The Early Settlement of Delaware County to the Grant of the Province to William Penn

The first vessel under the control of white men whose prow ever ruffled the bosom of the great sheet of water now known to the world as Delaware Bay was the "Half Moon" ("Halvemann"), of eighty tons burden, an exploring vessel belonging to the Dutch East India Company, commanded by Henry Hudson. The log-book of Robert Jewett, the mate, records that about noon of Friday, Aug. 28, 1609, a warm, clear day, "we found the land to tend away N. W. with a great bay and river." The lead line, however, disclosing many shoal places, the vessel, next morning, was put about and steered on a southeast course, the officers being convinced that "he that will thoroughly explore this great bay must have a small pinnace that must draw but four or five feet water, to sound before him."

The following year Sir Samuel Argall is said to have entered the bay; and in honor of Thomas West, Lord De La War, the then Governor of Virginia, he named it Delaware Bay. In 1610, Lord Delaware, it is stated, himself visited it, and again in 1618, when he died on his vessel when off the Capes. In 1614, Capt. Cornelius Jacobsz Mey, in the "Fortune," a vessel owned by the city of Hoorn, entered the bay, and in commemoration of his visit Cape Cornelius and Cape May between them still bear his name. Two years subsequent to Mey's voyage, Capt. Cornelius Hendrickson, in a small yacht, the "Restless," is positively asserted by some historians - and the statement is almost as positively denied by others - to have explored the Delaware as far as where the Schuylkill empties into the former river. If it be true that Capt. Hendrickson did actually sail up the stream to the place named, he was the first European of whom we have record that saw any part of the land now comprising the county of Delaware, for this vessel moved along the river the entire length of our southeastern boundary, and he must have noticed the localities where afterwards was planted that germ of civilization from which has evolved the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The history of the various attempts of the Dutch and Swedish powers to establish permanent lodgment on the Delaware is a most interesting theme to the student of our colonial annals. Especially is this true since the indefatigable labors of the members of the Historical Societies of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey have unearthed in recent years a number of authentic documents and historical papers whose very existence was unknown, which now shed much light on those early days of adventurous colonization. But the scope of this work forbids other than a brief narrative of those events excepting where, happening wholly within the territory now comprising Delaware County, they become part of the immediate story of this locality.

In 1621, in Holland, was incorporated the great West India Company, which while its object was a monopoly of the trade of the territory where it might locate posts simply for barter with the savages, the practical results of its efforts was the establishment of a permanent colony in New York and, in a measure, the settlement of the Delaware. Under the auspices of this company, in 1624, Capt. Mey located a garrison ¹ near the mouth of Timber Creek, Gloucester Co., N. J., and built Fort Nassau, which post was abandoned the year following. Nevertheless the Dutch company did now relinquish its purpose of making a permanent lodgment on the Delaware, and with that end in view, Samuel Goodyn and Samuel Bloemmaert in 1631 purchased from three of the chiefs of the resident tribe of Indians a large tract of land, sixteen miles square, extending from Cape Henlopen northward towards the mouth of the river. To this purchase - athough it was not made until after the arrival of the vessel in the winter of 1630-31, which was remarkably mild - Capt. Peter Hayes, in the ship "Walrus," conveyed a small colony, which he located on Lewes Creek, designed to establish a whale- and seal-fishery station there, as well as plantations for

"New York, February 14, 1684-5.
"The deposition of Catelina Tricho, aged fouer score yeares or thereabouts, taken before the right hono^ble Collo. Thomas, Leu^t and Governour under his Roy^ll high^ss James, Duke of York and Albany, etc., of N. York and its Dependencyes in America, who saith and declares in the pr'sens of God as followeth:
"That she came to this Province either in the year one thousand six hundred and twenty-three or twenty-fouer, to the best of her rememberance, and that fouer women came along with her in the same shipp, in which the Governor, Arien Jorissen, came also over, which fouer women were married at Sea, and that they and their husbands stayed about three weeks at this place, and then they with eight seamen more went in a vessel by ord^rs of the Dutch Governo^r to Delaware river and there settled. This I Certifie under my hand and ye Seale of this province
"Tho. Dongan."