Georgetown, Delaware, July 30, 1888:

Georgetown is the county seat of Sussex county Delaware located at the junction of the former Junction and Breakwater and the Breakwater and Franklin Railroads, now the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania. In 1880 it had 710 inhabitants and in 1887 there were 1600, a lot to do with the locating of the C. H. Treat Company, maker of peach baskets and other wood products which employed over 100 people. also there was the Sussex Manufacturing Company which made wood work items for the building business, such as windows, doors, etc. There are three food canning houses, an evaporator of fruit and several smaller business to keep the population working. Georgetown, named for George Mitchell, one of a committee appointed to locate it in 1791. The county seat was moved from Lewes for a more convenient location to the county.

The oldest religious edifice is the St. Paul's Episcopal Church that was originally built in 1794 with money raised by a lottery authorized by the State of Delaware Legislature. Several more lotteries were necessary in the early 1800's to complete it and build a Masonic Hall and Academy There is also a Presbyterian and Methodist church and Catholic's occasionally meet in the Court House.

Georgetown is laid off from a center square with wide shaded streets running at right angles. The court house, the Eagle and the Brick hotel's front on this square. The town has two newspapers, The Sussex Journal, editor McKendree Downham and The Delaware Democrat, editor E. F. Paynter, both newsy weekly journals.

Georgetown has one old custom it has kept for years, Return Day, following elections in November to which Sussex county people flock to the town center to hear the results of election read from the court house door at noon.

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Philadelphia, Inquirer
Contributed by Harrison

Description: Delaware's youngest Bride at Age 13 Years.
Date: December 7 1909

Newspaper published in: Philadelphia

Source: GBank

Bayard, Delaware, December 7, 1909:

Richard Banks, 18 years old of Williamsville in Sussex county Delaware, a son of James A and Ann Banks, took to himself a "child wife", supposed to be the youngest girl ever married in Delaware, when he was married to Miss Orma Hickman, age 13, daughter of the late Theodore and Maggie Hickman, who have during the past ten years moved to Bayard from Cape May county in New Jersey. The wedding was held with the full consent of her mother and was solemnized at the home of her widowed mother. The young girl is well developed for her age d easily passes for sixteen years old. She is perfectly happy with her new husband telling friends she found the one she loved. The bride was born and bred in this country but has seen very little of life outside of her family farm home. she and the husband will reside at the farm which her mother owns.

Richard Warren Banks lived until June 1967 before he died near Bishop, Worcester county, Maryland. Orma died in 1978. both are buried in Carey's Cemetery at Frankford, Delaware.  Sometime after 1921 the family moved to St. Martins Neck in Worcester county where Richard became a carpenter, giving up a short span of farming. They had five children, daughter Edna born 1912, daughter Zenia born 1916, son's Arthur born 1919, Clifton born 1921, all in Delaware and their last son Richard Warren Banks Jr., born 1927 in Worcester Maryland.