National Register Listing

Frederica Historic District

a.k.a. Johnnycake Landing

Market, Front, and David Sts., Frederica, DE

The Frederica Historic District 18 significant because it is a well-preserved example of a rural nineteenth-century Delaware town which has remained virtually unchanged since the nineteenth century. It is also significant because its architecture represents all periods of its history and gives - wall-unified visual impression.

The town of Frederica had to beginning in the eighteenth century, when it was a crossroads settlement and small shipping center for southern Kent County. Located at the head of navigation on the Murderkill river, Frederica, or Johnnycake Landing as It was known in the mid-eighteenth century. Was well situated to serve as a shipping point for agricultural goods and as marketplace for Murderkill Hundred. A merchant's establishment and a tavern farmed the nucleus of the town, where the main road (Market Street) crossed the road from the west (Front Street) to the landing.

In the late eighteenth century two large tracts of land, contiguous to the landing. were divided up and individual lots were sold. The lots were located along Front Street, and also along a new road to the south of Front Street called David Street. The town grew rapidly after I was laid out.

The 1797 assessment for Frederica listed eighteen houses and lots, five wharves, a "brick wet and dry goods store," a tavern and store, tanyard, and a tailor shop. Three town residents owned a total of ten slaves. Several ships were listed, including three vessels owned by William Berry and are owned by Benjamin Coombe called the TWO DOLLYS.

The eighteenth-century Inhabitants of Frederica followed a wide variety of trades, including carpenters, cabinetmakers, merchants, and shopkeepers. Artisans included a cordwainer, a tanner, a tailor, a saddler, a blacksmith, and a gold and silversmith. As the town grew early in the nineteenth century, it gained a bricklayer, a hatter, a carriage maker, as well as more doctors, blacksmiths, carpenters, and shopkeepers.

Shipbuilding played an important role in Frederica, even before the town was laid out. Ship registers for the port of Philadelphia in 1736 listed sloop called HOPEWELL, built on the Murderkill River. In 1756 Zechariah Goforth launched the eight-ton schooner HAPPY RETURN, of which Goforth was the master. The DOLPHIN, owned by Philip Barrett and Calab Sipple and captained by Sipple, was a fifteen-ton vessel launched on the Murderkill in 1761. In 1774, the twenty-ton schooner NANCY, built on the Murderkill, was listed.

Shipping in Frederica reached a peak between 1844 and 1887, when two generations of the Lank family operated & shipyard at the landing. In these years, the yard built between 35 and 40 two- and three-masted schooners along with scores of smaller boats.

Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1977.