Wilmington is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. It lies at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine River. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area.
About Wilmington, Delaware in brief
Wilmington is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine River, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Wilmington was named by Proprietor Thomas Penn after his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who was prime minister during the reign of George II of Great Britain. As of the 2019 United States Census estimate, the city’s population is 70,166. The greatest growth in Wilmington occurred during the Civil War, when the village of Wilmington was annexed by the state. The DuPont company became a major supplier of gunpowder to the military. In 1778, Eleuthère du Pont, a French Huguenot, emigrated to the United States to make gunpowder. The company had begun making the explosive DuPont Knowledgeable by 1802, and had a mill on the Brandy Wine River north of Wilmington. The town was officially a member of the Confederate Union, though it was officially divided in its support of both the Union and the Confederate States of America during the American Revolutionary War, and became a part of both states in 1775 and 1777. It was also known as \”The Rocks\”, and is located near the foot of present-day Seventh Street. The area was called the Bear River because it flowed west to the People of Conestoga or the Susquehannocks.
The Dutch heard and spelled the river and the place as \”Minguannan. \” When settlers and traders from the Swedish South Company under Peter Minuit arrived in March 1638 on the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, they purchased Maax-waas Unk from Chief Mattahorn and built Fort Christina at the mouth of the Maax/Hanna River. The modern city also encompasses other Swedish settlements, such as Timmerön Timber Island, Sidoland, Strandviken and Översidolandet. 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, which was built by the Dutch in 1651. In 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 American. 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 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, to Wilmington, presumably after the British Prime Minister Spencer Compton.
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This page is based on the article Wilmington, Delaware published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
