Editing Delmarva Peninsula (section)

===Colonization===
[[Image:feralpony.jpg|thumb|A feral pony of [[Assateague Island]]]]

In 1566, an expedition sent from [[Spanish Florida]] by [[Pedro Menéndez de Avilés]] reached the Delmarva Peninsula. The expedition consisted of two [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] friars, thirty soldiers and an indigenous Virginia boy, [[Don Luis]], in an effort to set up a Spanish colony in the Chesapeake. At the time, the Spanish believed the Chesapeake to be an opening to the fabled [[Northwest Passage]]. However, a storm thwarted their attempts at establishing a colony.<ref name="Milanich1999">{{cite book |last=Milanich |first=Jerald T. |author-link=Jerald T. Milanich |year=1999 |title=Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians |url=https://archive.org/details/laboringinfields00mila |url-access=registration |location=Washington, D.C. & London |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |page=92 |isbn=9781560989400 |access-date=March 7, 2022 |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref> The land that is currently Delaware was first colonized by the [[Dutch West India Company]] in 1631 as [[Zwaanendael Colony|Zwaanendael]]. That colony lasted one year before a dispute with local Indians led to its destruction. In 1638, [[New Sweden]] was established which colonized the northern part of the state, together with the [[Delaware Valley]]. Eventually, the Dutch, who had maintained that their claim to Delaware arose from the colony of 1631, recaptured Delaware and incorporated the colony into the Colony of [[New Netherland]].

However, shortly thereafter Delaware came under British control in 1664. [[James I of England]] had granted Virginia 400 miles of Atlantic coast centered on [[Cape Comfort]], extending west to the Pacific Ocean to a company of colonists in a series of charters from 1606 to 1611. This included a piece of the peninsula. The land was transferred from the [[James II of England|Duke of York]] to [[William Penn]] in 1682 and was governed with [[Pennsylvania]]. The exact border was determined by the Chancery Court in 1735. In 1776, the counties of [[Kent County, Delaware|Kent]], [[New Castle County, Delaware|New Castle]], and [[Sussex County, Delaware|Sussex]] declared their independence from Pennsylvania and entered the United States as the state of [[Delaware]].

In the 1632 Charter of Maryland, King [[Charles I of England]] granted "all that Part of the Peninsula, or Chersonese, lying in the Parts of America, between the Ocean on the East and the Bay of Chesapeake on the West, divided from the Residue thereof by a Right Line drawn from the Promontory, or Head-Land, called Watkin's Point, situate upon the Bay aforesaid, near the river Wigloo, on the West, unto the main Ocean on the East; and between that Boundary on the South, unto that Part of the Bay of Delaware on the North, which lieth under the Fortieth Degree of North Latitude from the Equinoctial, where New England is terminated" to [[Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore]], as the colony of Maryland. This would have included all of present-day [[Delaware]]; however, a clause in the charter granted only that part of the peninsula that had not already been colonized by Europeans by 1632. Over a century later, it was decided in the case of ''[[Penn v Lord Baltimore]]'' that, because the Dutch had colonized Zwaanendael in 1631, the portion of Maryland's charter granting Delaware to Maryland was void.