1929 Building Dedication
After supper on October 24, 1928, thirty Talleyville residents gathered to organize a fire company that would protect their families, friends and neighbors. Their meeting place demonstrates how rural the area was the men gathered in the biggest building, the Grange Hall. But these men felt the need for a fire company. In those days of rare car ownership and poor roads, fire protection for the Talleyville area was provided by the then-distant Brandywine Hundred and Claymont Fire Companies.
1953 Building Addition
The men who attended that first meeting bore the names of families long-associated with the Talleyville area Hague, Carroll, Talley, McCrea, Strickland, Luke, Sheldon, Smith and McCoy, to name a few. Those thirty men, the first to organize and meet the community’s need for protection, were joined by their sons and grandsons as the years passed and the fire company grew with the area it protected. But the Talleyville Fire Company would not have survived and prospered without the women and the Ladies Auxiliary they founded the following year. The wives, daughters, mothers and grandmothers fed sandwiches and coffee to their men when they battled fires and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in events that included turkey raffles, card nights, carnivals and dinners that matched those produced by professional cooks and chefs.
1956 Juniors
That enthusiastic first meeting gave birth to what is now the Talleyville Fire Company. The founders including first chief, William A. Hague Jr. initially chose Goodwill Fire Company for the new organization’s name, but later decided to name the company for its home community. The fledgling fire company moved forward quickly, beginning construction of the fire station and ordering a fire truck from the U.S. Fire Apparatus Company in Wilmington. Several of the company’s original members personally guaranteed loans totaling $11,000 for the construction and equipment. Both building and fire truck were completed about the same time, and the Talleyville Company hosted a parade and celebration on October 12, 1929, when Cranston Heights firefighters housed the apparatus. By the summer of 1931, the loans were paid off and the Talleyville Fire Company was an established protector of its then-agricultural community.
