Remembering Sussex County: From Zwaanendael to King Chicken

INTRODUCTION

Like many rural Sussex County children of the 1970s and 1980s, I had every intention of leaving this area when I grew up, all too anxious to spread my wings and see what lay out there on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. And I did just that—in 1991, at the age of twenty-two, I packed my things and headed west. As I crossed over that bridge and headed for my new life in Ohio, I said goodbye to the home I had known my whole life and began what I knew would be a new and exciting existence in the city.

I lived in four states over the next few years, but a funny thing happened when I married my beautiful new bride in 1998 and began thinking of a family—I wanted more than anything to come home and raise my children right here in God’s Country. My youthful exuberance now clearly in the rearview mirror, this is where I wanted to be. This is where I wanted to work and this is where I wanted to watch my kids grow up—here, amidst the small towns and the cornfields and the chicken houses. This is Sussex County—my Sussex County—and I knew this is where I belonged.

When I first decided to take on this project, I did so as much out of a sense of nostalgia as out of ambition. I wanted to give people who live here a chance to reminisce about days gone by. More importantly, I wanted to tell people who don’t live here full time all about our wonderful area, an area that exudes more history than I could ever come close to covering in just one book.

Our friends and neighbors north of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal jokingly refer to us here in the south as being from Slower Lower Delaware, but you know what? That’s fine with us; we like it that way. What some think of as an insult, we consider a compliment. Things do move more slowly here, but that’s a good thing. In many parts of Sussex County—okay, maybe no longer in the county’s easternmost areas—a traffic jam is still defined as two consecutive red lights, as my father always says.

Researching and writing this book has been a trip down memory lane for me personally, though I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in the process. This is certainly not meant to be a comprehensive history of Sussex County but merely a series of history-based short stories that I’ve tried to make as informative and as enjoyable as possible. Some are versions of stories I’ve written in the past; many are not.

Throughout this process, I’ve discovered stories I never knew existed and learned of people, places and things that make Sussex County history such a fascinating subject. From the colorful past of General John Dagworthy to the stories of the Selbyville Swamp Monster and the infamous Patty Cannon, Sussex County is filled with larger-than-life characters who have helped make it such an interesting place over the years. From events like Big Thursday and Sussex County Return Day to the legendary stories of Fort Miles and the majestic Cape Henlopen Lighthouse, these are tales of our homeland, our history and our heritage. We should treasure them and tell them to our children—and insist that they tell them to their children one day.

These are stories about the men and women who helped forge our identity. Read them with an open mind and soak them in. Or close your eyes and have someone read them to you; picture yourself in the story, searching for the Swamp Monster, walking the promenade at Carey’s Camp or meeting the Nanticoke Indians for the first time from the ship of explorer John Smith.

For the past ten years or so, I’ve been lucky enough to cover Sussex County for many local media outlets. In my travels, I’m always amazed at the number of people in our area who can tell you just about anything you want to know about their little corner of the world. Hazel Brittingham in Lewes; Earl Tull in Seaford; Joana Donovan from Milton (though she lives in Salisbury now); Don Ward in Millsboro; Jean Norwood in Oak Orchard; Rosalie Walls in Georgetown; Sandie Gerken in Dagsboro; Jack Knowles in Woodland; Fred Stevens in Selbyville—these are all people who should be treasured. They have more knowledge about Sussex County in their heads than any of us could ever truly comprehend. They are the jewels of our area, and I highly recommend talking to any one of them if you really want to learn what Sussex County was like long before most of us were even gleams in our fathers’ eyes.

Times have certainly changed in Sussex County in my forty years, but the quality of life here remains just as high as it always was. I don’t have to worry about letting my daughters go out in the yard to play, I know I can count on my neighbors to chip in during a time of need, as they can me, and I feel good that my kids are receiving a quality education that will prepare them for bigger and better things in life.

I live in Seaford, where my grandfather worked for the DuPont Nylon Plant for forty-five years. He always loved his job, as well as his family and his simple life here in Sussex County—to this day, he still travels to the Nanticoke Senior Center three days a week to play bridge. As was the case with thousands of Sussex Countians, Pop Pop accepted the call to duty and left his life and family to fight for Uncle Sam during World War II. But he always knew where his home was, and he came back to God’s Country the minute he got the chance.

Only the man upstairs knows what lies ahead as we continue with our trek through the twenty-first century, but I take every opportunity to let my children know how lucky we are to live on this little piece of land, bordered by the Chesapeake Bay to the west and the south and by the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

Sussex County is a place to be treasured, and I hope this walk down memory lane will be half as fun for all of you to read as it was for me to write.

God bless Slower Lower Delaware!

SECTION I

EASTERN SUSSEX COUNTY

The Cradling of a State

Take a drive along King’s Highway in Lewes today and you can’t miss it—a towering structure built to resemble the fabled stadthuis (town hall) in Hoorn, the Netherlands. Constructed in 1931, the Zwaanendael Museum gives residents and visitors alike a glimpse into the history of Lewes, the First Town in the First State.

In the museum are exhibits on Lewes’s role in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and lots of memorabilia commemorating the first Dutch settlement in the New World. It was an ill-fated and short-lived attempt, to be sure, but the original Swanendael settlement, later renamed Zwaanendael and, eventually, Lewes, remains the first recorded attempt at settlement by Europeans in present-day Sussex County.

Swanendael, which translates to valley of the swans in Dutch, was settled in 1631, a few months after more than two dozen pioneering men sailed the Atlantic Ocean from Holland. Their goal was to establish a whaling colony near the mouth of what explorer Henry Hudson had dubbed the South River—the Delaware Bay—upon discovering the area in 1609.

Whale oil was in high demand at the time in western Europe and the waters surrounding Cape Henlopen were filled with whales—or so the settlers thought. It was this inherent belief of whales aplenty that brought the Dutchmen to the New World aboard the Walvis, which, coincidentally, translates to whale in Dutch.

Navigator David Pietersen de Vries led the expedition. He landed at Swanendael in the spring of 1631 and left twenty-eight men behind when he departed a short time later for home. Before he could return the following year, all thirty-two men at Swanendael—it’s presumed that four additional men joined the settlement sometime over the course of those several months—had been killed by the local Indians.

This artist’s rendering shows what the Dutch settlement of Swanendael is believed to have looked like in 1631. The ill-fated settlement was the first recorded attempt at settlement by Europeans in present-day Sussex County. Courtesy of the Lewes Historical Society.

The Zwaanendael Museum, pictured here on February 5, 1932, was constructed to resemble the town hall in Hoorn, the Netherlands. It was built in 1931 and gives residents a unique look at the history of Lewes. Delaware Public Archives.

De Vries returned to Swanendael anyway, arriving in December 1632 to witness firsthand the ruins of his once proud settlement. By talking with Indians indigenous to the area, de Vries learned that the settlement had been destroyed as a result of an unfortunate misunderstanding. A chief in the tribe had mistakenly removed a Dutch coat of arms from the settlers’ structure, setting in motion a series of events that eventually led to the destruction of Swanendael.

Interestingly enough, there are many stories passed down through the years regarding possible survivors of the Swanendael massacre. But many experts believe these stories are just tall tales told with more than a hint of dramatic embellishment.

One, in particular, is recounted in Jerome Wiltsee’s 1908 publication entitled A Genealogical and Psychological Memoir of Philippe Maton Wiltsee and His Descendants. In the work, Wiltsee claims that Philippe Maton traveled with his two sons from present-day Albany, New York, to Swanendael in preparation for a possible move there. Legend has it that Maton fell ill and was bedridden when the Indians attacked the settlement. He was killed, but his two sons were taken in by the local Indians and cared for, or so the story goes.

In Wiltsee’s work, he recounts the attack as follows:

The Indians, in fulfillment of a pre-arranged plan, chose a favorable time and apportioning the work amongst themselves, some under the guise of friends, entered the fort and murdered Hossitt (Maton’s servant) and Philippe Maton…The two boys, hearing the victims’ cries and seeing the slaughter of the men, fled