Delaware’s Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs is beginning construction on a new John Dickinson Plantation Visitor Center.
The Division's director Suzanne Savery said it will provide more opportunities to share stories about the people who lived on the 450-acre property over the years.
The center has been in the works for about five years and will add a conference space for 120 people. It's currently schedule to open early 2026.
John Dickinson, known as “Penman of the American Revolution,” spent his boyhood on the plantation where his family became one of the most prominent slaveholders in Delaware.
“It was the individuals that were enslaved and indentured and freed individuals who actually worked the land,” Savery said. “So I think it's key that we know their names – not just Dickinson, who owned the land – but it was Clem and Violet and Chaz.”
The plantation is in State Representative Kerri Evelyn Harris’ district. She said it’s important to have difficult conversations, particularly about slavery, in Delaware’s educational spaces.
“History is complicated, just like all of our individual lives are… Having a three-dimensional perspective early on in our history is going to help us all go forward with the future history.”
Savery added that expanding the plantation’s history is important.
“They were here more than Dickinson. It was their property too… And we need to have people understand what this site meant in the 18th and the 19th century, and who was really living here and how it operated.”
Dickinson conditionally emancipated most of the enslaved people he claimed ownership over in 1777, according to The Friends of the John Dickinson Mansion. He unconditionally freed them 11 years later.
Savery said the museum aims to recognize the dignity that people lost on the plantation and to honor the communities that lived there.
The plantation recently added a 1.3 mile trail that allows visitors to see an African burial ground on the property that was discovered in 2021.
