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DEDelaware Famous People
The 80-mile ride that put Delaware first
On 1 July 1776 the Delaware delegation in Philadelphia was deadlocked, Thomas McKean for independence and George Read against. Caesar Rodney, a Kent County farmer and militia officer who wore a green silk scarf over the cancer eating his face, rode overnight through thunderstorms from Dover and arrived in his boots and spurs on 2 July to break the tie. The ride is on the Delaware state quarter, and Rodney is one of the two Delawareans in the National Statuary Hall. Read, having voted no, signed the Declaration anyway in August, and he is one of only six men who signed both it and the Constitution. Delaware ratified that Constitution on 7 December 1787, ahead of every other state, which is where the licence plates get First State.
A president who was not born here
No president has been born in Delaware. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1942, and the family moved to Claymont when he was ten. He won a Senate seat in November 1972 at 29, before he was old enough to serve, took the oath in a hospital chapel weeks after a crash killed his wife and infant daughter, and took the train home to Wilmington most nights across 36 years in the Senate. He served eight years as vice president and was president from 2021 to 2025. John Dickinson, raised at Poplar Hall outside Dover, is the earlier near miss: he refused to sign the Declaration, then wrote the first draft of the Articles of Confederation.
The family that shaped everything else
Eleuthere Irenee du Pont, who had trained in Paris under Antoine Lavoisier, thought American gunpowder was poor and built his own mill on the Brandywine outside Wilmington in 1802. The company supplied a large share of the Union's powder in the Civil War, and his descendants then went to work on the state itself. Pierre S. du Pont paid out of his own pocket to rebuild Delaware's public schools in the 1920s, including more than 80 for Black children. Alfred I. du Pont funded old age pensions before the state would. Henry Francis du Pont turned the family house at Winterthur into a museum of American decorative arts. Pierre du Pont IV served as governor from 1977 to 1985.
The Wilmington case inside Brown v. Board
Louis Redding was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1929 as its first Black member and remained its only one for about a quarter of a century. He argued Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart for families in Claymont and Hockessin, and in 1952 Chancellor Collins Seitz ordered the white schools to admit the Black plaintiffs. Of the five cases folded into Brown v. Board of Education, Delaware's was the only one in which the state court had already ruled for the children. A century earlier Thomas Garrett had run a station of the Underground Railroad from his Wilmington hardware business, working with Harriet Tubman on the routes north; a court fined him into bankruptcy in 1848, and he told the judge from the bench that he would carry on.
Dover, the stars and the choking manoeuvre
- Annie Jump Cannon, born in Dover in 1863, learned the constellations on the roof of her father's house and went on to classify the spectra of roughly 350,000 stars at Harvard, devising the O B A F G K M sequence astronomers still use.
- Henry Heimlich, born in Wilmington in 1920, published the abdominal thrust for choking victims in 1974.
- Emily Bissell of Wilmington designed the first American Christmas Seal in 1907 and raised the money for a tuberculosis shack on the Brandywine.
- Howard Pyle, born in Wilmington in 1853, wrote and illustrated the pirate and Robin Hood books that fixed how Americans picture both, and taught N.C. Wyeth.
Screen, stage and the Wilmington sound
Aubrey Plaza grew up in Wilmington and went to Ursuline Academy. Elisabeth Shue was born in Wilmington in 1963, Valerie Bertinelli there in 1960, and Ryan Phillippe in New Castle in 1974. George Thorogood formed the Destroyers in Wilmington in 1973. Clifford Brown, born in Wilmington in 1930, changed what a jazz trumpet could do in about four years of recording and died at 25 in a crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Randy White went from McKean High School in Wilmington to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and shared the Super Bowl XII most valuable player award, and Elena Delle Donne, another Ursuline graduate, has won two WNBA most valuable player awards.
Delaware people: quick answers
Has any US president been born in Delaware?
No. Joe Biden, president from 2021 to 2025, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and moved to Claymont, Delaware, at the age of ten. He represented Delaware in the Senate from 1973 to 2009.
Who is the most famous person from Delaware?
Caesar Rodney, whose overnight ride from Dover to Philadelphia on 1 July 1776 broke Delaware's tie on independence. He appears on the Delaware state quarter and in the National Statuary Hall.
Which celebrities grew up in Delaware?
Aubrey Plaza and Elisabeth Shue, both from Wilmington, Valerie Bertinelli, born in Wilmington in 1960, Ryan Phillippe of New Castle, and the guitarist George Thorogood.
Who was Annie Jump Cannon?
A Dover-born astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory who classified the spectra of around 350,000 stars and created the O B A F G K M classification scheme still in use.
Why is the du Pont family tied to Delaware?
E. I. du Pont built a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington in 1802. His descendants funded schools, pensions and museums across the state, and Pierre du Pont IV was governor from 1977 to 1985.
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