Hockessin Delaware History & Facts

Hockessin is a census-designated place (CDP) in New Castle County, Delaware, United States. The population was 13,527 at the 2010 census.

Hockessin came into existence as a little village in 1688 when several families settled in the area. The village was named after the Lenape word hokes, meaning good bark or good bark hill. There is a second and more likely origin for the name. While the word Hockessin does look like a Native American word, the name Hockessin did not show up on any early maps until many years after the Hockessin Meeting House was built and what is now the Village of Hockessin was never settled by the Native Americans, while they did have a hunting camp nearby. There was no town name Hockessin and the area was referred to as Mill Creek Hundred. The actual name is believed to be derived from one of the first settled properties which was named Occasion and settled by William Cox in 1726 and also the location of the first Quaker meetings in the area before Hockessin Meeting House was built a few years later. The earliest known use of the word Occasion was in 1734 in a property deed for this property. And the road to the Hockessin Meeting House, currently Old Wilmington Road, was written as Ockession Road on a map in 1808. The first Roman Catholic church in Delaware was located in Hockessin. Missionary priests from Maryland established the Coffee Run Mission in 1790.

The A. Armstrong Farm, Coffee Run Mission Site, Hockessin Friends Meetinghouse, T. Pierson Farm, Public School No. 29, Springer Farm, and Wilmington and Western Railroad are listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. More recently added sites to the National Register of Historic Places include: Tweed's Tavern, the home of Negro league baseball player James "Nip" Winters, Colored School #107C, St. John the Evangelist Church, the Daniel Nichols house, and the Cox/Phillips/Mitchell Agricultural Complex.

The community is near the northwestern border of Delaware, within 1.2 mi (1.9 km) of the Pennsylvania border on the east bank of Mill Creek.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 10.0 square miles (26 km2), of which 10.0 square miles (26 km2) is land and 0.10% is water.

As of the census of 2000, there were 12,902 people, 4,464 households, and 3,731 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 1,286.7 people per square mile (496.7/km2). There were 4,575 housing units at an average density of 456.3 per square mile (176.1/km2). The racial makeup of the CDP was 88.8% White, 2.7% African American, 0.2% Native American, 7.2% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.5% from other races, and 0.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.0% of the population. From 1990 to 2016, the population of Hockessin has grown by about 35%.

Famous Peoples From Hockessin Delaware

Neilia Hunter Biden

(July 28, 1942 – December 18, 1972) was an American teacher and the first wife of Joe Biden, the 46th and current president of the United States. She died in a car crash in 1972, along with her one-year-old daughter, Naomi. Her two sons, Beau and Hunter, then known as Bobby, were critically injured but survived the wreck.

Neilia Hunter was born on July 28, 1942, in Skaneateles, New York, to Louise (née Basel; 1915–1993) and Robert Hunter (1914–1991) who were Presbyterians. She attended Penn Hall, a secondary boarding school in Pennsylvania. She was active in the school's French club, hockey, swimming and student council. After secondary school, she attended Syracuse University and was a school teacher in the Syracuse City School District. She was an English teacher at the Bellevue Academy in Syracuse, New York. She was related to former Auburn city councilman Robert Hunter.

We also serve Milford city.

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