Zwaanendael Museum

The Zwaanendael Museum in Lewes was built in 1931 to mark the 300th anniversary of the Dutch settlement of Zwaanendael, and its stepped gables, shutters and red-and-white details are modeled on a Dutch town hall. The settlement was founded in 1631 by the Dutch West India Company as Delaware's first European settlement and lasted barely a year: accounts say a dispute over a tin plate bearing the company's coat of arms, which local Lenape had made into tobacco pipes, escalated into an attack, and the explorer David de Vries found the burned site in 1632. The state-run museum now tells that story alongside maritime, military and social history of the Lewes area, and shows a mounted "Fiji Merman" specimen that locals call the "Monkeyfish." Ghost stories connected with Zwaanendael come from newer homes built near the old colony site, where residents have described orbs and streaks of light, cold spots, a sense of being watched and books that seem to move on their own; none are reported at the museum itself.