Newark

Wars History of Newark

Lenape Territory and the Walking Purchase (Pre-1737)

Before European settlement, the Newark area was part of the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, who had lived in the region for thousands of years. The Lenape occupied seasonal settlements along the White Clay Creek and Christina River, practicing agriculture, hunting, and fishing. The Walking Purchase of 1737—a fraudulent land grab orchestrated by William Penn's sons—resulted in the theft of 1.2 million acres of Lenape territory, including the land that would become Newark. The Lenape, who called the transaction 'The Hurry Walk,' were forced westward into Ohio. This dispossession laid the foundation for European settlement of Newark, first settled by Scots-Irish immigrants around 1694. The Lenape were among the first to encounter Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers, and experienced a 90 percent population decline through disease, war, and forced removal. The Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, now centered near Cheswold north of Dover, continues to reclaim ancestral lands and culture in the 21st century.

The Battle of Cooch's Bridge and the British Invasion (1777)

The Battle of Cooch's Bridge, fought on September 3, 1777, was the only battle of the American Revolutionary War fought on Delaware soil and took place just three miles south of Newark. A British army of 18,000 troops under General William Howe, having landed at Head of Elk, Maryland, marched toward Philadelphia. General George Washington dispatched a light infantry corps of 1,000 picked men under Brigadier General William Maxwell to contest the British advance. The Americans, including Continental soldiers from Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina alongside Delaware militia, ambushed Hessian Jäger troops led by Captain Johann Ewald along the road from Aiken's Tavern (modern Glasgow) to Cooch's Bridge. The fighting lasted seven hours, with intense skirmishing through woods and fields, at times devolving into hand-to-hand combat. The Americans ran low on ammunition and were forced to retreat across Cooch's Bridge after desperate fighting with bayonets and swords. The British claimed 50 American dead; the Americans admitted 20 killed and 20 wounded. Three to nine Hessian wagons carried British wounded. Lord Cornwallis used the Thomas Cooch House as his headquarters from September 3-8. A local legend holds that the Stars and Stripes was first carried into battle at Cooch's Bridge, though this is disputed by scholars. The battle was the opening engagement of the Philadelphia Campaign, leading to the larger Battle of Brandywine on September 11.

The War of 1812 and the DuPont Powder Mills

During the War of 1812, Newark and the surrounding region played a critical supporting role through the DuPont powder mills on the Brandywine Creek north of Wilmington, founded by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont in 1802. The British blockade of the Delaware Bay and River, declared in December 1812 and enforced from early 1813, threatened the region. Royal Navy vessels under Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren bombarded Lewes for 22 hours on April 6-7, 1813, using Congreve rockets for the first time against Americans. The British conducted raids throughout the Delaware River, destroying approximately 20 ships. E.I. du Pont and his brother Victor organized militia companies called the Brandywine Rangers, composed of millworkers, to protect Wilmington and the powder yards from British attack. American gunpowder production at DuPont soared from 204,046 pounds in 1811 to 519,551 pounds in 1814, with 374,000 pounds going to the U.S. government. Despite the fear of invasion, British forces never reached Newark, but the war transformed DuPont from a small operation into a major industrial concern that would shape Delaware's economy for the next two centuries.

The Civil War: Slavery, Delaware College, and Fort Delaware (1861–1865)

During the Civil War, Newark was deeply divided by the slavery question. Delaware, though a border state that remained in the Union, was a slave state where slavery was legal until December 1865. Delaware College (predecessor to the University of Delaware) was deeply entangled with slavery. Rathmell Wilson, President of the College's Board of Trustees, was an enslaver who owned the Chase family—Ann, Charles, Henry, and Sewell—manumitted on delayed schedules that kept them in bondage for years. Wilson also fought against abolition, blocking an anti-slavery speaker from appearing in Newark in 1852 and running for State Senate in 1862 on the pro-slavery Democratic ticket. Delaware College students debated slavery in their literary societies, with topics like 'Should the Missouri Compromise be reversed?' When a freedom seeker sought shelter on campus in December 1853, College President Reverend W.S.F. Graham refused aid, stating 'the College must not break the law even when the law seems wrong.' The DuPont powder mills supplied nearly one-third of the Union's gunpowder during the war, but production came at a terrible cost: on February 26, 1863, a packing room explosion destroyed 10,000 pounds of powder and killed 13 men; two more explosions that year killed 40 more. Just 10 miles from Newark, Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island held over 33,000 Confederate prisoners, with approximately 2,500 dying from disease and malnutrition. The war profoundly shaped Newark, leaving a legacy of racial division that would take over a century to begin addressing.

Modern Conflicts: Civil Rights, Desegregation, and Racial Justice (1950–Present)

Newark became a battleground for civil rights in the 20th century. The University of Delaware was segregated until 1950, when Louis L. Redding, Delaware's first Black attorney, won Parker v. University of Delaware. Redding presented evidence of vast disparities between Delaware State College for Negroes and the University of Delaware: inadequate facilities, no faculty tenure, a library one-tenth the size, and lack of accreditation. Chancellor Collins J. Seitz ordered the university to admit Black students, integrating not just the university but eventually movie theaters, hospitals, and retail stores across the state. However, the African American community of New London Road in Newark—a free Black neighborhood established in the 1840s when Rathmell Wilson sold land to Black families like Isaac Bacchus—was gradually displaced by the expanding university footprint. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, the University of Delaware launched the Antiracism Initiative, with over 350 faculty, staff, and students forming 20 subcommittees. The Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession at UD Committee was formed, producing extensive research into the university's ties to slavery, including the role of Rathmell Wilson and the Lewis family. The university joined the Universities Studying Slavery consortium in 2021. This ongoing reckoning with Newark's history of racial injustice represents the modern front in the city's long trajectory of conflict over freedom and equality.