The Old Town of New Castle , Delaware 
NEW CASTLE 
THE EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH 
cedar trees among the white tombstones stand 
out against the church. The wooden spire 
rises out of a beautifully proportioned English 
tower. Seen from all sides, it is picturesque. 
The great open square with avenues of lofty 
maples and here and there an aged button- 
wood or elm is divided into smaller plazas by 
such beautiful old buildings as the court¬ 
house, the church, the “academy,” the school- 
house (formerly an United States arsenal) 
and The Town Hall. About this common, 
which was a grant to the town by William 
Penn, are houses of which scarcely one strikes 
a discordant note. Even the surrounding 
streets lend to the picture the old fashioned 
names of Market, Delaware, Harmony, and 
Orange. New Castle lies here forgotten, 
spreading itself in dreamy irregularity over 
ground first picked from the wilderness by 
the Dutch in 1653. 
About twenty years before this, a ship 
loaded with provisions, cattle and seed, and 
carrying thirty Hollanders, had landed its 
cargo on the Delaware shore just above 
Cape Henlopen. The settlement was called 
Lewes, but the poor emigrants who built a 
fort and planted seed, never saw another 
spring, for they were every one massacred by 
the Indians. Seven years later a band of 
fifty Swedes sailed into the Delaware under 
the leadership of Peter Minuet. Passing 
the beautiful curve of New Castle,—for the 
sand did not seem to offer land favorable for 
farming,—they found a place suitable to their 
purpose near Wilmington. Success and fail¬ 
ure in turn met this primitive colony. Once 
they were on the point of departing for New 
Amsterdam; but reinforced from time to time 
by newcomers from Sweden, with provisions 
and goods for trading, they ultimately flour¬ 
ished. On the Delaware, at Gloucester, New 
jersey, the Dutch had a stronghold called 
Fort Nassau, which is said to have been built 
as early as 1623 ; but this was too far up to 
hold command over the navigation of the 
river, jealous of the growing power of the 
Swedes, Peter Stuyvesant, who was then 
Director-General at New Amsterdam, sent an 
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