Delaware Colony in the North American Middle Colonies

Middle Colonies

The Middle Colonies comprised the middle region of the Thirteen Colonies of the British Empire in Northern America. In 1776 during the American Revolution, the Middle Colonies became independent of Britain as the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware.Much of the area was part of...

 was a region of the Province of Pennsylvania

Province of Pennsylvania

The Province of Pennsylvania, also known as Pennsylvania Colony, was founded in British America by William Penn on March 4, 1681 as dictated in a royal charter granted by King Charles II...

 although never legally a separate colony

Colony

In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....

. From 1682 until 1776 it was part of the Penn proprietorship and was known as the lower counties. In 1701 it gained a separate Assembly from the three upper counties but had the same Governor as the rest of Pennsylvania.
The first European exploration of what would become the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River by the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 ship Halve Maen

Halve Maen

The Halve Maen was a Dutch East India Company vlieboot which sailed into what is now New York harbor in September 1609. It was commissioned by the Dutch Republic to covertly find an eastern passage to China...

under the command of Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century. Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a prospective Northeast Passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle...

 in 1609.