Delaware

The disappearance of Horace Marvin, Jr. became a national sensation.

In early March 1907, young Horace, just a few weeks shy of his fourth birthday, was playing in the yard of his father's new farm in a sparsely populated area near Dover, Delaware. The family had just moved from Iowa and this was the first day Horace had to explore their new home. In the farmyard with Horace were his brother John and cousin Rose, all visible to neighbors helping the previous owner move off the farm. Then Horace disappeared without a trace. Within two weeks this heartbreaking event was being reported to hundreds of other families in newspapers across the country and around the world.

Horace's disappearance would be the most publicized missing child story until the Lindbergh kidnapping exactly twenty-five years later. Local author Brian G. Cannon tells the full story of this tragedy for the first time.

Daring raids, sporadic gun fights, and midnight chases filled the headlines in 1920s Delaware.

Prohibition attempted to kill John Barleycorn, the personification of intoxicating drinks, but in Delaware the notice of his death was premature. Government agents tried in vain to stop bootleggers and rumrunners who fed the speakeasies that quenched the thirst of the people of the First State. Against the backdrop of the Roaring '20s, bootleggers sped up and down the new Du Pont Boulevard while enforcement agents, such as the bible-thumping Three Gun Wilson, tried in vain to stop them. The stock market crash and the Great Depression ended dry laws and brought about Barleycorn's resurrection.

Local author and historian Michael Morgan recounts dramatic tales of rumrunners, bootleggers, dry laws and wet politicians.