The Brandywine
The Brandywine
An Intimate Portrait
W. Barksdale Maynard
Also by W. Barksdale Maynard
Architecture in the United States, 1800–1850
Walden Pond: A History
Buildings of Delaware in the Buildings of the United States Series
Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency
Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindfulness, with Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly
Princeton: America’s Campus
The Talent Mandate: Why Smart Companies Put People First, with Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly
Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Fair Play Foundation and by a gift from Eric R. Papenfuse and Catherine A. Lawrence.
Copyright © 2015 W. Barksdale Maynard
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maynard, W. Barksdale (William Barksdale)
Brandywine : an intimate portrait / W. Barksdale Maynard.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4677-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Brandywine Creek (Pa. and Del.)—History. 2. Brandywine Creek Valley
(Pa. and Del.)—History. I. Title.
F157.B77M39 2015
| 974.8'4—dc23 | 2014028300 |
To Susan, Alexander, Spencer, and Elisabeth
Contents
Chapter 1 Fish Creek in New Sweden
Chapter 2 Pride of Penn’s Woods
Chapter 3 A River Red with Blood
Chapter 4 “Rushing Water and Buzzing Wheels”
Chapter 5 Thunderous Age of Black Powder
Chapter 9 “Painters of True American Art”
Appendix Bridges of the Brandywine
Preface
American Arcadia
It comes down from the Welsh Mountains and twists its way through some of the prettiest countryside in the middle states before gushing along a rocky gorge at Wilmington and meeting tidewater. The quintes-sential Piedmont stream, running lively over the rocks, the Brandywine finally loses itself into the flat and featureless Christina River, which joins the Delaware Bay.
Centuries ago, the Brandywine wove together two of the thirteen colonies. Finding its source in the wooded hills of the second-largest colony, Pennsylvania, it ended in the second-smallest, Delaware—later the first state. Every traveler who went north to south through colonial America crossed the Brandywine, usually in Wilmington, often stopping to admire its phenomenally productive mills, which made this valley a crucible of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, its importance to the early nation was immortalized by its being the scene of the largest land battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of the Brandywine, fought by George Washington’s armies around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, one steamy late-summer afternoon, September 11, 1777.
From that day forward, the fame of the Brandywine has never subsided. Early tourists came to see the battlefield and, with the onset of the romantic movement around 1800, to delight in the valley’s verdant beauty. Writers visited, and artists, until finally there flourished the so-called Brandywine school of painters, centered on Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth. Perhaps the most famous American painter in the world, Andrew Wyeth, spent nearly a lifetime portraying the Brandywine scene.
Today the Brandywine Valley is famous for its cultural institutions and its outstanding gardens and museums, all of which derive from a long heritage of thoughtful attention to history, pride of place, and quality of life. So important is the Brandywine to the nation, 1,100 unspoiled acres along the creek—called Woodlawn—were recently earmarked for inclusion, advocates fervently hoped, in a brand-new national park, the first Delaware has ever had.
“If proponents prevail,” National Geographic reported, the country would at last suitably honor the Brandywine “and the outsize course that it has cut through American history.” Then in March 2013, President Obama established First State National Monument, the four-hundredth unit of the National Park Service. Its flagship component