I'm honored to be chosen to participate in the celebration of Newark's history.

Through the efforts of many dedicated people, we have an abundance of new sources available to learn about the history of Newark.

There are two fine new books-one by Theresa Hessey in the Images of America series and an even more magnificent Histories of Newark, with its many illuminating articles by first-rate scholars brought to us through the direction and editing of Paul Bauernschmidt, Deborah Haskell, Rebecca Johnson Melvin and Shaun Mullen.

There are also two exhibits offering a rich selection of visual materials-that of the Newark Historical Society and that done by Rebecca Johnson Melvin at the Morris Library's Special Collections.

After absorbing all that wealth of information, what is left to say?

Two hundred fifty years is a long time. Consider this: George II of England was the present Queen Elizabeth II's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather-that's six greats ago. In light of that time span, how can one give a short summary that captures Newark's history?

I was inspired by something I read in the newspaper recently where Bill McLain, the president of the Newark Historical Society, was quoted as saying that the 250th celebrations were designed to “show where Newark's been and where it's going to be,” especially for those who have “recently moved here and have no sense of Newark's background."

So, newcomers-and longtime residents alike-can reflect on this: that Newark's history represents a microcosm of the history of the American Town. This town reflects so many themes that are important to the history of the United States as a whole that it is difficult to sum them up in a brief presentation.

Location, location, location, as the real estate people say. From its origins as Native American crossroads to its present prosperity tinged with serious concerns about the announced closing of the Chrysler Plant, Newark has been a prism through which to view American history-and geography shapes history.

The market village of 1758 was part of a second wave of immigration from Europe, and especially from the British Isles to America. The first wave settled the seacoasts-along the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay in the 1600s and early in the 1700s. The second wave moved beyond to settle the interior. In the mid-1700s, many of the newcomers were Scots-Irish Presbyterians. Mostly farmers, they were people who put great store in the value of education. They were also a contentious group arguing about religious doctrine. There was the new side and the old side-the spirit versus the understanding. Francis Alison was the chief proponent of the latter view-that is why he started a school in nearby New London that, as you cannot help but have heard, later moved to Newark and was the inception of the-drum roll, please-University of Delaware.

Who can imagine Newark today without its University? Or the University without Newark? Don't even try-the University of Delaware gives so much to make this community what it is.

The other major group of second wave settlers in the Newark region were the Welsh who received their Welsh Tract adjacent to Iron Hill from the colonial proprietor William Penn.

Today we see Newark and its landscape in terms of manmade modes of transportation-its roads, bridges, highways and railroads. In contrast, the Native Americans and early settlers saw hills, valleys and waterways.

There's a reason why the Presbyterians called their first churches “Head of Christiana” and “White Clay Creek”-named for the streams that begin in the hills of Pennsylvnia and flow southeastward, passing Newark to its north and south on their paths toward the Delaware River.

Both streams provided enough force to power mills. Newark is at the fall line where water coming down from the hills meets the coastal plain-a.k.a. sea level.

On the Christina, there was Cooch's grist and sawmill adjacent to his bridge-made famous on Sept. 3, 1777, when Delaware's only Revolutionary War battle, or rather skirmish, occurred there. But Newark experienced the full force of the British Army as it marched through the town past two, then new buildings, the brick Elliott Hall and the stone Academy.

The White Clay became the site of industrial-sized mills, most importantly the Curtis Paper Mill and the Dean Woolen Mills-both major enterprises that turned Newark from a farmers' market crossroads with its Main Street and its small college into a full-fledged town-incorporated in 1852.

With the mills came hundreds of mill workers, men, women, and children, who lived in wooden houses along Chapel Street and Cleveland Avenue while the mill owners built much larger homes of brick and stone on “Quality Hill,” West Main Street.

On Christmas 1886, the Dean Mill burned and over 150 people were suddenly without work-roughly one third of the town's population had been dependent on the mill. But help was at hand-first, Newark created a fire department, then John Pilling, a former Dean Mill executive, teamed up with Samuel Wright to create American Vulcanized Fibre Company on the woolen mill site, and Newark became a center for the manufacture of this early form of plastic.

The fall line, which parallels the intersection of the coastal plain with the Appalachian foothills all down the East Coast, not only provided sites for water-powered mills and the industrial towns and cities that they spawned, it was also the roadway for major 19th-century innovation in transportation-the railroad-an important addition to Newark's development for passengers as well as freight. There was good reason why South College Avenue was once called Depot Road.

One of America's most important historical landmarks was the Mason-Dixon line. As many of you know, the surveyors Mason and Dixon stayed at the St. Patrick's Inn-now the Deer Park-in 1764, while they were demarking the boundary between the lands of the Penns and the Calverts.

In the 19th century the Mason-Dixon Line took on another connotation, especially for black people. Below the line lay slavery, above it freedom.

Newark was an anomaly. It was neither above nor below the Mason-Dixon Line-rather it was at the line. Delaware was a slave state, yet one with abolitionists, and Newark was the closest community to the two lines that Mason and Dixon had drawn-the north and south line separating Maryland from Delaware and the east-west line separating Maryland from Pennsylvania. The geometrically tricky place where the two lines met at Delaware's semicircular northern boundary-called the Wedge-was disputed among the three states until 1893.

As you might imagine, Newark was not a pleasant place to be during the Civil War. Many armed themselves. James Vallandigham, the minister at White Clay Creek Church, was pro-Southern. His brother, a “Copperhead” congressman from southern Ohio, fled to the South. Most Newarkers, like most Delawareans, generally were pro-Union, and a paramilitary group called the Newark Home Guards was raised whose members administered the Oath of Allegiance to persons suspected of harboring Southern sympathies.

Newark had two small black communities, one at Iron Hill, and the other at the intersection of New London Road and Cleveland Avenue. St. John's and Mt. Zion Methodist and Pilgrim Baptist churches, not to mention the Elks' Club, testify to the stability of the latter community-so long kept at arm's length by law and custom from intermingling with the larger, more powerful white world around them. It is worth recalling in this well-educated town that, long after Newark built a high school for whites, the town's black youngsters had to go to Wilmington's Howard High should they wish to receive a high school education. And there was no bus-only the train to get them part of the way. Newark took a major step toward overcoming earlier racial restrictions in housing in 1968, but the long saga from segregation to integration and busing continues to plague Newark and indeed all of America-not unexpectedly so near to the Mason-Dixon Line.

The Newark that we know today is in large part a creation of post-World War II America. It is the world created by and for the automobile, a world of suburban developments, interstate highways and strip shopping malls-and it's all here to see and study in Newark.

Where to start? How about the Chrysler assembly plant constructed in 1951 to build tanks during the Korean War. Then there was the Kirkwood Highway, completed in the mid-1950's to connect Newark to Wilmington-an avenue for those who wished to live in a town but work in the city. Then DuPont put its engineering department at Louviers, subsequently the home of MBNA and now Bank of America. The Gores also made Newark their headquarters.

Suburbs blossomed-Brookside, mainly for the Chrysler workers; Silverbrook and Oaklands, for a more diverse workforce; apartment complexes that have become student enclaves. Need I go on? Newark is America writ small enough to be understood, if we but try to understand it. It is home, and it is a community that is deservedly well loved and well worth celebrating. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NEWARK!

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Carol Hoffecker, Richards Professor Emerita of History at the University of Delaware, is the author of several books on Delaware history. Her University honors include induction in the Alumni Wall of Fame; the Francis Alison Award, as an outstanding member of the faculty; the Medal of Distinction; and the E. Arthur Trabant Institutional Award for Women's Equity.