We are told that DeVries had almost finished his preparations and was expecting soon to return to Zwannendael, but that when he heard the tidings he was overcome.
The return voyage was given up, for the new colonists were afraid to risk the fate of the others. And so, in the massacre of Zwannendael, ended the first settlement ever made on Delaware soil.
Yet still the land had been possessed by the Dutch. It was not, any more, unclaimed land that belonged to any man that came along. When the King of England gave away all the land along that part of the coast to Lord Baltimore, only three years later, he could not give this land of Delaware, because it had already been settled by DeVries for Holland. Our state began when the Dutch colonists first stepped ashore on Paradise Point.
NOTES
[1] Bancroft says, “The voyage of DeVries was the cradling of a state, and that Delaware exists as a separate commonwealth is due to the colony he brought and planted on her shore. Though the colony was swept out of existence soon after, this charter, three years before the Maryland patent was granted Lord Baltimore, preserved Delaware.”
[2] Giles Hosset in this position as Director of the Colony may well be called the first Governor of Delaware.