Recent History of the Hermitage Property
1932 photo from Dailin Collection, Hagley Museum and Library
1) New (1800's) part of the house, 2) Old (1700's) part and kitchen extension, 3) Kitchen garden, 4) Outhouse,
5) Apple orchard, 6) Chicken house? 7) Ice house, 8) Stone barn (cows?) 9) ?? 10) ??? 11) ??? 12) Pasture (site of 1940 circus, 13) Pastures for ??? 14) William Penn HS, built c1930
In recent years the Hermitage was occupied by the Megginson family, including recent City Councilman Ted Megginson as renters, and then by Buddy and Lena Deemer as owners.
In a Youtube video,
Ted Megginson recalls what it was like in the 1940's. The
area by Rte 9 was a pasture, and the location of the tent when the circus with its elephants came to town in 1940, 1941 and 1943.
The 1940 ad announced that the circus coming
to the Megginson farm would feature the famous "Dolly the patriotic elephant who can pick out an American flag every time." She'd be a hit now at Republican events!
In an aerial photo taken in 1932, 
the 'green trail' starts
near the site of the house, then descends around the apple orchard on the slope to the marsh. The 'red trail' now in a forest is over a former field where corn and other
crops were grown in rotation. The field was still there in a 1945 aerial photo.
Megginson recalls that the house was not modernized: heat was limited to some big wood-stoves.
Selden Deemer, who grew up in the Hermitage in the 1950's shared some memories.
He lived at the Hermitage from when his parents purchased it in 1949 until he went away to college in Istanbul in 1967. Schooling and
jobs took him to UMich., UCLA, Monterey, Dhahran, UMich. He then settled down in Atlanta first for graduate school at Emory, then worked at the Emory library.
He wrote:
"We grew corn and sunflowers, possibly some vegetables, in the open area to the north of buildings 7,8, and 9. I learned to drive on a Farmall Cub tractor.
Building 10 was gone by the time I lived there, and 7,8, and 9 were roofless. Building 5 was an ice house with a well.
The barn (11) was still in good shape, but my mother let the foundation decay, so it was torn down, probably in the 1970's.
The area between the house and the railroad tracks (12, 13) was open field, not used for agriculture.
Coal-burning steam locomotives caused brush fires every few years, so it was not forested like today. Hunters used it for
hunting."
Lena Deemer, an owner of the Hermitage since 1949 is now almost 100 years old.
She is shown here in about 1957 in front of the mansion as a fashionable young woman with her 1956 Mercedes 190SL roadster.
She worked at the time at the Dupont Experimental Station, She recalled about 10 years ago that among the many properties she and her late husbands
owned in New Castle, the Hermitage was her favorite. She enjoyed the swimming pool they built between the house and the orchard.
She said that her friends then were primarily from Wilmington.
From 1990 to 2000 there was apparently a dirt bike park over most of the area on the east side of the Markell trail. The white trail
now passes over some bumps that were probably constructed by kids as a jump to "get some air".
In 1991, Schroeder took a picture from the parking lot area, showing the ice house to the left and a picket fence leading to the kitchen door of the house.
In 2019, the ice house is still visible, along with the trees, but nothing else. According to Mrs. Deemer, the last resident of the house, the
fence gave privacy to an in-ground pool, now removed.
Jim Meek 2020
NC-CHAP
the 'green trail' starts
near the site of the house, then descends around the apple orchard on the slope to the marsh. The 'red trail' now in a forest is over a former field where corn and other
crops were grown in rotation. The field was still there in a 1945 aerial photo.
Megginson recalls that the house was not modernized: heat was limited to some big wood-stoves.
