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Yesterday, I helped a friend inspect a house he’s having built near Ocean City, MD and passed through Dagsboro, Delaware. I was an hour ahead of him, so I stopped in the little Town Hall in Dagsboro. http://www.sussexcountyonline.com/towns/dagsboro/municipalinfo.html
There, I met a nice elderly lady who worked for the town. She was about 70 years old. She told me that she had been born, raised, and had spent her whole life in Dagsboro.
I asked her if the town had any local history books for sale and she said they did. But when I began to peruse it, I found only a brief and indirect reference to its previous name, Blackfoot Town. So, I put my $10.00 back into my wallet and handed the book back to her.
The lady did however tell me that she had been taught in elementary school that a tribe of Blackfoot Indians had lived there before the town was named Dagsboro in honor of Gen. John Dagworthy.
She directed me to Prince George’s Chapel and cemetary, about a half mile away. http://www.sussexcountyonline.com/towns/dagsboro/princegeorges.html
At the church, I read from a bronze plaque that the church had been built in 1755. Later, I found the grave of Gen. John Dagworthy. He was born in 1721 and died in 1784. http://www.sussexcountyonline.com/towns/dagsboro/dagworthy.html
Wish there was more to report but, alas….
Thanks, for the report, Roy, and for thinking of us. Hope you’re doing well.
That is something though, to know that about 50 years ago there was oral history in the community that Blackfoot Indians had lived there. Of course, someone can pooh-pooh that as just old conjecture, but I think the simpler explanation is that there were people in that town who identified themselves as Blackfoot, as the historian noted, I forget his name. It’s back on that first post about Blackfoot Town. Was that Weslager? Is my memory serving for a change?
I remembered correctly!
http://www.saponitown.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=593&perpage=15&pagenumber=2
It’s part of Bess’s post. Weslager interviewed a Mr. Hitchens who reported being from the Blackfoot tribe.
Apropos nothing, much, C.A. Weslager was a good friend of mine during the last ten or twelve years of his life. We had tons of correspondence, but very little was about Native American issues and the part that was dealt with Susquehannock and Algonquian people. (He was kind of specialized in the Delawares, or Lenni Lenape.) Anyway — since he died in about 1994, probably his personal papers went to some archive or other, and might be available for research. In which case one might still be able to find out more about his Hitchens interview. The fact that everybody involved is now deceased doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no record of it… just a thought, if it rings somebody’s bell, I could try to track this down.
PappyDick,
Would you mind tracking it down? Many of us have the Blackfoot story in our family. Maybe the interview can help us find out more information as to what the Blackfoot ID refers to.
Techteach
It would be nice to know what time frame that much of this refers to, I really like the interview of Roys with the elderly Lady.
There’s more some where.!
From a couple of messages back — I checked with another mutual friend, and he thinks Weslager willed his papers to the University Of Delaware. I checked their library website, and Special Collections has not listed those manuscripts — which doesn’t mean they don’t have them, only that there is not currently a description (or Calendar) of the papers, and therefore they probably aren’t available for research. I’ll try to pursue it further, because Wes might have changed his mind (and will), and they may be somewhere else. But the quick answer is, there’s not a quick answer.
Further commentary on “Blackfoot Town” comes from a Sussex County, DE web site:
General John Dagworthy, commander of the Sussex County Militia during the Revolutionary War, is regarded as Dagsboro’s founding father after establishing industry in the area with grist and lumber mills, tanneries, and an export business shipping cypress lumber to Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey.
Because of his efforts, the town name was changed from Blackfoot Town to Dagsbury in the 1780s before becoming Dagsborough in the 1830s.
Prince George’s Chapel [which is in Dagsboro] was received by the Worcester Parish of the Church of England on June 30, 1757, when the Dagsboro area was still a part of Maryland.
The chapel, on two acres of land purchased from Walter Evans, was named for Prince George, who later became King George III of England…
__________
[PappyDick again]
This seems to indicate that the Blackfoot Town name is older than “the 1780s,” and there was already a nice little Church of England there in 1757. (By the way, I have both interior and exterior slides of it taken in 1965, since which time it has been pretty radically “restored.”) So there might be parish records, e.g., of Indians being baptized (i.e. christened, probably should say that, since so many Saponi descendants are Baptists and know what the word really means). If they exist, I think there would be typed transcriptions in the Maryland Historical Society library in Baltimore. And there would be records of the land there of Walter Evans in the Maryland Hall of Records, in Annapolis. (As opposed to the DE Public Archives, in Dover.) Land records typically mention the neighbors.
One other little comment about the place name: there is a science called onomastics that deals with names, of which place names are an important subset. There have been good articles about Delaware place names, in Delaware History magazine (one was by A.R. Dunlap) and maybe elsewhere; I’m not aware of any such book, apart from a 1966 USGS publication useful mostly for locating an obscure place — but I haven’t been much in touch with those folks for about 15 years. Maryland had two volumes of a very good place-name study — Hamill Kenny edited the second volume in the mid-1980s, don’t recall if he had also produced the first. I mention this because “Blackfoot Town” was probably a Maryland place-name originally, though its location is now in Delaware. Anyway, it may be that someone already investigated why the place was called Blackfoot Town, and published this info about 20 to 50 years ago. Or, not. But if someone did, these would be the places to look.
I haven’t found out were Weaslager’s papers are yet, but Frank Speck got him interested in the area in question and the Nanticoke. There is a collection of Speck papers at the American Philosophical Association:
http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/s/speck.htm
……”Scope and content
The Frank G. Speck Papers consist of 15.5 linear feet of professional correspondence, field notes, lecture notes, and manuscripts of published and unpublished works. The material focuses on the Eastern Woodlands Indians, particularly the Catawba, Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Houma, Iroquois, Labrador Eskimo, Mantagnais-Naskapi, Nanticoke, Penobscot, Powhatan, Algonkian, and Yuchi. The collection is divided into two subcollections: Subcollection 1 is comprised of Speck’s research material and correspondence, and Subcollection 2 consists of his manuscripts and related correspondence. The two subcollections were acquired separately by the Society, and were originally cataloged as the Frank G. Speck Papers (572.97 Sp3) and the Frank G. Speck Manuscripts on Native Americans (970.3 Sp3p) respectively.
Subcollection I is divided into two series. Series I came to the Library shortly after Speck’s death in 1950 from Mrs. Frank G. Speck (with later additions from William N. Fenton and John Witthoft). Ninety-five percent of the material relates to North American tribes east of the Mississippi. The material was arranged by Anthony F. C. Wallace, and described in “The Frank G. Speck Collection” in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (Vol. 95, pp. 286-89). According to Wallace, the Speck collection is an important ethnographic source material to those working on Eastern Woodlands Indian cultures since it constitutes a valuable body of unpublished data. In addition, the collection documents a significant chapter in the history of American science. As an early student of Franz Boas, Speck’s work represents the first generation of American ethnographers to pursue the kind of research Boas encouraged and taught (a patient, detailed description of a primitive culture based on long and intimate residence with the community). Of particular interest are Speck’s Columbia lecture notes from classes he took with Boas. Speck’s field notes further indicate his method of study, in which casualness was itself unconsciously a technique for creating “rapport.” Speck scribbled information on envelopes, scraps of paper, road maps, and old letters – in addition to ledger books and tablets. ….”
Last Friday, having nothing better to do, my wife and I drove out to the Eastern Shore, went to Dagsboro looking for some swamp to photograph for this forum. That didn’t work out too well, the swamp nearest Dagsboro is now called “Burnt Swamp” because it burned in 1929 — and kept smoldering underground, and underwater, for many years thereafter (like a coal mine fire). We did go several miles SW and I took some shots of a relatively young (i.e. previously logged, in living memory) cypress swamp, near Gumboro DE. Tried to post one of those photos here, Saturday, but the file was too big.
Anyway, following up something in my post #96, above — I picked up a copy of the 1966 USGS publication, Delaware Place Names. It cites as one source for the “Blackfoot Town” entry a monograph I don’t recall having seen: A.R. Dunlap and C.A. Weslager, Indian place-names in Delaware (Wilmington: The Archaeological Society of Delaware, 1950), 61 pages. I have some of those old ASD bulletins, etc., including some that Weslager edited around 1939. But I have no idea where — they went into some box, before we moved here, seven years ago.
I also picked up the book about old Dagsboro homes and families, mentioned by Coharie Roy in post #91 above. I wanted to study the maps that are tucked into pockets in the front and back. Haven’t done that yet. If it has anything of great interest, I’ll let you know.
Well, since you brought it back — I’ll try inserting some photos from my trip to Dagsboro and its neighborhood, in May of last year. (See post #98.)
Apologies to whatsisname, Jeff Foxworthy? Anyhow: if the view out the front door of your cabin looks like this,
http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa140/razyn_photo/?action=view¤t=BurntSwamp.jpg
you might be a Blackfoot.
If the road to town from your place in Burnt Swamp looks like this,
http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa140/razyn_photo/?action=view¤t=Roadinswamp.jpg
the folks in town might call you a Blackfoot. And if the Episcopal church in that town looks like this,
http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa140/razyn_photo/?action=view¤t=PGChapel.jpg
which is Prince George’s Chapel (1767) in Dagsboro — you just might end up being a Baptist Blackfoot.
So I guess I might belong to a tribe after all, eh? That’s the scenery out our front porch…and many driveways look like that around here….and I didn’t grow up in Episcopal church…but, it was Primitive Baptist…and they were the ones that took in the “coloreds”…both black and red. They were some of the first churches in our area except for the Quakers.
Well, that’s what I was talking about. I kind of think those particular Episcopalians would have expected folks to come to church with clean feet. On the other hand, quite a few varieties of Baptists wash them in church (dirty or not), as a New Testament ordinance and a sign of humility.
But I was also alluding to the observed tendency of our eastern Blackfoot to live in, or near, swamps. Brenda had started a thread about that
http://www.saponitown.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2367
and I had that in mind, when I took the photos around Dagsboro last year.
Loved your photo tour, Dick. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Has anyone ever heard of Ft Christianna, DE? Heard of it today. Something new to research. It’s in the context of someone born there, who died in Dagsboro, in the 1700’s. They carry the family ID of Blackfoot! How’s them apples?
Thanks Pappy for sharing the beautiful photos!
Linda, that is wild! Another Ft. Christanna…you would have to believe there is a connection.
The one in Delaware (downtown Wilmington, actually) is the colonial (1638) Swedish Ft. Christina, named for their queen at the time… played by Greta Garbo in a pretty good movie of about 1930 that’s still on late at night… I think the river that flows by there (also the Christina) gave its name to a little town upstream where they like to misspell it “Christiana,” Delaware. In contemporary documents the Swedes called the settlement around it Kristinehamn; they were more interested in the anchorage or harbor (hamn) than in the fort (skans), as they weren’t especially mad at anybody, including the local Indians. The log church, for example (now Holy Trinity “Old Swedes” Episcopal church, a stone replacement built in the 1690s) was outside the walls of the fort. And so were most of the houses.
Anyway — it has nothing to do with the VA governor’s Ft. Christanna, built (about 75 years later) for us Eastern Siouans.
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