Delaware Trivia & Tidbits - Page 8

Looking for Delaware trivia? Try our list Delaware little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

The 1780 Barratt’s Chapel in Frederica (pop. 648) is considered America’s “Cradle of Methodism.” It was there that the nation’s only remaining Methodist preacher, Francis Asbury, met England’s Thomas Coke in 1784. The meeting was the catalyst for the establishment of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.

first appeared: 7/25/2004

During the Civil War, thousands of Confederate soldiers were imprisoned at Pea Patch Island near Delaware City (pop. 1,453). The name reportedly came about when a ship carrying a cargo of peas grounded on the island.

first appeared: 7/18/2004

In 1929, Louis L. Redding, of Wilmington, became the first black lawyer admitted to the Delaware Bar Association. He was the primary litigant in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court desegregation case, Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kan.

first appeared: 7/11/2004

During the 19th century and up until the 1930s, Sussex County was the nation’s leading producer of holly, which was used for Christmas decorations. In 1939, the American holly was adopted as the state tree.

first appeared: 6/27/2004

The life of Eldridge Reeves Johnson, founder of the Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1901, is chronicled at the Johnson Victrola Museum in Dover (pop. 32,135).

first appeared: 6/20/2004

The 1732 courthouse in New Castle (pop. 4,862), one of the nation’s oldest, is where abolitionist Thomas Garrett was convicted in 1848 of violating the Fugitive Slave Act.

first appeared: 6/13/2004

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is not in Delaware. Actually, it preserves 40 miles of Delaware River shoreline in neighboring Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In a previous edition, we erroneously placed the recreation area in Delaware.

first appeared: 6/6/2004

Delaware had more than 800,000 peach trees in 1895, when the peach blossom was named state flower. Peaches were a leading crop until the late 1800s, when blight destroyed many of the orchards.

first appeared: 5/30/2004

Chesapeake Bay, North America’s largest estuary, was formed some 12,000 years ago when melting glaciers flooded the Susquehanna River Valley. The bay’s 64,000-square-mile watershed includes parts of Delaware and five other states.

first appeared: 5/23/2004

Despite asthma and cancer, Caesar Rodney rode 80 miles on horseback from Kent County to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to carry Delaware’s vote for independence in 1776.

first appeared: 5/16/2004

Dover International Speedway, known as “The Monster Mile,” expanded its seating capacity for 16 consecutive years from 1986 to 2001, increasing from 22,000 seats to its current 140,000. Driver Richard Petty won the speedway’s first race in 1969.

first appeared: 5/9/2004

Agriculture is the primary use of more than 40 percent of the state’s 1.25 million acres of land. Potatoes are the state’s leading fresh-market crop.

first appeared: 5/2/2004

The Delaware Saengerbund was founded in Wilmington in 1853 as a singing and social club for arriving German immigrants. The club’s Oktoberfest, originally a wedding festival for Bavarian royalty, is still held every fall.

first appeared: 4/25/2004

According to legend, one of the state’s nicknames—The Diamond State—came from Thomas Jefferson, who described Delaware as a “jewel” among states, due to its strategic location on the Eastern Seaboard.

first appeared: 4/18/2004

Ditch taxes, an unusual form of 19th-century revenue, developed in low-lying areas of this state as a means of paying for draining marshland and maintaining runoff channels.

first appeared: 4/11/2004

Though no Civil War battles were fought on Delaware soil, the state’s DuPont mills produced nearly half of the gunpowder used by Union troops.

first appeared: 4/4/2004

Delaware’s tall ship, the Kalmar Nyckel, is a full-scale reproduction of the vessel that brought the first settlers to the Delaware Valley from Sweden in 1638. The replica was launched in 1997.

first appeared: 3/21/2004

Ladybugs became the state’s official bug in 1974, after an intensive effort by Mollie Brown-Rust and her second-grade students at Lulu M. Ross Elementary School in Milford (pop. 48,168).

first appeared: 3/14/2004

Descendants of the original Nanticoke Indians, known as the “Tidewater People,” celebrate their heritage each September with the Nanticoke Indian Powwow about seven miles east of Millsboro (pop. 1,643).

first appeared: 3/7/2004

The state’s official marine animal, the horseshoe crab, can go a year without eating. The dangerous-looking but harmless creature has evolved little in 250 million years.

first appeared: 2/29/2004

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