There Weren’t Actually Thirteen Original Colonies

One of the most enduring misunderstandings in American history

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The Thirteen Colonies are one of the most enduring parts of early American history. It was the Thirteen Colonies that gave birth to the infant United States of America. But what if I told you that is not true? There weren’t actually thirteen colonies. The number of colonies that people reference is wrong.

Wait. That can’t be right. Can it?

First off, everyone, everyone, uses the term Thirteen Colonies. Secondly, there are thirteen stripes on the American flag to represent the thirteen colonies. Right? Not quite.

So how is it that everyone gets this wrong?

The stripes on the flag actually represent the original thirteen states not colonies. There were thirteen original states but only twelve original colonies.

There were only twelve colonies at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The colonies were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The missing colony? Delaware.

Delaware has a convoluted history that is enough to confuse even the most ardent students of history. Delaware was the first state officially recognized in the United States but it was never an official colony of Great Britain.

At the time, Delaware consisted of just three counties — New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. These counties hugged the Delaware River, but they were never their own colony. Colonies during this period had to be chartered. Colonies were chartered either by a family, a company, a corporation, or by the British crown directly. For example, Pennsylvania was chartered to and was owned and administered by the Penn family. Virginia was originally founded by the Virginia Company of London. Georgia was a crown colony founded for the use of the British penal system.

Delaware never had a colonial charter. It was passed around between various groups and interests for decades before the Revolutionary War. Delaware was claimed by the Dutch after their colonization of New Amsterdam (later New York) before being lost to the British in the Anglo-Dutch…