Delaware
Where the First State became one of our first.
Dover · Wilmington · Delaware City
The Journey
Delaware is small, close enough to home, and surrounded by states that usually get much more attention. But that became part of what made visiting it meaningful.
Delaware was one of the states we explored early, before visiting all fifty had become our family goal. At that point, we were simply traveling, visiting capitals, seeing places, and enjoying them as they came.
In Dover, we drove through the narrow historic streets and visited the State Capitol. On the old Dover Green, we stood only steps from the site of Battell’s Tavern, where on December 7, 1787, thirty delegates unanimously ratified the United States Constitution. Delaware became the first state to do so, giving it the identity it still proudly carries today: the First State.
At the Air Mobility Command Museum, we walked among more than thirty historic military aircraft, from the C 47 Skytrain to the enormous C 5 Galaxy, while learning how American airlift carried troops, supplies, humanitarian aid, and even coal during the Berlin Airlift.
Then we took the boat from Delaware City out to Pea Patch Island and Fort Delaware. We walked through the old stone fortress, saw the cannons and living history displays, and learned how the fort that had been built to protect Wilmington and Philadelphia became a Union prison during the Civil War, ultimately holding more than 33,000 Confederate and political prisoners.
At the time, we did not realize how meaningful these early trips would eventually become. Delaware was simply another place we were curious to see.
Jewish Delaware
In Wilmington, we visited the modest gray building of Adas Kodesch Shel Emeth, a traditional Orthodox congregation and the oldest existing Jewish congregation in Delaware.
Standing there introduced me to an interesting contrast. Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, yet organized Jewish life arrived relatively late. Jews had lived here since the colonial period, but the community remained too small to sustain permanent institutions for generations. Adas Kodesch was organized in 1885, and in 1898 became the first Delaware congregation to dedicate a building specifically as a synagogue.
Today, Wilmington and the surrounding area have synagogues, Chabad, Jewish schools, and established communal institutions. What began as a tiny community eventually planted deep roots.
There was something fitting about discovering that story in Delaware. Even in the First State, not every story began first.
What Stayed With Me
What stayed with me about Delaware was the power of being first.
Delaware is not filled with the large attractions or national parks that define some other states. It has beaches, history, beautiful towns, even a humble capitol building, but its identity rests on something that happened in one room, on one day in 1787. It went first.
More than two centuries later, everyone still remembers. There is a lesson in that which stayed with me. Sometimes being first means seeing something before everyone else does, taking the chance before it becomes obvious, or starting something before it becomes fashionable.
Delaware was the First State. For our family, it was one of our first too.
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