Yoon Jong Muc

Yoon Jong Muc

Competition Fall 2017

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Spring Grove Mills and Estate -- Part II

The Spring Grove Mills Estate today

In the last post, we followed the story of the Spring Grove Factory from its beginnings as Henry Brackin's grist mill, through its history as a cotton and woolen mill under various owners. When we left it, the factory had been converted back to woolen production under owner Aquila Derickson. And after Aquila's passing in the early 1880's, the property was sold to one of his sons, Joseph W. Derickson. Although many of the facts are clear, there is a glut of confusing information about what exactly was going on during the 30 or so years the Dericksons owned Spring Grove, especially during the 1880's.

We get some frustratingly incomplete and at times contradictory details from several sources. Of Calvin Derickson, J.M. Runk in 1899 says that he was involved in the manufacture of spokes (which we knew) and in the wool and cotton business with James Ford. I do not know who James Ford was, nor does his name show up anywhere else. Of Joseph, Runk has this to say: "For a period of ten years he operated the Spring Grove mills, manufacturing silk and woolen yarns. The mills were destroyed by fire in 'the fifties', and he sustained a loss of more than five thousand dollars." The last part is just wrong, as we know exactly when the mill was destroyed, and it wasn't in "the fifties". If there was a fire then, it was before the Dericksons were involved and it was rebuilt. But, it does give us our first mention of silk being made here. Now read what Scharf has to say about the site:

From John Thomas Scharf's 1888 History of Delaware

This is Scharf's entry for Spring Grove, although he doesn't use that name. First of all, we know that the Dericksons owned it through all of this, although with mills, the owners and operators often get confused in written histories. And I'll just say straight out, I have no idea who Brielly or Smith are. I can only guess that Gregg might be either Irvin Gregg or another member of that local family. Scharf doesn't even specify which Derickson he's talking about, although I would assume it was Joseph. Since, to the best of my knowledge, all the Dericksons were farmers and had no training in manufacturing, it's not surprising that they would have partnered with others.

Joseph W. Derickson (left), Edward R. Cranston (right). The man
with the fantastic beard in the center is as yet unidentified

Joseph W. Derickson (1833-1898) definitely owned Spring Grove for the last 15 years of his life. He can be seen as the beard seated on the left in the photograph above. Whether alone or with partners, Derickson ran the Spring Grove Mills until 1891, when disaster struck. In the early hours of the morning of August 15, 1891, a thunderstorm rolled through Mill Creek Hundred, with heavy lightning. The Spring Grove Mill was struck and set alight. Although the mill had not been operating for several months, it went up in flames -- flames big enough that their glow was seen as far away as Wilmington. By the time the smoke cleared, Spring Grove Mill was little more than a stone shell, and would not be rebuilt.

From the (Wilmington) Morning News, August 15, 1891

From the (Wilmington) Morning News, August 17, 1891

Joseph Derickson's mill and his barn (for which he got a $2100 insurance settlement a couple months later) were destroyed, but the house just a few dozen yards away seems to have been unharmed. (If this seems like suspiciously good luck to you, you're not alone. However, mills and barns were particularly susceptible to fire.) When photographer Charles S. Philips came along four years later to photograph the mill, only the walls remained standing in front of the house. And as if he wanted to confuse us further, he labeled it as "Woolen Factory burnt 1891 Cranstons about 1 1/2 miles above Milltown, New Castle County, Del on Mill Creek, Nov. 29, 1895." It's quite obviously Spring Grove, but why he called it Cranston's is unknown. It does, however, make me rethink the photograph of the men above, which included Derickson and Edward R. Cranston. Perhaps Cranston was an investor in the mill towards the end, we don't know.

Spring Grove Mill, 1895, taken by Charles S. Philips
(Chester County Historical Society collection)

Although the mill would not be rebuilt, the house continued to be occupied. It would now become primarily a farm, and later a country estate. Exactly who lived there, when the house was constructed, and by whom, is still an ongoing investigation. When more information comes to light I'll be sure to follow up. Whoever it was who built it or lived in it at the time, the ownership of the Derickson family essentially ended with the death of Joseph from a farm accident in June 1898. In March of the following year, his heirs sold the property, now described as "...with the mill seat thereon called Spring Grove...", to Henry R. Kelley.

News of Joseph W. Derickson's death, June 1898

Henry R. Kelley was born in Philadelphia, the son of Irish immigrants. Interestingly, the 13 year old Henry is listed on the 1880 Census as working in a woolen mill in Philadelphia. He married a local Springer girl in 1889, so although I have no proof, I wonder if maybe Henry was familiar with the mill, or if he had worked there. In any case, Henry owned the property, now about 13 acres, for just over 20 years. In June 1919, he sold to Walter K. Jeffers, who along with his brother Roland owned Jeffers Bros. butcher shop in Wilmington. It appears that Walter purchased the farm not for himself (he remained in the city and at a country house he had near the C&D Canal), but for the rest of his family.

The 1920 Census shows Walter's parents, Roland, and two other brothers residing on "Mermade Road". Walter's mother, Laura Hinson Jeffers, died in March 1922, and her obituary specifically noted that she "...moved to the Spring Grove Farm, near Marshallton, about three years ago...". Soon after, the family put the farm up for sale, as seen in the ad below. The ad gives a great description of the property, including the surprising fact that the stone tenant house, built years earlier for the mill workers, was still intact at the time.

The Jeffers' (the ad says Roland was the owner, it was in fact Walter) were successful in selling the estate, which they did to Walter W. Melson, a superintendent at the fibre mill in Marshallton. Melson owned Spring Grove Farm for six years, during which I think he used it as a summer home. He doesn't appear to have sold his home in Marshallton, which (although I can't be sure yet) may have been the Bringhurst House that stood across from the fibre mill on Greenbank Road. When Melson sold Spring Grove in 1929, it marked the beginning of a new era for the site, and the start of a string of interesting residents.

Melson sold the farm on November 23, 1929 to Daniel Cauffiel. If that name sounds familiar, so will the corporation Cauffiel sold to four days later -- Renappi. In the recent post about the Huston-Springer Houses, we discussed that Cauffiel was a real estate manager for the du Pont family, and how he purchased land for the Renappi Corporation owned by Donald P. Ross. Ross was married to the former Wilhelmina du Pont, and along with brother-in-law William du Pont, Jr was the co-founder of Delaware Park. Ross ultimately purchased nearly 2000 acres along Limestone Road for his horse farms, and Spring Grove was a special part of it.

It's not likely that Ross himself lived at Spring Grove, his MCH home was elsewhere. What he did was to lease the other houses (there were about 15 on the farms he bought) to people he knew -- the kinds of people that run in du Pont circles (not to be confused with Dupont Circle, a neighborhood in DC), as well as people he knew through horse racing. For instance, in 1958 the home was occupied by Joseph Chinn, Jr., President of Wilmington Trust Bank. From 1959-1963, the estate was home to Phillip Bryan Field, who knew Ross through his horse racing connections. Field was a sportswriter for the New York Times, an early voice of horse racing on television, and a general manager of Delaware Park. But Field's biggest contribution to American culture is in popularizing the term "Triple Crown". His use may have been the first in writing, and his columns certainly cemented the term in the American consciousness.

Bryan Field at the 1961 Kentucky Derby

During the tenure of Dick and Vivienne Ehret (1963-1967), a fire broke out on the cedar shake roof, sparked from burning leaves. Luckily, Mill Creek Fire Company was nearby on a training exercise and extinguished the blaze before more damage was done. From 1967 until 1977, the home was occupied by Ross's son, Donald Ross, Jr. It was he who built the family room addition to the house, seen on the right of the photo at the top of the page. In 1968, Ross married Susie Dent, former wife of a grandson of A.I. du Pont. Donald Ross, Sr. died in 1973, and the family sold the estate in 1977 to a member of another prominent family, Winton Blount III.

Blount was from Alabama, the son of Winton "Red" Blount, Jr., cofounder of building contracting firm Blount Brothers (now Blount International). Red's company built, among other things, the Louisiana Superdome, the first nuclear power plant in Tennessee, and the first USAF missile bases. Blount also built Launchpad 39A at Cape Canaveral, from which Apollo 11 began its journey to the moon in 1969. Red Blount served as the last Postmaster General, having been appointed by Richard Nixon in 1969. He oversaw the transition of the Post Office from Cabinet-level position to the quasi-governmental agency it is today, and was the first director of the US Postal Service. Blount sold his company in 1999 for $1.35 billion.

Red did visit his son Winton at Spring Grove on several occasions. Winton Blount III served as CEO of Blount International, and mounted two unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns in Alabama. He was also a former chairman of the Alabama Republican Party.

The Blounts sold the property in 1981 to Frederick Crary, a veteran of both World War II and Korea, the later in which he served as a paratrooper. The current owner, Major General (DE ANG Ret.) David Deputy, served 41 years in the Delaware Air National Guard, as well as retiring as a Captain after nearly 25 years with the Delaware State Police. He now works for the State Legislature in Dover. David has accumulated copious amounts of research on the property, much of which went into the writing of these posts. I personally thank him and his wife for their hospitality, their assistance in the research, and their care for this fascinating, beautiful, and historic estate.

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JUNE 6 = "D - Day" 76 Years Later

"Omaha Beach was a night- mare. Even now it brings pain to recall what happe- ned there on June 6, 1944. I have returned many times to honor the valiant men who died on that beach. They should never be forgotten. Nor should those who lived to carry the day by the slimmest of margins. Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero."

- General Omar Bradley, "A General's Life", 1983

On today's date, June 6 in 1944 - 76 years ago -the forces the Western Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France. This was the largest amphibious operation in military history with 160,000 men hitting the beach that morning starting at 6:30 a.m. The landings were preceded by airborne attacks through the early morning hours of June 6 by 24,000 Allied paratroopers. There were 5,000 ships supporting the invasion with naval bombardment as well as carrying the troops and supplies. The enemy were the forces of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany who had occupied France since 1940, imposing untold brutality. The Allied forces were the armies of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, the Free French, as well as ships and contingents of many of the countries which had been overrun by the Nazis. This was quite literally democracy and freedom versus the forces of tyranny, and as would become apparent as the invading allies moved inland and uncovered the murderous death camps, the forces of darkness and evil.

These are basic facts of the operation that day, called "D Day". But this battle (code named "Operation Overlord")... this one day... was such a huge and complex undertaking that entire books, movies and TV documentaries have been devoted to it.. This one engagement would decide whether the Nazi tyranny could be overthrown, or whether it would last indefinitely. Every part of this story would qualify for a separate posting of it's own. But for our purposes here I shall choose one particular facet of the story and focus on that. And as the worst of the fighting -- the bloodiest, yet as General Bradley (commander of the U.S. forces in Normandy) tells us above the most heroic part of the story came at Omaha Beach, that is where I shall focus, attempting to relate what it was like to be there.

Omaha Beach - A Killing Field

Omaha Beach was so bloody is because of its topo- graphy and its po- sition in the Allied attack zone: right in the middle of it - a fifty mile (80 kilometer) stretch of the of northwestern France's Normandy peninsula, divided into Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah Beach (click on the above map to enlarge). The British, Canadian, and Free French were assigned the Sword, Juno and Gold beaches, the Americans were assigned Omaha and Utah Beaches. Failure to take it could endanger the entire operation by leaving the Allied forces divided. The German commander, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, an intelligent officer (to say the least) saw that this area would be the key to any Allied assault, and had put up the strongest defenses in Normandy here. Omaha was overlooked by tall cliffs (easily visible in the middle of the above photograph) from which the Germans could blanket the whole beach with machine gun fire. The beach leading up from the water was filled with obstacles and mines. Part of the beach was called "shingles" - a line of small stones which offered a very small amount of protection from the machine gun fire. These were lined with barbed wire which made it impassable without exposure to the machine guns. And staying by the shingles too long left the troops exposed to German mortar fire. And with high cliffs enclosing it, Omaha could not be gone around.

"A hurricane of enemy machine gun fire..."

As if the above was not enough, the German forces defending Omaha were not the soft, half-loyal Russian and Polish conscripts that Allied intelligence had reported, but the crack, battle-hardened 352'nd Division. Their artillery made it nearly impossible for the men to be taken close to the beach. Thus from the moment they left their landing craft, the American infantry was in high water under heavy fire. As General Bradley sorrowfully recorded: "All men instantly came under a hurricane of enemy machine gun, mortar and artillery fire. Dozens died or fell wounded, many drowning in the sea. There was no cover. The men lay in the sand or shallow water, unable to return fire, or crouched behind stranded landing craft. For several hours, the beach and the water just beyond was a bloody chaos."

Bradley gives "unstint- ing praise" to the ships of the U.S. navy, whose destroy- ers repeatedly risked running aground by steaming in close enough to the beach to give the Army troops cover with their big naval guns. But Omaha was still nearly impassable. Nearly entire regiments were wiped out within a few minutes, leaving many survivors disoriented. Sgt. Thomas Valance of the 116'th Regiment recalled that after being severely wounded, he "... staggered up against the seawall and sort of collapsed there, and as a matter of fact spent the whole day in that same position. Essentially my part in the invasion ended by having been wiped out as most of my company was. The bodies of my buddies were washing ashore and I was the one live body in amongst so many of my friends, all of whom were dead, in many cases severely blown to pieces."

Private John Mc Phee of the 16'th regiment recalled being exhausted by all of the heavy equipment he had to carry: "Our life expectancy was about zero. We were burdened down with too much weight. We were just pack mules. I was very young in excellent shape. I could walk for miles, endure a great deal of physical hardship, but I was so seasick I thought I would die. In fact, I wished I had. I was totally exhausted." Pvt. Mc Phee was hit three times, and luckily for him was dragged to safety by his buddies and evacuated.

Dealing With Chaos and Moving Off the Beach

With so many higher ranking officers being wounded or killed it was frequently left to Captains and lower ranking officers to organize the chaos from different parts of units being thrown together in the chaos of battle and find some way of moving off the very slim sliver of beach they were holding onto and moving up the cliffs. Lieutenant John Spaulding of the 16'th regiment's E Company lead one such movement, climbing one of the many bluffs looking down on the beach: "We still could see no one to the right and there was no one up to us on the left... we didn't know what had become of the rest of E Company. Back in the water boats were in flames. I saw a tank ashore, knocked out. After a couple of looks back, we decided we wouldn't look back anymore." Spaulding lead his men through a minefield with the help of Sergeant Fred Bisco, who yelled "Lieutenant, watch out for the damn mines... but we lost no men coming through them, although H Company coming along the same trail a few hours later lost several men. The Lord was with us and we had an angel on each shoulder on that trip." 

Captain Joseph T. Dawson was leading a company of men through a similar minefield situation when he met up with Spaulding's group. They were proceeding "... up to the crest of the ridge which overlooked the beach. We got about halfway up when we met the remnants of a platoon from E Company, commanded by Lt. Spaulding. This was the only group -- somewhere less than twenty men -- we encountered who had gotten off the beach." The group then organized an attack: "Above me, right on top of the ridge, the Germans had a line of defenses with an excellent field of fire. I kept the men behind and along with my communications sergeant and his assistant, worked our way up to the crest of the ridge. Just before the crest was a sharp perpendicular drop, and we were able to get up the crest without being seen by the enemy. I could now hear the Germans talking in the machine gun nest immediately above me. I then threw two grenades, which were successful in eliminating the enemy and silencing the machine gun which had been holding up our approach." 

General Eisenhower Pays Tribute

Overall the Allies suffered 12,000 casualties (men killed or wounded) in operations that took place on June 6, 1944. These included operations of airborne troops, naval vessels, and medical corpsmen operating on the beach, whose heroic contributions to the victory won that day we simply didn't have room to include in this posting, as extended as it is. In an interview with Walter Cronkite on the 20'th Anniversary of D Day in 1964 Dwight D. Eisenhower the Supreme Allied Commander who gave the order to go ahead with the invasion on June 6 said:

"It's a wonderful thing to remember what those fellows twenty years ago were fighting for and sacrificing for, what they did to preserve our way of life. Not to conquer any territory, not for any ambitions of our own. But to make sure that Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world. I think it's overwhelming. To think of the lives that were given for that principle, paying a terrible price on this beach alone on that one day... But they did it so that the world could be free. It just shows what free men will do rather than be slaves."

Sources:

by Omar N. Bradley & Clay Blair, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983

by Stephen E. Ambrose, Touchstone Books, New York, 1995.

edited by Jon E. Lewis, Carroll & Graf Publ. Inc., New York, 1998.









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings

+ 4146.
+ 279.

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Trains Collide in Erie

On a Thursday morning, on the 5th of October 1950, a speeding New York Central streamliner wrecked in a terrific explosion and fire, but its 153 dozing passengers miraculously escaped death. More than 40 persons were injured, none seriously.

The New England States Express, cruising through Erie at more than a mile a minute, sliced into an oil tank car that popped out of a passing freight train. The tanker erupted in a blast that shook downtown Erie.

Huge flames licked around the Express stainless steel coaches as 11 of them zig-zagged to a grinding halt crosswise on the tracks. Only one car — a dormitory for dining car employees — caught fire. One coach carrying 50 passengers turned over on its side. The 75-car freight piled up on a parallel track. A disaster call went out.

Within minutes some 20 doctors, 50 firemen and a like number of policemen were at the scene. Together with hundreds of passersby and railroad employees the rescue crews worked feverishly to free passengers from flame-seared cars under the ominous threat of spreading fire or new explosions. The fast-working rescuers slithered in pools of thick oil from the smashed tanker and the battered diesel of the passenger.

Another tank car wrecked in the freight was loaded with powdered chemical which Erie’s Fire Chief Lawrence Scully was unable to identify. Scully's men battled the scattered blazes and prowled in the wreckage to prevent spread of the fire. Said the fire chief: "It was one of the most unusual fires in my experience. And it was a God's blessing that those people escaped." Crewmen of the two trains said they were unable to prevent the crash.

The scene at the wreckage.

The scene at the wreckage.

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June muscle mix 2019

Dmitry Vasilenko (Russia)

Patrick Moore (USA)

Adam Rochester (Australia)

Bilgehan Koc (Turkey)

Eddie Bracamontes (USA)

Avi Ben Yosef (Israel)

Felipe Mattos (Brazil)

Christopher Nober (Sweden)

Sahar Kazes (Israel)

Brad Rowe (USA)

Nick Pulos (USA/Greece)

Kristoffer Berner (Denmark)

Sasan Heirati (Iran)

Houssam Ouazzani (Morocco)

Andrea Muzi (Italy)

Oleh Kryvyi (Ukraine)

Hassan Osseili (Lebanon)

Besard Maxharraj (Kosovo/Albania)

Ahmed El Wardany (Egypt)

Paul Poloczek (Germany)

Varinder Singh Ghuman (India)

Vlastimil Kuzel (Czech Republic)

Angelos Kakanis (Greece)

Petar Klancir (Croatia)

No ID

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