Cultural changes and economic shifts moving at a high speed are influencing the way Delawareans live and impacting the historical landscape. As growth impinges upon the state's geographic fringe, Delaware's small towns and fragmentary landscapes face an increasing risk of being lost. Fragmentary landscapes are places with obscure histories and a built environment that is difficult to interpret, frequently related to a lack of evidence. The nature of this evidence shapes all historical research and fragmentary landscapes do not communicate their past clearly. These sensitive and unknown entities possess intricate and fragile truths about the past, present, and future of local culture.

Cheswold is a small town and fragmentary landscape in central Kent County, Delaware. The tiny hamlet is composed of a post office, some vacant lots, a lone restaurant, and a small core of nineteenth-century residences. With a population that has never exceeded 500, the town never supported a newspaper. No family bibles, business records, daybooks, journals, or diaries relating to Cheswold survive in the collection possession of any institutional repositories. There are few town maps of Cheswold, none prior to 1919. The historical records of town government are lost. There is no town historical society and no previously written town history.

This thesis contributes to the field of vernacular architecture by interpreting the significant history of Cheswold, testing a methodology that can be employed for further research of fragmentary landscapes in Delaware. The ability to build the interpretive relationship between existing broad patterns and fragmentary local evidence holds tremendous information potential for future research. Establishing a precedent for the research of small towns, each chapter of this thesis engages a different evidence base to interpret a separate component of Cheswold's history. Drawing from the research methods of this thesis, future researchers are able to ask directed questions of extant and negative primary evidence and utilize existing secondary studies to interpret fragmentary landscapes in Delaware.