Frederica is a town in Kent County, Delaware, United States. It is part of the Dover, Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 774 at the 2010 census. ILC Dover, the company which manufactured the spacesuits for the Apollo and Skylab astronauts of the 1960s and 1970s, along with fabricating the suit component of the Space Shuttle's Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), is located nearby. History The present-day town of Frederica was part of a land grant to Boneny Bishop by William Penn in 1681. The location at a bend along the Murderkill River was originally known as Indian Point and later became known as Johnny Cake Landing. The waterfront was surveyed in 1758 and the area where most shipping activity occurred became known as Goforth's Landing. The remainder of the town was surveyed and laid out by Jonathan Emerson in 1772. In 1796, the community was renamed from Johnny Cake Landing to Frederica Landing at the request of one of Emerson's daughters, as she believed the name Johnny Cake Landing was a rather unceremonious, informal name and inappropriate for a settlement close to Barratt's Chapel, a major landmark for Methodism. (See Johnnycake.) The Town of Frederica was incorporated by the state in 1826. The incorporation act for Frederica was repealed in 1855, only for the town to be reincorporated in 1865. Frederica was built along the Murderkill River at a point it was still navigable, from the Delaware Bay. The town was surrounded by wetlands, leading to the nickname "Frogtown" for the large number of frogs that live in the wetlands. Frederica developed as a shipping and shipbuilding center due to its location along the navigable Murderkill River; shipping and shipbuilding would dominate the town's economy for several decades. The town was linked by water to other Kent County towns along with the city of Philadelphia, and its fortunes depended on its water connections to these places as roads were often impassable at the time. Important cargo shipped along the Murderkill River in Frederica's early history included bacon, beef, corn, wheat flour, cedar shingles, cheese, butter, tar, pitch and hardwood boards. In 1857, the Delaware Railroad was constructed across the state, leading to a decline in Frederica's status as a major shipping center. The railroad brought improved transportation across Kent County, diverting the shipment of goods away from the river ports. The shipping interests in Frederica fought against the construction