Delaware Campus Library Blogs

The Jacob Broom House in 1975

Jacob Broom,  a modest and hardworking businessman, is one of the least known signers of the United States Constitution. There is not even a contemporary portrait available of him.

Broom was the only one of the five Delaware delegates to the Constitutional Convention who was not a lawyer. Born in Wilmington in 1752, Broom was a surveyor and conveyor of title.  He also dealt in real estate and operated a number of business ventures, including a machine shop and served as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Delaware Bank.

Being a delegate to the Constitutional Convention was his only venture into national politics, but he held a number of local offices, including chief Burgess of Wilmington, Justice of the Peace of New Castle County and member of the Delaware state legislature.

He married Rachel Pierce and had eight children. He was a member of Old Swedes Church. He lived originally in the city of Wilmington until 1795 when he built a house for his family near his cotton mills on the banks of the Brandywine. In 1802 he sold the house and mills to Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, who founded his gunpowder mills there. These mills were the beginning of the DuPont Company. Jacob Broom died in 1810 in Philadelphia and is buried in Christ Church Burial Ground.

The Jacob Broom house, also known as Hagley, is privately owned and not open to the public.

Photo by: Jack E. Boucher [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Sources:

Jacob Broom genealogy page: http://www.mccullough.nl/Jacob_Broom.htm

Nomination form of Jacob Broom House for National Register of Historic Places

Signers of the Constitution Biographical Sketches

Campbell, William W. “Life and Character of Jacob Broom,” Historical and Biographical Papers of the State of Delaware, v. 5 (1909)

Drescher, Nuala M. Jacob Broom: A Biographical Sketch. Hagley Museum, 1959

Lombardy Hall, country home of Gunning Bedford Jr.

Three miles south of the Widener Law campus, just off route 202, is Lombardy Hall, farm and country home of Gunning Bedford, Jr., Delaware attorney, judge and signer of the United States Constitution. Bedford was born in 1747 in Philadelphia and attended what is now Princeton University where he roomed with James Madison. He studied law with Joseph Reed and eventually moved to Delaware, first to Dover and then to Wilmington. He represented Delaware at the Continental Congress, was a member of the Delaware legislature and was Delaware’s attorney general. Bedford had a cousin, confusingly also named Gunning Bedford, who was also an attorney, an officer in the Continental Army and governor of Delaware.

Gunning Bedford, Jr.

At the Constitutional Convention, Bedford spoke strongly for the rights of small states like Delaware. Another delegate, William Pearce, described him as “… a bold and nervous Speaker, and has a very commanding and striking manner; -but he is warm and impetuous in his temper, and precipitate in his judgment. Mr. Bedford is about 32 years old, and very corpulant.”

Bedford was selected by George Washington to be federal district judge for Delaware. He held this position until he died in 1812.

Lombardy Hall was Bedford’s country home; he also had a town house in Wilmington at 606 Market St. After his death Lombardy Hall went through several owners and eventually became vacant. In 1967 it was purchased by the local Masonic Lodge (Bedford was the first Masonic Grand Master of Delaware) and restored. It is open to the public by appointment only.

Photos from: Wikimedia Commons

For more information: Conrad, Henry C. Gunning Bedford Junior. Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware, vol 26, 1900.

Louis Redding confers with Thurgood Marshall

Louis L. Redding was the first, and for twenty six years the only, African-American attorney in the state of Delaware. Born in 1901, Redding grew up in Wilmington and attended Howard High School, at that time the only high school in the state of Delaware open to black students. He graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.

In 1929 Redding passed the Delaware Bar Exam. His most difficult challenge had been finding a preceptorship, or clerkship, at that time a requirement for Delaware bar admission. No white attorney would offer Redding a clerkship, until Judge Daniel O. Hastings reluctantly agreed to serve as Reddings preceptor. Hastings encouraged Redding to never enter his office, so Redding did his studying at home or in the library.

Redding started a general practice in Wilmington, taking on criminal and family cases, but he also practiced in all three counties in Delaware. He was legal counsel for the Wilmington NAACP. Some of the many civil rights cases he handled were Parker v. Univ. of Delaware, 31 Del. Ch. 381, 75 A.2d 225 (Del. Ch. 1950) (which integrated the University of Delaware), Gebhart v. Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144, 87 A.2d 862 (Del. Ch. 1952), aff’d, 91 A.2d 137 (Del. 1952) (which eventually became part of Brown v. Board of Education, integrating the public schools) and Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961) (ending segregation in publicly owned properties).

Louis L. Redding died in 1998. His many contributions were eventually acknowledged by the state of Delaware. The University of Delaware established the Louis L. Redding Chair for the Study of Law and Public Policy and the City/County building in Wilmington was named after him. There is also a Louis L. Redding Middle School.

For more information on Louis L. Redding see:

Woolard-Provine, Annette. Integrating Delaware: The Reddings of Wilmington. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. F174.W79 N4 2003

Williams, Leonard L., Louis L. Redding 16 Del. Law. 10 (1998-1999)

Mary Ann Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1823. Her father, Abraham Doras Shadd was an abolitionist and prominent member of the free black community in Wilmington. The Shadds  lived in Delaware until Mary Ann was 10 years old when her family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania probably because there were better educational opportunities for black children there than in Delaware. Mary Ann returned to Wilmington for a time and taught school in West Chester, Norristown, and New York city.

After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 the Shadd family moved to Canada, where Mary Ann started a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman and a school. She married Thomas F. Cary and had two children. She eventually returned to the United States, and after the Civil War moved to Washington, D.C. where she taught school and wrote for newspapers. She also was an activist for women’s suffrage. In 1883 she graduated from Howard University School of Law becoming the second African American woman to graduate from law school.

Wikipedia

Mary Ann Shadd Cary House in Washington DC

Biggs House, Wilmington

This house at 1310 W. 14th St in Wilmington is today an apartment building near Trolley Square. But in the early 1900s it was the boyhood home of John Biggs Jr. Biggs, born in 1895, was a Wilmington attorney who eventually became chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After his marriage, Biggs moved from the house on 14th St to Wooddale, an estate west of Wilmington.

Editorial board of the 1917-1918 Princeton Tiger. Biggs is center front, Fitzgerald behind him

But perhaps Biggs’ most interesting claim to fame is that he was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Princeton roommate. Biggs and Fitzgerald shared an interest in literature and writing, working on the Princeton literary magazine together. Biggs later wrote several novels and short stories.

Ellerslie, Edgemoor Delaware

In 1927, Fitzgerald was having trouble concentrating on his writing. Biggs convinced him that he should move somewhere quieter and less literary than New York or Hollywood. Somewhere boring. Somewhere like Delaware. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda rented a mansion near Wilmington called Ellerslie. However, Fitzgerald was still distracted from his writing, taking the train to New York for the weekend and throwing raucous house parties at Ellerslie. Zelda took ballet lessons in Philadelphia. They lived in Delaware for two years off and on until they moved to Europe. Ellerslie was eventually torn down and is today the site of the DuPont Edge Moor plant. When Fitzgerald died in 1940, Biggs served as executor of his estate.

Much of this information is from the only biography of Biggs: Seymour I. Toll. A Judge Uncommon: A Life of John Biggs, Jr. Legal Communications, Ltd, 1993.

If you have a little spare time why not take a local legal history tour? The New Castle County Courthouse Museum located in historic New Castle, Delaware is one of the oldest surviving courthouses in America. It was built in 1732 and served as New Castle County’s Courthouse until 1881 when the courts moved to Wilmington. It also served the federal courts and was Delaware’s original state capital building.

The cupola of the New Castle County Courthouse was used as the center of the 12 mile circle that created Delaware’s unique circular northern border.

Probably the most famous trial held in the Courthouse was the 1848 trial of abolitionists Thomas Garrett and John Hunn on a charge of aiding fugitive slaves. They were found guilty and heavily fined, but both were undeterred and Garrett declared in court, “I say to thee and to all in this court room, that if anyone knows a fugitive who wants shelter send him to Thomas Garrett and he will befriend him.”

The Courthouse Museum has limited hours, so be sure to check before you go.

While you’re in New Castle you can also visit the George Read House, built by the son of George Read, attorney and signer of the US Constitution. The New Castle Common has a statue of William Penn holding a key, a turf and twig and a container of water. These are symbols used in the ancient common law ceremony of “livery of seisin” which was used to convey land.