Twelve was magical for the Gooches on Chestnut Street

Nancy Gooch Collick grew up in one of the Chestnut Street houses condemned recently by the City of Lewes. A fading notice taped to the doors declares the structures unsafe for use or occupancy. Windows boarded, yards still littered with the trappings of human existence, and a simple, crooked sign declaring Home Sweet Home to all passersby all attest to almost a century of Gooch family history.

In the two houses, on two lots side by side, Nancy said patriarch Ernest Gooch and his wife, Lethia - a Daisey by birth and with Nanticoke Indian lineage - raised 12 children. Most of Nancy’s aunts and uncles moved on when they reached adulthood. “One went to California, another to Texas, but the rest stayed around here. Five are still living, three boys and two girls.”

Nancy’s mother - also Nancy - lived in the white house and raised her seven children there with the help of Ernest and Lethia. Next door in the green house, Nancy’s Aunt Mary - her mother’s sister - lived with her husband, William Stanley, and their five children. Ernest’s 12 children and then 12 more grandchildren made for a real presence smack dab in the middle of downtown Lewes for several decades. For Nancy, who eventually married Coach Bill Collick, growing up in the middle of the 20th century with all her cousins around her offered a childhood she wouldn’t trade for any other.

Much has changed since those days. The houses - one reportedly with a dirt floor - fell into disrepair over the past few decades. At the time the city decided the houses were no longer safe for habitation, Ernest’s oldest son, Ernie - also known as Uncle Junior - had broken his leg in a fall and was rehabilitating elsewhere. Now in his early 90s, Uncle Junior, said Nancy, was born and raised in one of the houses, as were his brothers and sisters. He and another Gooch cousin, Bobby, who had been living in one of the homes, have now gone to live with relatives or friends.

Segregation wasn’t a problem

“Life was good for us,” remembers Nancy. “Those were the best years of my life, growing up there. Yes, there was separation and segregation in Lewes. We’d get food every once in a while from Mitchell’s restaurant on Second Street, near where King’s Ice Cream is now. We would pick it up at the back door. “There was no sign out front saying we couldn’t go in that way, no fussing. And we went to the movies across the street from the fire hall. We sat upstairs, because that’s where colored people sat, and nobody cared. We accepted it. In the summer, we would walk over to Lewes Beach every day, to the colored beach - Beach No. 2 they call it now - and we would play all day. Aunt Mary would bring lunch over to us and then someone would bring a grill in the evening for hot dogs and hamburgers. Then we would go to the Dairy Queen on the way home. It was great. You know, when we integrated, some had trouble with it, didn’t want to. They were comfortable the way things were. But it didn’t bother me one way or the other. My grandfather always told us ‘You look at people within their hearts, not at the color of their skin.’ He taught us that. He was a proud, honest, hardworking man, and he worked his tail off to get that property on Chestnut Street.

“I can still see my grandfather coming down the street, headed to the post office from Beebe Hospital - where he worked - with the mail satchel. He would stop in and check on everyone. It was his street. Then he’d head back to work. He was a tireless worker and took care of his family.”

Part of Great Migration

Nancy said her grandfather moved to Delaware in 1909, 14 years after his 1895 birth in Oxford, North Carolina. Quick research on the internet finds lots of Gooches in North Carolina, particularly in Granville County where Oxford is located. One real estate listing shows a Gooch Road address.

It appears that Ernest may have been on the leading edge of the Great Migration, when - according to Wikipedia - more than 6 million African-Americans left the agricultural existence of the South and moved to more urban areas in the Northeast, the Midwest and the West. That migration continued to about 1970.

Soon after his arrival in Lewes, Ernest went to work for various members of the Beebe family and did everything from helping build the first hospital and driving the first ambulance to picking up the mail, handling maintenance, and comforting patients confined to the few rooms available in the town’s new medical facility.

In 1918, Ernest married Lethia Daisey. Nancy has their marriage license. “They married on Aug. 7, 1918,” she said. “He was 23; my grandmother was 18.”

Nancy said all of the Ernest Gooch heirs own a piece of the two properties. “My mother’s request was that we never sell the property. Once you get out of Lewes, you won’t get back in. You can’t get back in. I will take care of it as long as I’m alive. Beyond that, there’s not much I can do. Tear the houses down, put a fence around it, just keep it. That property means the world to me. It’s dirt, but it’s our family history.”