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Did you know that it is the 200th anniversary of Return Day? We had some curious folks from New Castle County stop in to see what all the hubbub was about.  They looked at photographs , and at our newspaper clipping file. They also saw the 1811 legislative petitions from each county asking for election […]

Tis the season for creepy tales and here’s one right from our holdings. This is a statement collected from concerned citizens of the Mispillion Hundred in the 18th century regarding the mistreatment of the skull of a gentleman who had died approximately 15 years earlier. According to this record, the perpetrator dug it up and allowed his […]

Did you know that Monday was “Delaware Day” at the Antietam Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland?  Antietam is remembered as the bloodiest one-day battle of the American Civil War and many of the Delaware troops present were involved in some of the most terrible parts of the battle. The Delaware Heritage Commission and the Delaware Public Archives, along with […]

We posted a wedding album on our Facebook page. It had been up for about 5 minutes when a man called to tell us that he recognized a face. He is originally from Jersey City, NJ and in one of the pictures was his boss when he was 13 years old. He worked at Neibanck’s […]

Actually there have been five lighthouses at Port Mahon to guide ships and waterman on the Delaware Bay.  The first was built in 1831 and because of erosion, a series of replacements were built.  The last lighthouse was built in 1903 and lasted until 1984.  Recently processed, the Delaware Technical and Community College Photograph Collection […]

With all the excitement about the Kentucky Derby, we had some people stop by to see if we had anything relating to thoroughbred racing in Delaware.  They loved looking at all the old photographs from Delaware Park.  They reviewed state reports, administrative files from the Department of Agriculture on the Thoroughbred Racing Commission and scrapbooks […]

If you have been reading the newspapers lately or watching the news, you know that Delaware has a scheduled execution for April 20th.  We had some curious citizens stop in to see if we had any information or documents about past executions. They started by looking at our newspaper collection. Next they looked in our […]

Growing up in Pennsylvania, the only indication that a new driver was behind the wheel was a nervous parent sitting in the front passenger seat or some less-than-confident moves on the road. When I moved to Delaware and began seeing “Novice Driver” stickers affixed to cars, I couldn’t help but like them. What a great […]

  So I was watching TV last night and an Ancestry.com commercial came on.  It was a woman talking about how she was looking for information on her grandmother and lo and behold she found her marriage record.  To my surprise the next image they showed was a Delaware marriage certificate that Ancestry had digitized […]

If you’ve been reading the papers you saw that the Indian River Inlet bridge finally opened today.  With all the attention it’s been getting, we had some people from the area stop by to see what we had on the previous bridges that were there.  They were surprised that we had information on all 3 […]