DELAWARE BEFORE THE RAILROADS

An illustrated book offers a photographic journey through three centuries of Delaware history.

Between 1638, when Swedish explorers landed on its shores, and the opening of the New Castle & French Town Railroad in 1832, Delaware was something of a Colonial backwater, its few settlements largely clustered along Delaware Bay. As a result, Tabler writes, modern development took some time to reach the Delmarva Peninsula, and “Delaware’s stock of colonial structures has for the most part remained undisturbed far longer than many other colonial era states. Its key historical sites are more readily accessible today.” Those historical sites form the basis for the author’s journey through Delaware’s pre-railroad history, which benefits from his pleasing photographs. Each of the book’s pages consists of images accompanied by captions that are continued in extended footnotes at the back of the volume. There are digressions into such subjects as oyster dredges, Colonial medicine (“ ‘Tooth drawers’ sometimes used such painful practices as string pulling and hot coals to get teeth out”), and Colonial clockmaking. The shots of Delaware’s remarkable red brick buildings stand out, particularly one of a mist-shrouded State Capitol building in Dover. A late afternoon sun illuminates a mill perched on the icy banks of the Choptank River. Tabler also digs up some intriguing historical nuggets—Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours told his father he had situated the family’s gunpowder mill along Brandywine Creek in Wilmington after ruling out other possibilities in Maryland and Virginia because “the country, the people, the location are all worthless.” Brandywine Creek was so named because the Stidham family used its water to make an aquavit liqueur that, in Denmark and Sweden, is known as “Brændevin.” But the book’s structure is awkward, with readers having to jump to and fro between the picture captions and the continuations. And much of the text takes a plain, just-the-facts approach that becomes a bit enervating—“Duncan Beard (1740-1797) was both a clockmaker and silversmith....Beard was a charter member of the Masonic Union Lodge No. 5, chartered in 1765.” Still, the volume should appeal to regional history buffs and proud Delawareans.

A historical work with some striking images of distinctive Delaware buildings and a dry text.