11,500 years ago, people lived in the old state Delaware. We think they were from Asia by a land bridge that is now under water. Thousands of years later Native tribes came including Lenni Lenape and the Nanticoke. People think that the first European to arrive was Henry Hudson who got there in 1609.

When the civil war happened in 1861, Delaware was a slavery state. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declared all slaves in the United states, including in Delaware, to be free people.