Auburn Factory.

In 1886 James sold his interest in the mill to his brother William as James took over operation of their father’s mill on Hyde Run near Brandywine Springs. After a fire destroyed Auburn Factory, William Clark sold the mill to Israel & Elwood Marshall and partner Franklin Ewart (1890). Converted to a cotton rag paper mill, the operation became highly profitable. By October 1892 Israel and Elwood were able to buy out Ewart’s interest in the mill. During the 1890s the mill produced more than a million pounds of rag paper annually. In 1925 the mill passed from Marshall family ownership to the recently incorporated Marshall Brothers Company, Incorporated. In April 1954 the mill was purchased by National Vulcanized Fiber who remained its owner into the early 21st century when the property became Auburn Heights Preserve and finally Auburn Valley State Park.

Not to be overlooked, after Israel invented the Endless Fiber Machine in the Insulite Mill across from Marshall Brothers Mill, the Marshalls bought the 122-acre Ferree property for the newly formed National Fiber & Insulation Company. Eventually the Marshalls added the 25-acre parcel between Benge Road and Yorklyn Road to their property holdings. Later still, the land opposite Auburn Heights on Creek Road would become Marshall property (formerly Garrett property).

We also should not overlook the 203 acres that Tom Marshall’s cousin, Eleanor Marshall Reynolds purchased in 1952 and named Oversee Farm. The Marshall family member with perhaps the least amount of land owned around Yorklyn is Abner Marshall, an uncle of Israel Marshall who owned 10.5 acres along Yorklyn Road. Abner would go on to discover kaolin in a field giving rise to the kaolin mining industry in the Yorklyn-Hockessin area in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the early 1900s, over 1,000 tons of kaolin was shipped by the B&O Railroad weekly.

Abner Marshall’s son owned more property in New Castle County than his father having bought the former Allen Wood Rolling Mill in Wooddale. This 81.2-acre property was purchased by Abner’s son Robert Marshall in 1891. Robert sold 8.5 acres of the property bordering Leach Quarry to Alexander Morris and David Connell who joined their neighbor quarrying stone (1893). The remaining 72.7 acres Robert sold to Israel, Elwood, and Dr. Taylor Mitchell (Israel & Elwood’s sister’s husband) in 1893 as an operating rag paper mill (1893). In March 1898 Israel sold his interests in the family’s Wooddale papermaking operation to his brother Elwood. This gave rise to the Wooddale firm being known as Marshall & Mitchell Paper Company. This timing interestingly coincides with Israel constructing Auburn Heights. A pair of 1900-dated deeds reveal that Elwood sold his interest in 7 acres (two parcels), of the 114-acre mill property they both owned, that Auburn Heights now sits upon.

The final two pieces of industrial real estate in New Castle County, owned by the Marshalls, were in Marshallton and Newport. Israel’s uncles, John and Caleb owned 41.3 acres and ran Marshall Iron Company that manufactured terne sheet, which today, we call galvanized steel. This mill employed numerous workers and gave rise to the area becoming known as Marshallton, DE. This property returned to Marshall control in 1922 when J. Warren Marshall purchased American Vulcanized Fiber Company and formed National Vulcanized Fibre Company. Other land was owned by National in Newark and Stanton as part of the 1922 purchase however we ignore these parcels since the Marshall family never personally owned those parcels.

Finally, if you are aware of Marshall Street in Newport, DE that runs east of Route 141 from Water Street to the vicinity of 1st Avenue, Calvin Marshall (John’s son) operated a rolling mill along the Christiana River bounded by Marshall and Walnut Streets (west and east respectively), and the Pennsylvania, Wilmington, & Baltimore Railroad (now Amtrak) on the north (approximately 4 acres).

Tallied up, members of the Marshall family owned roughly 590.5 acres of property around Yorklyn, Wooddale, and Newport over the past nearly 200 years. Including the numerous smaller parcels scattered throughout New Castle County (we will ignore the Marshall’s several-acre beach property in Rehoboth, DE), the Marshall family land ownership total comes up about 150 acres short of what the Garretts once owned in New Castle County. However, if we consider the Marshall land in Chester County owned by the Marshalls when Delaware was ‘the three lower counties of the Providence of Pennsylvania’, which neighbored John Garrett’s original land purchase, the Marshall holdings would exceed the Garrett land holdings.