| Feeling "The Old" on Main Street in Warwick |
| R. John Brockmann of Main Street, Warwick |
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| Statistically accurate, footnoted papers won't tell you what it's like to feel "the old" here on Main Street in Warwick. They won't tell you what it's like to wake up each morning in the bedroom above Joseph Dickson's parlor where he laid out samples of his handicraft, his coffins "Of the latest styles and different qualities." When I look at the fancy Philadelphia wrought iron of the parlor coal stove with its brass bar to rest one's feet - far too fancy for Warwick's community of farmers - I sense Joseph's attempt to create a set aside special place where "Funerals receive my special attention." Moreover, when the door creaks open in the wind, I wonder if that's one of Joseph's children or just his apprentice come to smell supper in the kitchen. |
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| The Tree Tunnel Along Main Street as seen in a 1903 photograph |
First thing each morning, my dog and I go out for a run, and the heavy fog of the surrounding fields seems to lift up over the old few trees that remain to line the road. They used to nearly form a tunnel along Main Street, but now they're mostly gone: killed by disease and road work. Main Street's dirt road must have been wider then than the macadam now because the old brick front walks peeking out from beneath front lawns don't quite reach the road, falling short some six or seven feet. |
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| That quiet Main Street was once the 1-95 of young America - the shortest wagon route between ships loading and unloading at Fredrick Town on the Sassafras off the Chesapeake on over to Odessa and ships on Appoquinimink Creek and the Delaware River. |
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| West towards Cecilton, if my dog and I run that way in the morning, we'll pass the house Washington visited a number of times. That old house's fine red bricks remind me that quiet Main Street was once the 1-95 of young America - the shortest wagon route between ships loading and unloading at Fredrick Town on the Sassafras off the Chesapeake on over to Odessa and ships on Appoquinimink Creek and the Delaware River. Washington and others would call at that narrow brick, one-room wide house because the man who lived there was Washington's "factor," his paid representative who would sell his crops and collect his fees - an eighteenth-century commodities broker. Yes, Main Street was once part of the fastest way up and down the East Coast. However its 1-95ness was bypassed in turn by the Frenchtown rail line, then the canal, then the Wilmington and Susquehanna line up in Elkton, and then finally by routes 7, 40, and now 1-95 some fifteen miles to the north. If I run in the fog with the dog east towards Middletown and past the columned porch of Jump's old corner general store, I might still sometimes make out Irish curses and cries. The Irish came back from Middletown and their hard labor on the Delaware rail line. With staves and clubs they intended to teach Mr. Jump to be more kindly and to continue serving drunk, grieving men returning from a funeral out at Old Bohemia church. The 30 of them surely would have taught that man a lesson if Jump's Main Street neighbors had not also turned out with iron bars, rocks, and shotguns to meet them on Main Street. The incident only drew a story four inches long in the October 27th 1855 issue of the Cecil Democrat, but five men died there that day. |
| Across from old Jump's general store on Main Street, at the corner, is a sign declaring that down Old Telegraph Road is where James Rumsey, one of the inventors of the steamboat, was born. That sign, however, suggests none of the shouting Rumsey, Robert Fulton, John Fitch, Oliver Evans of Delaware and others threw at each other in the fight to patent working steam engines. The sign also says little of the emotions Rumsey felt on May 15, 1788, as he embarked for England to take his patent battles overseas. He wrote to his brother-in law Charles: |
| Tell her [his wife] I sincerely wish her all happiness and tell my child to be a good girl, and remind her that it is in part for her that I toil. [And for his deaf and dumb son Edward that he be kept] with the doctor if possible, or some other school. I shall endeavor to have him some clothing got against winter, and if nothing else can be done, send him to Joseph Barnes. I have laid a train for him to finish his studies, but it will be expensive, and therefore must be the last shift except my circumstances change. . . . Charles, take [care] of my child and all the little business I left with you. I can make no promises, but I think I shall not go to Europe for nothing., |
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| White Children on the Steps of the "New" Warwick Academy, 1903 |
| If my dog and I run out towards the northwest on Church Road, just before we leave the houses of town, we pass an old red brick building, the "old" Warwick Academy begun for the children in 1858. In those early days, the "boys" who attended school at the Academy only did so in the winter since they were mostly grown men who could only attended when their farming chores let up. The girls, however, were typical school age children, and this discrepancy in age could entirely change the character of incidents such as a boy pulling a ribbon out of a girl's hair. A teacher in those days by the name of Hopkins was nearly killed by a girl's uncle who wanted retribution for such ribbon-pulling stunts. In 1890 the "old" Academy became a freed man's school for black children, and another Academy was opened up for white children on Main Street. That old freed man's Academy set back from the corner explains to me anew each morning why the children's faces in the picture of the Main Street Academy are all white. |
| No matter which way my dog and I run on those foggy mornings, we're always confronted by the old hotel on Main Street, the old Gillespie House. At its peak, the Gillespie House drew a sporting crowd that would come to drink and gamble on horses that raced the 7/8ths of a mile track in the center square of Warwick. As part of that borderland between Maryland and Delaware, between gambling permitted and gambling prohibited, the Gillespie House drew some odd sorts - including "an unknown man" who walked up to two sitting on the Gillespie House porch and shot one of them in the foot. The Gillespie House did well; well enough to sprout out buildings and barns as well as a two-story cook house. Now most of those buildings are gone, and the cook house has been moved entirely not just once but twice, and now lives around the corner, unpainted and deserted, on Water Street. |
| There used to be a 4th of July parade down Main Street from the Washington house, past the Gillespie House and the "new" Academy, and going all the way down to the corner where the Irish skirmished and Mr. Rumsey is remembered. There used to be more people visiting on the porches where my dog and I now sit for company and feel "the old" in Warwick. There's much more to see and tell on Main Street than I've time and space here: i.e.,Jamison's old carriage factory that looks like it's been posed for an Andrew Wyeth painting or the fox hunter's chapel, Mt. Olivet, that could lead us onto discussions about religion, the Jesuits out at Old Bohemia, and the original Catholic founding of Warwick. There's a house for sale - cheap - just the other side. of the "new" Academy on Main Street. Want to join us and feel "the old" on Main Street? |
