Wilmington, Delaware - History

History

The area now known as Wilmington was first colonized by settlers from Sweden who in March 1638 arrived on the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel. They established Fort Christina at the mouth of the Christina River at the area known as "The Rocks", located near the foot of present-day Seventh Street. Fort Christina served as the headquarters for the colony of New Sweden which consisted of, for the most part, the lower Delaware River region (parts of present day Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey), but few colonists settled there. Dr. Timothy Stidham (Swedish:Timen Lulofsson Stiddem) was a prominent citizen and doctor in Wilmington. He was born in 1610, probably in Hammel, Denmark and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden. He arrived in New Sweden in 1654 and is recorded as the first physician in Delaware.

The most important Swedish governor was Colonel Johan Printz, who ruled the colony under Swedish law from 1643 to 1653. He was succeeded by Johan Rising, who upon his arrival in 1654, seized the Dutch post Fort Casimir, located at the site of the present town of New Castle, which was built by the Dutch in 1651. Rising governed New Sweden until the autumn of 1655, when a Dutch fleet under the command of Peter Stuyvesant subjugated the Swedish forts and established the authority of the Colony of New Netherland throughout the area formerly controlled by the Swedes. This marked the end of Swedish rule in North America.

Beginning in 1664 British colonization began; after a series of wars between the Dutch and English, the area stabilized under British rule, with strong influences from the Quaker communities under the auspices of Proprietor William Penn. A borough charter was granted in 1739 by King George II, which changed the name of the settlement from Willington, after Thomas Willing the first developer of the land who organized the area in a grid pattern similar to that of its northern neighbor Philadelphia, to Wilmington, presumably after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.

Although during the American Revolutionary War only one small battle was fought in Delaware, British troops occupied Wilmington shortly after the nearby Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. The British remained in the town until they vacated Philadelphia in 1778.

In 1800, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, a French Huguenot emigrated to the United States. Knowledgeable in the manufacture of gunpowder, by 1802 DuPont had begun making the explosive on the banks of the Brandywine River, just outside of the town of Wilmington. The DuPont company became a major supplier to the U.S. military.

The greatest growth in the city occurred during the Civil War. Delaware, though officially remaining a member of the Union, was a border state and divided in its support of both the Confederate and the Union causes. The war created enormous demand for goods and materials supplied by Wilmington including ships, railroad cars, gunpowder, shoes, and other war-related goods.

By 1868, Wilmington was producing more iron ships than the rest of the country combined and it rated first in the production of gunpowder and second in carriages and leather. Due to the prosperity Wilmington enjoyed during the war, city merchants and manufacturers expanded Wilmington's residential boundaries westward in the form of large homes along tree-lined streets. This movement was spurred by the first horsecar line, which was initiated in 1864 along Delaware Avenue.

The late 19th century saw the development of the city's first comprehensive park system. William Bancroft, a successful Wilmington businessman, led the effort to establish open parkland in Wilmington and was heavily influenced by the work of Frederick Law Olmsted. Rockford Park and Brandywine Park were created due to Bancroft's efforts.

Both World Wars stimulated the city's industries. Industries vital to the war effort – shipyards, steel foundries, machinery, and chemical producers – operated on a 24-hour basis. Other industries produced such goods as automobiles, leather products, and clothing.

The post war prosperity again pushed the residential development further out of the city. The 1950s saw a large increase in people living in the suburbs of North Wilmington and commuting into the city to work. This lifestyle was made possible by extensive upgrades to area roads and highways and through the construction of Interstate 95, which cut through several of Wilmington's neighborhoods and contributed to significant population losses in the city. Urban renewal projects in the 1950s and 1960s cleared entire blocks of housing in the Center City and East Side areas.

Riots and civil unrest in the city following the 1968 assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and in response, on April 9, 1968, Governor Charles L. Terry, Jr. deployed the National Guard and the Delaware State Police to the city at the request of Mayor John Babiarz. One week later, Mayor Babiarz requested the National Guard troops be withdrawn, but Governor Terry refused, and kept them in the city until his term ended in January 1969. This is reportedly the longest occupation of an American city by state forces in the nation's history.

In the 1980s, the city experienced tremendous job growth and office construction when many national banks and financial institutions relocated to the area after the Financial Center Development Act of 1981 substantially liberalized the laws governing banks operating within the state. In 1986, the state adopted legislation targeted at attracting international finance and insurance companies. Today, many national and international banks, including Bank of America, Chase, and Barclays, have operations in the city, with these typically being their credit card operations.