Part 7

But the little sweetheart was dead. Years before, she had grown up and married, and then had died, leaving a daughter. Lafayette wished to see this daughter, but she was away at boarding school. Mr. Tatnall had asked the mistress of the school to allow his niece to come to him for that day, but the mistress had refused; she was so strict that she would not allow the young girl to be absent for a day, even to meet General Lafayette.

Just beyond the bridge, a great crowd of people had gathered. They cheered wildly as Lafayette’s carriage rolled across the bridge. At the same time, all the bells in the city began to ring, and so with shouts and music, and the pealing of bells, General Lafayette was welcomed back to Delaware.

The procession paraded through the streets and under the arches, and at last drew up before the City Hall, where a great feast had been made ready. About two hundred people were at the banquet.

Just as the feast was ended, an old woman pushed her way into the hall, and came to where Mr. McLane was standing. Mr. McLane knew who she was very well. Her name was Belle McClosky, and she earned her living by selling cakes and pies about the town. Wherever she went, she always carried an old musket ball in her pocket. Often she took out this ball and showed it to her customers, and boasted that she had taken it out of General Lafayette’s wound with a pair of scissors when he was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine.

Now, as soon as she reached Mr. McLane’s side, she said, “Mr. McLane, I want you to introduce me to General Lafayette.”

Mr. McLane hesitated a moment; then he said “Very well, Belle, I will do it. I know you are a true patriot, and I believe you saved many a poor soldier’s life at the time of the war.”

He then led Belle over to General Lafayette. The General spoke to her pleasantly, but he had not the least idea who she was.

“General,” said Belle, “do you remember being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, and the young woman who took out the ball with a pair of scissors?”

“I remember very well,” answered Lafayette. “She saved me several hours of suffering. I would like to see her again, that I might thank her.”

Belle took the ball from her pocket, and held it out to him in her hand. “This is the ball,” said she, “and I am the woman who took it out, though I am so old now it is no wonder that you do not know me.”

Lafayette was amazed. He thanked her warmly, and then took the ball and looked at it. “So you have kept it all these years,” he said. “That is very curious.”

Then he gave the ball back to her, and Belle went out from the hall that day a very proud and happy woman.

Lafayette paid only one visit in Wilmington, and that was to Mrs. Connel. She was the wife of Mr. John Connel who had been very kind to some French soldiers at the time of the war between France and Russia.[35]

Later in the afternoon, the General set out for New Castle, to attend the wedding there.

New Castle had prepared to welcome him with a military salute. There were two six pound cannons in the old arsenal at New Castle, that were named the “Wasp” and the “Hornet.”

They had been moved to the northeast end of the town, near the site of old Fort Casimir, ready for use. As the procession passed Rogers’ Woods, and came in sight of New Castle, the gunners began. The cannons boomed and boomed incessantly until Lafayette had entered the house of George Read, 2nd, on Water St., where he was received, and where guards were placed at the front door to keep back the crowd.

In the evening Lafayette attended the wedding. At this wedding, he was, of course, the guest of honor. The chair where he was to sit was raised so as to be higher than any others in the room, and was wreathed about with flowers.

A great crowd gathered before the house to see General Lafayette.

Senator VanDyke, the father of the bride, gave orders that the door and windows should be left open, so that the people outside could see the General and also the wedding party.

Afterward, he went to take supper and spend the night, with George Read, 2nd, the son of the signer of the Declaration of Independence. The next morning, he was driven over to Frenchtown, Maryland, on the Elk river, where he was met and welcomed by the Marylanders.

So Lafayette passed through Delaware, on his tour through the States, and so the Delaware people welcomed him. It was a beautiful greeting, and Delaware may well be proud of the day when Lafayette was here.

NOTES

[34] The ferry landings were near the Brandywine Flour Mills on one side, and at the foot of King Street on the other.

[35] Mrs. John Connel afterward went to France, and was the guest of the Lafayette family for six months. She was presented at the Court of Louis Philippe, and the King gave her a handsome lace fan, which is still preserved in the family.

How Once Upon A Time Mason And Dixon Ran A Boundary

OF ALL the States belonging to the United States of America, there are no two that are of the same size or shape. Some are big and some are little. One is almost square. One is shaped like a boot.

Delaware, has two boundaries, one on the west and one on the south, that are perfectly straight. On the east the boundary follows the line of the Delaware River and bay. The northern line of the State is an arc, or part of a circle. If you put a pin through the little dot on the map that is marked “New Castle,” and tie a thread to it and measure, you will find how perfect this arc of the circle is, and you will also find that New Castle is the centre of the circle.

Why should Delaware have this queer curved northern boundary? It is because, many years ago, as this book has told once before, in 1681, King Charles the Second of England gave what is now Pennsylvania to William Penn. In that grant, Penn was given “that extensive forest lying twelve miles northward of New Castle, on the northern side of the Delaware,” the southern boundary of which was a circle drawn twelve miles distant from New Castle northward and westward.

Penn, at first, was contented with this grant from King Charles. But when he looked over his land grant carefully, he saw that it would be much better for Pennsylvania to have at least a strip of land that would run along one side of the Delaware River and down to the Delaware Bay. This land had been already given by the King, to his brother, the Duke of York.

If Penn only had that strip of land, his ships could sail up the river more safely. He could also carry on a better trade with the Indians along its banks. So he asked the Duke of York to let him have this river land. We have already read how the Duke of York answered him,—how the Provinces on the Delaware were given to Penn on lease, for a certain share of rents and profits, and a rose to be presented to the Duke every Michaelmas, on demand. This lease was to run ten thousand years, which was the same as if it were a gift out and out.

So what is now our State of Delaware came into the possession of William Penn, and in the deeds its boundaries were laid out; the northern one was still to be the arc of the circle drawn around New Castle. Its western boundary was to be a straight line drawn on down from the rim of this “twelve mile circle,” till it should meet another line, a straight one, which was to be drawn from Cape Henlopen across to the Chesapeake, and was to be the southern boundary of the State. If you will look at the map in the front of the book, you can see how the arc of the twelve-mile circle and the two straight lines to the south and the east give Delaware its present shape. The eastern part of the land within the twelve mile circle extended all the way to low water mark on the New Jersey shore, and also to the center of the bay south of the circle. The grant gave Penn the Pea-Patch Island too, where Fort Delaware was afterward built.

The Duke of York gave the land to William Penn. But years and years before that, long before the Duke of York himself owned the Provinces on the Delaware, there was another Englishman who claimed them as his own.

This was Lord Baltimore. In 1632, the King had given him a grant not only of Maryland, but of what is now Delaware, as well. The grant was given on the word of Lord Baltimore, that no Christian people had ever settled on the peninsula. But, as we know, about one year before that DeVries had landed at Zwannendael, had bought the land there and had started his little settlement. Probably Lord Baltimore knew nothing of this. Whether he knew or not, the King was very angry when he found what a mistake had been made, and that the Dutch had made a settlement in Delaware years before. There was even a great deal of doubt as to whether Lord Baltimore’s grant would hold good.

Perhaps it was because of this doubt that Lord Baltimore did not make any claim to these Delaware lands until 1659. At that time, his brother, Lord Calvert, was the Governor of Maryland. The Dutch were living along the Delaware, and had built forts there.

In that year (1659) five or six Dutch soldiers deserted from the Dutch fort at New Amstel[36] and fled down into Maryland.

The Dutch Director-General sent a message to Lord Calvert, asking him to send the deserters back to him.

Lord Calvert answered the Dutchman very politely. He was very willing to send the soldiers back, he said, but at the same time he wished to warn the Director that New Amstel and Altona,[37] and all the land along the Delaware up to the fortieth degree, belonged to Lord Baltimore.

When this message was brought to the Dutch Director and his council, they were surprised indeed. This was the first they had heard of the English having any claim to the land at all. They could hardly believe it, and yet they were so afraid of getting into trouble with the English that some of the councillors wanted to leave New Amstel at once, and move up to the Hudson, where they would be safe.

It was not long before they heard again from Maryland. In August, Colonel Utie came over from St. Mary’s,[38] bringing letters and messages from Lord Calvert. The message that he brought was that the Dutch must move away at once. They must give over all the land to the English. However, they might stay on one condition. That was that they would obey English rules, and would agree that Lord Baltimore was the owner of the land and their ruler.

Before the Director and his council could agree to this condition, they said they would have to consult with Governor Stuyvesant.

Colonel Utie was quite willing for them to consult their governor, and he gave them three weeks to send their messengers to New Amsterdam and learn from Governor Stuyvesant what they were to do.

Three weeks later, to a day, the Director and his council met together, and three weeks later, to a day, Colonel Utie came to their meeting to hear what they had to say. They had heard from Governor Stuyvesant, and his messages were very decided. The Dutch were not to give up the land, and they were not to own Lord Baltimore as their ruler. The land belonged to the Dutch. They had bought it from the Indians; they had been its first settlers and they had “sealed it with their blood” at Zwannendael.

But Stuyvesant did more than send this answer to the English. He quietly sent messengers down along the Delaware, and bought from the Indians all the land that did not already belong to the Dutch, and he built a fort at Hoornkill, and made ready to protect his land.

Lord Calvert did not force him to fight for his rights, however. The English governor seemed quite as unwilling as the Dutch had been to carry the dispute any further.

But the Dutch were not to keep the land very much longer, in spite of the friendliness of Lord Calvert. It was soon to be taken from them, and by the English, too, though not by Lord Baltimore.

In 1664, a fleet of vessels was sent over from England by the Duke of York, to take possession of the land. It was his now; the King had given it to him, in spite of the grant made to Lord Baltimore years before.

The Duke of York was a very rich and powerful nobleman. The Dutch did not dare to stand out against him, no, not even the hot-headed Governor Stuyvesant himself. Very quietly, they handed over all the land to the English. Not a single shot was fired any place, except at Fort New Amstel. There the Director-General made one effort to protect the Dutch rights. He tried to hold the fort, but even the townspeople were against him. He was soon forced to yield, and the English soldiers marched in and took possession. English soldiers filled the fort; English farmers tilled the ground; Englishmen made the laws and settled quarrels, and then, during the time when their government was being established, the great tract of land north of the Delaware Province was made over to William Penn, and a little later the Provinces on the Delaware were sold to him, too.

But now Lord Baltimore began again to push his claims to the land. While the Dutch had it, he was willing to let the matter rest. As long as the Duke of York owned it, he had been afraid to dispute about it; but now it belonged to William Penn, and William Penn was only a private gentleman.

At one time, Lord Baltimore sent Colonel George Talbot over from Maryland with a band of soldiers. They seized a farm near New Castle that belonged to a Mr. Ogle. On the farm Colonel Talbot built a fort with palisades, and he put a force of armed men in to defend it. He declared he was holding it for Lord Baltimore.

Soon after this, Penn heard that Lord Baltimore had sailed back to England, there to make claims on the land before the King’s Privy Council. Penn then took ship and went back to England, too, to present his side.

After the Privy Council had heard everything there was to be said, and had read all the papers on the question, they gave their decision. The decision was that Lord Baltimore had no right to any of the three Provinces on the Delaware. They were to belong to William Penn. The boundaries were to be the lines marked out by the Duke of York,—half the peninsula down to Cape Henlopen, and a line to be drawn across from Cape Henlopen to meet the Western boundary.

But somehow the quarrel did not end. Years passed and Lord Baltimore died, and William Penn died, and still the boundary dispute went on. Finally the same old question was decided in exactly the same way by the Lord Chancellor of England in 1750, in favor of William Penn’s children, and the thing was settled at last. But it was not as easy to mark out the boundary lines on real land as it is on a map. So because the marking of them was very difficult, and because Penn’s heirs and Frederick, the new Lord Baltimore, wanted the lines settled once for all, two very good surveyors came over from England in 1763, to run the boundary. The names of these two surveyors have been famous ever since. They were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

It was not an easy task that these two surveyors had undertaken to do. A great part of the land was still wild and unbroken. Savages and wild beasts lurked in the forests. At night, as they sat beside their camp fires, they could hear the long cry of the catamounts off in the wood. Often an Indian warrior would glide out from the thickets, and stand watching their work, and then glide away again, silent as a shadow. The savages seemed friendly, and indeed some of them went with the white men as guides, but there was no knowing when they would turn against the white men. At one time, word was brought to Mason and Dixon that the Indians meant to attack their camp, and twenty-six of their workmen left, and made their way back to safety. All work stopped for a while. Then fresh men came out to take their places, and the chopping and surveying went on. Great trees were cut down and rocks were rolled from their beds. A path eight yards wide was made through the wilderness, and in this “vistoe” as they called it, stones were set up to mark the boundary line. Some of the stones had Penn’s coat-of-arms carved on them; some were carved upon one side with “P” for Pennsylvania, and on the other with “M” for Maryland.

Months slipped by, years passed, and still the work was not finished.

Then one day the surveyors came to a path through the forest that crossed the “vistoe” they were marking out. It was a path worn by the passing of many Indian feet. Here the savages who were acting as their guides stopped.

“It is not the will of the Six Nations[39] that you should go further,” they said.

The white men were very anxious to finish the line. They had been working on it for over four years, and it needed thirty-six more miles to complete it, but the Indians would guide them no further. “It is not the will of the Six Nations,” they repeated.

The white men were afraid to push on further without permission. They were afraid they would be massacred, so they were obliged to turn back leaving the line incompleted, and many, many years passed by before that line was finally finished.

But Mason and Dixon’s line[40] still marks the boundaries between the three States of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and here and there a stone still stands where they set it up in their “vistoe,” more than a hundred and fifty years ago. One stone is preserved in the rooms of the Delaware Historical Society, at Tenth and Market streets, in Wilmington.

The lines they marked out were those between Pennsylvania on the north, and Delaware and Maryland on the south, and between Maryland and Delaware[41] and they did their work so well that it has never had to be done again.

NOTES

[36] Now New Castle.

[37] Wilmington.

[38] The first settlement in Maryland.

[39] The Six Nations were the tribes of Indians inhabiting that region.

[40] At the time of the Civil War, 1861-65, the Mason and Dixon line was spoken of as the line dividing North and South, free and slave States from each other. When it was laid out, it was with no such idea, however, as we have seen, but to correctly mark the divisions between the properties of William Penn and Lord Baltimore.

[41] In 1909, the original Royal Grants from the King and the Duke of York to William Penn were given to the Colonial Dames by Mrs. W. R. Miller of Media, Pennsylvania. These deeds were given by John Penn, the great grandson of William Penn, to Mr. John Coates, of Philadelphia in 1811, and had been handed down and carefully preserved. The Colonial Dames, on receiving them, presented them formally to the State of Delaware, and Governor Pennewill accepted them in the name of the Commonwealth, before the joint session of the Legislature.

They are undoubtedly the most important records ever presented to this state. They are the Royal Grants, which confer practically the sovereignty to the State of Delaware of the land composing its domain. Upon the validity of these Grants the division lines between Maryland and Delaware were established in the famous chancery suit in England between William Penn and Lord Baltimore. In the Pea-patch Island controversy between New Jersey and Delaware they established Delaware’s ownership of this island, where Fort Delaware was erected. Also in the late case between New Jersey and Delaware concerning the fishery rights within the twelve mile circle, these papers played an important part.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 96, “upn” changed to “upon” (charged upon the)

Page 96, “deKalb” changed to “DeKalb” to match rest of usage (DeKalb himself had)

Page 98, “readinesss” changed to “readiness” (readiness shown by them)

Page 104, “oncamped” and “eften” changed to “encamped” and “often” (encamped. In the next) (often be seen kneeling)

Page 137, in text of illustration, “Battleship” is printed as “Battleshib.”

End of Project Gutenberg's Once Upon a Time in Delaware, by Katherine Pyle