The Lewes History Archive
Long before it was anything else, lewestown.com was a local-history site. From 1997 it carried articles about Lewes, Delaware written by Hazel D. Brittingham (1927–2024), the town's foremost historian, under her imprint Lewestown Publishers. Those pages were cited by Wikipedia, genealogy sites, and local-history researchers — and then, for years, the links led nowhere. This archive restores the original page addresses.
What is at each address
Two things, kept strictly apart. First, a link to Mrs. Brittingham's original page as preserved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine — her text, her photographs, her layout. Her work remains under the copyright of her estate, so it is not republished here. Second, a newly written article on the same subject, researched independently from primary sources: National Register of Historic Places nominations, U.S. Coast Guard records, the Delaware Public Archives, and the published record. Every claim in the new articles is sourced, and every page says when its sources were last checked.
The pages
| Address | Subject | Original |
|---|---|---|
| Ryves_Holt.html | The Ryves Holt House, by tradition Delaware's oldest standing house — and the honest debate over its true date | capture |
| cannonball_house.html | The Cannonball House, the 22-hour bombardment of 1813, and the two casualties of the battle that put the ball in its wall | capture |
| cannonballs.html | Cannonballs over Lewes: why a British squadron shelled the town for twenty-two hours over twenty cattle | capture |
| coastal_calamities.html | Three Aprils at Cape Henlopen — 1777, 1813, and the lighthouse that fell into the sea in 1926 | capture |
| lighthou.html | The Cape Henlopen Lighthouse, 1767–1926: built by Philadelphia lottery, lost to a moving dune | capture |
| beacon.html | The Cape Henlopen Beacon, the smaller light that guarded the tip of the cape | capture |
| name_of_henlopen.html | How Cape Henlopen got its name — and how a mapmaker's confusion helped draw Delaware's southern border | capture |
| military.html | Fort Miles: the World War II fort built into the dunes of Cape Henlopen for an attack that never came | capture |
| breakwtrs2.html | The Delaware Bay breakwaters and their two lighthouses, and the first structures of their kind in the Americas | capture |
| breakwater_quarantine.html | The Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Station, where immigrant ships were held before Philadelphia | capture |
| whorekill.html | The Whorekill: the name Lewes carried before it was Lewes, and the two competing explanations for it | capture |
| EarlyLewes.html | Early Lewes: the 1631 Dutch colony, the massacre, and the town that failed three times before it stuck | capture |
| Images.html | The De Vries monument and the visual record of Zwaanendael, the 1631 Dutch settlement | capture |
| history.html | The Zwaanendael Museum and the English coats of arms — two towns in one skyline, and a mermaid | capture |
| christmas.html | One night before Christmas, 1673: forty armed horsemen, and what happened after | capture |
| verdict.html | The verdict: not guilty — the 1683 death of Susan Johnson and the trial that followed | capture |
| maull_house.html | The Maull House: 1730s cypress, Napoleon's shipwrecked brother, and a governor who lasted two months | capture |
| drburton_house.html | Dr. Burton's House, and what became of a 134-acre patent granted in 1675 | capture |
| burtonIngrm_house.html | The Burton-Ingram House, and what a building loses when it is moved to be saved | capture |
| rabbit_ferry_house.html | The Rabbit's Ferry House: an ordinary farmhouse, which is exactly why it matters | capture |
| mtg_house.html | The old Methodist meeting house of 1790, now on its third site | capture |
| episcopal_chr.html | St. Peter's Episcopal Church and the spire that tops every photograph of Lewes | capture |
| presbyterian_chr.html | The Lewes Presbyterian Church, and the Bicentennial project that lit it | capture |
| matters.html | Matters of faith: Francis Asbury, George Whitefield and the coming of Methodism to Lewes | capture |
| fourstrs.html | The four principal streets, and the 1722 survey that sorted out the boundaries | capture |
| roadway.html | The roadway with three names: Front Street, First Street, Water Street — and nearly Canal Street | capture |
| pastpresent.html | Where the past is present: how a business district that closed at six came back | capture |
| DvIbody.html | A street corner rich in historic lore: the New Devon Inn and the names before it | capture |
| people.html | People who made a difference: the Rodney sisters, Col. Samuel Boyer Davis and Gilbert Byron | capture |
| bride_groom.html | Lewes's Bride and Groom trees, planted about 1813 to mark an intended marriage | capture |
| weather_oddities.html | Weather oddities: what a coastal community remembered before forecasting | capture |
| sea_bounty.html | The sea's bounty: wrecks, salvage and what the Atlantic gave back | capture |
| Shad_body.html | The day the shad were scooped from the water at Lewes | capture |
| gilbert.html | Gilbert Byron, the “Chesapeake Thoreau,” and the years he taught and wrote in Lewes | capture |
| hazel-brittingham.html | Hazel D. Brittingham (1927–2024), the historian behind these pages | — |
Why restore dead addresses
Because other people's citations point at them. The Wikipedia articles on the De Vries Palisade and Gilbert Byron, the county-history record, and a scatter of genealogy and local-history sites all reference these exact URLs. A citation that resolves to a page — one that acknowledges the original, links to it, and stands up its own sourced account — is more useful to a reader than a 404. Lewes has traded on its history since it started calling itself the First Town in the First State; the least its namesake domain can do is keep the town's own historian findable.
Readers exploring the places these pages describe — the Ryves Holt House, the Zwaanendael Museum, the Cannonball House — may also find our practical historic Lewes walking guide useful. Like the rest of the site, these pages are affiliate-supported: each carries an accommodation map that may earn us a commission, disclosed where it appears. What that pays for is the research; it buys no influence over the history, and the sources under every article are there so you can check us.
Support the real archive. Hazel Brittingham's papers and photographs — more than fifty boxes of them — are held at the Hazel Brittingham Collections Center at the Lewes Historical Society. If these pages were useful to you, support the institution that preserves her actual work.
A note on independence and copyright
The new articles in this archive are original works; Mrs. Brittingham's writing and photographs are quoted only briefly and with attribution, or not at all, and her originals are always linked at the Internet Archive. We have not approached her estate or the Lewes Historical Society for permission to republish her text, and we make no claim to have done so. The offer stands open from our side: if her family, or the Society, would like her original articles restored at these addresses under her own name, we will publish them in place of ours, clearly credited. Equally, if you are connected to her family or to the Society and would like these pages changed, corrected, or removed, write to hello@lewestown.com and we will act on it.
On the commercial question, so it is on the record: these pages carry an accommodation map that earns us a commission on bookings, and a script that can add an affiliate code to outbound travel and booking links. The map sits after each article and its sources, never beside quoted material, and the page about Mrs. Brittingham herself carries neither. Nothing in the history is written, chosen or omitted for commercial reasons. If her family would prefer no commercial element on pages carrying her words, we will remove it on request.
Planning a visit
Where to stay near historic Lewes
The places these pages describe are nearly all within a compact, flat historic core. If you are coming to see it, this map shows current availability and prices in the area.
We may earn a commission from bookings made through this map, at no cost to you. It does not affect anything written above, and our historic walking guide has the practical visiting detail.