When researching your family history through older census and land records, you will inevitably see location names listed as Hundreds. Many other state counties are subdivided into unincorporated townships and you can think of these as somewhat equivilent to Delaware's hundreds.
Hundreds are old English unincorporated governmental subdivisions of counties for the purpose of representation and taxation. A "tithing" was considered a family (average family size was 10), and a "hundred" was an area of 10 families, or about 100 family members plus all workers the families kept on staff.
Hundreds were first established in colonial Delaware by William Penn in the 1680s. Originally, Penn divided New Castle county into 5 hundreds. As the population grew, New Castle county was further subdivided into 10 hundreds by 1868. In 1875, Blackbird hundred was apportioned from Appoquinimink Hundred.
In the historic Hundreds maps below you will find the names/locations of family tracts of land and dwellings in 1868. References like Grubbs Cor's (Corner) in Brandywine hundred can still be found today in Delaware, located in Google Maps, and in many cases, found in Wikipedia along with an article about the founding family. If you find your family on an 1860 - 1870 census, these maps may be helpful in locating where the family settled and gleaning the names of their neighbors who, in many cases, may have intermarried with your family.
The following maps are from the Pomeroy and Beers Atlas of 1868 and includes the New Castle city map. These maps are in PDF high-quality format and open in a new tab.
Find a more information about New Castle County historical settlements, towns, and other places.
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