Coursey, Thomas B., House

The Thomas B. Coursey House is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion B for its association with Thomas B. Coursey, a significant figure in the economic, social, and political history of late nineteenth-century Kent County. The house is also eligible under Criterion C as a well-preserved example of a dwelling that was characteristic of houses built for the rural elite of central Delaware in the nineteenth century but which have been rapidly disappearing during the past thirty years.

Thomas Boone Coursey, a prominent Kent County mill owner, farmer, and politician, was born in Camden, Delaware, on December 14, 1806. Coursey's parents, Thomas and Mary, had migrated from Caroline County, Maryland to Kent County, Delaware. His father was a carpenter and builder as well as a farmer. The elder Coursey married three times and fathered several children; Thomas was the product of and youngest son of his father's second marriage. Little is known of his mother; she died the same year Coursey was born.

Coursey's younger years are relatively obscure. Tax assessment records suggest that the Coursey family was of the middling sort. Certainly Thomas' father was not wealthy; extant Levy List records for the 1830s, place him well below the financial elite of Murderkill Hundred. Still, young Thomas does not appear to have wanted as a child, and was even reportedly educated in a private school.

As a young man, Coursey followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a skilled carpenter and small farmer. When he was in his thirties he began acquiring the property, which would eventually make him a well-to-do grist and saw miller. In 1838 he made the first of his real estate purchases when he bought approximately nine acres near Camden, Delaware and began operating a mill there. He continued buying property throughout the 1850s and 1860s, including the parcel near Frederica where he operated his principal grist and saw mill and built his home.
Coursey's rise to wealth and prominence can be traced through the public records. The 1834 Levy List for Murderkill Hundred reveals that he had only a horse and a cow, worth a total of $53. By 1850, the Agricultural Census reveals that he was well above the hundred's average in wheat production, Indian corn production, total livestock value, and improved land holdings (see attached charts). The face value of his farm was $3,000 and his net worth, inclusive of mill holdings, was estimated at $6,000. By the 1860 he could afford to build his impressive home, where he lived and conducted his business, social, and political life until his death in 1899. By 1870 his farm was worth $12,000 and he paid a yearly total of $900 in wages and board for three white and four black laborers. In that same year he was worth in excess of $42,000. Besides the servants, he also supported his wife Sallie whom he married in 1832, and his numerous children (he fathered a total of ten but at least three died at an early age).

By 1880 Coursey was the fourth largest miller in Murderkill Hundred with a capital outlay of $10,000. He actually led the hundred in production capacity per day; in the amount of cornmeal, feed, and hominy produced per year; and in the total value of all products produced. His mill was situated on Murderkill Creek: adjacent to, and south of his house. The mill had three, g' falls which powered three, 3' wide turbine wheels capable of producing forty-five horsepower of energy and eighty rotations per minute. Inside the mill, three stone runs were kept busy year round. Coursey could grind 200 bushels of grain a day and yearly ground a total of 6,000 bushels of wheat and more than 7,500 bushels of other grains. From all of this effort came 1,300 barrels of flour, 5,000 pounds of buckwheat, 399,724 pounds of cornmeal, 106,112 pounds of feed, 6,000 pounds of hominy, all for a total of $10,650 a year. This yearly income, when combined with the value of his farm and mills made him a wealthy man, certainly above where he started in life.

Coursey's rising social status and economic success brought him more and more social responsibilities. His life-long interest and success in scientific agriculture, evident especially in his introduction of guano as a fertilizer in the lower part of the state, led to his election as president of the Kent County Agriculture Society in 1856. In 1865 he was chosen as one of nine directors for the First National Bank of Dover. He was also an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming a member of the Board of Directors for the Wilmington Conference of that denomination. He was also a delegate of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church which met in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880. His dedication to the church led him to buy a resort house from the Rehoboth Beach Camp Meeting Association in 1877. Coursey was also a friend of the poor and often provided flour for the destitute of his region when no work was to be had.

In 1870, Coursey ran for governor on the Republican ticket and lost. In his early years he appears to have been a Democrat but his convictions on such things as prohibition lead him to the Whig party, then to the know Nothings, and to the People's Union party. By 1870 he counted himself among the Republican fold. He was a champion of the blacks, a suffrage supporter, and a defender of President Lincoln. Coursey's run for the governor's seat was handicapped by the fact that Delaware at that time was a predominantly Democratic state and also by the fact that his Democratic opponent, James Ponder, was a far more experienced politician who had served in the Delaware State Senate, including a period as Speaker of that body, for a number of years.

Furthermore, his campaign appears to have been stung by charges that Coursey himself was an extreme radical who was depending on black votes to put him into office. This charge undoubtedly hurt his campaign, for though Delaware never seceded, most Delawareans did not relish a heightened black role in state affairs. Coursey ran a respectable race considering the odds against him but lost to Ponder by approximately 2,300 votes. This was the first Delaware election after the ratification of the fifteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While it gave blacks the right to vote, a right which was enforced by federal marshalls at the polls, the Democratic party kept blacks from voting and were even able to drive some federal marshalls from their posts.

Coursey never again ran for a major state office. Until his death he kept up with his local public service and continued to run his mills and farm. His wife died in 1871 at age 61. Coursey himself lived on until 1899, when he died at age 93. He lived a long life, dedicating himself to his mills, his farm, and the area around him.

The Coursey House is one of the largest surviving nineteenth-century homes in South Murderkill Hundred. The hundred was first occupied in the eighteenth century. Since this hundred stretches across the entire width of the state, nineteen miles at this point, the western area was settled by farmers from Maryland while the eastern region was settled by a mix of Maryland and Virginia citizens and new European immigrants. While some eighteenth century homes survived in the hundred, most of the remaining housing stock is nineteenth century. Frame is the structural system of choice though some brick and some log houses are also found in the hundred.
In the early nineteenth century, South Murderkill Hundred, as well as the rest of Delaware, suffered from an agricultural depression brought about by poor farming practices. The depression began to lessen in the 1830s. At this time men, such as Coursey, began to purchase property and acquire large land holdings or establish themselves as entrepreneurs and factory/mill owners.

Coursey's economic and social rise is typical of the mid-nineteenth century. His large Italianate style house, set above his principal mill, was the physical manifestation of his achievement. While in plan the house is a traditional five-bay, center-passage building, the decorative features of the house set it apart from the common dwelling and from the surviving housing stock from the period. The Italianate style was popular in rural Delaware but complete examples such as the Coursey House are not usual. While complete examples are typical of the small town architecture of Central Delaware, in the rural sections, Italianate features consisted of a flat roof with brackets or classical corner boards or some detailing on a porch or on the door. In that respect, the Coursey House is more typical of urban Delaware architecture than the common farmhouse. But then Coursey was not a farmer but a prosperous mill owner and businessman with interests in town and on the farm.

Coursey's mill ownership accounts for the large office/ kitchen attached to the south end of the house. While some interior construction and trim elements indicate that this wing might be an earlier building incorporated into the main block of the house, no documentary evidence exists for that conclusion. Without damaging the physical integrity of the wing, it is not possible, at this time, to examine the structural relationship between the wing and the main block. The Gothic-Revival mantel in the wing can either be interpreted as belonging to an earlier construction period or may relate to the use of the Gothic-Revival style for the porch on the front of the house. Since a deliberate effort was made to present a unified external appearance with no visible breaks in the walls, a logical assumption is that the house was built as a unit with a wing housing an office for Coursey and a kitchen.

The rural area around the Coursey House has changed character in the past thirty years. As less people have been needed on the farms, the tenant houses and many of the "home places" have been torn down either because they were not needed or because they interfered with irrigation systems or with plowing. The Coursey House complex is the last nineteenth-century house of the rural elite left in its area and one of the few remaining nineteenth-century houses between Felton and Frederica. The house has survived mainly because the Coursey family occupied the house and property as its home place until 1985. At that time the property was sold to the present owners. The mill property along the creek had been sold to the State of Delaware years prior to that for use as recreation area.