Wilmington, Delaware: Thomas Willing or an English Earl?

Wilmington, Delaware, started out as Willingtown, and two old reference books disagree on whether its 1739 name honors Thomas Willing or an English earl. Henry Gannett’s 1905 list of American place names, put out by the U.S. Geological Survey, says “Wilmington” is just a garbled version of Willing’s town. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says the town was renamed for Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.

Thomas Willing’s town lots

The first part of the story isn’t in doubt. In 1728, Thomas Willing married Catharine, the daughter of Andrew Justison, who owned land along the Christiana. In 1731, his father-in-law deeded him part of it. Writing in his History of Delaware (1888), J. Thomas Scharf says that, “as nearly as can be ascertained,” Willing laid the tract out in lots that October and “began the village of Willingtown, from which Wilmington really grew.”

It didn’t grow fast. Henry C. Conrad’s state history of 1908 says a town map from 1736 shows just 33 houses. What changed things was William Shipley, a Quaker from Ridley Township, Pennsylvania, who bought land there in 1735 and moved in. Other Friends followed, and both Scharf and Conrad call Shipley the virtual founder of Wilmington.

A charter, and a new name

Willingtown still had no town government of its own in 1736. On June 10 of that year, 103 residents asked Governor Penn for a borough charter. When Scharf describes the town’s fight over its markets that same year, he names the governor as Thomas Penn. The charter didn’t come until November 16, 1739, and, in Scharf’s words, “The name then became Wilmington in place of Willingtown.”

That’s where it gets interesting. Scharf doesn’t say why the name changed. Neither does Conrad, and neither does Benjamin Ferris, whose 1846 history of the Delaware settlements includes a history of Wilmington. Ferris just says the charter is how the village “changed its title, and became known as the Borough of Wilmington.”

Willing, or the earl?

So you’re left with two answers from two respected books, and neither one shows its evidence.

Gannett’s entry reads: “the present name is a corruption of the name Willington, given it in honor of Thomas Willing.” Two things stand out. The local histories call the village Willingtown, not Willington. And Gannett had the earl in front of him: just two entries further down, he says the Wilmingtons in Massachusetts, North Carolina and Vermont were “named for Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.” He just didn’t give Delaware’s to him.

The Britannica goes the other way. It says the name was changed by a borough charter “in honour of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington (c. 1673-1743).” It also says the charter was “granted by William Penn,” while Scharf puts Thomas Penn in the governor’s chair when the town was asking for its charter. So that entry has its own loose thread.

There’s a third, older voice, and it sides with the earl. Elizabeth Montgomery’s Reminiscences of Wilmington, a book of local memories that the Britannica puts on its own reading list, says the village of “Willingstown” was renamed “in honor of the Earl of Wilmington.” Like the other two, she doesn’t say how she knew, and she was writing more than a century after the charter. You could also argue the spelling leans the same way: “Wilmington” is the earl’s title letter for letter, while Gannett’s version needs the name to have been mangled along the way. But that’s a reading of the evidence, not a document, and until someone turns up a letter or a council record that explains the choice, the honest answer is that it’s disputed.

Before Willingtown

Long before Willing drew his lots, the spot had a Swedish name. The Britannica says Swedish and Dutch colonists settled there in 1638 under Peter Minuit, built a fort called Christina, and called the settlement around it Christinaham, “in honour of Queen Christina.” The state’s own name goes back to an English lord, which is a separate story.

Sources & further reading

• J. Thomas Scharf, History of Delaware, 1609-1888, vol. 2 (1888), pp. 631, 635–636. Willing’s marriage, the 1731 deed and the lots that “began the village of Willingtown” (p. 631); the 1736 petition, Governor Thomas Penn and the dispute over the markets (p. 635); the charter of November 16, 1739, and “The name then became Wilmington in place of Willingtown” (p. 636).
• Henry C. Conrad, History of the State of Delaware, vol. 1 (1908), pp. 299–300. The town “called Willingtown,” the 1736 map with 33 houses, William Shipley and the change of name about 1739.
• Benjamin Ferris, A History of the Original Settlements on the Delaware (1846), p. 182. The charter by which the village “changed its title, and became known as the Borough of Wilmington.”
• Elizabeth Montgomery, Reminiscences of Wilmington (1851; 2nd ed., 1872), p. 271. The village of “Willingstown” and the change of name “in honor of the Earl of Wilmington.” Checked in the 1872 second edition.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 2nd ed. (USGS Bulletin 258, 1905), p. 327. “A corruption of the name Willington, given it in honor of Thomas Willing,” plus the other Wilmingtons he credits to the Earl of Wilmington.
• The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 28 (1911), “Wilmington (Delaware).” Fort Christina and Christinaham in 1638; Willingtown in 1731; the charter and the name “in honour of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.”
• GNIS feature 214862, Wilmington (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for the city: county and coordinates.