THE NEW CASTLE RIVER FRONT
Jeanette Eckman typed notes, 1947
Character of the Shore - Early Wharves and Piers, Ferries
Contemporary descriptions and records pertaining to the New Castle
waterfront in the Dutch and early English periods, confirm the tradition
of a point of land jutting out into the river at the end of present
Chestnut Street. The point stood high above a sandy beach, and the water
line sweeping round it curved sharply inland north and south. To the
north the curve was toward the mouth of a stream entering the river
through a marsh where the canal is and where yachts and other small boats
had safe harbor. To the south the beach curved in a crescent, coming
closest to the Strand at the site of the Read houses, where in storms at
high tide the water is said to have washed up over the bank that rose
above the beach, dashing its spray over the street. A number of early
accounts and records mention the "high bank" along the river. In 1708, a
visitor (John Oldmixon In "The British Expire in America')
wrote of New Castle, "it stands high" and is "finely seated upon
the Delaware River." Deep water came close to the sandy beach, so that
landing was said to be easier here than elsewhere on the west shore of
the Delaware.
Upon the ramp or wharf extending from Fort Casimir across the sand to the
water, as shown by the drawing of the Swedish engineer Lindestrom (1654),
people, goods, heavy supplies, and livestock were disembarked directly
from the ocean-going ships. How long this wharf was in use from the time
it was built by Peter Stuyvesant when he erected Fort Casimir In the summer of l65l, is not clear. From time to time it was damaged by storms and in l662 under the administration of the last Dutch director, Alexander D'Hinojossa, the wharf was apparently out of use, for William Beekman, the customs officer for the river, reported to Stuyvesant: "nor is it possible now to bring goods to the storehouse on account of the highbank. Mr. D'Hinojossa has therefore to carry the city's property a long distance with a cart and oxen. When no cartman can be obtained, the sailors must work it all up on the Strand from the boats."
A few years later when the English under the Duke of York had control of New Castle, the increased river traffic and shipping must have required the building of a satisfactory wharf. The site and time of erection has not been established in this search. However, when the old fort was abandoned in the 1670's for the new blockhouse on the
green, Harmony Street would have been the most direct haul from the river to the new fort. That "the free wharf" appears In indentures of 1701, and that Harmony Street is called in these indentures "the street to the free wharf" may
indicate that a town wharf at this site replaced the landing wharf at the old fort, soon after the building of the block house on the Green.
But it is quite possible that the first wharf of the English period was at the and of Chestnut Streat, using the pilings of the old one, and this may have been the reason that Englebert Lott was required to level the walls and build on the foundations of the old fort, when its site was granted to him in l677.
That some of the merchants and other residents along the west side of the Strand between Delaware and Harmony Streets had their own wharves and landing places in front of their houses before the arrival of William Penn is indicated in contemporary items concerning the occupations and activities of these men.
Moses DeGonne, who lived In his small house on the Tile house site before Jan Boyer bought it in 1678, was a boatman, who carried goods and presumably passengers in the river trade between the Delaware end the Chesapeake. [The larger vessels in the seaboard and West Indies trade rounded the soiuth cape of the peninsula for trade between the Delaware and the Chesapeake; the owners of small craft did a good business, and often evaded duties by using short overland hauls of cargo between private wharves at head waters of creeks like the St. Georges, Drawyers end
Appoquinimink flowing Into the Delaware end Back Creek, Bohemia River, end other tributaries of the Chesapeake.] Whether Jan Boyer bought the boat with the house is not told in the records but the next year Boyer is in the carrying business. He refused to take two pasengers up the river because he was afraid of the smallpox there which he had never had.
The passengers who tried without success to persuade Boyer and then some Swedes from Christina to take them up the river at a reasonable price, were Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, visiting Dutch labadists, staying at the house of Eprhaim Herman ao the site of the Reed garden in 1679. They were standing on the street with the unwilling Boyer and the high-charging Swedes when a boat came down the river on which the visitors recognized Robert Wade and his wife, Quakers from Upland Wade readily agreed to take the visitors up the river with him on his way home. He and his wife stayed overnight et Ephraim Herman's though Harman had gone to see his father at Bohemia Manor. It is possible of course that Wade tied up at the "free wharf" and that Boyer's boat and that of the Swedes also were there. But as Herman owned a sloop and was an active young trader it is quite likely he had his own landing wharf of some kind in front of his home.
The shore in front of the earliest Strand dwellings would be the natural mooring place for the canoes, shallops and other craft belonging to the householders. Convenience would suggest wooden landings, and substantial wharfs for those who could afford them, or had the time end energy to build. Several early travelers describe the ground surface of New Castle as "stony" - and stones gathered from the fields would be cheap materiel for improving the wharfs and building bulkheads and walls to prevent damage by tides and storms.
In 1701, owners of houses on the Strand requested of William Penn, legal deeds for the "bank lots" in front of their houses. The grants were made, of equal width to the householder's property on the east side of the Strand and extending 600 feet from the street into the river. The warrants directed that the Strand should be fifty feet wide. A
condition in the deeds was that the lots be improved and a good wharf built on each within within years from the date of the deed.
Between 1701 end l708 the lots between Delaware end Harmony Streets had been surveyed and the deeds recorded. Some Strand properties and the bank lots with them had changed hands in this period, some with mention of buildings and appurtenances on the bank lots. Deeds and wills for subsequent changes of ownership of property on
the east side of the Strand continue to mention dwellings that faced the Strand, also shape, storehouses, and wharfs behind them end alleys between. The depth of the lots "600 feet into the river" as directed by Penn's warrants grant seem not to have extended their wharfage as the channel receeded A reliable eye-witness, Joshua Ramstead of
Connecticut, wrote in his diary September 1749, while visiting New Castle that the fine compact town, handsomely situated an the Delaware River had "no wharf but what was dry at low water round it."
Before another fifty years had passed, several substantial wharves had been extended nearer deep water, at Delaware Street, Packet Alley, and Harmony Street, but whether any good sea walls or bulkheads were built between l749 and 1790 has not been established by specific mention in indentures The number of buildings end improvements on individual plots indicates, however, that walls had been built along some properties and the ground filled in behind them, giving space for the shops, storehouses, and trades carried on by the merchants, coopers, carpenters, blacksmiths and others, The l804 survey map gives an impression of stout walls bounding the wharf plots.
No mention of piers has been found before the early 1790's. By this time the slow economic recovery from the Revolutionary War had gained impetus at New Castle. Travel and traffic north and south were by route through the town; the meetings of congress and the growing business and trade brought great increased use of this route that
spurred improvements in land and water transportation. Leading merchants and other townspeople secured from the legislature authorization to raise by lottery no more than $12,000 to build [ice] piers ln the harbor, "for security of shipping and for promoting commercial and agricultural interest." This was in l794. The managers named by the legislature: John Stockton, William Lees, James Riddle, Kensey Johns, Isaac Grantham, Archibald Alexander and George Reed Jr., raised the money, and saw to the building of three piers, at Delaware Street, at Alexander's Alley, and just south of Harmony Street. In 1802 an unused balance in cash and money due, of nearly $4,000 remaining from this lottery was authorized to be expended for "repairing the upper pier", for building an additional pier or "repairing the sunken pier at Delaware Street."
That same year when George Read Jr., having finished the building of his new house up the Strand, advertised for sale his former dwelling house, #6 The Strand with the garden plot extending to Delaware Street, he said of the location of this property, being at the most public point of intercourse in the town, it is peculiarly calculated for the
residence of a man In business or holding public office. The repair of the piers in the harbor. one of which is adjacent to this property (Delaware Street wharf), has been commenced and will no doubt be completed during the course of the ensuing summer, and the merchants of Philadelphia by their memorial to congress during the present session, have recommended the erection of five additional piers in the harbor which will render it equal if not superior to any port in the United States and add greatly to the value of the property."
As a site for a house of public entertainment to catch all the custom of the busy port, George Read's advertisement must have appealed to Lieutenant Caleb P. Bennett, who had his tavern at Fourth and Delaware Streets. The latter place was advertised for sale and Bennett, having bought the Strand property from George Read, opened his hotel there, the "Delaware House" in January 1803.
That same month the Delaware legislature ceded to the United States the piers already built and the sites of others to be built by the government. This action followed authorization by President Thomas Jefferson of an expenditure of not
more than $30,000 for repairing or erecting piers in the Delaware River provided the legislature should code the sites.
On the 1804 survey (made under the direction of the town commissioners, four piers are shown) one at the end of Harmony Street, one just south of it, one at Alexander's Alley, and one at Delaware Street. These stone piers stood
out from the shore 100 feet or more from the deepest landing wharves at the time they were built. The goverment did build seven additional piers to which there was considerable local objection because of the rapid of ships using the wharfs. The New Castle and Frenchtown railroad built its own pier and wharf on its waterfront south of Delaware Street. A pier in front of the Read house was later removed.
The act of 1794 authorizing the lottery for the first public piers, required that if any pier should be placed opposite to any public street, the street should "remain open and unobstructed to low water's mark, so as to afford a free and easy passage to and from the town to the piers.'' The amendment of 1802, authorizing expenditure of the balance of the lottery, provided also Par the superintendence and care of the piers by the towns commissioners. The commissioners were given power to assess and collect a wharfage fee from every vessel that arrived at or received protection from the piers. This revenue was assigned to repairing piers and removing obstructions from the harbor - the first mention of this sort in the surviving laws. The commissioners were further authorized to make rules and regulations concerning all ships using the harbor for loading and unloading cargo or ballast - the fine to be $100 for each violation; and they were required to appoint a harbor master, annually; his compensation to be paid from wharfage revenue.
New Castle's turnpike era between 1809 and the 1830's and the New Castle and Frenchtown railroad's active years between 1832 and the 1850's gave the town waterfront its heyday of life and prosperity. The fire of 1824 which started behind the James Riddle residence and merchandising establishment near the Delaware Street end of the
Strand and destroyed dwellings, shops, storehouses and wharves in its sweep north, nearly to Harmony Street, while it caused great financial loss and temporary inconvenience to traveler and trade, scarcely halted the flow of trade and
travel.
The steamboat era brought the Cape May traffic from the south; members of congress, cabinet members, and members of the foreign embassies at Washington with friends and families, crossed from the Chesapeake to New Castle to take the Cape May steamboat. The new railroads, after the early 1850's and the development of Wilmington, diverted this cosmopolitan traffic. New Cantle suffered an eclipse in transient guests until the automobile and the modern ferries brought all the world through the town again.
Now that the Delaware River Bridge will soon again divert the transient visitors, the airport with its great airlines may furnish new visitors if the historical value and charm of New Castle can be brought-pleasingly to the attention of the travelers.
Ferries
Swedish, Dutch and early English territory on the Delaware included the shore of Now Jersey opposite, with small settlements and numerous plantations there. Traffic back and forth across the river was a part of the local life from the beginning, but in the earliest periods no regular ferry was needed. Among a people who went to market and to church