The colony The Dutch who established the first European settlement in Delaware at Lewes in 1631 were killed by Indians, and it was not until 1638 that a permanent settlement was planted--by Swedes at Fort Christina, now Wilmington; they reputedly erected America's first log cabins in this colony of New Sweden. The Dutch from New Amsterdam (New York) conquered the Swedes in 1655, and the English seized the colony from the Dutch in 1664. Thereafter, except for a brief Dutch reconquest in 1673, Delaware was administered as part of New York until 1682, when the Duke of York ceded it to William Penn, who wanted it so that his colony of Pennsylvania could have access to the ocean. Though Penn tried to unite the Delaware counties with Pennsylvania, both sides resented union. In 1704 he allowed Delaware an assembly of its own. Pennsylvania and Delaware shared an appointed governor until the Revolution. Only in 1776 did the name Delaware--deriving from Sir Thomas West, 12th Baron De La Warr, a governor of Virginia--become official, though it had been applied to the bay in 1610 and gradually thereafter to the adjoining land. Bright Star