While I passed the bulk of my time in Delaware in June 2008, my first day as a tourist there happened the previous October. I needed to go to Philadelphia to take my comprehensive exams and defend my dissertation proposal, so I drove there from my father’s house in northwestern Ohio planning to make a weekend out of it. It was not an easy time in my life for get-away trips, as my father was completely dependent on care. He was confined to a wheelchair and hospital bed at that stage, and could not be left alone. However, if I did not achieve this milestone in my progress toward my degree, I would lose the funding for research and tuition that had been awarded by the University of Pennsylvania and I would need to terminate my studies and research aims. The available weekend was difficult all the way around–there were no family members to sub out for me, and our trusty daddysitter had family coming in from Alabama and Kentucky for the weekend. But I had no choice and, rather than say no, our dedicated nursing student helper enlisted her whole, glorious family to keep company with my dad that weekend. I came home to find a stockpile of pulled pork and cornbread in the refrigerator just for me, and an old man who had been spoiled by Southern hospitality all weekend long. I’m not sure he was ever happier than when I left to face my examiners back in my graduate life and he got to hang with these generous families.
Incidentally, I survived that ordeal. I remember toting a massive champagne bottle to the event, which was held at an unfamiliar location since our beloved Folklore Archive had been awarded to another department. The campus refrigerator was too small for it, so the unopened champagne bottle sat on the floor for all of the examination. I had brought it for a purpose. It was now late 2007. I had hoped to meet this milestone in the spring of 2005, but that time was simply an endurance test with no room for any other exams. My father’s health had deteriorated to the point where we nearly lost him more than once, my house was so heavily in debt from unexpected repairs that I could not afford to move elsewhere, and my studies had been utterly derailed. I had no time or funding to move forward in my degree. Slowly, and against all odds, each of these burdens resolved in the manner I longed for. My father came home; my house sold at a price that alleviated my debts which enabled me to continue to care for him from home. If I successfully completed this last milestone, I would have done what I thought impossible two years before. A kind uncle had given me the champagne to celebrate something in those challenging years, but I had nobody to share it with if I opened it. I promised myself that would open the bottle and share its contents if the committee moved me forward. We enjoyed it over lunch after I submitted the passing paperwork to the departmental secretary. I spent the next day exploring a little piece of Delaware.
My first stop was, unsurprisingly, at a DuPont property. The DuPonts have a long history in Delaware and my first stop was at their origin point, Eleutherian Mills. The original DuPonts migrated to the US in 1800; two years later, the younger son, Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, established a gunpowder mill on the banks of the Brandywine River. This establishment grew into the largest black powder manufacturing firm in the world and made the DuPont family one of America’s wealthiest for many generations. The site also served as the family home for a number of DuPonts and remained in powder production until the end of World War I. By 1952, the family donated the land and their company created a trust for the site to be made into an industrial museum on Hagley Yards, adjacent land that had long been part of the estate. It is now the site of the Hagley Museum, which tells the story of the DuPont Family and gunpowder manufacturing there for over a century.
The day I visited was a glorious fall day. Unfortunately, I have no photos to share–my camera was back in Ohio and I would not have had funds at the time to purchase a new one. (At least I remembered to pack the champagne.) It appears that I also stopped to visit the Delaware Toy & Miniature Museum, which displays the dollhouse collection of Jean Austin duPont.
From there, I drove to Dover and attempted to visit the John Dickinson Plantation. Delaware has a conflicted history related to slavery. It was a slave state that remained in the union during the Civil War. To date, my efforts to visit a plantation had all been foiled and this day was no exception. I reached it to find that tours were not offered in October. There was an Air Force museum at Dover Air Force Base–a site most famous as the receiving mortuary for service members’ remains who are repatriated to the US following death on the battlefield–but it was near its closing time (and as former Dayton resident, Wright Patterson AFB seems more compelling). It seems I spent the night on the ocean at Lewes before turning toward Maryland to visit an old friend and then heading home to my father and the left-over pulled pork.