Is Delaware in the souuuuuth? (Wilmington, Milford: how much, house, stores)

[doctorjef]

I suspect the urbanisation thing is just a statistical artifact having to do with the large percentage of the overall very small state population that live in urban areas, of which the only true one is Northern New Castle County. Georgia and Tennessee, with much larger (and more) cities than Delaware might somehow be statistically construed as being less urban because a larger percentage of the population live in rural areas in those states. There's really much less in Delaware than in Tenn. or Georgia.

As to the whole argument about whether or not DE is in the South, it's silly to be applying archaic definitions. DE has no distinctively Southern culture. Southern Living magazine may include DE in its "catchment area", but culturally it's really rather meaningless.

"Mid-Atlantic" seems best to describe DE.

[jmc1]

I grew up in Delaware. NCC 18yrs.. College at San Diego State. Move back after college and move to Sussex 15yrs.. Not to beat a dead horse, but The Governor Ross Plantation in Seaford Delaware includes rebuilt log slave quarters that are the only remaining slave quarters as far north as Delaware. I think if you talk to almost any old Sussex countian, from judges to large land owners to even a farmer down here(if you knew any), that Sussex is the South. Even if it were to be the most northern county to be considered the South. Maybe it's just a feeling they have. Maybe they are just senile. Some I know are darn near 90. http://www.sussexcountyonline.com/to...ford/ross.html Now I know that people from NCC, NJ, NY, PA that move here may not think of this being the South, well some do, but ask a real old timer from around here if they were from the North or South(forget the Mid-Atlantic). I have been called a Yankeee by some and I am from New Castle County. So, I guess Delaware is both, but Sussex was and should still be considered South if you had to pick one of the two; if not I guess I could throw a stone into the South.

[doctorjef]

jmc1, that's exactly the sort of archaicism to which I was referring. What nonegenarians in Sussex County think really doesn't define either Sussex County or Delaware as a whole in the first decade of the C21.

[jmc1]

Tell them that. They own most of the land. You sound just like one of the people I would hanging around with be for I left for San Diego. Then I came back and thought, wow, nothing has changed (Trolley Square, Buckleys, Point-To-Point, the people), I got to get out of here. That is when I moved down here. Bought a condo in Spring Lake. Couldn't wait for summer to end and you all go back up North. But now it never ends. Sold the condo at triple the price and moved west some. Then about 4 years later the 5 miles west from RT1 turned from country to hundreds of houses. So, I sold again and move west some more. So, come on, the only thing you know about Sussex county is how to get to Rehoboth/Dewey Beach; not its' people or culture.

[bluenoter]

Delaware is Confederate, while West Virginia is Yankee.

[doctorjef]

Is that to illustrate that both characterisations are ridiculous?

[cpterp]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

Delaware is Confederate, while West Virginia is Yankee.

Delaware (and Maryland) was never part of the Confederacy, but West Virginia was "claimed" by the confeds even after they seceded. Most major battles of the Civil War were fought in that area of the WV panhandle, Western MD, SW PA (Gettysburg/Monocacy/Harpers Ferry/Antietam). While I would think Delaware, DC, and Maryland are definitely NE, I wouldn't go as far to call WV "Northeastern" though, even though I woudn't call WV "Southern" either: 1. because of their location 2. they share almost no characteristics with most NE states (eg. WV is the poorest state in the country, ironically bordering the wealthiest state in the country-MD). I think I heard somewhere that West Virginians hate when someone calls them "Southern," and instead prefer be called "mountaineers."

I happened upon an interesting read searching Google (Warning: this site is very extremist): http://dixienet.org/New%20Site/theso...wnnation.shtml

As a Marylander, when was a kid, my family used to visit the Eastern Shore, including OC, and Bethany and Rehoboth beach in DE. Even though my memory that far back is vague, I don't remeber it seeming "Southern."

[Bobilee]

Originally Posted by cpterp

Delaware (and Maryland) was never part of the Confederacy, but West Virginia was "claimed" by the confeds even after they seceded. Most major battles of the Civil War were fought in that area of the WV panhandle, Western MD, SW PA (Gettysburg/Monocacy/Harpers Ferry/Antietam). While I would think Delaware, DC, and Maryland are definitely NE, I wouldn't go as far to call WV "Northeastern" though, even though I woudn't call WV "Southern" either: 1. because of their location 2. they share almost no characteristics with most NE states (eg. WV is the poorest state in the country, ironically bordering the wealthiest state in the country-MD). I think I heard somewhere that West Virginians hate when someone calls them "Southern," and instead prefer be called "mountaineers."

I happened upon an interesting read searching Google (Warning: this site is very extremist): DixieNet.Org :: The South As It's Own Nation

As a Marylander, when was a kid, my family used to visit the Eastern Shore, including OC, and Bethany and Rehoboth beach in DE. Even though my memory that far back is vague, I don't remeber it seeming "Southern."

Some West Virginians might not want to be called southerners, but there are others who would object to being called anything else, depends on where you are in the state. According to Rupert Vance in Regionalism and the South "West Virginia is found to have its closest attachment to the Southeast on the basis of agriculture and population." But many in the northern part of the state think of themselves as northerners, it's a very split state.

[7 Wishes]

Let's see:

1) Delaware was not part of the Confederacy

2) Someone here noted not really any "Southern" accents

3) Wilmington/New Castle County is part of the metropolitan area of PHILADELPHIA!!! Please don't tell me that's "southern". Yeah, y'all, Rocky Balboa is a "son of the South".

By the way that 800K population is in the 2nd smallest state in area in the country, not the same idea in terms of "sparseness" as the 800K in say North Dakota or the 500K in Wyoming

And West Virginia is tricky......the northern panhandle is at the same latitude as central New Jersey and are in the Pittsburgh TV market. But I think the rest of the state is culturally "southern", even if the state was formed because of rebelling over the Civil War with Virginia.

[doctorjef]

Thanks, 7 Wishes -- all good points.

RE: West Virginia. Most of the state is culturally southern. The split from VA really had to do with longstanding socioeconomic differences and lack of adequate representation in the state legislature. The geography of the western part of the original Commonwealth of Virginia made it unsuitable for large scale plantation farming and hence for large scale slave-holding, in contrast to most of the rest of the state. In the late 18th Century people in the western part of the state were already expressing interest in splitting off to form a separate state -- remember that VA ceded its claim to the land that became KY, which was admitted to the Union in 1792 as a slave state, balancing the admission of Vermont in 1791, which had originally split off from NY and been an independent republic for a few years, and which of course did not have the institution of slavery. Anyway, it was plausible for West Virginia to leave, but this doesn't cancel out the historically southern mountain culture of the state (like western NC and eastern Tenn.).