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How to Research Your Family History in Delaware

Delaware compresses American genealogy into three counties and one extraordinary archive. Nearly everything a researcher needs – colonial land warrants, probate files, older vital records, manumission papers – has been gathered into the Delaware Public Archives in Dover, making the First State one of the most centralized research environments in the country. The layers underneath run deep: Swedish and Dutch colonists of the 1630s–1660s, Quaker and Anglican registers, one of the largest free Black populations of the early republic, and a land system organized into “hundreds” – a subdivision almost no other state uses.

Start With Vital Records

Delaware experimented with civil registration as early as 1861, let it lapse, and resumed for good in 1881; consistent statewide coverage dates from then, with compliance firming up into the 1910s. Current records are held by the Division of Public Health’s Office of Vital Statistics – but Delaware’s distinctive gift to researchers is what happens when records age out of restriction: births over 72 years old and deaths and marriages over 40 years old transfer to the Delaware Public Archives and become fully public, with much of the historical run indexed and available onsite (and increasingly online). Few states open their vital records this early or this cleanly.

Before 1881, church registers carry the load (see below), along with marriage bonds and county records.

The County Offices – And The Hundreds

Delaware’s three counties (New Castle, Kent, Sussex) each split records among:

One term you must know: the hundred. Delaware subdivides its counties into hundreds rather than townships, and tax lists, assessments, censuses, and deeds locate families by hundred. Identify your family’s hundred and its neighbors; it is the geographic key to every pre-modern Delaware list.

  • Recorder of Deeds – deeds and mortgages from the 1600s–1700s onward.
  • Register of Wills – probate: wills, inventories, administrations, guardianships. Historical probate files have largely been transferred to the Public Archives, where they are centrally indexed.
  • Prothonotary and court clerks – civil and court records; equity matters ran through Delaware’s storied Court of Chancery, whose older case files (trusts, guardianships, disputes naming whole families) are also at the Archives.

The Delaware Public Archives

The Public Archives in Dover is the center of gravity for the whole state: colonial and state government records, the transferred probate and Chancery files, tax assessments by hundred, military records from the colonial wars through the 20th century, naturalizations, school and institutional records, and the aged-out vital records described above. Its online catalog, digitized collections, and name indexes are free, and because the state is small, the Archives’ consolidated indexes function almost like a statewide surname index – a luxury unheard of in larger states.

The Colonial Deep End

Delaware’s paper trail begins with New Sweden (1638) and the Dutch on the Delaware, before English rule. The living link is Old Swedes (Holy Trinity) Church in Wilmington, whose registers and congregational records reach into the 1600s, documenting Swedish and Finnish colonist families for generations. Anglican/Episcopal parishes and – decisively in Delaware – Quaker meetings kept the other great registers: Friends’ meeting minutes and vital records for Wilmington and the surrounding meetings document births, marriages, removals, and discipline in famously meticulous detail, and are abstracted in the standard Quaker encyclopedias and digitized collections. Until 1776 Delaware was the “Three Lower Counties” of Pennsylvania, so some colonial matters route through Pennsylvania provincial records.

African American Research

Delaware is one of the most important small states for Black genealogy. A slave state that never seceded, it nonetheless had one of the nation’s largest proportions of free Black residents decades before the Civil War – which means free families appear by name in deeds, tax lists by hundred, court records, and censuses far earlier than in the Deep South. The Public Archives holds manumission papers, freedom certificates, and indenture records; Quaker meeting records document the manumission movement itself; and probate and deed books record enslaved individuals in the estates of enslaving families. The end of slavery in Delaware came only with the 13th Amendment in 1865, so the courthouse-and-archive trail runs continuously across emancipation.

Online And Free

The Public Archives’ catalog and digital collections are free. FamilySearch carries filmed Delaware probate, deed, church, and vital collections. Subscription platforms add the federal censuses (locate families by hundred), directories, and newspapers – free through Delaware public libraries. The Delaware Genealogical Society publishes indexes and a research guide tuned to the hundreds system.

Research Checklist

  1. Identify the county and the hundred for every era of the family.
  2. Order recent vital records from Vital Statistics; pull everything past the 72/40-year windows at the Public Archives.
  3. Work the transferred probate and Chancery files through the Archives’ central indexes.
  4. Pre-1881 events: go to church registers – Old Swedes, Episcopal parishes, Quaker meetings.
  5. For African American lines, use manumissions, freedom papers, and tax lists by hundred to follow free families deep into the 1700s.
  6. Remember the Pennsylvania connection for pre-1776 colonial matters.

Sources and References