List of counties in Delaware

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Delaware counties

The U.S. state of Delaware has three counties: New Castle, Kent, and Sussex.

Contents

1 County formation
2 County information
3 Notes
4 References

County formation

Following the English conquest of 1664, all of the western side of the Delaware River and Delaware Bay was governed as part of the New York Colony and was administered from the town of New Castle, Delaware. During the brief recapture of the colony by the Dutch in 1673, Governor Anthony Colve formally created additional court districts at Whorekill, now Lewes, Delaware, and Upland, now Chester, Pennsylvania, leaving the court at New Castle with the central portion of the colony.

The former Whorekill District was named for the Whorekill Creek and the Dutch community on it. The name remembered the amorous activity of Native American women at that location. The community became the town of Lewes, Delaware and was the county seat of the Whorekill District and then, after its division, of Deale or Sussex County. In 1791, with the expansion of Sussex County to the south and west, the county seat was moved to Georgetown.

Whorekill District was divided in 1680 into Deale County and St. Jones County and St. Jones County was soon renamed Kent County. The county seat was at Dover.

The jurisdiction left to the court at New Castle became New Castle County, and the county seat remained at New Castle until 1881 when it was moved to Wilmington.

The former Upland District was named for the Swedish settlement of Upland and renamed Chester County in 1682 by William Penn. It has since been divided into Delaware County and Chester County and was wholly within the present boundaries of Pennsylvania.

The boundaries between the districts were not well defined, and there is some indication that before 1682 the Upland District served the Swedish and Finnish population throughout the central Delaware Valley, and New Castle served the Dutch and the few English.

Lord Baltimore, the Proprietor of Maryland claimed all of present-day Delaware, and organized the northern and eastern portions of it as Durham County, Maryland. This county existed only on paper. The southern and western portions of present-day Sussex County were organized as portions of several adjacent Maryland counties and were not recognized as part of Sussex County, Delaware until the Mason-Dixon Survey was run in 1767.

County information

FIPS County Code The FIPS county code is the five-digit Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code which uniquely identifies counties and county equivalents in the United States. The three-digit number is unique to each individual county within a state, but to be unique within the entire United States, it must be prefixed by the state code. This means that, for example, while Kent County, Delaware is number 001, Allegheny County, Maryland and Bristol County, Rhode Island also have the number 001. There also is a Kent County, Maryland with the number 029 and a Kent County, Rhode Island with the number 003. To uniquely identify Kent County, Delaware, you would need to use the state code of 10 plus the county code of 001. Thus the unique identifier for the entire United States for Kent County, Delaware would be 10001, for New Castle County would be 10003, and Sussex County would be 10005.	County Name	Created	Parent County	Previous Names	County Seat	Population (2000)	area (sq. miles)	Origin of Name	Link
[001]	Kent Kent County was named by William Penn in 1682 and was originally called St. Jones County.	1680	Whorekill Whorekill District was created in 1673 and divided into Deale County and St. Jones County in 1680.	St. Jones	Dover	126,697	426	County of Kent, England	[Kent County]
[003]	New Castle	1664	original		Wilmington The county seat of New Castle County was at New Castle until 1881.	500,265	590	Town of New Castle	[New Castle County]
[005]	Sussex Sussex County was named by William Penn in 1682 after his native county in England, and was originally called Deale County.	1680	Whorekill Whorekill District was created in 1673 and divided into Deale County and St. Jones County in 1680.	Deale	Georgetown The county seat of Sussex County was at Lewes until 1791.	156,638	938	County of Sussex, England	[Sussex County]
	TOTAL					783,600	1,954

The FIPS state code for Delaware is "10."
The link shown under FIPS county code is to the U.S. Census Bureau State and County Quick facts page for that county.

Notes

References

	State of Delaware • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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