St. Joseph on the Brandywine, Greenville, DE

In time, Masses were celebrated in the Brandywine Manufacturers Sunday School, which could accommodate more people.

By the late 1830s and before the establishment of the Wilmington Diocese, the Catholic workers in the DuPont mills on the Brandywine River began to petition the Philadelphia Archdiocese for their own parish. The petition was granted, and mill workers contributed a portion of their weekly salaries toward the construction of the church building. The DuPont family also supported financially the effort. On December 20, 1841, the first Mass was ceelbrated in the church, making Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Church the second longest continuously operating Catholic church in Delaware, after the Cathedral of St. Peter.

Dedication took place on December 20, 1841. The church was plain, made of local materials, and built by and for the local workforce.

Since Wilmington was then part o the Diocese of Philadelphia, Bishop Kenrick, who negotiated the purchase of the land for the church, officiated at the dedication services. Shortly after the church opened, a school was established in the basement of the church. A two story stone schoolhouse was built in 1855 on what is now the Family Center parking lot. The Sisters of Saint Joseph staffed the school from 1853 to 1870, when the Sisters of St. Francis took responsibility and led the school until it closed in 1972.

The oldest tombstone in the cemetery dates back to 1843. Since then, soldiers from every war, as well as several priests who served the parish, have been laid to rest in the cemetery, which was expanded in the 1990s to include the parcel along Kennett Pike. Today, well over 5,000 graves surround the church.

In 1848, the church was enlarged, and again in 1878 the front tower was added. It was not until 1887 that the steeple with the bell finished the top of the front tower. Three arches were added to the altar in 1894 and four years later, stained glass windows were installed. But the most dramatic transformation of the church building in that same year was the wiring of the church for electricity. Electric light allowed for the first midnight Mass at Christmas to take place. In 1902, the Church exterior received its distinctive yellow color with paint donated by Alfred I. Dupont that matched many of the DuPont homes in the area. And in that year the first pipe organ was installed.

The 1941 renovation of the church included new stained glass windows, which are in place to the present day. The only stained glass that remains from the 1898 windows is the small purple circular pieces at the very top of each window. The sacristy was enlarged in 1950, and significant changes were made to the interior of the church in 1974, when the altar rail, main and side altars, and many other traditional parts of the church were removed. Two years later, in 1976, the church property was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The 1994 renovations attempted to harmonize the liturgical rite with the more than century old traditions and environment of the church. The current Allen Organ was installed in that year, a unique installation in that the one organ is playable from two separate consoles, one in the sanctuary and one in the choir loft. In the new millennium, the church has received a new slate roof with repair to the steeple and a new HVAC system has been installed. In 2016, a Delaware State Historic Marker was placed on the church property.