When were Pennsylvania and Delaware separated into different colonies?

Answer 1

Trick question - but also a good one. - Delaware never did become a separate colony until less than a month before the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. - Delaware schools celebrate that "Separation Day" every June, but the materials they present are not at all convincing as to why Delaware separated or Pennsylvania allowed it. - I have a theory. - Since many of Delaware's leading citizens (eg Bedford, Dickinson) also held property and office in Pennsylvania, and many of Pennsylvania's richest (eg Morris, Willing) got rich importing slaves through Delaware (both before and after Pennsylvania started taxing slave imports, as the PA Gazette and other colonial records confirm), I suspect one reason for separation was the realization by some of the richest citizens in both colonies that the radicals who were gaining the upper hand in the Pennsylvania Assembly would eventually combine with the newly-abolitionist Quakers and other minority sects to make slavery in Pennsylvania illegal. - Which they did, before the Revolution was won. - By separating Delaware, both the "Lower Counties'" slaveowners and those Philadelphians who wished to exploit the "Peculiar Institution" could purchase nearby property where they could keep their field laborers, skilled workers, and women who provided all kinds of domestic services, despite Pennsylvania's increasingly broad abolition law. - Delaware never made slavery illegal, and it never quit the Union either; so Abraham Lincoln specifically protected Delaware slave-owners from the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation. - Delaware remained a slave state until after the Civil War was over and Lincoln was dead; in the end it was the last place in the English-speaking world where slavery remained legal, almost 90 years after Separation Day down in New Castle enabled Pennsylvania's wealthiest to keep their human property not far down the river, despite Revolution and Civil War, if they so wished. - Joe DiStefano, July 2010

Answer 2

it broke away from Pennylvania in 1776 the year the declaration of independence was signed.

Answer 3

Separated in 1701

Answer 4

December 7 1776