Genealogy Trails Early Delaware History It was one of the original Thirteen Colonies and is known as the "First State" as it was the first to ratify the United States Constitution. Discovered by Henry Hudson in 1609, while sailing under the Dutch flag. The following year, Capt. Samuel Argall of Virginia named the state for his colony's governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr. The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in present day Delaware by establishing a trading post at Zwaanendael, near the site of Lewes in 1631. Within a year all the settlers were killed in a dispute with Native Americans. In 1638 a Swedish trading post and colony (New Sweden) was established at Fort Christina (now in Wilmington) by the Dutchman Peter Minuit at the head of a group of Swedes, Finns and Dutch. Meanwhile, the Dutch established a new fort in 1651 at present day New Castle, under the leadership of New Netherlands' Governor Peter Stuyvesant. In 1655 New Sweden fell to the Dutch forces led under Gov. Stuyvesant, and it was incorporated into the Dutch New Netherlands. Only nine years later, in 1664, the Dutch were themselves forcibly removed by a British expedition under the direction of James, the Duke of York. Fighting off a prior claim by Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, Proprietor of Maryland, the Duke passed his somewhat dubious ownership on to William Penn in 1682. Penn badly wanted an outlet to the sea for his Pennsylvania province and leased what were now known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware" from the Duke. Semi-autonomous after 1704, Delaware fought as a separate state in the American Revolution and became the first state to ratify the Constitution in 1787. Penn established representative government and briefly combined his two possessions under one General Assembly in 1682. However, by 1704 the Province of Pennsylvania had grown so much, their representatives wanted to make decisions without the assent of the Lower Counties and the two groups of representatives began meeting on their own, one at Philadelphia, and the other at New Castle. Penn and his heirs remained the Proprietors of both and always appointed the same person Deputy Governor for their Province of Pennsylvania and their territory of the Lower Counties. The town of New Castle, a port on the Delaware River, became the colonial capital of the "Three Lower Counties" (Delaware) in 1704. They remained a part of Pennsylvania until 1776 when economic, cultural, and political differences fostered a permanent separation. The capital was moved from New Castle to Dover in 1777. Native American History Before Delaware was settled by Europeans, the area was home to the Eastern Algonquian tribes known as the Unami Lenape or Delaware, throughout the Delaware valley, and the Nanticoke along the rivers leading into the Chesapeake Bay. The Unami Lenape in the Delaware valley were closely related to Munsee Lenape tribes along the Hudson River. They had a settled hunting and agricultural society, and they rapidly became middlemen in an increasingly frantic fur trade with their ancient enemy, the Minqua or Susquehannock. With the loss of their lands on the Delaware River and the destruction of the Minqua by the Iroquois of the Five Nations in the 1670's, the remnants of the Lenape left the region and moved over the Alleghany Mountains by the mid 18th century. Delaware is also the name of a Native American group (called in their own name Lenni Lenape) that was very influential in the dawning days of the United States. A band of the Nanticoke tribe of Indians still remains in Sussex County. BACK