New Book Traces How Delaware's Spring Grove Mill House Touched America’s Turning Points

Deputy’s 234-page book, released Sept. 3, 2025, follows his years of research into the Spring Grove Mill House and the surprising people and events connected to it.

Dave Deputy’s new book tells the story of the Spring Grove Mill House and how it’s connected to the surprising people and events in American History

WILMINGTON, Del. — A Delaware homeowner’s curiosity has turned into a page-turning work of local history. Retired Brig. Gen. David Deputy, a former Delaware state trooper, has published Deputy’s 234-page book, released Sept. 3, 2025, which follows his years of research into the Spring Grove Mill House and the surprising people and events connected to it.

Deputy’s 234-page book, released Sept. 3, 2025, follows his years of research into the Spring Grove Mill House and the surprising people and events connected to it. The narrative moves from Revolutionary War strategy sessions to an Apollo 11 thread, from a plot involving Lee Harvey Oswald to a George Washington leadership turning point, and even to deal-making that helped legalize gambling in Delaware.

Author Dave Deputy recalls buying the Spring Grove Mill House with little sense of its past—then learning it was far older than advertised and once part of an early-1700s milling site. “One day I found a Revolutionary War map online,” he says. “There was a blast of yellow—an explosion—centered right where our house stands. The caption showed combat here in 1777.” That discovery led him to General George Weedon’s foray at Spring Grove, a skirmish he argues helped tilt momentum toward the Americans. Citing filmmaker Ken Burns’ framing of the Revolution as a world-shaping birth of democracy, Deputy places Spring Grove’s 1777 moment in that larger current of history.

For New Castle County readers, the story lands close to home. The house at the center of the book is in Delaware, and Deputy uses familiar landscapes—mill roads, farmsteads, and river corridors—to show how seemingly ordinary local places carry national echoes. The result doubles as a call to action for area residents: look again at the houses you pass every day. Many, Deputy suggests, hold untold chapters of the American story.

That local lens extends beyond storytelling. Drawing on his background as a brigadier general and state trooper, Deputy blends strategic perspective with investigative detail to model how anyone can dig into a property’s past—through deeds, maps, newspaper archives, and interviews. Those do-it-yourself tools make the book a natural fit for county book clubs, libraries, school projects, and historical societies interested in preservation, genealogy, and community history.

Deputy keeps the pacing accessible, stitching “strange-but-true” Americana to practical guidance. It’s part hidden-history thriller, part research handbook—particularly suited to a county where 18th- and 19th-century structures still anchor neighborhoods and main streets.

Book details: The Spring Grove Mill House: The Home with the Most Ties to American History by David Deputy; published Sept. 3, 2025; 234 pages; Kindle (Amazon), with paperback and hardcover listed; Publisher: SelfPublishing.com; ISBN-13: 979-8896943518 (Kindle), 979-8896943525 (Paperback). Typical list prices: Kindle ~$9.99; Paperback ~$15.99+; Hardcover ~$39.99+. The Spring Grove Mill House: The Home with the Most Ties to American History: Deputy, David: 9798896943525: Amazon.com: Books