Editing Kent County, Delaware (section)

==History==
[[File:Seal of Kent County Delaware 1683.jpg|thumb|1683 Seal of Kent County]]
In about 1670 the [[England|English]] began to settle in the valley of the [[St. Jones River]], earlier known as Wolf Creek. On June 21, 1680, the Duke of York chartered St. Jones County, which was carved out of New Amstel/New Castle and Hoarkill/Sussex counties. St. Jones County was transferred to [[William Penn]] on August 24, 1682, and became part of Penn's newly chartered [[Delaware]] Colony.<ref>''NEW YORK: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries'' by John H. Long and Kathryn Ford Thorne</ref>

Penn ordered a court town to be laid out, and the courthouse was built in 1697. The town of Dover, named after the town of [[Dover, Kent|Dover]] in England's Kent, was finally laid out in 1717, in what was then known as the Lower Counties. It was designated as the capital of Delaware in 1777. In 1787 Delaware was first state to ratify the [[U.S. Constitution]], and became "the First State." Through much of the late 18th century, the economy of Kent County was based on small grain farms. As a result, farmers did not need as many slaves as did owners of tobacco plantations. Delaware had a high proportion of free blacks among its African-American population by the early 19th century. 
[[File:NEW KENT COUNTY COURTHOUSE, DOVER, DELAWARE.jpg|thumb|The new courthouse]]

In the 1960s, Dover was a center of manufacturing of spacesuits worn by NASA astronauts in the [[Project Apollo|Apollo]] moon flights by [[ILC Dover]], now based in the small town of [[Frederica, Delaware|Frederica]]. The suits, dubbed the "A7L," was first flown on the [[Apollo 7]] mission in October 1967, and was the suit worn by [[Neil Armstrong]] and [[Buzz Aldrin]] on the [[Apollo 11]] mission. The company still manufactures spacesuits to this day—the present-day Space Shuttle "soft" suit components (the arms and legs of the suit).