History · Hockessin

A history of Hockessin,
then and now

Postcards, papers and photographs of Hockessin from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.

7old images & papers
11recent photos
From Hockessin’s archive · credits on each photo

The story

from WikipediaRead it all ↗

Hockessin came into existence as a little village in 1688 when several families settled in the area. The village was named after the Lenape word hokes, meaning good bark or good bark hill. There is a second and more likely origin for the name. While the word Hockessin does look like a Native American word, the name Hockessin did not show up on any early maps until many years after the Hockessin Meeting House was built and what is now the Village of Hockessin was never settled by the Native Americans, while they did have a hunting camp nearby. There was no town name Hockessin and the area was referred to as Mill Creek Hundred. The actual name is believed to be derived from one of the first settled properties which was named Occasion and settled by William Cox in 1726 and also the location of the first Quaker meetings in the area before Hockessin Meeting House was built a few years later.…

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Timeline

built from the dates on the items below
1930s6 items · Phillips Corn Crib and Granary, Old W…Commons
1940–1979Nothing in the archives yet
1986AArmstrongFarmHockessinDECommons
1990–1999Nothing yet. Family albums go here.
Help out

Finish Hockessin’s story

Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.

2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewPhillips Corn Crib and Granary, O…, 1933: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10

Famous people from Hockessin

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By decade

Hockessin, decade by decade

Then & now

No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Phillips Corn Crib and Granary, Old Wilmington Road, west of junction with North Star Route, Hockessin, New Castle Coun… (1933) and it appears here side by side.

🔁 Retake this view · +15

Stories next door

nearby towns’ history

From Wikimedia Commons (18). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.

The porch light’s on

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Boundary source: https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/arcgis/rest/services/TIGERweb/Places_CouSub_ConCity_SubMCD/MapServer/19 · 2025-01-01