Day 29: Touring the first town in the first state

We finally got around to visiting some of the museums and historic sites that are right under our noses here in Lewes.

I’ve mentioned some of this in earlier posts but Lewes was “discovered” in 1609 by Henry Hudson (there were, of course, native people who had been living here for centuries). Hudson was looking for a northwest passage to the Pacific ocean and was probably a little miffed when the promising Delaware Bay turned out to be the Delaware River, and New York harbor turned into the Hudson River.

Although he did not find what he was looking for, Hudson claimed the area for the Netherlands (Hudson was English but was employed by the Dutch) and called the two places north bay and south bay.

A year later an Englishman by the name of Samuel Argall sailed into the "south bay" and he named the cape here in honor of the governor of Virginia at the time, Lord de la Ware. The cape was eventually renamed Henlopen, after a place in the Netherlands, but the name Delaware stuck and was eventually applied to the larger area that included the bay, the river and, ultimately, the state.

Hudson supposedly suggested the spot in the south bay that is now Lewes might be a good place for a whaling station and, in 1631, two or three dozen guys showed up to start one; calling the place Zwanendael in the Walvis. Zwanendael means valley of the swan and Walvis means whale (and it was also the name of the the ship that brought them across the Atlantic).

When a supply ship showed up a year later all of the guys were dead, apparently the result of a “cultural misunderstanding” with the locals. There are lots of theories about the nature of this “cultural misunderstanding” but the one that makes the most sense to me is that the Dutch boys got a little too friendly with some of the native women, and the native men exacted a harsh punishment.

Such has been the downfall of many.

In 1638 the Swedes settled in what is now Wilmington and that community flourished to a much greater extent than did Zwanendael.

For the next 40 years or so there was back and forth bickering among the Dutch and the Swedes and Lord Baltimore over in Maryland but that was pretty much settled when William Penn arrived in 1682 and renamed the place Lewes, declaring it to be the seat of the new Sussex County, one of Pennsylvania’s three “lower counties of the Delaware.”

The three counties gradually but steadily grew away from Pennsylvania and into self-governance, eventually becoming a separate colony just a month before the revolution.

This story is told in the Zwaanendael Museum (pictured below) which was built in 1931, the 300^th anniversary of the founding of the settlement by the horny whalers. The building is modeled after the town hall in Hoorn, the Netherlands.

The Presbyterian Church is just down the street from the museum and I’ve posted a photo of the church (below) to show what I have described in earlier posts as the propensity for churches in Delaware to be surrounded by cemeteries.

The next photo (below) is the Episcopal Church in “downtown Lewes”. This building was built in 1854 but it is the third church building on the site as it evolved from the Church of England into Trinity Episcopal Church.

In addition to (of course) a cemetery, the grounds of the church include a meditative labyrinth and you can see in the photo below that I am "getting my zen on" as I prepare to enter the labyrinth.

In the 19^th century the construction of the two breakwaters and the two lighthouses (that I have described in previous posts) helped Lewes become an important harbor for fishing vessels and for the pilots that, to this day, travel out from here to board ships near the mouth of the bay to guide them through the tricky waters as the bay narrows to a river in Wilmington and, eventually, Philadelphia. The photo below is the "lightship" Overfalls, literally a portable lighthouse. Lightships were used in the 19th and early 20th century. Built in 1938, the Overfalls is one of the last lightships constructed in the U.S.

Obviously, the folks here in Lewes are quite proud of their lighthouse/ship history.

In the 20^th century it is important to note that, as Rehoboth Beach and Cape May were developing as tourist spots, Lewes was primarily a working-class town centered on fishing for a type of fish known as Menhaden. Menhaden were netted in great quantities and processed for their oil. By the mid-20th century most of the people that lived in Lewes were linked in some way to the Menhaden fishing industry.

A major transition took place in the mid-1960s when the Menhaden declined sharply. Fortuitously, both the Cape May ferry and the state park opened in 1964 and a branch of the University of Delaware that is devoted to marine sciences opened in 1970. Now the town caters primarily to tourism and sport fishing, attracting well-to-do retirees and getting a nice boost from the university.

Although there was supposedly a 100 percent chance of rain today only a few sprinkles fell and we spent most of the afternoon walking around downtown, visiting the many historic sites. The threat of rain may have kept the workers away and it was a blissfully quiet morning.