of New Amsterdam. Followed by the previous Swedish colony on the upper Delaware River at Fort Christina and New Sweden (which the Dutch had attacked and occupied several years earlier). These later became part of the English and later British America colonies/provinces of New York state and New York town along with renamed Wilmington and New Castle along the Delaware River as part of the colonial Province of Pennsylvania and later in the future state of Delaware. Later the Duke himself granted holdings to various landholders who endured into the 18th century. The duke later ascended to the English throne himself as King James II of England and also James VII of Scotland. By the mid-19th century, the descendants of these landholders were farmers attempting to make a living off the relatively poor sandy infertile land. The town was founded in 1873 as the Rehoboth Beach Camp Meeting Association by the Rev. Robert W. Todd, of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church of Wilmington, Delaware, as a site for Methodist (Methodist Episcopal Church) camp meetings in the spirit of similar resorts further north on the New Jersey shore, such as Ocean Grove. The Camp Meeting Association disbanded in 1881, and in 1891, the location was incorporated by the General Assembly of Delaware (state legislature) as "Cape Henlopen City". In 1893, it was renamed to Rehoboth Beach. Rehoboth () means "broad spaces." It appears three times in the Old Testament as a place name: a well dug by Isaac (at modern Wadi er-Ruheibeh) (Genesis 26:22), a city on the Euphrates River (Genesis 36:37; I Chronicles 1:48), and one of the cities of Asshur (Genesis 10:11) in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Hence the name may have had a special appeal for the religious founders of the city, although the adjacent bay had already borne the name Rehoboth for at least a century before the town was founded. The first boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach was constructed in 1873 and has seen changes in configuration from weather and storms over the years. The Junction and Breakwater Railroad constructed a line from Lewes south to Rehoboth Beach in 1878, running down the center of today's Rehoboth Avenue. The arrival of the railroad allowed visitors to come in from northern Delaware and Pennsylvania and its cities and towns, leading to the beginning of Rehoboth Beach as a tourist destination. After the railroad came to Rehoboth Beach, the center