"A View of The Town of New Castle From The River Delaware,
-- Taken the 4th July 1797 -- By Ives le Blanc"
We can get a clear idea of what New Castle actually looked
like around 1800 by looking at this watercolor by Ives le Blanc and the watercolor
of Front St. done just 7 years later by Benjamin Latrobe.
Since at least the early 1900's, the 11" x 30" le Blanc picture has belonged to the Bringhurst
family, former owners of
Rockwood .
The copy shown here was made by taking closeups pictures of the image in its frame and assembling
them digitally. A black and white version
(from the Rodney collection in the Historical Society of Delaware) is better able to show the complete
image with the inscription at the bottom.
We know virtually nothing of le Blanc (or LeBlanc) -- origin or other works.
He is shown in the 1797 tax last as Yves Leblanc with an
assessment in the third quintile, but not in the 1800 federal census.
He MAY be the Yves Le Blanc born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti) c1772 who MAY have left that country with other Acadians after the
slave revolt of 1791. This Le Blanc lived in Cuba in 1806 and died in New Orleas in 1826. (See below)
Noteworthy in the picture is the waterfront activity-- two schooners
(probably packet boats) entering and
leaving the harbor, and a shallop tied to Bond's wharf next to Packet Alley. On the wharf, in front of
Bond's store and the Stage Tavern, are piles of lumber; on the adjacent Alexander's wharf are
barrels (of rum?). The sign on the store (click to enlarge) appears to read
* -- for a town of 262
taxpayers! New Castle's real major activity was provisioning ships from
Philadelphia just before they started their voyage as reported by eyewitnesses.
George Read Sr.'s house is visible behind the sails of the boat. George Read Jr.'s house would be built a few years later replacing the houses immediatley to
the right. The boat appears to be carrying two female passengers and 2 children. Two of the four person crew appear to be African-American.
Many buildings are identifiable by shape or location, especially by comparing the picture with Latrobe's survey and view of Front Street. On the left are the Van Leuvenigh house (A), the Bond house (burnt 1824 and replaced as 30 The Strand) (B), the now-demolished Dutch Tile House (C) at 54 the Strand. The Thomas hotel (now the Episcopal parish house) (D), which is shown on the Latrobe survey had not been built in 1797. We see the Stage Tavern/Hotel/Bonds Store just to the left of Bond's house, with its many porches adjacent to Packet Alley, where Boulden Store now stands, the backs of buildings on the water side of The Strand, and the sheds, storehouses, and stores of an active waterfront. Then, the town was little more than a block wide.
This impressive site includes includes history and presentations on the deportations, and of relevance to New Castle's dikes a working model of the dikes and sluices used to convert salt marsh to useable farmland.
Of relevance to my curiosity about the Le Blancs, they had a copy of Stephen A. White's Dictionnaire Genealogique Des Families Acadiennes. No Yves or Ives Le Blancs were listed. By the way, Le Blanc and White is one of the most common surnames among the Acadians. Mr. White is still alive and working on extending his database. I contacted him at the University of Moncton. He kindly wrote:
We have two Yves LeBlancs in our database. The older of the two was a son of Pierre LeBlanc and Francoise Trahan. He was born on Belle-Ile-en-Mer (off the coast of Brittany) on June 1, 1768, and died at Chantenay (near Nantes) on Dec. 19, 1784 (age sixteen), so he was clearly not the one who was in Delaware in 1797 and 1798.
You may want to take note of the younger Yves, however, because between your information and ours he cannot be ruled out. This Yves LeBlanc was a son of Marin LeBlanc and Anne Cormier. He was born on Saint-Domingue, in the West Indies, about 1772, and died at New Orleans, Louisiana, on Aug. 24 or 25, 1826, so he was alive and a young adult at the time the charming picture of New Castle was drawn. Was he the artist? I have no way of knowing, but it is known that the Acadians (and other "Whites") still in Saint-Domingue at the time of the slave revolt in 1791 left the country for various places, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, so it seems no great stretch to suppose that a few might have settled for a time in Delaware. The only problem with such a supposition is an absence of proof. Indeed, we know nothing of "our" Yves LeBlanc's youth. We do know that by about 1806 he was married to Marie-Louise Montamat, daughter of Francois Montamat and Marie-Anne Theriot, and that he had a son who was born at Baracoa, in Cuba. In 1809 he moved with his growing family to Louisiana. The names of his and his wife's parents are indicated in at least three of the baptismal records of his children in the registers of St-Louis parish in New Orleans.
Whether or not le Blanc was of Acadian descent, the differences are striking between the events of the Dutch, Swedish and English colonists in the Delaware valley, and the French and English colonists in Maine and the maritime provinces of Canada. During the former transitions of rule Swedish-Dutch-Swedish-Dutch-English-Dutch-English courts-English Quaker, there was religious toleration, very little bloodshed and perhaps in most cases recognition of previous owner's property rights. In contrast, the Great Expulsion of the French Acadians led to mass deportation and thousands of deaths.
* L. Riordan, Many identies, one nation, 2007
Noteworthy in the picture is the waterfront activity-- two schooners
(probably packet boats) entering and
leaving the harbor, and a shallop tied to Bond's wharf next to Packet Alley. On the wharf, in front of
Bond's store and the Stage Tavern, are piles of lumber; on the adjacent Alexander's wharf are
barrels (of rum?). The sign on the store (click to enlarge) appears to read
Shipping Supplies
Live stock
Although
harbor traffic may have decreased by 1800, in
1772 140,000 gallons of rum came through the townLive stock
George Read Sr.'s house is visible behind the sails of the boat. George Read Jr.'s house would be built a few years later replacing the houses immediatley to
the right. The boat appears to be carrying two female passengers and 2 children. Two of the four person crew appear to be African-American.
Many buildings are identifiable by shape or location, especially by comparing the picture with Latrobe's survey and view of Front Street. On the left are the Van Leuvenigh house (A), the Bond house (burnt 1824 and replaced as 30 The Strand) (B), the now-demolished Dutch Tile House (C) at 54 the Strand. The Thomas hotel (now the Episcopal parish house) (D), which is shown on the Latrobe survey had not been built in 1797. We see the Stage Tavern/Hotel/Bonds Store just to the left of Bond's house, with its many porches adjacent to Packet Alley, where Boulden Store now stands, the backs of buildings on the water side of The Strand, and the sheds, storehouses, and stores of an active waterfront. Then, the town was little more than a block wide.
In the harbor (E) off Harmony Street wharf is one of the ice piers built by public subscription in 1794, then ceded to the Federal goverment in 1803.
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Who was Yves Le Blanc?
Le Blanc does not show up in catalogs of artists in the University of Delaware library. Perhaps because he was an illustrator? I had assumed he was one of the many people of French descent who came to the U. S. after the deportation of the Acadians, although he does not show up in a list of exiled Le Blancs from Acadia from 1755-1763? Was he a son? Then, this summer I visited Nova Scotia, and the Grand-Pre National Historial SiteThis impressive site includes includes history and presentations on the deportations, and of relevance to New Castle's dikes a working model of the dikes and sluices used to convert salt marsh to useable farmland.
Of relevance to my curiosity about the Le Blancs, they had a copy of Stephen A. White's Dictionnaire Genealogique Des Families Acadiennes. No Yves or Ives Le Blancs were listed. By the way, Le Blanc and White is one of the most common surnames among the Acadians. Mr. White is still alive and working on extending his database. I contacted him at the University of Moncton. He kindly wrote:
We have two Yves LeBlancs in our database. The older of the two was a son of Pierre LeBlanc and Francoise Trahan. He was born on Belle-Ile-en-Mer (off the coast of Brittany) on June 1, 1768, and died at Chantenay (near Nantes) on Dec. 19, 1784 (age sixteen), so he was clearly not the one who was in Delaware in 1797 and 1798.
You may want to take note of the younger Yves, however, because between your information and ours he cannot be ruled out. This Yves LeBlanc was a son of Marin LeBlanc and Anne Cormier. He was born on Saint-Domingue, in the West Indies, about 1772, and died at New Orleans, Louisiana, on Aug. 24 or 25, 1826, so he was alive and a young adult at the time the charming picture of New Castle was drawn. Was he the artist? I have no way of knowing, but it is known that the Acadians (and other "Whites") still in Saint-Domingue at the time of the slave revolt in 1791 left the country for various places, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, so it seems no great stretch to suppose that a few might have settled for a time in Delaware. The only problem with such a supposition is an absence of proof. Indeed, we know nothing of "our" Yves LeBlanc's youth. We do know that by about 1806 he was married to Marie-Louise Montamat, daughter of Francois Montamat and Marie-Anne Theriot, and that he had a son who was born at Baracoa, in Cuba. In 1809 he moved with his growing family to Louisiana. The names of his and his wife's parents are indicated in at least three of the baptismal records of his children in the registers of St-Louis parish in New Orleans.
Whether or not le Blanc was of Acadian descent, the differences are striking between the events of the Dutch, Swedish and English colonists in the Delaware valley, and the French and English colonists in Maine and the maritime provinces of Canada. During the former transitions of rule Swedish-Dutch-Swedish-Dutch-English-Dutch-English courts-English Quaker, there was religious toleration, very little bloodshed and perhaps in most cases recognition of previous owner's property rights. In contrast, the Great Expulsion of the French Acadians led to mass deportation and thousands of deaths.
* L. Riordan, Many identies, one nation, 2007
James L. Meek '12
NC-CHAP
Revised '19
NC-CHAP
Revised '19