Master's Theses (before Fall 2009 -- partial holdings)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/21710

The Office of Graduate & Professional Education deposits all master's theses from a given semester after the official graduation date.

For the time being, this particular UDSpace collection of master's theses from before Fall 2009 is of limited scope. However, University of Delaware master’s theses submitted from 1980 through Summer 2009 are available online at ProQuest/UMI through Dissertations & Theses @ University of Delaware. Use the library catalog, DELCAT Discovery, to search for all print or microform copies of master's theses 1980-2009 that are NOT available in Dissertations & Theses @ University of Delaware because Dissertations & Theses @ University of Delaware does NOT contain the complete collection of University of Delaware master's theses.

To see University of Delaware master's theses submitted beginning Fall 2009, go to Master's Theses (Fall 2009 to Present).

Master’s theses in the Longwood Graduate Program in Public Horticulture submitted between 1970 and 2004 are available online.

More information is available at Dissertations & Theses.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 582

Alexander Calder: the formative years
(University of Delaware, 1974) Marter, Joan M.
Preservation of historic New Castle: a study in perception
(University of Delaware, 2003) Wildes, Kristen Laham
This thesis studies the preservation of New Castle, Delaware. Because of its prominent history and remarkable architecture, several individuals set out to restore New Castle as a museum attraction in the 1940s and 1950s using Colonial Williamsburg as a model. The planners wanted to ensure the future of the town and use it for the patriotic education and inspiration of Americans. However, their extensive vision failed to become a reality. ☐ During interviews, several long-time residents of New Castle talked about the proposed restoration plan. Their experiences reflect opinions that differ from the planners about how a comprehensive restoration would have impacted the town. Informants felt that the community was primarily responsible for the fact that the plan was never carried out. Instead, New Castle enacted zoning legislation to protect its historic properties. Residents expressed concern about preventing too much change in New Castle and reflected on many changes that have occurred since the time of the proposed restoration.
Business and government in nineteenth century Delaware
(University of Delaware, 1964) Whitham, William Bolesbridge
It is suggested in this thesis that the development of law touching business in Delaware was evolutionary, and comprised three major themes: the establishment of a reasonably secure financial system, the development of a transportation system serving the state, and the establishment of a diversified manufacturing and commercial sector of the overall economy. In any given period all three themes were present, but one was the predominant preoccupation of the day. ☐ After a period of slow but steady growth in the eighteenth century, the time between 1791 and 1831 is suggested as having been perhaps the most significant stage in the course of events with which this study is concerned. In this period, the basis for later development was laid and the lines which this development would follow first became visible. Although the preoccupation of the period was with establishing a financial system adequate to the needs of the state, the first industry and manufacturing appeared, and the first attempts at creating a transportation network were made. From the 1830's to the 1850's, transportation was the predominant interest, since the banking system of the state had crystallized by slightly after 1820. From the 1850's onward, manufacturing and industry were of more interest than transportation and banking, and the state moved increasingly into regulation of business and associated practices. ☐ The organization of business developed parallel to these changes. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the typical Delaware business was a small single proprietorship or a small partnership. Increasingly, however, incorporation began to be used, and the first extended remarks upon this subject appear in the 1831 State Constitution. As the practice of incorporation spread and became more and more widely used, this basic law was amended and extended. A very limited general incorporation law was enacted in the 1870's, extended in the 1880's, and replaced at the very end of the century. The State Constitution was revised in 1897, at which time the legislature was empowered to enact a general incorporation law. This it did in the 1899 session, and the resulting statute was the basis of the twentieth-century incorporation law of the state. This is not discussed, as the enactment of the 1899 law formed the last chapter in the century of change examined.
The Brandywine mills, 1742-1815
(University of Delaware, 1956) Welsh, Peter Corbett
In 1740, Oliver Canby moved from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to the newly chartered town of Wilmington in Delaware. Oliver Canby, like many others who came to Wilmington, was a Quaker and as a member of the Society of Friends he had acquired early in life a useful trade or craft. Canby was a millwright by profession and in less than 15 years after coming to Wilmington he had gained, besides several promising mill seats, the control of important water rights on the Brandywine. During this period (1742-1755) Canby built the first mill of size or consequence on Brandywine Creek. The Canby Mill began the history of the merchant flour industry in this area known as the Brandywine Mills. ☐ The initial work of Oliver Canby was followed by that of Thomas Shipley who, in less than ten years after Canby's death (1755), transformed the flour mills on the lower Brandywine from custom mills to merchant enterprises. This was accomplished by building large mills with overshot wheels below the last falls of the stream. These mills were built on the south bank of the creek where, for the first time, they could begin to make full use of the water power so readily available. Even more important than power was the fact that these new mills were at tidewater; therefore they were convenient to ocean navigation by way of the Christina and Delaware Rivers. Similar mills were built on the north side of the stream in the 1770's. The development of this area was mainly due to the resourcefulness of Joseph Tatnall who is correctly thought of as Delaware's first great industrialist. ☐ Prior to the revolution the energy of three men -- Oliver Canby, Thomas Shipley and Joseph Tattnall -- had given impetus to the building of eight tidewater mills on the Brandywine. There were four mills on each side of the stream in this period and they ground the grist brought from the rich wheat fields of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These meals were located in the heart of America's first extensive wheat belt and we're readily accessible to the wheat growers of the middle colonies via river, road and ocean. The Brandywine millers, during the Revolution, the Confederation and the early Republic, expanded the business that had been founded in the colonial period. After the Revolution these mills produced flour for domestic and foreign consumption and provided a stimulus for Wilmington's prosperous economic and commercial life. ☐ The Brandywine Mills between 1770 and 1815 increased in number from eight to fourteen merchant mills, all tightly clustered about the tidal basin of Brandywine Creek. It was during this period that Oliver Evans introduced the idea of automation to flour mill machinery; and subsequently the mills at Brandywine were mechanized. These mills, despite, mechanization, provided work for hundreds of individuals including millers millwrights, coopers, blacksmiths and shallopmen. By the 1790’s, mills at Brandywine annually ground 300,000 to 100,000 bushels of wheat. Every year local merchants shipped thousands of barrels of Brandywine flour to the four corners of the globe and the Quaker millers reaped a return of a half million dollars in profits from their mill operations. The Brandywine Mills were, in every sense, a large scale enterprise and their history is the story of the industry that preceded du Pont as the industrial giant on Brandywine Creek. This story “fully written out … would afford a complete picture of the rise of the milling interest in the United States.
The senatorial career of Willard Saulsbury, 1859-1871
(University of Delaware, 1966) Smith, Wayne Sylvanus

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