Visitors & Their Adventures

Many visitors come

to go out on the boats,

to eat crabs and oysters,

to tour the old places in town

and hear stories of bygone days, or to take day trips to little old Methodist camp meetings,

and big old cities and new!

Click the following link to view a few of the many visitors and the wonderful adventures they have while staying at my house!

http://picasaweb.google.com/LeipsicMansionHouse/VisitorsTheirAdventures#slideshow/5353468509357260322

The House that William Ruth Built

This town and his trading business was well established when William Ruth, a local merchant and trustee of the first free school, built his big brick "mansion house." Originally eight rooms, additions in 1837, 1850 & 1910 brought the grand total to 22 or 23 depending on how you count the rooms, the landings the baths, etc. This home now houses a small internet cafe' with a small business co-op, the Leipsic River Watershed Association, and four guest rooms.

We now call the old girl "The Leipsic Mansion House."

To see a slide show of the house or to read more about its history,

click on the brown highlights or on the following link: http://picasaweb.google.com/LeipsicMansionHouse/LeipsicMansionHouse#slideshow/5349787803463849810

Our Internet Cafe', Seminar Space, & Guest Rooms

Will Charm You,

When you come and see for yourself!

A Fast Landing

The Delmarva peninsula, a migratory home to millions of geese and water fowl, was formed by melting ice 100 thousand of years ago. Year round home to fox, deer, turkey, muskrat, and mink., there is evidence of human life from 2000 BC. Like the hundreds of thousands of migrating birds that come here year after year, the Lenape and Nanticoke Tribes of the Iroquois Nation also migrated to these, their most southern hunting grounds, for thousands of years. The new immigrants of the 15th century began withSweedish explorers. Then came the French Huguenots, Dutch Reformed & English Quakers seeking religous freedom. This tract of land, given by William Penn to John Hillyard in 1687 was incorporated as a town in 1720, named by Jacob Stout, ”Fast Landing” since it was such a rare and solid ground to moore his boat in the midst of what must have seemed to be unending marshes.

Moonshine

A brilliant full moon demands my full attention through sporadic, wispy clouds, and despite bud-bursting branches of a grand old maple, sharply contrasting a gently darkening velvet sky.


So I sit for a chilly moment at the table set with shells, sea sanded stones, and my own thoughts wandering though history, wondering how many before me, loving this old bay side porch with her huge pillars and high ceiling, have set here, gazing at his warmth, on just such a cold spring night, mesmerized in the same way, by his dazzling fullness.

How long has he called for special treatment,

For time and talent to write him an ode, or a ballad, or a joke?

How many children of this town's past have sung a cow jumping over?

How many a youth, to his rippling reflection on the river?

How many men have sailed out to sea from this tiny port,

Only to bask longingly upward into his brilliance . . .

Hoping against hope that their land-locked loved ones, long left behind,

Have noticed . . .

And are now soaking up

All the love reflected in his light?

How could anyone help but sing in the shadow of his brightness? How he does call us all, to rise to his occasion! Can it be that we are one with evening's full tide reaching up into spring rain's river . . . surging with intoxicating urgency further still, into our very own moonshine mirror?

This porch, this house, this town,

This tidal river, this bay, and the sea herself,

All hold this memory to be true . . .tying:

Your reflection to mine,

Land to sea,

Past to present,

High to low,

Dark to light,

Lost to found,

And all of us bound,

Together,

In his everlasting light.

Here's to you,

You Mighty Spring Moonshine!

And to you,

Dear Mae!

What is in a name?

The March Rabbit . . .
The Muskrat!

A Quaint Water Town . . .
A Swamp!

This Old House . . .
This Old Headache!

As Shakespeare claimed,
"A rose, but by any other name, is still a rose"

And I totally agree!

Living in a little water village near the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Southern Delaware, makes a person rather sensitive to how we are seen, what we are called, and how we protect our potential.

May story's tellers
And cemetery dwellers
Tell all,

As rivers rise and moonshines
On ever higher
Tides.


And may you, Dear Reader,
Come walk with me.
Before it is,
too, late . . .
To enjoy,

RuthAnn Purchase

"The March Rabbits' Blogger"