Sudler House – Attawattacoquin

A patent for 1200 acres called Attawattacoquin, upon which the house and outbuildings stand, was granted in 1684 by Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, 2nd Proprietor and 6th and 9th Proprietary Governor of Maryland, to Christopher Nutter, a government agent and Native American interpreter from Maryland. Attawattacoquin is an Algonquin Indian word meaning “Village in the clearing of the woods [trees] by the river.” A log cabin was the first dwelling erected on the property and was situated in the front yard of the present-day house. As the oldest known domestic structure in Bridgeville, the earliest portion of the house was standing by 1730, along with a springhouse, icehouse, barns and stables. When the Mason-Dixon Line survey was completed in 1767, a new patent for Attawattacoquin was granted by William Penn’s sons, as Proprietors of the Province of Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties (Delaware). The property was transferred to John Jessop, a descendant of Nutter’s. Jessop, along with Freeborn Garrettson, was commissioned as a circuit rider by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Francis Asbury, the first Bishop of the Methodist-Episcopal Church in North America, to spread the Methodist-Episcopal Gospel in Canada. Together with Daniel Baker and William Morgan, Jessop and Garrettson became the foremost American circuit riders of the 18th century. Before leaving for Canada, Jessop sold the property to Dr. John Carey, Bridgeville’s first physician who, in 1833, sold the property to its namesake Dr. John Ralston Sudler (1797-1871). In 1974, Sudler House was named to the National Register of Historic Places and in 1976, was entered into the Historic American Building Survey Registry as part of a special Bicentennial project honoring the original thirteen states.