Gov. James Ponder House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

From the record

“James Ponder House, now the Short Funeral Chapel, is a historic home located at Milton, Sussex County, Delaware. It was built about 1875, and is a three-story, five-bay, Victorian townhouse.”
Wikipedia article Gov. James Ponder House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 136 National Register listings published here for Sussex County · listed in 1973 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Ponder, Gov. James, House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 416 Federal St., Milton, 19968
When was it listed? May 1973
Category. building
Census division. Milton
National Register reference number. 73000560 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

15 since 2002

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 15 fires within 5 miles of Gov. James Ponder House between 2002 and 2019, burning about 21 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	4
Arson/incendiarism	3
Railroad operations and maintenance	2
Smoking	2
Other causes	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Recreation and ceremony	1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
9 September 2015	Equipment and vehicle use	3.0 acres	Delaware Forest Service	GRAVEL FIRE
9 September 2013	Smoking	under an acre	Delaware Forest Service	not named
20 August 2010	Railroad operations and maintenance	3.0 acres	Delaware Forest Service	not named
26 July 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Delaware Forest Service	not named
6 June 2003	Smoking	under an acre	Delaware State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
25 June 2015	Other causes	1.0 acres	Delaware Forest Service	PRETTY FIRE
4 May 2019	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Delaware Forest Service	245 FIRE
4 April 2013	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Delaware Forest Service	not named

Every fire recorded in Sussex County

Storms near this property

14 since 2000

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Milton, the town this property stands in, in 14 storm reports between 2000 and 2023: 5 thunderstorm wind, 4 lightning, 2 flood, 1 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
August 2011	Lightning	Milton	$25,000	A lightning strike and ensuing fire damaged a home on Ellison Drive in Milton. Four fire companies helped extinguish the blaze. No injuries were reported.
September 2000	Lightning	Milton	$15,000	no account filed
May 2008	Lightning	Milton	$10,000	A lightning strike at a Milton substation damaged some equipment. It caused 1,741 Delmarva Power and Light customers in Milton and another 67 in Harbeson to lose power. The outage last about four and a half hours.
July 2011	Lightning	Milton	$1,000	Lightning struck a home in Milton.
September 2023	Hail	Milton	-	Trained spotter reports quarter-sized hail in Milton DE. Time given in report.
February 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Milton	-	Two large trees were downed at a residence. Report via social media. Time estimated from radar.
July 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Milton	-	A tree and wires were downed near Milton-Ellendale Highway in Milton. Time estimated from radar.
August 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Milton	-	Wires were downed near Milton. Time estimated from radar.
August 2018	Flash Flood	Milton	-	Widespread roadway flooding occurred in and around Milton, including areas along Delaware Route 1.
September 2016	Flood	Milton	-	Minor Street flooding was reported.
August 2016	Heavy Rain	Milton	-	Just over 2 inches of rain fell from thunderstorms.
October 2009	Flood	Milton	-	Runoff from two days of heavy rain caused poor drainage and field flooding in eastern Sussex County. In Milton, flooding was reported at the Shipbuilders Village on Spinmaker Lane. Ponding of water occurred at the Cannery Village near the Sussex County Airport in Georgetown and Plantation Road south of Belltown was also nearly impassable. Event precipitation totals included 4.73 inches in Georgetown, 4.16 inches in Greenwood, 3.96 inches in Seaford and 2.53 inches in Delmar.
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Milton	-	A cluster of showers and thunderstorms moved across Delaware, well ahead of a cold front, during the afternoon of the 31st. Some of the thunderstorms produced locally strong winds, which downed numerous power lines in the Milton area at about 3:45 PM EDT.
November 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Milton	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sussex County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Draper-Adkins House	0.2 miles	1973
Milton Historic District	0.3 miles	1982
Hazzard House	0.6 miles	1973
David Robbins Homestead	2.0 miles	2013
Fort Miles Historic District	4.4 miles	2004
Cool Spring Presbyterian Church	4.7 miles	1982

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 73000560 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sussex County	All 136 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.