In This Place...

In This Place.... Late 1600's - 1700's.
A Plentiful and Prosperous Place
The map at left (circa 1630) and quote below highlight the wealth of natural resources as viewed by early Delaware Bay explorers:

"The land is very good and fruitefull...covered with woods and stately timber...the low grounds of which there is great quantitie...the River aboundeth with beavers, otters, and other meaner furs...the Countrey is very well replenished, with deere and in some places stores of Elkes...the quantity of fowles is so great as can hardly be beleeved...of fish heere is plentie...for my part I am confident that this River is the most healthful, fruitefull and commodious in all of North America".
source: Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware (1630-1707) by Albert Cook Myers (1634). Map scan courtesy of Delaware Public Archives.

Early Duck Creek Domiciles
Colonial settlement of this area began in the middle of the 17th century. Settlements were oriented to the narrow "necks" of land bordering navigable streams, including Duck Creek to the east and Taylors Gut to the south.

Prior to building the new AREC, archaeological surveys here recovered hundreds of artifacts including bricks, glass, and fragments of earthenware pointing to the presence of domestic (mid-1700's to 1800's) dwellings on this land. Among the artifacts were pieces of a cast iron kettle (photo below left).

Native American and Early Colonists Contact
Early European explorers of this part of Delaware found lush landscape of dense hardwood forests and vast marshy meadows, offering abundant wildlife and rich fish and shellfish resources. They also found native people who negotiated rather than fought and having no concept of land ownership, entered into treaties and trades with the settlers, resulting in widespread diminishment of the lands and resources that had always sustained them.

This is evidenced by Ephraim Herman's 1680 purchase of a 1280-acre tract of land "between Duck Creek and a Great Swamp called ye: Cedar Sypory Swamp...from an Indian Chief called Mehocksett"...for two halfe Anckers of drinck, one blancket, one matscoate, two Acxes, two knyves, two double handful's of pouder, two barrs of lead and one kittle." (Lunt, 1968)