Delaware Colony

The Delaware Colony was an English colony in North America. It was part of the Middle Colonies.

From the early Dutch settlement in 1631 to the colony’s rule by Pennsylvania in 1682, the land that later became the U.S. state of Delaware changed hands many times. Because of this, Delaware became a very heterogeneous society made up of individuals who were both religiously and culturally diverse.[citation needed]

During his voyage in 1609 to locate the Northwest Passage to Asia for the Dutch, Henry Hudson sailed into what now is the Delaware Bay. He would name it the South River, but this would later change after Samuel Argall discovered the river in 1610 after being blown off course. Argall would later rename the river Delaware, after his governor, Lord De La Warr.

Neither the Dutch nor the English showed any early interest in establishing any kind of settlement of this land. The first true attempt to settle the land came in 1631 when the Dutch sent a group of twenty-eight men to build a fort inside Cape Henlopen on Lewes Creek.[2] This first colony was established in order to take advantage of the large whale population and produce whale oil. However, by 1632, the entire colony was massacred by the native Indians because of misunderstandings.

Source: Wikipedia