I Went to the First State National Historical Park, and I Need to Tell You about Caesar Rodney

 

All I wanted to accomplish was collecting my national parks passport stamp for the First State National Historical Park. 

Instead, I got myself caught up in the most pleasant and benign hostage situation.

First of all, I feel like all of these New England states just play fast and loose with each others' mottos. We were in Maryland at this point, not even close to New Hampshire! How does this warrant a New Hampshire state motto-themed pun?

The plan was to hit up First State National Historical Park, walk around for a bit--

cobblestones!

--do the museum so we could figure out what on earth we were supposed to be looking at, because I was, sadly and alas, NOT up-to-date on my Delaware state history, and then get back on the road to Philadelphia.

The museum had all my favorite parts. There were old pipes!

Remember when I mudlarked some exactly like this from the banks of the Thames?

Fun chances for guest input!

A "voter ID" is not an example of a voting right? MAGA party line people are so boring.

Hands-on activities!

I think we're supposed to be noticing how the boundary arc is similar to Delaware's current state line... but I don't know the shape of Delaware that well, and there's not an example nearby. You think too much of me, First State National Historical Park!

Cool tag lines!

Weird statuary!

I texted the kids that I found a statue of one of them in this museum, then waited to see which one got to her phone first to congratulate her sister.

We probably should have left after the museum, because we were technically supposed to be moving the kid out of her dorm that afternoon, ahem, but I wanted to check out the outside of the buildings, and as we were walking around the old courthouse--

--there was a sign that said that you could see inside it if you were on a ranger-led tour, and the timetable indicated that a tour had literally just started one minute ago!

So we popped into the building, where there was, indeed a park ranger, and since we were the only people who'd shown up, she started her spiel right away.

Thus began the nicest, most interesting hostage situation I have ever been involved in. 

Y'all, we got the WHOLE story of this courthouse. We heard interesting stories of the people who were tried and jailed here. We learned where the gallows used to be. We saw a cool handprint in one of the handmade bricks on the floor:

 We learned about the tea room that the courthouse turned into, on account of there were so many tourists coming to and fro on the nearby ferry:

We learned about how one time a youthful Shirley Temple visited the court house tea room with her family on the way to or fro the ferry, was heard sassing her mother there, and the person who heard her wrote a newspaper article about it.

We also saw a copy of the newspaper article.

I'll admit that the presentation did feel a little long, and every time I thought the docent was wrapping up she seemed to go back in time to a different interesting story and sort of start the run-through again with all-new information, but honestly it was so interesting and I was having a ball. Like, I knew that time was passing, but seriously, how long could one presentation be? Might as well lean in and learn stuff.

Finally, the docent really did finish telling us every single thing there was to learn about the old court house, and we got up, thinking we were about finished and let's go hit up the gift shop real quick and then hop in the car, when she was all, "Okay, now watch your step as we go upstairs!"

OMG you guys! There was an UPSTAIRS!!!

When we settled down in this room, we learned everything there was to learn about Delaware state history, including the fact that the 13 original colonies is kind of a lie, because up until just before Independence Day, Delaware Colony was actually not its own separate colony, but part of Pennsylvania! There was a bunch of scuttlebutt about the leadership in Pennsylvania never giving Delaware its due, so when they heard about the Declaration of Independence coming up, the people of Delaware were like, "Screw Pennsylvania! We're going to declare ALL the Independence!"

And they did!

We also learned about Caesar Rodney, who was this sickly Patriot dude who had asthma and migraines and cancer so bad that he commonly wore a scarf to hide a tumor on his face and was always in agony, etc. Oh, and his parents had died when he was a kid but that was actually his big break, because then he became a ward of some rich, political guy who set him up in politics when he was grown. 

During the First Continental Congress Rodney got super sick but since there were three Delaware representatives and they were both voting for independence, it was fine for him to travel home so he could properly rest. But then right before the final vote, he heard that one of his fellow representatives was now going to vote no!

So poor Caesar Rodney, asthmatic and riddled with cancer and also super sick with some virus or something on top of it, rode 70+ miles throughout the night, IN A THUNDERSTORM, to come back to Philadelphia to vote. And when he got back to the Continental Congress, not only did he turn Delaware's vote to independence, but he gave a speech so moving that other representatives of other colonies changed their votes, too!

He's on the Delaware state quarter riding his horse. The docent showed us a picture of it.

We also saw a portrait of Marqus de Lafayette, who gave a speech in front of the court house in 1824:

Y'all, I was so into those Caesar Rodney stories that the presentation just flew by. When the docent finally ended it and told us we could finish looking around the place by ourselves, I checked my watch for the first time and had to double-check that I wasn't randomly in a different time zone, because TWO HOURS had passed!

I don't know, you guys. I know I could have questioned it or called a halt at any time, and I literally thought I was walking in for a ten-minute run-down of a cool old court house, but this docent had me eating out of her hand. I was enraptured for two full hours of Delaware history.

On the way out, the docent mentioned that there was a historical cemetery next door. I said, "OOH, does it have Caesar Rodney?!?"

And then the docent had to tell me that Caesar Rodney, this American patriot who bodily suffered for our independence, had actually been buried in an unmarked grave and we never found out where it was. 

I think I was overwrought from so much Delaware history by that point, because I burst into tears, horrifying the docent. And then I was doing the thing where I was laughing at myself because of my behavior and apologizing for crying and actively crying and just kind of repeating, "OMG Caesar Rodney!"

Anyway, the cemetery had some other cool grave markers!

Lol at this statue of William Penn. Delaware couldn't get rid of you fast enough!

Okay, NOW we can go move the kid out of her dorm!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!