Saturday, March 02, 2013

Brandywine Creek State Park - stone walls

DC writes:
...and also of a stone row in Brandywine Creek State Park, and a link to some photos of that wall I took. Here is the link to the photos:


     The professor says that the historian for the Park claims these were built by "Italian stone masons" in the 1880s or so. That made me laugh. The Italian stone masons were artists, they would have been totally aghast that someone would suggest they had built such rude stone rows (not even walls) in the middle of nowhere!  There are walls, built for the DuPonts, in that area but they are very different from what I have found in the woods. FWIW, my great grandfather was a stone mason and immigrated from Italy in 1880 to the US. I never met him but I imagine he would be quite disappointed if anyone suggested these type of rows were his work. :~) BTW, I am not knocking the people who DID build these walls, but I think they had a different purpose and mindset, and there is artistry in what they did as well, but it is different.

3 comments :

  1. To me, the photos do show aboriginal walls, not colonial examples. The first image seems to show a manitou stone leaning against a portion of the wall. I have seen manitou stones, elsewhere, such as at an impressive wall site in Milford, PA.

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  2. I may have been hasty in concluding that the large stone in the second image is a manitou stone. It could be, but I'd want to see more of it (side view) to make any firm statement.

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  3. It's not that I told dc that I believed the historian - who also seemed not to know of the stone piles which are clearly indicated on the map. I suspect that we are dealing with yet another wet Egyptian - deep in de Nile!

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