Call Number:

Item 0086

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

1 item

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0097, Item 0086, M.C.L. Worrell, Reminiscences of Wilmington, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1880s-1890s (inclusive)

Creator:

Worrell, M.C.L., 1809-1905

Form:

Notes, Clippings (information artifacts), Memoirs, and Genealogies (histories)

Abstract:

This manuscript consists of M.C.L. (Miriam C. Lamborn) Worrell's reminiscences about Wilmington, Delaware, in the 1810s-1820s. The notes were recorded by Worrell in the 1880s-1890s.

Miriam C. Lamborn was born in 1809 to Jonathan and Rachel Lamborn and was raised in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1833, she married Thomas Worrell at the New Garden Quaker Meeting in Chester County, Pennsylvania. It appears that both Miriam and Thomas Worrell became Hicksite Quakers following the 1827 Hicksite-Orthodox split. The Worrells settled in Mill Creek, Delaware, around 1840 where Thomas ran a woolen mill. The Worrells had returned to Wilmington by the 1880s when Miriam began her reminiscences of the city. Mary C. Lamborn Worrell died in 1905 and was buried at Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery.

University of Delaware. Library. Self works : diaries, scrapbooks, and other autobiographical efforts : catalog of an exhibition, August 19, 1997-December 18, 1997 : guide to selected sources. Newark, Del. : Special Collections, Hugh M. Morris Library, University of Delaware Library, 1997."Thomas Worrell Family and Mill," The Mill Creek Hundred History Blog (accessed December 15, 2016) http://mchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/12/thomas-worrell-family-and-mill.htmlLamborn, Samuel. The Genealogy of the Lamborn Family. With Extracts from History, Biographies, Anecdotes, Etc. Philadelphia: The Press of M.L. Marion, 1894.U.S. Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935: New Garden Monthly Meeting, Chester County, Pennsylvania. (accessed via Ancestry.com on December 15, 2016.)U.S. Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935: Wilmington Monthly Meeting, New Castle County, Delaware (accessed via Ancestry.com on December 15, 2016.)Information derived from the collection.

This manuscript consists of M.C.L. (Miriam C. Lamborn) Worrell's reminiscences about Wilmington, Delaware, in the 1810s-1820s. The notes were recorded by Worrell in the 1880s-1890s.

In these reminiscences, Worrell created a detailed sketch of Wilmington, Delaware, as it appeared in the 1810s and 1820s. Worrell moved block by block through the city and its outskirts, recording information about the architecture of buildings, infrastructure, street plans, and past and current residents. Using Market Street and the Christina and Brandywine Rivers as her reference points, Worrell described wharves, craft shops, hotels, private residences, and a variety of specialty stores. She made brief reference to the sections of town inhabited primarily by African American residents, including Chicken Alley. Worrell described Arthur Murphey's "groggery" on Front and Shipley Streets as the location "where all the lower class of drunkards were made."

In crafting her reminiscences, Worrell made frequent references to Benjamin Ferris's

Worrell also included the genealogies of several Wilmington families and information about her schoolmates and members of the Wilmington Monthly Meeting. She provided extensive genealogies of the Richardson and Gilpin families, as well as information regarding the Tatnalls, Mendenhalls, Corbits, Bayards, Shipleys, and others. She included lists of her schoolmates at the Friends' School between 1817 and 1820 and at "Neighbor Moore's" school in the later 1820s. Worrell also recalled members of the Wilmington Meeting by their seating order in the pews.

This collection consists of twenty-two leaves of paper with handwritten notes in black ink, several small newspaper clippings, and an envelope that was used to hold the materials.