Delaware Colony
former colony in North America, part of Great Britain
Delaware Colony was a North American colony. It was in land on the bank of the Delaware River Bay. People settled to here in the 1600s. The first people here were Lenape and possibly the Assateague tribes of Native Americans. The first European settlers were Swedes. In the 1700s, Delaware Colony's English colonists were mostly quaker.
Lower Counties on the Delaware Bay | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1664–1776 | |||||||||
.svg) | |||||||||
 Delaware in 1757 | |||||||||
| Status | Colony of England (1664–1707) Colony of Great Britain (1707–76) | ||||||||
| Capital | New Castle | ||||||||
| Common languages | English, Dutch, Munsee, Unami | ||||||||
| Government | Constitutional monarchy | ||||||||
| Legislature | General Assembly of Delaware Colony | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1664 | ||||||||
| 1776 | |||||||||
| Currency | Delaware pound | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | United States | ||||||||
The Lower Counties of Delaware were governed from Pennsylvania from 1682 until 1701. The Lower Counties then petitioned to become a colony. This made the two colonies independent. They had the same governor until 1776. At the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, the colonies decided to create the state of Delaware.
Sources change
- Johnson, Amandus. The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1638–1664 (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911)
- Weslager, C. A. A Man and His Ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel ( Kalmar Nyckel Foundation. Wilmington, Delaware. 1989)