Ocean View, Delaware bypassed the area where Ocean View now lies because of the poor quality of its sandy, salty soil and the salt air that blew in from the Atlantic Ocean; they preferred to settle a few miles farther inland, where the land was higher and drier and the soil richer. Would-be settlers also faced a legal complication in obtaining land in what is now Ocean View, because Lord Baltimore claimed the area as part of his Maryland colony, while William Penn asserted that the area belonged to the Delaware Colony; settlers opted to look elsewhere for land to which they could
Devil's Island marry freed male inmates to aid in settlement and development of the colony. As the results were poor, the government discontinued the practice in 1907. On Devil's Island, the small prison facility did not usually house more than 12 persons. The horrors of the penal settlement were publicized during the Dreyfus affair, as the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus was unjustly convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island on 5 January 1895. In 1938 the penal system was strongly criticized in René Belbenoît's book "Dry Guillotine". Shortly after the release of Belbenoit's book, which aroused public outrage about the