Archive record
- Subject
- Hazel Downs Brittingham, 12 November 1927 – 30 December 2024
- Role here
- Author of the original lewes_history pages on this domain (Lewestown Publishers, from 1997)
- Her papers
- Hazel Brittingham Collections Center, Lewes Historical Society
“Ask Hazel, she'll know”
For decades, that phrase was how Lewes, Delaware answered its own questions. Hazel Downs Brittingham was born in her parents' house in Lewes in 1927, lived her entire ninety-seven years in the town, and became its most trusted historian — not through a university post, but through half a century of reading deeds, keeping files, and writing it all down.
How a bank clerk became a town's historian
Brittingham graduated from Lewes High School and, in 1945, took a job at the Sussex Trust Company. As assistant treasurer she worked with mortgages, which meant researching deeds and property records — some reaching back to the 1600s. By her own account she became absorbed in the question of who the owners were, where they lived, and what their lives were like. Everything that followed grew from those title searches.
In 1947 she married Emory B. Brittingham of the Lewes Dairy family; the next year the couple bought and ran the Lewes restaurant known locally as Britts. From 1955 she worked as educational secretary for the Lewes school district and then the Cape Henlopen School District, handling its public relations until her retirement in 1980. She wrote freelance for the Daily Whale, the predecessor of today's Cape Gazette, and her byline appeared in the local press for the rest of her life.
Lewestown Publishers and this website
In the late 1990s Brittingham published under her own imprint, Lewestown Publishers of Lewes. Its best-known title is Lantern on Lewes: Where the Past Is Present (1998), a collection of her stories of historic Lewes illustrated and photographed by Elaine and James C. Ippolito. The imprint also put her research online: from 1997, articles under the /lewes_history/ path of this domain covered the naming of Cape Henlopen, the lost Cape Henlopen Lighthouse, the Whorekill, the De Vries monument, the Ryves Holt House, and the writer Gilbert Byron. Wikipedia and local-history researchers cited those pages for years. This archive exists to keep those addresses alive and to point every one of them back to her originals at the Internet Archive.
What she left behind
Brittingham credited meticulous organization for her usefulness: files on every topic, maintained continuously, ready to answer any question. She donated more than fifty boxes of papers and photographs to the Lewes Historical Society — including a large collection of images of the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse — and the Society's archival center now bears her name as the Hazel Brittingham Collections Center. She was inducted into the Delaware Maritime Hall of Fame, marked by a granite monument in Canalfront Park, and was instrumental in winning a historic marker for the unknown sailors' cemetery at the Cape May–Lewes Ferry terminal. The mayor of Lewes proclaimed Hazel Brittingham Appreciation Day on 27 July 2017.
One detail from her obituary is worth keeping: though she lived her whole life in Lewes, Delaware, her travels took her to Lewes in England and to Hoorn in Holland — the English town her town was named for, and the Dutch city bound up in its oldest name. She followed the town's story to both of its sources.
She died peacefully at home on 30 December 2024, at ninety-seven. The City of Lewes, in its statement, called her a truly remarkable woman who devoted much of her life to the betterment of the community.
Her photographs and papers are not reproduced on this site. They belong with the Lewes Historical Society, where they can be consulted, and with her estate. If you are a member of her family and would like anything on these pages changed — or would like her original articles restored here in her own words — write to hello@lewestown.com.
Where this comes from
- Cape Gazette, “Hazel Downs Brittingham, Lewes historian, author” (obituary), 31 December 2024.
- Cape Gazette, “Hazel Brittingham remembered as beloved Lewes historian”, January 2025.
- Hazel D. Brittingham, Lantern on Lewes: Where the Past Is Present, Lewestown Publishers, Lewes, 1998. ISBN 978-0966395600.
- Lewes Historical Society (Historic Lewes), historiclewes.org, on the Hazel Brittingham Collections Center.