History · Slaughter Beach

Slaughter Beach’s history is
mostly unwritten

The public archives hold no old photos of Slaughter Beach. The rest are in attics, shoeboxes and the historical society. Help start the collection.

1681established
0old images & papers
12recent photos

The story

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Slaughter Beach was founded in 1681 and incorporated in 1931. There are at least three stories of where the town's name came from: The first is that it was named after William Slaughter, a local postmaster in the mid-19th century. The second story claims "the name may stem from the annual springtime appearance of hordes of horseshoe crabs that emerge from the waters of Delaware Bay to lay their eggs on the beach. Changing tides leave many crabs stranded, so that they fall victim to the beating sun or marauding foxes and raccoons—hence the name 'Slaughter Beach.'" The third story, and the most contested source of the town's name, stems from a local legend which tells of a man named Brabant who, in the mid-18th century, "slaughtered" several indigenous inhabitants by cannon in order to prevent an impending massacre. In 2018, PETA wrote to the mayor and followed up with a press release req…

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Slaughter Beach

Delaware · DE
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Boundary source: https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/arcgis/rest/services/TIGERweb/Places_CouSub_ConCity_SubMCD/MapServer/18 · 2025-01-01