#hagley

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Hagley on the Brandywine, Wilmington, Delaware, United States,

Courtesy Greater Wilmington Convention & Visitors Bureau

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Happy National Library Week!! We're observing this great celebration of our nation's libraries with some scenes from the Hagley Library's very own dedication on October 7th, 1961. The Eleutherian Millis Historical Library was formed by a merger of the former Longwood Library and the reference library of the Hagley Museum, located at Eleutherian Mills in Wilmington, Delaware, the site of the du Pont family's original 1802 homestead and powder factory. In 1984, the Library changed its name to the Hagley Library, a research library and archive specializing in the history of business and technology in America.

The photographs come from the Hagley's collection of Eleutherian Mills Historical Library Dedication audiovisual material (Accession 2011.324). To view more items from this collection online, visit its page in our Digital Archive by clicking here.

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Eastern Phoebe 

Hagley Museum, Delaware

May 23, 2017

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[livesunique]

Hagley Mansion, Eleutherian Mills, Wilmington, 

State of Delaware, United States 

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This #WeaThursday is shaping up to be a beautiful day for strolling the scenic grounds of the Hagley Museum and Library, but things are a bit more ominous online.

This photograph, taken on September 16th, 1930 shows a thunderstorm gathering over the flying field of the Philadelphia Municipal Airport (or what is now the northern end of today’s Philadelphia International Airport, right along Island Avenue).

This image is from the Hagley Library’s J. Victor Dallin Aerial Survey collection (Accession 1970.200). To view more images from this collection, which includes over 7,800 aerial views of towns, cities, and notable landmarks (mostly in the Mid-Atlantic states), visit its page in our Digital Archives by clicking here.

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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.