John Richardson House (Brick Mill House)

John Richardson House (Brick Mill House)

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c. 1723. 3 Mill Rd., on Little Mill Creek, off Maryland Ave. at southwest corner of Canby Park

Swedish engineer Peter Lindeström showed “Little Falls Kill” on a map of 1654, but soon the name was Anglicized to “Mill Creek”—appropriately, as milling took place here continuously from 1669 to 1923. Quaker John Richardson, miller and trader, possibly built the two-story brick house in 1723 when he bought the mill. Of glazed-header Flemish bond, the irregular and ancient-looking little dwelling stands on a high stone basement and has a watertable at the level of the windowsills. Richardson's son built the large stone house just uphill (1765 datestone); lawyer and historian Henry C. Conrad owned it as “Glynrich” starting in 1887 and subdivided its farm in 1905—one of the first streetcar suburbs on the fringes of Wilmington.

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