#brandywine river

[lightningsocks]

[blasphemousbipolarbrat1]

[spectraling]

Summer is here, Éowyn, you can’t avoid it forever

[themonkeycabal]

Brandywine River and Walker's textile mill, Delaware

By Michael Melford

[lotrscenery]

Brandywine River - Loch Ard, Scotland

[womblegrinch]

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) - The Falls of Brandywine

Watercolour and pencil on paper. Executed in 1943.

18 x 21.5 inches, 45.7 x 54.6 cm. Estimate: US$80,000-120,000.

Sold Christie’s, New York, 20 May 2009 for US$68,500 incl B.P.

[hagleyvault]

On this day in 1787, the Hagley Library’s home state of Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, earning it the nickname of “The First State”. We’re marking the occasion with this hand-drawn map that’s even closer to home. Created in 1797, just ten years after statehood, it was used by landowner Rumford Dawes to apply for insurance on the buildings depicted. This property was first put to use as an industrial site eighteen years earlier in 1779, when John Gregg and his brother Samuel Gregg, Jr. partnered with brothers Joshua and John Gilpin to establish a forge, rolling mill, slitting mill, and saw mill at the site. Dawes purchased the property in 1783, and used it to operate a metalworking business with his brother Abijah, where they manufactured nails and other goods for sale in their store on Water St. in Wilmington. By 1810, they had sold the property to Thomas Massey, who used the site to run a cotton-spinning business. On October 1, 1812, Massey sold the property to the E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, which was looking to expand the operations of their black powder mills located upstream at Eleutherian Mills, which had been founded in 1802 by the French immigrant Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. By the time industrial operations at the site ceased in 1921, the DuPont company’s operations had spread nationwide. The Hagley Museum opened here in 1957, and the Library followed in 1961.

[udspeccoll-blog]

Delaware’s Past in Postcards

Augustine Paper Mills on the Brandywine early 20th century.

postmarked 1913

Dam on the Brandywine above Augustine Paper Mills.

postmarked 1910

Postcard Collection: denwilmpape005, denwilmpape004, denwilmpape002, denwilmrive020. Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware