National Register Listing

Great Geneva

3 mi. S of Dover on DE 356, Dover, DE

Great Geneva was intimately connected with the growth of the community of Friends near Camden,
and with the fortunes of the Hunn family.

The Hunns in Delaware are descended from a certain Nathaniel Hunn of Boston. After he died in King Philip's War, his wife, Priscilla, remarried and moved to Kent County, bringing her young children with her.

Jonathan Hunn, the great-grandson of Priscilla Hunn, purchased the tract called Great Geneva before 1765, and probably built his house about the same time.

The tract had first been surveyed to Alexander Humphreys in 1683, and passed through several hands before
the middle of the eighteenth century. Adjacent to the Great Geneva Property is Brecknock, from which Daniel Mifflin took a portion in 1783 to lay out Piccadilly, the present-day Camden, a center for the Society of Friends in Delaware.

Sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of the house's builder lived at Great Geneva, and continued their activities as Friends, and, during the nineteenth century, as abolitionists. Both Ezekiel and John, grandsons of Jonathan, were ardent foes of slavery. The latter was a friend of abolitionist Thomas Garrett. On his deathbed, John

Local significance of the building:
Architecture; Social History

Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

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.