Blue Hen State
| 1. | The State of Delaware; - a popular sobriquet. It is said, though the story lacks proof, to have taken its origin from the insistence of a Delaware Revolutionary captain, named Caldwell, that no cock could be truly game unless the mother was a blue hen, whence Blue Hen's Chickens came to be a nickname for the people of Delaware. |
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by G. & C. Merriam Co.