Delaware's Anthem - It's Ours, NOT Yours Quiz

Answer:

So, Delaware, like many other states, has a state song that became official around the turn of the 20th century. Again, like most of these songs, it was originally a poem honouring the state and then turned into a song by adding a musical score and voted to become the official state song in 1925.

The song itself is interesting, mostly for the conceit of its construction. It has four verses, one for each of the three (that's right, only three) counties in the state, and a fourth verse for the state as a whole. Delaware has the fewest counties of any state in the USA - OK my pedants, technically Alaska and Louisiana have less, with zero. Alaska only uses boroughs and Louisiana has parishes, but come on! Delaware is the second-smallest state and the 46th most- populated, and so they only divided the state into three.

The first verse honours New Castle, the northernmost county in the state. The most populous county in the state, it is also home to its most populous city, Wilmington. The city was laid out and settled in 1638, not by the usual suspects - the English, the French, the Spanish, or even the Dutch- but by the Swedes! By the early 1650s the Swedes and the Dutch were in nearly open war for the possession of the Delaware river and Peter Stuyvesant came down from what would become New York and New Jersey to drive out the Swedes. By 1655 he had, until the much stronger English forced the transfer of all lands to them in 1663.

Kent, the middle county, is next on the list. This is the least populated of the three counties but holds the state capital, Dover. The area was only sparsely populated during the Swedish and Dutch eras and even under the English it remained mostly uninhabited, by Europeans at least. It finally had life breathed into it when it was transferred to William Penn as part of his expansion into the New World that gave us Pennsylvania. Though not having many other claims to fame, this county was at one time the largest manufacturer of spacesuits and still makes spacesuit components to the present day.

Sussex country, the southernmost county was so ignored by the English once they had taken control of it that by the time they got around to sending in a trickle of settlers the Swedes, well established as they were, simply welcomed the English in and lived harmoniously together. The few Dutch that were there suffered a different fate, being rounded up and sold into slavery in the Virgina colony. The writ of law didn't run very strong in this part of Delaware and soon Sussex country became a breeding ground for pirates. The final shape of this country arose from a three-way dispute between Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware itself. The dispute finally being resolved in the mid-1700s with the establishment of the Mason-Dixon line.

Finally, it is worth noting that Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, mostly due to its small size providing no overt opposition to the new document.