National Register of Historic Places

Vernacular Frame House

St. Georges, New Castle County, Delaware
Listed
April 7, 1982
Type
Building
Period
Industrial
Ref No.
82002359

About this property

The Ethel S. Roy House is a historic building identified simply as Vernacular Frame House when listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as part of the Red Lion Hundred Multiple Resource Area. The house was built c. 1868 by a former slave and was singled out for historic preservation in an effort to counteract the bias that only homes of the affluent are recognized as being historically significant. It represents a working man's home in a labor-intensive agricultural society and has had few alterations since it was built. Red Lion Hundred is an area of New Castle County, Delaware roughly equivalent in size and function to a township. It was settled in the seventeenth century, with the soil being ruined by intensive tobacco cultivation by 1800. A "peach boom" lasted from about 1830 to 1870 until a blight called "the yellows" destroyed the peach crops. Slavery provided labor in the area until the American Civil War. The Roy House was built soon after the Civil War by a former slave, whose granddaughter lived in the house until at least 1979. It is located just north of the unincorporated village of Saint Georges, Delaware, on a 150-foot square plot of land once owned by the locally prominent Sutton family. It is a wooden frame two-story, two-bay house with gabled roof which had a small enclosed front porch. Photographs taken in 1970 or 1979 show a simple building with wooden siding, a tin roof, six-over-six windows, and an interior chimney on the south end. The single decorative item appears to be a "gothic" attic window with a "pointed arch" above a rectangular window. A photograph from 2011 shows that the roof, siding and windows have been recently replaced, the porch opened up, and the chimney removed.

Location

St. Georges, New Castle County, Delaware
39.55669, -75.64811

Categories

ARCHITECTURE
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Historic Sites

Sutton House
Industrial
0.1 mi
North Saint Georges Historic District
Listed
0.2 mi
St. Georges Presbyterian Church
Industrial
0.2 mi
Bloomfield
Industrial
0.4 mi
Linden Hill
Industrial
0.6 mi

Nearby Battles

Battle of Iron Hill
1777Revolutionary War
9.4 mi

Questions about this property

When was Vernacular Frame House listed on the National Register?

Vernacular Frame House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 7, 1982.

What type of historic resource is Vernacular Frame House?

Vernacular Frame House is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Vernacular Frame House?

The period of significance for Vernacular Frame House is recorded as the industrial era.

Can I research the history near Vernacular Frame House?

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