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A shuttle bus takes visitors to Eleutherian Mills, built by E. I. du Pont in 1903. It was the first house the family built in America. The Georgian-style mansion sits on a hill with a view of the Brandywine. It’s furnished with antiques that recall the five generations of du Ponts that lived here. Highlights include French block-printed wallpaper in the dining room, and the first office of the DuPont Company, complete with the desk Henry du Pont used around 1850. The barn is filled with antique vehicles, including a real Conestoga wagon. Outdoors, an authentically restored nineteenth-century French garden is laid out in the parterre, or sectioned, style, with espaliered fruit trees and a gazebo. Powder YardFor E. I. du Pont, the Brandywine River meant power: the waterpower to generate energy that ran gunpowder-producing machinery. Today, visitors to the Hagley Powder Yard can see the operation in action. Working models, restored equipment, and exhibits bring the past to life.
Join a powderman at Eagle Roll Mill, where gunpowder ingredients were mixed under the weight of two eight-ton waterwheels. Watching the rushing water spin the wheels is living history at its best. You’ll see and hear how the powder was tested and learn about the extensive safety precautions that were taken to minimize the ever-present danger of explosion. A restored circa 1880 machine shop hums with activity. Leather belts and pulleys power metal-working machinery that is demonstrated to visitors, and is still used to repair the site’s machinery. A stone quarry is a reminder of the granite that was used to build many of Hagley’s structures. A few steps away in the engine house, an 1870 engine operates under live steam. Step inside to get a feel or the heft of the metal wheel and the speeds it achieves. A whistle blows when the boiler is ready. Workers’ HillThe restored buildings here focus on the social and family lives of powder mill workers. Interpreters in period dress introduce visitors to the late nineteenth century in the Gibbons House, which was home to foreman John Gibbons from the late 1850s to the 1880s. A variety of ethnic groups lived and worked at Hagley, including many Irish. Learning about their traditions, foods, and conveniences helps visitors understand the rhythms that structured people’s lives. The Brandywine Manufacturers’ Sunday School, constructed in 1817, is where mill workers’ children learned to read, write, and do arithmetic before Delaware provided public education. Lessons are given just as they would have been back then. Try your hand with a quill pen; it’s not as easy at it looks. The Belin House was home to several generations of company bookkeepers, and is now a restaurant. Reading List: Hagley Museum and Library, Jill Mackenzie, ed. Impressions of Hagley. Wilmington, DE: Hagley Museum and Library, 1991.
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