The Ethel S. Roy House is a historic building identified simply as Vernacular Frame House when listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1982 as part of the Red Lion Hundred Multiple Resource Area. The house was built c. 1868 by a former slave and was singled out for historic preservation in an effort to counteract the bias that only homes of the affluent are recognized as being historically significant. It represents a working man's home in a labor-intensive agricultural society and has had few alterations since it was built. Red Lion Hundred is an area of

New Castle County New Castle County is the northernmost of the three counties of the U.S. state of Delaware (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex). As of the 2020 census, the population was 570,719, making it the most populous county in Delaware, with nearly 60% of the ...

, Delaware roughly equivalent in size and function to a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

. It was settled in the seventeenth century, with the soil being ruined by intensive

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

cultivation by 1800. A "peach boom" lasted from about 1830 to 1870 until a

blight Blight refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism. Description Blight is a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral organ ...

called "the yellows" destroyed the

peach The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, non-fu ...

crops. Slavery provided labor in the area until the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. The Roy House was built soon after the Civil War by a former slave, whose granddaughter lived in the house until at least 1979. It is located just north of the unincorporated village of Saint Georges, Delaware, on a 150-foot square plot of land once owned by the locally prominent Sutton family. It is a wooden frame two-story, two-bay house with gabled roof which had a small enclosed front porch. Photographs taken in 1970 or 1979, National Register of Historic Places. show a simple building with wooden siding, a tin roof, six-over-six windows, and an interior chimney on the south end. The single decorative item appears to be a "gothic" attic window with a "pointed arch" above a rectangular window. A photograph from 2011 shows that the roof, siding and windows have been recently replaced, the porch opened up, and the chimney removed.

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retrieved December 16, 2011. {{National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Houses in New Castle County, Delaware Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Delaware National Register of Historic Places in New Castle County, Delaware

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