Delaware - why does it exist?

[crypto]

No offense intended for anyone from Delaware, but based on what I’ve been able to uncover, Delaware was originally part of Pennsylvania. It would seem that Pennsylvania would want to keep this part of her colony, as it was on the Atlantic seaboard, and removed any holdings that directly rested on the ocean.

Pennsylvania did, of course, have Philadelphia, which was the largest port at the time in the colonies, but to give up the chunk of land that turned into Delaware doesn’t seem to make any sense from an economic POV. Even back then, I’m sure this didn’t slip by the decision-makers in Pennsylvania.

So, why was it done? And how was it done? Did England just carve that part of Wm. Penn’s land grant away without discussion, or was there some other transfer method?

[SirRay]

From the book “American Colonies” by Alan Taylor (2001)

One factional divide set the older, non-Quaker settlements of the Lower Delaware (the three ‘Lower Counties’) against the more numerous and mostly Quaker new-comers dwelling upriver in the three “Upper Counties”.
…
More vulnerable to French and pirate attacks by sea, the Lower Counties demanded defense appropriations to arm their militia and strengthen their coastal fortifications. But the Quaker assemblymen balked, for their constituents were more securely located upriver, committed to pacifism, and determined to minimize their taxes
…
Unable to reconcile the two regions, Penn consented to their division in 1704 into the distinct colonies of Pennsylvania and Delaware…

Remember, the future Delaware was the former area of the Swedish colony (the book states the immigrants were really from all over Europe, but mostly Finland), and had a more heterogenous background (including religions) than the later settled Pennsylvania

[jasg]

I believe that Delaware was part of New Amsterdam and thus was a Dutch colony which had absorbed New Sweden. After the English took over in 1664, the residents did not want to a part of Papist Maryland or Quaker Pennsylvania - and formed Delaware in order to maintain their Dutch Reformed Church.

[Captain_Amazing]

Part of the problem is that, when William Penn framed the Pennsylvania government, he decided that every county (there were six, three Lower Counties; New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, and three Upper Counties; Chester, Philadelphia, and Bucks) would have an equal number of assemblymen, and that the Assembly would meet every other year in New Castle and Philadelphia. As the population of the Upper Counties grew, the Upper County assemblymen grew to resent that they couldn’t get any laws passed without the consent of the sparsely populated Lower Counties, and also didn’t like having to trek out to New Castle every other year.

So, in 1704, both Assemblies got the right to meet separately, although they shared a common governor/proprietor until the Revolution.