Lewes ( LOO-iss) is an incorporated city upon the Delaware Bay in eastern Sussex County, Delaware, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population is 2,747. Along with adjoining Rehoboth Beach, Lewes is one of the principal cities of Delaware’s suddenly growing Cape Region. The city lies within the Salisbury, Maryland–Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. Lewes proudly claims to be “The First Town in The First State.”

Lewes was the site of the first European concurrence in Delaware, a whaling and trading declare that Dutch settlers founded upon June 3, 1631, and named Zwaanendael (Swan Valley). The colony had a brusque existence, as a local tribe of Lenape Indians murdered all the 32 settlers in 1632.

The Place remained rather neglected by the Dutch until, under the threat of annexation from the colony of Maryland, the city of Amsterdam made a agree of land at the Hoernkills (the area around Cape Henlopen, near the current town of Lewes) to a bureau of Mennonites for agreement in 1662. A sum of 35 men were to be included in the settlement, led by a Pieter Cornelisz Plockhoy of Zierikzee and funded by a sizable forward movement from the city to get them established. 41 persons came taking into account Plockhoy from the Netherlands to the Hoernkill onboard the Dutch boat the Sint Jacob, one of whom was Otto Wolgast from the town of Wolgast, Pomerania. The concurrence was acknowledged in 1663, and lasted until the agreed next year; in 1664, the English captured New Netherland from the Dutch, and they ordered the pact razed once reports indicating that “not even a nail” was left there.

The Dutch colonists proved slow to regroup, but a new concurrence gradually regrew on the Hoernkills. In late December 1673, when the area was briefly held once more by the Dutch, the concurrence was attacked and burned down once again by a intervention of Maryland colonists. In 1680, under the authority of the Duke of York, who had been granted such authority by his brother, King Charles II, the village (and county) was reorganized and known for two years as New Deale, Deale County, Delaware. A log courthouse was authorized to be built at this time. An Anglican congregation was customary by 1681 and a Presbyterian church was built in 1682.