History Of Delaware
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History Of Delaware
The history of Delaware as a political entity dates back to the early colonization of North America by European settlers. Delaware is made up of three counties established in 1638, before the time of William Penn. Each county had its own settlement history. The state's early colonists tended to identify more closely with their county than Delaware as a whole. Large parts of southern and western Delaware were thought to have been in Maryland until 1767. The state has existed in the wide economic and political circle of the nearby Pennsylvanian city of Philadelphia. Native Americans Before Delaware was settled by Europeans, the area was home to the Lenni Lenape (also known as the Delaware), Susquehanna, Nanticoke, and other Native American tribes. After the Swedes, Dutch colonists settled Delaware, with the native people trading with European settlers for around a half-century. Dutch and Swedish colonies The Delaware watershed was claimed by the English based on the explor ...
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John Smith (explorer)
John Smith ( – 21 June 1631) was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, admiral of New England, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, and his friend Mózes Székely. Following his return to England from a life as a soldier of fortune and as a slave, he played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English colonial empire, English settlement in North America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England. Jamestown was established on May 14, 1607. Smith trained the first settlers to work at farming and fishing, thus saving the colony from early devastation. He publicly stated, "He who ...
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Peter Minuit
Peter Minuit (French language, French: ''Pierre Minuit'', Dutch language, Dutch: ''Peter Minnewit''; 1580 – August 5, 1638) was a Walloons, Walloon merchant and politician who was the 3rd Director of New Netherland, Director of the Dutch North American colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1631, and 3rd Governor of New Netherland. He founded the Sweden, Swedish colony of New Sweden on the Delaware Peninsula in 1638. Minuit was born in Wesel, in present-day northwestern Germany. He is generally credited with orchestrating the purchase of Manhattan Island for the Dutch West India Company from representatives of the Lenape, Native Americans in the United States, the area's indigenous people. Manhattan later became the site of the Dutch city of New Amsterdam, and the borough of Manhattan of modern-day New York City. A letter written by Dutch merchant Peter Schaghen to directors of the Dutch East India Company stated that Manhattan was purchased for "60 Guilder, guilders worth o ...
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Lewes, Delaware
Lewes ( ) is an incorporated city on the Delaware Bay in eastern Sussex County, Delaware, United States. According to the 2020 census, its population was 3,303. Along with neighboring Rehoboth Beach, Lewes is one of the principal cities of Delaware's rapidly growing Cape Region. The city lies within the Salisbury, Maryland–Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. Lewes proudly claims to be "The First Town in The First State." History Lewes was the site of the first European settlement in Delaware, a whaling and trading post that Dutch settlers founded on June 3, 1631, and named Zwaanendael (Swan Valley).Munroe, John A.: ''Colonial Delaware: A History'': Millwood, New York: KTO Press; 1978; pp. 9–12. The colony had a short existence, as a local tribe of Lenape Indians killed all 32 settlers in 1632. The area remained rather neglected by the Dutch until, under the threat of annexation from the colony of Maryland, the city of Amsterdam made a grant of land at the Hoernk ...
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Zwaanendael Colony
or was a short-lived Dutch colonial settlement in Delaware. It was built in 1631. The name is archaic Dutch for "swan valley." The site of the settlement later became the town of Lewes, Delaware. History Two directors of the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch West India Company, Samuel Blommaert and Samuel Godyn, bargained with the natives for a tract of land reaching from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of Delaware River. This was in 1629, three years before the charter of Maryland, and is the oldest deed for land in Delaware. Its water-front nearly coincides with the coast of Kent and Sussex counties. The purchase was ratified in 1630 by Peter Minuit and his council at Fort Amsterdam. The estate was further extended, on May 5, 1630, by the purchase of a tract twelve miles square (31 km²) on the coast of Cape May opposite, and the transaction was duly attested at Fort Amsterdam. The Dutch West India Company was formed to colonize the tract that included Blommaert, Gody ...
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Gloucester City, New Jersey
Gloucester City is a city in Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 11,484, an increase of 28 (+0.2%) from the 2010 census count of 11,456, which in turn reflected a decline of 28 (−0.2%) from the 11,484 counted in the 2000 census. It is located directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and the Port of Philadelphia. Gloucester City was incorporated by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 25, 1868, from the remaining portions of Union Township, which was then dissolved. Additional territory was annexed in 1925 from Centre Township and in 1927 from Haddon Township.Snyder, John P''The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968'' Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 106 re Gloucester City, p. 109 re Union Township. Accessed May 30, 2012. The city's name derives from Gloucester, England. Gloucester City is known for its Irish American population ...
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Fort Nassau (South River)
Fort Nassau was a '' factorij'' in New Netherland between 1624–1651 located at the mouth of Big Timber Creek at its confluence with the Delaware River. It was the first known permanent European-built structure in what would become the state of New Jersey. The creek name is a derived from the Dutch language ''Timmer Kill'' as recorded by David Pietersen de Vries in his memoirs of his journey of 1630–1633. The Delaware Valley and its bay was called the "South River" (Dutch: ''Zuyd Rivier''); the "North River" of the colony was the Hudson River. The factorij was established for the fur trade, mostly in beaver pelts, with the indigenous populations of Susquehannock, who spoke an Iroquoian language, and the Lenape, whose language was of the Algonquian family. They also wanted to retain a physical claim to the territory. While the fort is generally described as being at today's Gloucester City, New Jersey analysis places it on the peninsula in the cove, now Brooklawn o ...
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Burlington, New Jersey
Burlington is a City (New Jersey), city situated on the banks of the Delaware River in Burlington County, New Jersey, Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a suburb of Philadelphia. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 9,743, a decrease of 177 (−1.8%) from the 9,920 recorded at the 2010 United States census, 2010 census, which in turn reflected an increase of 184 (+1.9%) from the 9,736 counted in the 2000 United States census, 2000 census. The city, and all of Burlington County, is a part of the Philadelphia-Reading, Pennsylvania, Reading-Camden, New Jersey, Camden combined statistical area and the Delaware Valley. Burlington was first incorporated on October 24, 1693, and was reincorporated by Royal charter on May 7, 1733. After American independence, the city was incorporated by the State of New Jersey on December 21, 1784. On March 14, 1851, the city was reincorporated and enlarged with portions of the surrounding township.Snyde ...
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Burlington Island
Burlington Island is a island located in the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the United States. Burlington Island is officially part of the city of Burlington, in Burlington County, New Jersey, United States. It is an uninhabited scenic landmark in the Delaware River. Burlington Island Lake is a large artificial lagoon within the island. Fort Wilhelmus The indigenous Lenape population called the island Matennecunk. In 1624, Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, the first Director of New Netherland planted an initial settlement of two families and eight men on what they called Hooghe Eylandt (High Island), making it the site of the first European settlement in what would become New Jersey. The factorij, or trading-post, called Fort Wilhelmus was completed under the direction of the 2nd director, Willem Verhulst, who lent his name to the island. Originally the Dutch West India Company intended to create a headquarters for the new province of New Netherland at what they ...
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Fort Wilhelmus
Fort Wilhelmus was a '' factorij'' in the 17th-century colonial province of New Netherland, located on what had been named Hooghe Eyland (High Island) (also called Verhulsten Island) on the Zuyd Rivier, now Burlington Island in the Delaware River in New Jersey. More a trading post than a military installation, it was built in 1625 by colonists from the Netherlands in the employ of the Dutch West India Company, with the intention of establishing a physical claim to the new territory and to engage in the fur trade with the indigenous population of Lenape and Minqua. The Walloon families had originally arrived at Noten Island (Governors Island) across from New Amsterdam in the Upper New York Bay, They had been sent south in order to begin the population of the province of New Netherland. They were later recalled to Fort Amsterdam since the Dutch West India Company had decided to concentrate their settlement efforts along the North River, or Hudson River. The fort was likely so ca ...
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Factory (trading Post)
Factory was the common name during the medieval and early modern eras for an entrepôt – which was essentially an early form of free-trade zone or transshipment point. At a factory, local inhabitants could interact with foreign merchants, often known as factor (agent), factors. First established in Europe, factories eventually spread to many other parts of the world. The origin of the word ''factory'' is (; ; , ). The factories established by European states in Africa, Asia and the Americas from the 15th century onward also tended to be official political Dependent territory, dependencies of those states. These have been seen, in retrospect, as the precursors of colonialism, colonial expansion. A factory could serve simultaneously as market (place), market, warehouse, customs, defense and support to navigation and exploration, headquarters or ''de facto'' government of local communities. In North America, Europeans began to North American fur trade, trade with Natives duri ...
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Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company () was a Dutch chartered company that was founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a :wikisource:Charter of the Dutch West India Company, charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and ended east of the Maluku Islands, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the largely eph ...
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