Lamb, Thomas, Farm
a.k.a. Brick House Farm
DE 130, Kenton, DEThe Thomas Lamb, "Brick House Farm", was acquired by Thomas Lamb in stages from members of the Chiffen family from 1830 onward. The purchases were not complete until the mid-1850s. At his death in 1872, Lamb left his widow and seven children an immense tract of land that included all the land south of the Kent-New Castle border, and bounded on the east by Road 130 and on the south by Road 129. It extended west almost as far as Hollett's Corner at Road 127 and Road 129. The tract amounted to over 700 acres of land. He also owned town lots in Kenton and in Clayton and a blacksmith shop in Clayton. Blacksmithing was his original trade. For most of his life, he operated a blacksmith and wheelwright shop, at Blackiston Crossroads. He purchased the blacksmith shop, with a carriage maker's shop attached, in Clayton in 1850.
The construction date for the house at "Brick House Farm" is based on structural evidence. The original warrants for the land in Kent County do not list exact boundaries but give locations based on the position of streams. Walter Dulany received a patent to lands west of the Lamb properties in 1706. The land to the east of the Lamb properties was deeded in individual farm plots starting about 1720. The chain of title for the "Brick House Farm" is lost in a maze of unrecorded deeds and family transfers through inheritance.
Thomas Lamb's, "Brick House Farm", is a surviving example of a once common building plan, the hall-parlor house. Constructed early in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the dwelling was a substantial investment for its first owner and makes a significant statement about housing choice and wealth in the early Kenton Hundred. Exploitive crops such as tobacco and hemp were preferred by the first settlers of the area. These produced enough surplus so that large permanent brick dwellings were soon the preferred building choice. An example of this tradition of building in brick and as a surviving example of a hall-parlor dwelling from the eighteenth century.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.