Fire at the Mill Creek Road Gregg House

The Gregg House on Mill Creek Road

As you may or may not have seen, there was a fire yesterday (March 14, 2019) at the old house on the Delcastle Golf Course property, on Mill Creek Road at the bend. The house is owned by New Castle County and is part of its curatorship program, which allows tenants to rent the property for free, as long as they make substantial improvements to it. The current occupants have been there for about five years. The blaze, which preliminary reports state was an accident started in a laundry room, has seemingly done major damage to the structure. The residents were able to get out safely, but a Minquas Fire Company firefighter was injured in battling the blaze. Please send your thoughts and prayers or whatever it is that you send out to wish him a speedy recovery. I still don't understand the heroic mindset that allows people to run towards a burning building, but I'm thankful for all those who do.

When I saw this story, my first reaction was the same as that of Ann DePace Keen who contacted me -- What is the history of this house? My quick answer to both of us was a resounding, "I'm not quite sure." When I wrote about the earlier history of the Delcastle property almost five years ago, I deftly avoided mentioning this particular house. The reason I danced around it is that the history of the house is not quite clear. As you can see by the pre-fire picture below, the house is clearly old. The question is, how old?

The Gregg House in better times

The problem, and, I think, the solution, is that it's part of the larger Delcastle property. Going to the old maps, it doesn't appear until the 1893 map, which, looking at the construction, seems like it could be right. Unfortunately, the 1893 map doesn't show the owner's name. However, I have every reason to believe that it was then, as it is now, part of the larger tract. As recounted in the previous post, the farm came into the Gregg family early in the 19th Century. I can now expand on that by saying that Benjamin Gregg (and Enoch, presumably his brother) bought out the shares of the heirs of Harrison Wells in 1804 through several transactions late that year. It was essentially the same 182 acres that his great-grandson Irvin Gregg would sell to the Board of Trustees of the New Castle County Workhouse in 1916. In between, four generations of Greggs would work the land and, I believe, build this house. The question is, who and when.

At this point I'm going to bow to the obvious and say that from the looks of the house and the map evidence, it probably was built in the 1880's or early 1890's. So, who was living on the farm then? The owner was Benjamin Gregg (1835-1910), along with wife Elizabeth (1831-1899) and sons Irvin (1861-1918), John (1864-1933) and Joseph Morton (1868-1933). Since the house is located on the larger tract, my hunch is that is was built for one of the sons, probably when he married and was looking to move his new family out. So, which son?

Eldest son Irvin married Rebecca Brackin (daughter of William Brackin of Stoney Batter Road) in 1889. They would raise three children together, but from what I can tell Irvin didn't buy his own farm until 1900, when he purchased 103 acres not far away up Mill Creek Road. John Wilmer Gregg was the next to wed, to Sally Garrett in 1891. He also bought his own farm, along Old Wilmington Road, in 1900.

The youngest son, Joseph Morton Gregg, married Ella May Shakespear in 1893. In 1900, Morton and Ella, along with children Elva, Ralph, and Mildred, are listed directly after his father Benjamin Gregg. This lines up with a family history that states Morton was farming the property in 1898. By 1910, Morton was listed as a miller in Faulkland. This leads me to think that perhaps the house was built for Morton, either as he came of age in the late '80s or around his marriage in '93. After he moved away (whenever that was between 1900 and 1910), the house could have been used by a tenant farmer.

As you can see, my facts here are true, but there's a healthy bit of speculation to go along with them. If anyone has any additional information about the family or the house, I'd love to hear it (even if you prove me wrong).