New Market, Delaware: The Village That Ellendale Swallowed

01Where Was the Abandoned New Market?

New Market lay between Ellendale and Milton in eastern Sussex County, about a mile east of Ellendale. The church stood on a dirt road "one and three-quarters miles east of Ellendale," as Zebley wrote in his 1947 The Churches of Delaware.

The settlement centered on the old church site, at the junction of Holly Town Road (also written Holly Tree Road) and Reynolds Pond Road, at roughly 38.80722, -75.39694.

02The 18th-Century Crossroads Behind the New Market Ghost Town

No founding date for New Market survives. The village was settled in the 18th century and "would have been around longer" than its church. By 1790, two small villages, Fleatown (also called Federalsburg) and New Market, stood near the future site of Ellendale.

The village's best-documented institution was its Methodist church. According to Zebley, the congregation was organized as "Wesley M. E. Church" on September 8, 1810, at the home of William Morris, near Elias Lofland's store. On August 7, 1811, Lofland donated sixty perches of land on the road to Nathan Reed's mill, and the church and graveyard were laid out there. Those two names, a store and a mill, are the only commercial details the surviving records give. The blog also infers a store and a blacksmith from song lyrics. No source states what New Market's economy rested on, and none gives a population figure. The blog says only that the village "was never populous."

The congregation had a reputation. The blog notes that Thomas Scharf, in his History of Delaware, and the Rev. Adam Wallace both described the New Market Methodists as "shouting Methodists." The church belonged to a Methodist Episcopal charge that also included the Ellendale, McColley's and Union churches.

03What Happened to New Market?

The answer is only partly known. The Delaware Public Archives marker for Ellendale says the town was surveyed in 1867 and "soon absorbed" the older villages of Federalsburg and New Market. Wikipedia likewise ties New Market's fate to Ellendale's founding. The Broadkill blogger is more cautious, calling the cause and the start of the decline uncertain. He suggests the pull of larger neighbors, Ellendale and Milton, as a likely factor, but this is his inference rather than a documented finding.

The church's own timeline continued well after the 1860s. Zebley records a new church dedicated September 1, 1850, and more land from John Warren on May 5, 1858. The building standing at the time of his writing was erected in 1881, with a reopening service on September 30, 1883. William Short gave additional land on June 15, 1904. The Broadkill blog gives 1903 for that last gift, a small conflict between the sources.

J. B. (John Bayne) Welch, who lived from 1848 to 1926 and was born near New Market Church, wrote a song called My Old New Market Home. According to the Broadkill blog, it was sung publicly in 1904 at a reopening of the church. Zebley dates a reopening to 1883, so these may be two separate events. The sources do not settle the question.

The end of regular worship is also disputed. Zebley says services were discontinued in 1936. The Broadkill blog, working from the Milford Chronicle's Ellendale columns, found services every two weeks in the late 1920s and early 1930s and none listed by mid-1931. It concludes the church was probably inactive after 1931. By the time Zebley wrote, the graveyard had been enclosed with an iron fence, and the Woman's Society for Christian Service, formerly of New Market, was meeting at Ellendale Methodist Church. According to the marker stone, the church building was "removed" in 1953.

Records on the village itself are thin. The research turned up no post office dates and no census entries for New Market. Anything stronger than the above would be guesswork.

04What Remains of New Market Today

Almost nothing is left of the village. A small cemetery with a stone marker sits on Reynolds Pond Road near Holly Town Road, on the grounds of the old church. The Delaware Cemetery Board lists it as New Market Cemetery, Reynolds Pond Road, Ellendale. Zebley identified the oldest tombstone there as that of Elias Baker, an original church trustee, who died January 9, 1821.

Nearby, a mobile-home community uses the name New Market Village. It is a modern development, not a surviving piece of the old settlement. Visitors looking for abandoned New Market will find farmland, a quiet road, and the graveyard. The cemetery is the one place in New Market, Sussex County, where the village's history is still visible on the ground.