Donate | Book Tours (header buttons)

Historic Shipcarpenter Street Campus

Location

110 Shipcarpenter Street
Lewes, DE 19958

Hours

 

Administrative hours: Monday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Campus Grounds are open every day year-round dawn to dusk.

Historic Buildings are closed for the Winter Season

 

 


About Historic Shipcarpenter Street Campus

Nestled in the heart of historic Lewes, The Historic Shipcarpenter Street Campus offers 9 historic buildings for you to explore. Highlighting Lewes’s relationship to the sea and dedication to the preservation of historic structures, these museums help to tell the story of Lewes through the centuries since its founding. The Campus includes the Hiram Rodney Burton House (c. 1720, the only building on its original site), the Burton-Ingram House (c. 1785), the Rabbit’s Ferry House (c. 1740), the Thompson Country Store (c. 1800), the Ellegood House and Blacksmith Shop (c. 1790), the Doctor’s Office (c. 1850), and Midway School #178 (c. 1898).

The Historic Campus is located at 110 Shipcarpenter Street and is open to the public free of charge..


Buildings on The Shipcarpenter Street Campus

Burton-Ingram House:

Identified by its rare cedar plank front and rear door shutters and weathered cypress
shingles, the Burton-Ingram House is one of Lewes' finest examples of what became
known as the Federal style in American architecture. It was built c. 1785 on the
southeastern side of Lewes' commercial center on Second Street. With its raised and
somewhat protected first story, the elegantly proportioned residence followed designs of
townhouses then being built in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. It
remained virtually untouched for over a century until December 1920, when a fire
destroyed its rear dining wing.

The land the house once sat on was granted to John Kipshaven in 1682. When
he died, his daughter and son-in-law, Martha Kipshaven Jacobs and Albertus Jacobs,
inherited the property. It passed through the Jacobs family until Sarah Jacobs Burton,
Albertus Jacobs' great-granddaughter, sold the house in 1789 to John Craig, a local
blacksmith. After a brief ownership, Craig sold the house in 1792 to Mary Paynter
Blount who, two years later, married neighbor and revolutionary war hero Colonel Henry
Neill. The couple lived in the home until their deaths in 1803, leaving it to Mary’s family,
whose heirs shared the home for many years.

The Ingram family owned the house until 1930 when Charles S. Horn acquired
it. Horn sold the house to the Silco Company, who donated it to the LHS in 1962 and
relocated it from Second Street to 110 Shipcarpenter Street. Three years later, the rear
wing lost to the fire was replaced with a similar period addition from a late-18th century
house in Milton.

The Wiltbank-Watts House/Hiram Rodney Burton House:

From its exposed brick foundation to its refined Federal-era symmetrical front facade, the
Wiltbank-Watts House, previously known as the Hiram Rodney Burton House, is as visually
impressive as its history.

Cornelius Wiltbank, the grandson of Helmanus Wiltbank, began construction of a
Georgian house around 1720, possibly incorporating an existing structure dating to the 1690s.
The home remained in the Wiltbank family until 1814, when Reverend James Wiltbank, second
great-grandson of Helmanus, sold the house to War of 1812 hero Capt. Thomas Rodney.
Following Rodney’s death in 1820, the home and estate went to his wife, Sarah Burton
Rodney Short, who in 1863 left the house to their daughter, Ruth Hunn Rodney Burton. Ruth and
her husband, Joshua Sheppard Burton, completed significant renovations, including the addition
of a front porch. They left the home to their three sons, but the two youngest, Walter and Frank,
sold their shares to older brother Hiram Rodney Burton, a physician and early 20th-century
member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

During his ownership, Burton oversaw extensive remodeling of the house, drawing upon
Colonial, Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival architectural designs. The building was also
home to Burton’s daughter, Leah Burton Paynter, a leader in the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
Leah sold the house in 1930 to the Ott family, who operated a tearoom on the first floor. Later,
the Watts family moved into the home and lived there until they sold the property to the Lewes
Historical Society in 1989.

Midway School:

Starting in 1898, a steady stream of students passed through the single, plank-constructed door of
the Midway School. Known initially as Public School No. 178, this one-room schoolhouse—with its light blue clapboards and historic bell—was built near the Midway Presbyterian Church halfway between the towns of Rehoboth and Lewes.

From 1914 to 1920 the school expanded, employing two teachers and adding a second room but, with dwindling class sizes, returned to one teacher in 1922. Several educators— including Naomi Lank, Effie Warrington, Verda Rodney, Adelaide Warren, Laura Calhoon, Amanda Prettyman, Ruth Greene Cole, G.W. Ewing, and Issac Jearman—led instruction for white students in first through seventh grades, until the Midway region was incorporated into the Cape Henlopen School District in 1937.

Following its closure, the Midway School was sold to Ernest Megee, who moved the building to his farm for storage. Three generations later, in 1999, the Megee family’s generosity made the building available for inclusion in the Lewes Historical Society's main campus at 110 Shipcarpenter Street.

The Doctor's Office:

The Doctor's Office is the only surviving example of Greek Revival architecture in Lewes.
Reminiscent of an ancient Grecian temple, it was constructed c. 1836 when the historically based
architectural style was fashionable due to its association with Jeffersonian ideals.

Likely built by physician Henry Fisher Hall for his son, David Hall, the Doctor’s Office became a "scooter house,” meaning that it frequently changed location. It served as the office of
Drs. David Hall and later William Paynter Orr who, in 1906, moved it to the corner of Savannah
Road (then South Street) and King’s Highway on Second Street, where he rented it to tailor
Joseph Shek. During Shek’s occupancy, the structure sustained significant damage from a fire
started by an exploding bottle of cleaning fluid.

In 1945, the property was sold to Bill and Estella Clifton, who operated their eponymous
newsstand and soda fountain, which was added during renovations that also included building a
front porch and removing the front steps. Another fire, on New Year’s Eve 1970, shuttered the
business. The Cliftons moved the structure to Chestnut Street and then to Mary Vessels Park before donating it to the Lewes Historical Society in the early 1990s.

Stockley-Street House:

The Stockley House, previously known as the Rabbits Ferry House, was built in the 1740s on the
southwest side of Love Creek, in Sussex County, Delaware, by attorney Woodman Stockley II,
of Accomack, Virginia, and Mary Stockley (nee Evans). The home occupied one of their three
plots of land adjacent to Love Creek, where the Stockleys owned a total of eight plots ranging in
size from 110 acres to 550 acres each.

In his 1748 will, Woodman bequeathed to his youngest son, Cornelius, “the dwelling
plantation whereon I now live.” Cornelius, a successful blacksmith, acquired three additional
plots of land by 1760. Cornelius died in 1773, leaving behind his wife, Francis, and four
children. Since his eldest daughter, Mary, had passed away, her son, Cornelius Black, received
his mother’s share of his estate.

Because Cornelius Black was a minor when his grandfather died, it wasn’t until 1787 that
he inherited the land and “one log dwelling house, 20 ft. x 16 ft. with plank floor above and
below with a brick chimney and shingles rough, one other log house 12 x 16 feet a plank floor
above with a chimney of wood and clapboard rough.”

Cornelius Black, who purchased additional property belonging to an uncle, left behind
two tracts of land each inherited by his daughter, Frances Black Gordy, when he died in 1816.
Frances and her husband, Elijah, sold the land in 1831 to John Vessels, who continued to use
the property containing the Stockley House as a tenant farm from 1816 to 1831. The property
passed on to his son, William Fisher Vessels, who called it “Black Farm” after the previous
owner, Cornelius Black.

In his 1852 will, Vessels passed Black Farm on to his wife, Charlotte, and his son, Miers,
also indicating that the four enslaved people in his inventory become free upon reaching the age
of 27 to 28. Miers Burton Vessels took possession of the family land in 1854 but did not live
there. He sold the farm in 1870 to Lemuel P. Burton.

The Burton family owned the land from 1870 to 1887, leasing it out to Charle Webb
during this period. Purchasing the farm “on which Charles Webb now lives” in 1887, Thomas
Robinson owned the property for nine years, passing it on to his son, Benjamin, who then sold
the land to the Webb family in 1905. George T. Webb, related to tenant Charles Webb, sold the
property in 1944 to Joseph L. Street, although the Webb family retained ownership of the piece
of land containing a family cemetery.

In 1967 the house was purchased by Dr. James E. Marvil of the Lewes Historical Society,
thus saving the home from demolition and moving it to 110 Shipcarpenter Street.

Plank House:

The Plank House, with its exposed timbers and dovetail joints, resembles structures built by
Swedish immigrants who settled near New Castle, Delaware, in the 17th century. This log
house was initially located on a lot at 314 Pilottown Road owned by one of the first Swedes to
arrive in Lewes, Helmanus Wiltbank.

Dating to c. 1700 but with timbers dating to c. 1804, the Plank House property was
divided equally among Helmanus Wiltbank’s three sons—Cornelius, Abraham, and Issac—when
he passed away. Rev. James Wiltbank later inherited the lot and sold off parcels in 1803, when
Richard Howard, a local pilot, purchased the lot at 314 Pilottown Road. Howard lived on the
land until his death in 1825, his probate inventory listing several structures, including a
“smokehouse.”

Richard Howard’s daughter, Elizabeth Howard West, wife of pilot Lewis West, inherited
the property, while their son, Robert, a Lewes merchant, received the lot when his mother died in
1865. Robert and his wife, Clementine McCloud West, raised their daughters Margaret, Mary,
Louise, and Clara on the property at 314 Pilottown Road and left it to them. Three years later,
in 1890, Margaret, who was the youngest, sold her share and relocated to Philadelphia.
The Enos family lived on the property from 1902 to 1915. After their tenure Margaret
West sold the land in 1917 to pilots James Richard and George Herbert Orton, who then donated
the house to the Lewes Historical Society in 1963.

When he heard of the acquisition, Joseph Enos wrote to the Lewes Historical Society,
reminiscing about his boyhood in Lewes and describing the structure, even providing a map of
the property. “The Plank House, as you call it, we always called it a smokehouse, used for
smoking meats,” Enos explained. “I know it was originally a smokehouse because as small kids,
my brother Richard and I used to play in it and get our clothes all black and dirty from the
smoked walls.”

Considering the date of the timbers, along with Richard Howard’s probate listing of a
smokehouse, it is likely that the Plank House was built or renovated by Howard in 1804.

Ellegood House, c. 1800:

The Ellegood House is another example of an early Sussex County farmhouse. Sheathed in clapboards, the Ellegood House is also a temporary exhibit space.

Thompson Country Store:

The sturdy broad, white oak floor planks of the Thompson Country Store hardly show the wear
by the countless patrons who shuffled through for more than 150 years. Over time, this saltbox-style commercial building became a gathering place serving the community of Thompsonville,
Delaware, where patrons not only purchased needed goods but also shared local news. Absalom
and Rachel Hill built the Thompson Country Store around 1800 and operated it until Absalom’s
death in May 1888. Part of the property was sold at auction four months later to Daniel and
Lydia Thompson, who bid $2,100. The store’s inventory included fabric, kerosene, gunpowder,
shoes, and much more. In addition, locals were able to pick up U.S. Postal Service mail from
1891 to 1902, before Free Rural Delivery started. By 1917, Harvey Thompson had taken over the
business, operating it until he donated the building to the Lewes Historical Society in 1962.

Blacksmith Shop, c. 1790:

Formerly the home of a Lewes blacksmith, the Society’s Blacksmith Shop compliments the Ellegood House.