A genealogical research guide to Delaware historical statutes from 1638 to 1950.
Historical Law Guides > Delaware
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Legal Ages at a Glance General Principles Legal Age of Adulthood Marriage Property Ownership |
Inheritance Taxation Courts Sources & Where to Verify |
| Legal milestone | Age | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Full majority | 21 | Both sexes, whole period |
| Marry | 14 male / 12 female | 18 male / 16 female from 1921 |
| Parental consent for marriage | Under 21 male / under 18 female | Whole period; from 1913 it could be waived where the couple swore they were the child's parents |
| Bind oneself as an apprentice | 14 | Only where no father, guardian, or mother lived in the state |
| Apprenticeship ends | 21 male / 18 female | A child of color could be bound as a servant; a white child only as an apprentice |
| Choose own guardian | 14 | The choice is recorded, so it brackets a birth year |
| Guardianship ends | 21 | For a girl, guardianship of the person ended at her marriage if that came first |
| Make a will | 21 | 18 from 1945; two witnesses; no holographic wills |
| Serve as executor | 21 | A minor named executor received his letters at 21; someone else administered meanwhile |
| Witness a will | Any age if competent | Two credible witnesses required; a creditor could serve |
| Testify as a witness | Any age if competent | The judge examined a child before allowing the testimony |
| Taxable as a poll | Over 21 | Every freeman; no age released him from the list |
| Jury service | 21 | Qualified voters only; Black men eligible from 1870, women from 1945 |
| Criminal responsibility | 14 | Under 7 none; 7–14 presumed none; juvenile court from 1933 |
Delaware's law is English common law — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature. The first European settlement on the Delaware was Swedish, at Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, in 1638. Dutch control followed in 1655 and English control in 1664. From 1682 the three counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex were part of William Penn's grant, "the Three Lower Counties upon Delaware." They gained their own assembly in 1704 and shared Pennsylvania's governor until independence.
The first state constitution kept the English inheritance deliberately. The common law of England, together with so much of the statute law as had been adopted in practice, stayed in force until the legislature changed it, except where it clashed with the new constitution1. Every later constitution — 1792, 1831, and 1897 — carried that reception forward. So for any given year, the rule in force is the statute where the General Assembly had passed one by then, and the common law everywhere else.
Two features shaped almost every Delaware record. Land descended to all of a person's children in equal shares rather than to the eldest son alone. And a married woman lived under the common-law rule of coverture until the married women's acts of the 1870s, and under statute afterward. Both are set out below.
One further fact frames the whole period: slavery was lawful in Delaware until the Thirteenth Amendment took effect in December 18652. Where race changed a rule — in marriage, in apprenticeship, in the tax lists, in testimony — the difference appears below under the topic it belongs to.
One piece of Delaware vocabulary runs through all of it. Each county is divided into hundreds. A hundred is a local subdivision, roughly what a township is elsewhere, and it is the unit the assessor worked in, the unit the jury boxes were kept by, and the unit a marriage was published in. When a record names a hundred, it is naming a neighborhood.
Full legal age in Delaware was 21, for women and men alike, throughout the period. It came from the common law rather than from any statute fixing it3. A person under 21 was an "infant" in legal language, even at 20.
A minor could own property. What the law limited was the minor's power to hand it on. A minor's contract, unless it was for necessaries — food, clothing, lodging, and the like — was voidable, meaning it held good until the minor chose to undo it. He could undo it during minority or on coming of age, "as his own views of his interest may lead him to elect"4. A deed made by a minor was voidable in the same way, and he had to disaffirm it — formally repudiate it — within a reasonable time after reaching 215. In practice a minor's land was sold for him by a guardian under an order of the Orphans' Court, the county court that handled estates of the dead and the property of minors.
One statutory exception ran the other way. A married woman under 21 could execute a valid bond, obligation, or mortgage, and it bound her6. And in 1945 the age to make a will dropped to 18, which is set out below under Inheritance.
Majority was 21 for both sexes without variation. Two related ages did differ from it, and both are easy to confuse with majority: marriage, where the common-law ages were lower for girls, and apprenticeship.
A minor could be bound out to a trade or to service by an indenture, a written contract of service signed and sealed by the parties. A boy served until 21 and a girl until 18, and the statute drew a line by race in the same sentence: a white child could be bound only as an apprentice, a child of color as a servant7.
The father could bind a child; if no father lived in the state, the guardian; if neither, the mother. A minor over fourteen with none of them in the state could bind himself before a justice of the peace8. Two justices could bind out a child whose parents could not maintain him, and, on the same terms but as a servant, a child of color who had no parents in the state or who was under fifteen and whose parents could not maintain him; there the master paid the parent a set sum fixed by the child's age and sex9.
The indenture is the record, and a good one. The master stipulated for reasonable education in reading and writing, support and clothing, and two suits of clothes at the end of the term, and the child's age was written in as correctly as it could be ascertained. Within sixty days the officer who took the indenture delivered it to the recorder of deeds for the county10. So a bound child appears in the recorder's books with a stated age and a term that ends on a calculable date.
Into the twentieth century the common-law ages of consent governed: 14 for a boy, 12 for a girl. Below those ages a marriage was not void but inchoate — incomplete. On reaching the age of consent either party could repudiate it, and if instead they went on living together it stood11. The marriage-license act of 1913 made a license compulsory but set no minimum age of its own. A floor arrived in 1921, when the General Assembly rewrote the marriage chapter: no male under eighteen and no female under sixteen was to marry12. Those were still the ages at the close of the period.
Parental consent reached higher than the marrying age, and the consent rule is the older and steadier of the two. Under the Revised Code a marriage could not be solemnized — performed as a ceremony — where the male was under 21 or the female under 18 without the consent of the father, or if there was no father, the mother or guardian. A minister who married such a couple without it answered in damages to the party wronged13. The license system kept the same two ages and required the consent in writing under hand and seal before two reputable witnesses. From 1921, where a minor had no parent or guardian, a judge could give the consent instead12. By the end of the period one release had been added: the requirement could be suspended where the couple swore before the licensing officer that they were the parents, or the prospective parents, of a child, and the reason was endorsed on the application12.
| Period | Youngest who could marry | Written parental consent required for |
|---|---|---|
| Colonial – 1920 | 14 male / 12 female | A male under 21, a female under 18 |
| From 1921 | 18 male / 16 female | A male under 21, a female under 18 |
An underage or unconsented marriage stood as a marriage; the penalty fell on the officiant. In practice an ancestor's youthful marriage was almost certainly valid.
A valid Delaware marriage required a ceremony before an authorized officiant. Any ordained preacher, any religious society marrying by its own forms where one of the parties belonged to it, and the mayor of Wilmington could perform one14. Because the marriage came from the ceremony, a couple who simply lived together as husband and wife were unmarried in the eyes of Delaware law, and the courts held so in an unbroken line15.
Where a white person was a party, the officiant needed either a license or banns — a public announcement of the intended marriage, read at a place of worship in the hundred where the woman lived, on two Sabbaths after divine service, with no objection made. Marrying without one or the other cost the officiant a thirty-dollar fine14. From 1913 a license was required in every case and banns no longer served, though the act was careful to add that a marriage otherwise lawful was not invalidated by the failure to take one out16.
How the ceremony was recorded changed once, on a date worth knowing.
| Period | How a marriage was authorized | Record it creates |
|---|---|---|
| Colonial – 1912 | For a marriage with a white party, a license or banns published in the woman's hundred. A marriage of Black parties ran on its own track, below | The minister's own register, and an annual extract filed with the recorder of deeds |
| From 1913 | A license from the clerk of the peace, on a sworn application, after a health certificate and a waiting period of 24 hours for residents and 96 hours for non-residents | The marriage-license application and return — an unusually full vital record |
Before 1913 every preacher, the mayor of Wilmington, and every religious society that solemnized a marriage had to keep a record of it and deliver a true extract each March to the recorder of deeds, where it was recorded17. So Delaware marriage evidence before 1913 sits in ministers' records and in the recorder of deeds' marriage returns; from 1913 it sits in the clerk of the peace's license files16.
Marriage within the prohibited degrees of kindred — too closely related, by blood or by marriage — was void. Both parties committed a misdemeanor and were fined one hundred dollars, and a preacher who knowingly performed the ceremony was fined the same18. A couple who left the state to evade the rule and then lived here as husband and wife were punished as though the marriage had been made in Delaware19.
The act of 1913 added paupers, and a marriage between a person of sound mind and one insane or idiotic, to the marriages it made void16. The code in force at the end of the period carried a longer list of people forbidden to marry: the epileptic, the unsound of mind, the venereally diseased or otherwise communicably diseased without disclosure, the habitual drunkard or confirmed user of a narcotic drug, the recently divorced who withheld the facts, a patient in an insane asylum, and a person on probation or parole without official consent. Each applicant certified that none of these applied, and from 1947 filed a physician's certificate of a serological blood test20. A marriage in this second group was voidable at the instance of the innocent party rather than void. Either way the children were protected: the statute provided that children of void or voidable marriages alike were to be deemed legitimate, which reached even the children of a marriage the law declared void for race21.
A marriage between a white person and a Negro or mulatto was unlawful and void, and both parties, along with any minister who knowingly performed it, were fined one hundred dollars18. That bar stood in the statute books through the end of the period21.
Within their own community, Black Delawareans married under the ordinary law on a separate procedural track that matters for research. Negroes and mulattoes could marry without a license or banns. A free party produced a justice of the peace's certificate that he had proved his freedom before him; an enslaved party, called a servant in the statute, produced the written consent of the master or mistress. An officiant who married them without the certificate or the consent forfeited twenty dollars, and a free person who married a servant without that consent forfeited thirty dollars if a man and fifteen if a woman, to the master22. Delaware's free Black population was large and growing, so Black marriages appear in ministers' and church records throughout the antebellum period, and an enslaved couple could have a marriage the law recognized where the enslaver consented.
Land belonged to every free man in Delaware. A free man could acquire, hold, sell, and devise land — devise means to leave it by will — whether or not he held other property, paid a tax, held office, or could vote. Free Black men held that right and exercised it, and free Black families appear in the deed books throughout the period. Enslaved men had no capacity to own property, and anything in their hands belonged in law to the enslaver.
A foreign-born man had to take one step first. An alien living in Delaware who had declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States could take land by deed or will, hold it, and convey it, and on his death it descended as though he were a citizen. Alien kindred living in the United States could inherit; alien kindred living abroad were passed over as if they were dead23. So a foreign-born Delaware landowner has usually left a declaration of intention behind him.
For a woman, everything turned on marriage. A single woman or a widow — a feme sole, "woman alone" — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could. A woman transacting freely in the deed books is almost always unmarried or widowed.
A married woman was a feme covert, "covered woman," under coverture: the common-law rule that merged a wife's legal identity into her husband's. Wealthier families worked around it by placing property in trust for her "sole and separate use."
The married women's acts of the 1860s and 1870s dismantled coverture in stages24. By the code in force at the end of the period the rule was stated broadly: whatever property a married woman acquired in any manner, with all its income, rents, and profits, was her sole and separate property, and she could sell, will, encumber, contract, sue, and be sued as if she were unmarried25.
| A married woman's | Under coverture | After the married women's acts |
|---|---|---|
| Land | Her husband took the rents and profits | Hers, free of his control and of his debts |
| Personal property | Owned by her husband outright | Hers |
| Wages | Her husband's | Hers |
| Contracts | No force on their own | She could contract, and sue and be sued |
| Will | She could not devise | She could devise her property, at 21 |
One reservation ran through the whole scheme and outlived it. Nothing a wife did could defeat her husband's curtesy: his life estate in her land if a child had been born alive of the marriage25.
The old estate by the entirety survived the married women's acts. Where land was deeded to a husband and wife together, the survivor took the whole; during their joint lives neither could convey or encumber it without the other; and it was beyond the reach of either one's separate creditors26. A deed to "John and Mary his wife" is therefore a survivorship deed.
Two other useful points sit here. On buying land a married woman could secure the purchase money by her own bond or mortgage as a single woman could, and her husband did not have to join or consent27. And a wife abandoned by her husband without just cause, who owned real estate in her own right, could sell it as though she were unmarried28. A deed by a wife alone reciting abandonment marks a marriage that had collapsed.
This is one of the most useful dating tools in Delaware land research, because a wife's signature, or its absence, tells you both the period and whether the man was married.
The driver is dower: a widow's life estate in one-third of her husband's land, meaning the use of it for her lifetime while ownership passed to someone else. The widow of a man dying after 16 February 1816 took a third part of all the lands her husband had been seized of — had held as owner — at any time during the marriage, for the term of her natural life, free of every debt, lien, and conveyance he made after the marriage, unless she had released her dower by her own voluntary act29. Because dower attached to every parcel the husband held during the marriage, a buyer needed the wife to release hers to take clear title, and she released it by joining in his deed. What changed over time was the form of the release, not the need for it.
| Period | How the wife released her dower | Wife's signature on the husband's deed? |
|---|---|---|
| Before 1 May 1811 | She joined in the husband's deed; no separate examination | Yes |
| 1811 – 1945 | She joined in the deed and was privately examined apart from her husband | Yes |
| From 1945 | She signed and acknowledged the deed as if she were unmarried | Yes |
From 1811 a married woman's deed — whether of her own land or releasing her dower in her husband's — was good only if, on private examination apart from her husband, she acknowledged that she had signed willingly, without compulsion or threats or fear of her husband's displeasure. The examination could be taken before the chancellor, a judge, a notary public, or two justices of the peace for the county30. A deed she made before 1 May 1811 barred her dower without any examination31. In 1945 the private examination was abolished and a married woman executed and acknowledged her deeds as if she were single32. Dower and curtesy themselves were still in force at the close of the period.
One limit on both: dower and curtesy remained subject to execution — seizure and sale to satisfy a judgment debt — where the personal estate was not enough to pay the debt, and Delaware allowed no homestead exemption to shelter the land33. A family's land could be sold for the husband's debts in a way it could not in states with a homestead law.
So the working rule for a researcher: a Delaware husband's deed of his own land, joined by his wife and, from 1811 to 1945, showing her private examination, is releasing her dower. A deed of his own land signed by him alone generally means he was unmarried or a widower.
A child could own land at any age, taking it by descent, gift, or devise just as an adult did. Conveying it was the constraint: a minor's deed was voidable and could be disaffirmed within a reasonable time after he turned 2134, so a minor's land was ordinarily sold for him by a guardian under an order of the Orphans' Court. Own at any age; convey at 21.
A witness of any age could serve, provided he understood an oath and could relate what he saw. Competency, not age, was the test. A deed was made ready for recording either by the grantor acknowledging it or by a subscribing witness proving it, before the Superior Court, the chancellor, any judge, a notary public, or two justices of the peace for the same county35. In practice deed witnesses were adults, since a witness might have to appear years later to prove the deed.
Delaware ran two intestacy systems at once, one for land and one for personal property, and they worked differently. A person who died intestate died without a will. His land descended by the rules of descent, automatically, to the heirs, at the moment of death. His personal property — money, livestock, furniture, and debts owed to him — was gathered in and distributed by an administrator after the debts were paid.
When a landowner died intestate his land descended in fee simple — full ownership, with no strings and no reversion — to his kindred in this order36:
| Order | Who took the land |
|---|---|
| First | All the children equally, and the lawful issue of a deceased child by right of representation |
| Second | If no issue, the brothers and sisters equally, whole blood preferred to half; land the intestate had himself inherited went first to the blood of that ancestor |
| Third | The father |
| Fourth | The mother |
| Fifth | The next of kin in equal degree |
The statute defined its own terms, which is a help to a reader. Issue means all the lawful lineal descendants of the ancestor. Taking by right of representation means that the children of an heir who died first divide between them the share their parent would have taken37.
Sons and daughters, older and younger, shared alike. This is why Delaware estates so often divide a farm among several children or throw off an Orphans' Court partition.
The descent was subject in every case to the rights of the surviving spouse, who took a life interest: the use of the land for life, while ownership itself passed to the heirs36.
| Survivor | Situation | Life estate in the land |
|---|---|---|
| Widow, as tenant in dower | A child or a child's issue survives | One-third |
| Widow, as tenant in dower | No issue survives | One-half |
| Widow, as tenant in dower | No kin or heir of the intestate at all | All of it |
| Widower, as tenant by the curtesy | A child was born alive of the marriage | All of it |
By the code in force at the end of the period the surviving spouse's life estate in intestate land had grown to one-half where issue survived and to the whole where none did, the widow holding as tenant in dower and the husband as tenant by the curtesy. Where the intestate left a spouse but no kin and no heir at all, the survivor took the land outright38. This is why you so often find a widow or widower holding a life interest while the children hold the title.
The residue of the personal estate, after debts and charges, was distributed among the children and the lawful issue of children who had died first; if none, to brothers and sisters of the whole blood, then of the half blood; then the father, then the mother, then the next of kin — always subject to the surviving spouse39.
| Survivor | Situation | Share, owned outright |
|---|---|---|
| Widow | Issue of the intestate survive | One-third |
| Widow | No issue, but brothers, sisters, or other kin survive | One-half |
| Widow | No kin at all | All of it |
| Surviving husband | Of a married woman | All of her personal estate |
By the end of the period the surviving spouse's share of the personal estate was one-third where issue survived and the whole where none did40. Getting these fractions right can make or break a family reconstruction built from an estate division.
On top of her share a widow kept certain things free of the estate, left out of the inventory altogether: the family Bible, her own clothes and the ornaments proper to her station, the clothes of the family and of the deceased, and the family stores laid in before the death, up to a value of thirty dollars41. She was also entitled, as a prior claim on her husband's estate, to a cash allowance of up to five hundred dollars, whatever else she took under his will or under the intestacy laws; from 1941 she had to claim it within six months of his death42. Each is a separate record that usually names the widow.
Where her husband's will gave her a portion of his real estate, the gift was taken to be in lieu of her dower unless the will said otherwise. She could elect instead to take her dower, and had thirty days to do it after formal notice was served on her; if she stayed silent, the will governed43. Her election, or its absence, is in the probate file. A widow could also lose her dower before it ever arose: by accepting before the marriage, if she was then 21, an estate in her intended husband's land as a provision in lieu of dower, or by leaving him and living in adultery without reconciliation44.
A minor inherited immediately; title vested in the heirs the moment the ancestor died. Managing that inheritance fell to a guardian appointed and supervised by the Orphans' Court. A guardian was needed whenever a minor came into property with no parent able to act for him — on a father's death, most often. The guardian gave bond with surety, took charge of the ward's real and personal property, rendered just and true accounts, and on the ending of the guardianship delivered the property over45. That final settlement is one of the most valuable records in Delaware genealogy: it dates the ward's coming of age, and so approximates a birth year.
A father could name a guardian for his child by deed or by will, and that person was appointed unless there was just cause against it; by the end of the period the naming power belonged to the sole surviving parent, mother or father alike46. At fourteen a ward could choose his own guardian and the court appointed the person chosen, again unless there was just cause against it. A guardian appointed while the minor was under 14 was superseded when the minor turned 14 and chose another. Where the minor was under 14, lived outside the state, or failed to choose, the court appointed at its own discretion47. A guardianship record in which the child does the choosing is therefore evidence the child had reached 14.
Guardianship ran to 21 for both sexes, with one difference: a girl's guardianship of the person ended at her marriage if that came first48. So a guardian's final account filed when a female ward married, rather than at 21, dates the marriage.
At common law a child born out of wedlock was filius nullius, "nobody's child," and could inherit from no one. Delaware relieved this by degrees, and the order matters for dating a family.
The oldest of these rules ran upward, to the mother: when an illegitimate person died intestate and without lawful issue, his property, real and personal, passed to her49. A child conceived out of wedlock could also be legitimated, by any of three routes: the parents married before the birth; they married after the birth following an adjudication or acknowledgment of parentage; or the paternity was acknowledged in writing by both parents, or by the father if the mother was dead, and filed in the Prothonotary's office of any county. One limit is easy to miss and matters a great deal at an estate settlement: a child legitimated solely by that written acknowledgment did not inherit from the father50. So a filed acknowledgment of paternity names a father without making the child his heir, while a marriage of the parents does both.
Where the father was not brought in by legitimation, his duty to the child was support rather than inheritance, enforced through a bastardy proceeding. On the mother's oath before a justice of the peace naming the father, a warrant issued for his arrest; if the child was not yet born he entered a recognizance to appear a month after the birth. If the justice found him to be the father he was ordered to give bond to indemnify the trustees of the poor and to pay a monthly allowance for the child's support. Under the Revised Code that duty ran while the child was under ten; in 1921 the General Assembly raised it to sixteen, and by the end of the period the court fixed a monthly sum together with the birth expenses and the physician's fee51. The mother was a competent witness in the proceeding, and if she died before the hearing her declaration made in labor and kept to as a dying declaration was evidence52. The justice sent the bond of indemnity on to the trustees of the poor within sixty days53. These examinations and bonds name the reputed father.
The age to make a will was 21, for a will of land or of personal property alike, and no one under 21 was capable of making one. Married women were excepted at first, and gained the power to devise their own property, at 21, through the married women's acts54. In 1945 the will age dropped to 18 for real and personal estate together55.
Every valid Delaware will was in writing and signed by the testator, or by someone else writing the testator's name in his presence and at his express direction, and was attested and subscribed in his presence by two or more credible witnesses56. A witness could be of any age if competent, and a creditor of the testator was competent even where the will provided for paying his debt57. Delaware recognized no holographic will — one valid merely because written in the testator's own hand. The single exception to the two-witness rule was the nuncupative, or spoken, will: personal estate up to two hundred dollars, pronounced in the testator's last illness before two or more credible witnesses he expressly asked to take notice, written down and signed by them within three days, and produced for probate within thirty days of the death58.
A will was proved before the Register of Wills of the county where the testator lived. Once proved it was recorded in that office and the original stayed there, and the record or an office copy was evidence as to both real and personal estate59. An executor had to be of full age. Where a minor was named executor his letters testamentary — the court's written authority to act for the estate — were granted to him when he came of age; in the meantime they went to a co-executor, or, if there was none, administration with the will annexed was granted to someone else, meaning an administrator carried out the will in the executor's place60. A married woman could be granted letters and could serve as executrix or administratrix as if she were single, though if appointed she and her husband joined as principals in the bond61. So a change of administrator right after a wedding, or on a minor's coming of age, is often the reason a Delaware estate changed hands mid-administration.
Two taxes on individuals leave usable records: the property tax on land and personal property, and the poll tax — a capitation, or head tax, meaning a flat charge on a person rather than on what he owned. For genealogy the poll tax is the prize, because the county assessment lists it produced name men who owned nothing, which turns the tax lists into census substitutes.
The assessment was made in each county by assessors working hundred by hundred under the Levy Court, the body of county officers that set and laid the county taxes. All property, real and personal, was to be assessed at its true value in money, and every freeman above the age of twenty-one was rated a poll tax on top of his property assessment62. So a man's first appearance on the assessment list as a poll brackets his twenty-first birthday.
One quirk of the lists is worth knowing before drawing conclusions from a gap in them. Where a collector had sat the required days and still could not collect, the Levy Court allowed the uncollected sums as delinquencies, and the delinquent's name was struck from the assessment list and kept off it for a year. That rule applied to men assessed for a poll tax only — the men with no property63. A poor man can therefore drop out of the assessments for a year and reappear without having moved, married, or died.
The statute fixed the age at which a man became rateable as a poll and set no age at which he stopped. He stayed on the list as long as he lived in the county, and old age released him from the jury box at seventy but not from the tax64.
The poll tax reached free Black men as well as white men: they were freemen, and they were assessed, even though before 1870 they could not vote. Enslaved people were assessed to their owners as property, not as polls.
Being assessed mattered beyond the bill. The county list of taxables was the roll the Levy Court drew jurors from each March65, and a county tax paid was part of what qualified a man to vote. That is why Delaware assessment and registration records so often note whether a young man was between 21 and 22, and it is also why the tax requirement worked as a lever to keep poor men, and after 1870 Black men in particular, away from both the polls and the jury box.
Jurors had to be qualified voters, which meant men of twenty-one. Everyone qualified to vote at the general election was liable to serve, except a short list of exempt occupations — public officers of the state or the United States, counsellors and attorneys at law, ordained ministers of the gospel, officers of colleges and teachers in public schools, licensed physicians and surgeons, and cashiers of incorporated banks — and everyone more than seventy years of age66. Each March the Levy Court picked the names from the county's list of taxable citizens, in proportion for each hundred, and the ballots went into separate boxes for grand jurors, petit jurors, and Quarter Sessions jurors, kept by hundred65.
Tying jury service to the vote fixed who sat on the panel. For most of the period the juror was a white male taxpayer between twenty-one and seventy. Black men became eligible when the Fifteenth Amendment made them voters in 1870, though the tax-payment requirement and later practice kept them off in fact. Women were drawn on the same terms as men from 1945, when the General Assembly repealed the arrangement that had let them stand aside67.
Before the juvenile courts, the common-law ages governed, and Delaware left them where it found them:
Delaware's own criminal statutes worked from the same line. An adult who abetted, procured, commanded, or counselled another to commit a crime was an accomplice and equally criminal; but where the principal offender was under fourteen and the crime was not capital, the accomplice, if of full age, suffered the highest punishment the offence carried68. The law treated the child as an instrument and put the whole weight on the adult.
In the twentieth century special juvenile courts took children under a statutory age out of the ordinary criminal courts and treated them as delinquents rather than criminals. A separate Juvenile Court for Kent and Sussex Counties dates from 193369. After a juvenile court took jurisdiction, a child under its age has a juvenile file, typically closed, rather than a criminal case file.
A witness of any age could testify who understood the obligation of an oath and could relate the facts. The trial judge examined a child personally before allowing the testimony. A very young child's uncorroborated word counted for little, but that went to weight rather than competency, and the competency statutes turned on other matters than age.
A wife or husband was competent to testify for or against the other in civil and criminal causes alike — a power the married women's acts extended on the civil side in the 1870s and the code stated plainly by the twentieth century70. In a bastardy proceeding the mother was expressly made a competent witness52.
Race and testimony followed Delaware's unusual path between North and South. Most slave states barred Black witnesses in cases involving white parties. Delaware was one of a very few jurisdictions — with Maryland and the District of Columbia — that allowed at least some free Black testimony in cases involving whites, a latitude rooted in the state's large free Black population and its slow, contested emancipation. The antebellum rule stood in the Revised Code chapter headed "Of free negroes and mulattoes," which the revisers dropped from the compilation after emancipation71. Enslaved people's testimony was more tightly restricted. Full competence for all witnesses regardless of race followed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction amendments.
(Guide compiled by Jeniann Nielsen with AI assistance from Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemini Pro 3.1. Check primary sources as needed.)
Every rule above is tagged with the law it rests on. The lists below show where to read those laws in full, and the reference works consulted, so anything here can be checked against the original sources.