The 112-acre Penn Farm is the last remnant of New Castle’s rich agricultural history. In 1997, it was named to the National Register for Historic Places.
[caption id="attachment_13886" align="alignleft" width="165" caption="A rendering of Wm. Penn's original 1704 survey of New Castle Common (Click to enlarge) (courtesy: Trustees of New Castle Common)"]
“The farm represents the agricultural economy that was such a big part of the area, not only the City of New Castle but also New Castle County, from the early 18th century and into the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mike Connolly, executive director of the New Castle Historical Society.
Penn Farm is part of the original 1,068-acre New Castle Common, land west and north of New Castle’s historic district, that had been set aside for agricultural use well before William Penn arrived in North America in 1682 (spending his first night in New Castle) and perhaps as early as 1660, when the Dutch controlled the town. In those days, the land provided pasture for the residents’ livestock and the timber needed to build their homes.
In 1701, Penn, then proprietor and governor of Pennsylvania, formalized the use of the land, writing that it was “to lye in Common for the accommodation of the Inhabitants of the Town of New Castle for their onley use and behoof forever.” A survey of the common lands was completed in 1704.
In 1764, the Trustees of New Castle Common were granted a charter by Thomas and Richard Penn, William Penn’s sons and his successors as proprietors and governors of Pennsylvania, with “legal power to protect the Common from wrongful usage.” In 1791 the Penn family granted the land outright to the trustees, provided that it be used solely for the benefit of citizens of New Castle. In 1792, the trustees established guidelines for subdividing and leasing the land into farms. The original guidelines made tenants responsible for building their own homes on the farms and making other improvements as well.
The first tenant at what became known as Penn Farm was John Crow, a trustee who owned a tavern on Delaware Street. He built the first wood frame section of the still standing farmhouse between 1799 and 1810. The brick section and the remainder of the wood frame section were completed between 1814 and 1828. (An attached wooden shed was added in the late 19th or early 20th century.)
Crow died around 1828 and subsequent tenants included Andrew Colesbury, Dr. Henry Colesbury, Henry Reynolds and Michael Callahan. Records of the trustees show that wheat, corn and oats were the farm’s primary crops in the later part of the first half of the 19th century.
In the late 1820s, the trustees began paying for some improvements on their farms and in 1852 they set aside $600 for the granary on Penn Farm. A barn was built four years later, but records of who paid for it aren’t clear. The trustees spent at least $1,700 on other improvements for Callahan, who died in 1867.
Callahan and subsequent tenants often fell into debt, and the size of the farm expanded and contracted as neighboring farmers arranged to lease each other’s fields. In the early 20th century, the lower level of the barn was reconfigured for dairy use. Then, in 1905 and 1906, the farm was leased to Joseph Quigley, whose grandson Joseph Quigley III would become Penn Farm’s last tenant.
[caption id="attachment_13887" align="alignright" width="220" caption="A listing of tenants on Penn Farm from 1891-1947 (Click to enlarge) (courtesy: Trustees of New Castle Common)"]
The barn and granary were rebuilt in 1914-1915, and significant improvements were made during the following decade. From 1927 to 1932, the trustees leased 700 acres at Penn Farm and five other farms to the Mason Alfalfa Process Company, which grew and processed alfalfa there. Three tenants followed, then Joseph Quigley Jr. moved onto Penn Farm in March 1945. He raised pigs, chickens and dairy cows, delivering milk daily to the Delmar Dairy, and grew wheat, clover, timothy hay and other grains, according to Elaine Quigley, his daughter-in-law. After years of using horses and plows in the field, he was the first Penn Farm tenant to use a soft tire tractor for plowing, Elaine Quigley said.
By then, the area had begun to change. In 1941, the trustees’ farmland northwest of U.S. 13 was condemned — to become part of the new New Castle County Airport. By 1944, the trustees had been granted authority to sell off or otherwise develop the farmland, provided the proceeds would be invested for the benefit of New Castle and its residents. Farms gave way to communities like Penn Acres, retail hubs like the Penn Mart Shopping Center and the New Castle Farmers Market, education facilities like William Penn High School and Wilmington University, and business centers like the Centerpoint Business Complex, home of the Amazon.com warehouse operation.
Elaine Quigley, widow of Joseph Quigley III, moved onto Penn Farm in November 1957 with her husband, their two sons and the first of their two daughters, then only five days old. A “city girl” from Wilmington, she said this week, “I didn’t grow up to be a farmer, but I did grow into it.”
She recalled numerous farm families living nearby — the Megginsons, the Walkers, the Higginses — but all would eventually leave. Some of their former acreage was temporarily grafted onto Penn Farm, until it was eventually developed as Penn Acres South and the William Penn High School campus. When the farm’s size contracted, the Quigleys had to sell off their cows in 1973 as they could no longer grow enough grain to feed them, she said. From the late 1970s into the past decade, Penn Farm was often referred to as “Quigley’s Farm,” best known for the produce stand at its main entrance and the hayrides they offered each fall.
Joseph Quigley III died in February 2008. Elaine Quigley moved off the farm two years later and now lives nearby. “It was upsetting to see the other farmers leave,” she said, “but it was an interesting life.”