From Colorado, Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Illinois, California and a few other states as well, members of a family with a deep love of history returned to their roots earlier this month, to the place where their American story began more than 340 years ago.
The Descendants of Valentine Hollingsworth Sr. Society visited sites associated with their family throughout New Castle County, but the highlight was a morning spent at the Newark Union Church and Cemetery in Brandywine Hundred, where Hollingsworth was buried and across the street from a house that includes portions of the walls of Hollingsworth’s original home.
“This is where the Hollingsworth family’s journey in America began,” Randy Hollingsworth, president of the society, told the 49 cousins, spouses and friends who packed the recently restored Newark Union Church for the society’s annual meeting. Many of those seated in the church wore colored ribbons attached to their nametags, with the colors signifying the branch of the family from which they are descended.
Valentine Hollingsworth Sr. arrived in America in 1682, landing in New Castle on October 27, and, in December of that year, William Penn granted Hollingsworth nearly 1,000 acres in Brandywine Hundred, stretching roughly from Shellpot Creek on the east to the area around Blue Ball on Concord Pike on the west. Hollingsworth built his home near the creek, just west of what is now Baynard Boulevard, which runs between Shipley and Marsh roads. That home served as a Quaker meeting for about 20 years, until a meetinghouse was built around 1705 where the Newark Union Church now stands. In 1688 Hollingsworth designated a half-acre portion of that land grant near his home as a burial ground. Hollingsworth died in 1711 and was laid to rest there, in what is now the Newark Union Cemetery.
After the society’s annual meeting, Hollingsworth’s descendants assembled next to the memorial dedicated in his honor in 1936 for a ceremonial unveiling of the headstone of Hollingsworth’s grave, which, like many of the stones in the cemetery, had sunk about two feet below ground level over the years. The ceremony was arranged by Bob and Anne Daly, now the president and secretary of the Newark Union Corporation, who have spearheaded the restoration of the church and cemetery. The Dalys now live in the Valentine Hollingsworth House.
“To see Valentine’s gravestone, yes, it was kind of personal,” said Kathy Hutchison of Hamilton, Ohio, the society’s treasurer. “When Bob Daly talked about the experience of finding the stone, he almost broke into tears. Me too.”
“To see Valentine’s gravestone, yes, it was kind of personal. When Bob Daly talked about the experience of finding the stone, he almost broke into tears. Me too.”Kathy Hutchison, Treasurer for Descendants of Valentine Hollingsworth Sr. Society
Following the ceremony in the cemetery, reunion participants traveled throughout the area to learn more about how their ancestors spread throughout northern New Castle County. They stopped in Centreville, New Castle and Newark, as well as in Elkton, Maryland, and Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
There are few with the Hollingsworth surname still living in Delaware – “probably less than 10,” says Irvin Hollingsworth III of Centreville, who sported a green ribbon identifying him as a descendant of Valentine Hollingsworth Jr., the seventh of the elder Hollingsworth’s 11 children.
Jo Hollingsworth of Fostoria, Ohio, the reunion’s organizer and a past president of the society, fits her cousin’s description. Also a descendant of Valentine Jr., she was born in Delaware but moved with her family to Texas – prompted by a DuPont Co. transfer – when she was less than a year old.
Red ribbons, signifying descendants of Valentine’s third child, and second son, Thomas Hollingsworth, were more common at the reunion.
Hollingsworth history nearly everywhere
As the Hollingsworths crisscrossed the county and hopscotched the state line into Pennsylvania and Maryland, they learned not only of their roots but also their connections to other famous Delaware families.
Lombardy Hall on Concord Pike, best known as the home of Gunning Bedford Jr., one of Delaware’s signers of the U.S. Constitution, was built on what was part of William Penn’s land grant to Hollingsworth. Valentine deeded the land to “Big George” Robinson, the husband of his daughter Katheran, and family members built the stone structure around 1750. “Big George’s” grandson, Charles Robinson, sold 250 acres, including the home, to Bedford in 1785 and Bedford gave the estate its current name.
The Center Meeting, the Friends’ meetinghouse at the intersection of Adams Dam and Center Meeting roads, counts Valentine’s son Thomas as one of its founders. Thomas had moved across the Brandywine to the Centreville area around 1687, then found it difficult in winter to return to his father’s home for monthly meetings. Center Meeting was established the following year.
A portion of Thomas’s cabin still stands, as part of a home off Guyencourt Road in Centreville, according to Irvin Hollingsworth. Also, he said, Joseph Hollingsworth, Valentine’s 10th child, operated a mill on the Brandywine at Thompson’s Bridge. Maps from the 1700s identify the site as Hollingsworth Ford, and it was apparently the only place between Wilmington and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where it was easy to cross the Brandywine, he added.
Following those stops, Irvin Hollingsworth led the group through Coverdale Farm in Greenville, now a preserve of the Delaware Nature Society. Hollingsworth has a close attachment to his farm, as he grew up there and the farm was managed from 1929 to 1979 by his grandfather, Everett Levi Hollingsworth, and his father, Irvin Hollingsworth II, when the property was owned by former DuPont Co. President Crawford Greenewalt and his wife Marguerite, the daughter of Irenee du Pont.
Hollingsworth also took the group through the grounds of Oberod, a du Pont estate on Burnt Mill Road that was built from 1935 to 1937 on what had been a 125-acre farm owned by Everett Bellam Hollingsworth from 1882 to 1935.
One of the reunion group’s dinners was on the Wilmington Riverfront at Docklands, a restaurant housed in what once was the engine shop for Harlan & Hollingsworth, which built ships, railroad cars and hand-operated fire engines from the 1840s through 1899, when it was taken over by Bethlehem Steel. At the time, Harlan & Hollingsworth was among Wilmington’s largest employers. In its early years, the manufacturing business was led by Elijah Hollingsworth and his brother-in-law, Samuel Harlan, but the first linkage of those two surnames occurred about 150 years earlier.
Samuel Hollingsworth, Valentine’s fifth child, married Hannah Harlan in 1701 or 1702 and relocated to Birmingham Township, Pennsylvania, in the area near Glen Mills and Chadds Ford. Earlier, when the Friends’ Center Meeting was established, members of the Harlan family joined Thomas Hollingsworth in the list of founders.
In the 1690s and early 1700s, many Quaker farming families moved to the west side of the Brandywine, diminishing participation at the Friends’ Newark Meeting and leading to the creation of the Kennett Meeting in 1710. Samuel Hollingsworth transferred his membership from the Newark Meeting to the Kennett Meeting. He died in 1748 and was laid to rest in the Kennett Friends Burying Ground, another stop on the reunion tour.
One of the earliest movements of the Hollingsworth family extended into Elkton, Maryland, then crossed back to link with a prominent Delaware name and noted historic site.
Valentine’s son Henry settled at Head of Elk in 1711 and his grandson, also named Henry, became a prominent merchant in the area. As Maryland organized battalions at the start of the American revolution, Henry was named a colonel in one of the units and he would later serve as a quartermaster, directing the distribution of supplies to George Washington’s Colonial army.
When the British General Thomas Howe moved north from Elkton in 1777 in his campaign to seize Philadelphia, Hollingsworth’s battalion was among those that slowed the enemy march during the standoff at Cooch’s Bridge, the only combat action in Delaware during the revolution. It’s not clear whether Hollingsworth himself was at Cooch’s Bridge, as he was wounded in the throat on a reconnaissance mission near Elkton sometime before the Battle of the Brandywine, a few days after Cooch’s Bridge.
Also, in 1789, the colonel’s sister, Margaret Hollingsworth, married William Cooch, owner of the house closest to the battlefield.
The reunion participants’ visit to New Castle was significant for more than seeing where Hollingsworth first set foot in America. In the Colonial era, trials for crimes committed throughout New Castle County were held in New Castle and Hollingsworth was among a group of prominent citizens who served as a judge at those trials.
The family’s branches spread
"The younger people found us and reached out to their relatives. Many of them are coming to [the reunion in] Dayton next year.”Jo Hollingsworth, Past president of the Descendants of Valentine Hollingsworth Sr. Society
From New Castle County and nearby Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Valentine Hollingsworth’s descendants moved south, as far as the Carolinas, until finding their Quaker anti-slavery beliefs were frowned upon, and then headed west into Ohio, Jo Hollingsworth said. Following the Civil War, branches of the family extended farther west and south.
The annual reunions, held since 1993, and on several occasions in Delaware, help keep the family heritage alive, says Hutchison, an 11th-generation Hollingsworth.
At the annual meeting, Mary McGuire, the society’s historian, offered to assemble 3-minute video recollections from reunion participants. “We’re losing our history every day, whenever someone dies,” she said.
“When I started in 2005, there was my dad, my aunt,” Hutchison says, her voice trailing off. “We are kind of worried about keeping it going.”
Jo Hollingsworth is optimistic that the family traditions will endure. “The younger people found us and reached out to their relatives,” she says. “Many of them are coming to [the reunion in] Dayton next year.”
