Historic Home Blog

A significant historic Pennsylvania stone mill c.1765. This incredible property has a working water wheel that could possibly supplement the homes energy needs. It is configured for a potential B&B or Inn, family compound, personal residence, or duplex rental opportunity - with 2 kitchens, 4 full baths & 2 half-baths, 5 spacious bedrooms, 3 fireplaces, large windows with gorgeous views, 2 second floor balconies, wrap around deck and patios. A fenced courtyard provides for private gardening and entertaining, and a 5 car garage with heat/ac & running water can double as a workshop/studio. Rural setting, with the sounds of nature and Red Clay Creek, yet closed to schools, shopping & transportation.

History of Marshall Mill by Mary Larkin Dugan. December 2006
This converted mill, charmingly sited nears a brook and flume, dates back to at least 1765.
Although its origin is nearly lost in the mists of the past, it is on property Owen and Mary Harlan
Evans bought from Letitia Penn Aubrey. Part of the 15,500 acres from her father the Proprietor.
According to Kennett Township historian James Guthrie, Evans probably sold it to Joseph and Charity Harlan Hackney. The deed wasn’t recorded, not an uncommon thing in those early years.
The Hackneys’ name appears on the tract in the Gilbert Cope map of Former Landholders around Old Kennett Meeting. (See Maps.) In 1731 Joseph Hackney had married Charity Harlan at Old Swedes Church in Wilmington. Which is odd because Charity’s family. The Harlan’s were Quakers. Marrying in a church was grounds for dismissal from the Quakers. Anyway. In 1740 the Hackneys were listed in the Kennett Township records. Three children were born to them and a fourth after Joseph died in 1744. (See the Orphans Court listing of 1746.)
Hackney’s widow Charity married Francis Baldwin in November 1746 and the family moved to Berkeley County, Virginia, now a part of West Virginia. Berkeley County records mention that they came from Kennett Monthly Meeting (Quaker), so Charity had returned to the fold.

It’s a mystery when the next owner, John Marshall, bought the property. In 1763 Aaron Hackney and Sarah Hackney Rees, of Virginia, gave their power of attorney to a Kennett man, Thomas Harlan. In order that he should sue for the recovery of the “lands and tenements which the said Joseph Hackney died seized of.” which sounds as if someone had been squatting there. Or maybe someone had promised to purchase the place but failed to come up with the money. I did not find any indication as to how this turned out, but it does seem likely that John Marshall acquired the property before too long.
Again, this deed was not recorded. Sometimes the tax records make up for the lack of a deed, but in this case Hackney’s name disappeared after 1744. The Baldwins did not appear on the records at all, and John Marshall didn’t show up until 1767. although a local history says he “removed to Kennett Township in 1765.” Another history says he was operating a mill in 1763, having come to Kennett from Darby in Delaware County, according to a descendant. Could he have been the
squatter? I doubt we’ll ever know. Also, I found no evidence that his predecessor Hackney was a miller. Though it seems likely he was, given the proximity to Red Clay Creek and its usefulness for milling. But the years between Charity’s marriage in 1746 and Joseph Marshall’s appearance in 1763 or so are pretty dark.
As for the speculation about this having been the 1689 mill on the Red Clay Creek, I found nothing in the records to support this–nor to deny it. Historian Jarnes Guthrie thinks it unlikely. I’d suggest you contact restoration architect John Milner and employ him to examine the structure in order to ascertain the building’s date. He could probably tell what that archway on the road side was for, too. My guess is that long ago the bank dropped off sharply from the road, and the arch was the top of a rather wide door into the mill.
During the Revolutionary War British troops marched through Kennett Township on their way to the Battle of the Brandywine and looted from farms they passed. There is a list of people who put in for reparations (which no one ever got) and I checked this, but the Marshalls weren’t on it, so their mill was safe from the British, luckily.
John Marshall’s ownership of the mill property from about 1763 began roughly 200 years of Marshalls in what was fittingly called Marshallvale. Six generations of Marshalls have lived on the property. Although we think of our ancestors as having stayed put for generations, it was actually extremely rare for a family to stay on a property for such a long time. One reason for their long residence was that they prospered here. John Marshall and his son Robcrt operated grist and saw mills. It is interesting to look at their wills and especially at the inventories of their possessions, most of which were in the house and barn, not the mill, but still they give a picture of life in the 1800s.
In 1856 Robert’s son Thomas began milling paper, as many local millers were doing, to supply the publishing and cardboard box industries. Some news clippings give a picture of a thriving mill, which however had a disastrous fire in 1865. In 1890 Thomas’s sons Israel and T. Elwood joined with Franklin Ewart to purchase the former Garrett mill at Yorklyn. Israel had learned papermaking as a boy, and with what an obituary writer called his “inventive genius” he went on to develop a forerunner of plastic: vulcanized fiber, a substance with many applications, such as electrical insulations, music cases, luggage, and athletic equipment. National Vulcanized Fiber (NVF) made the Marshall’s rich. Besides the Yorklyn mill they had others, in Kennett Square and Newark, Delaware.
Israel’s brother T. Elwood Marshall also ran NVF and he and Israel continued a family tradition of community involvement, in banking and education. T. Elwood’s son J. Albert Marshall bought Marshallvale in 1922 and stayed there until his death forty years later. He and his family had moved in around 1918, according to a news item, J. Albert put in a 75 horse power turbine water wheel and electric generator. He also had plans to build a “commodious garage”, perhaps the one across from the mill. (I didn’t find any indication of who the “W.G.” who put his initials there might have been.)
In 1966 J. Albert’s children sold the mill property, about 2.7 acres, to William and Anne Scarlett, a socially prominent couple who lived there twelve years and then sold to Virginia Wrigley.
I regret not having been able to find any information about Ms. Wrigley, who owned the mill sixteen years. Nor did I find anything about Richard Dallett, who bought it in 1994 and restored the old mill race and wheel, providing electricity for the building.
It’s gratifying that such an historic building is still functioning, long ago as a mill and now as a home, and still in beautiful surroundings.

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