<^^^i't^'<1;.'^'|^^Ut^yy', '*^,*1^:: CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Given in Memory of George Harmon Coxe III '53 Cornell University Library F 130S2 E94 Scandinavian immigrants in New Yori( 163 3 1924 028 827 009 olin Cornell University ' M Library The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028827009 SCANDINAVIAN IMMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK 1630-1674 fiv,- ,\ I K I >'/ -JJr" A- E I) E R it^-^i''^ 1. Yn«li«Tie»«rH«rAw««»T4«ill,<nf>wS*w-York) A.B. l«i6. Reduced from a copy in the Lenox Library, New York City. Scandinavian Immigrants IN NEW YORK 1630—1674 WITH APPEHDICES ON SCANDINAVIANS IN MEXICO AND SOUTH AMERICA. 1532—1640 SCANDINAVIANS IN CANADA, 1619—1620 SOME SCANDINAVIANS IN NEW YORK IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GERMAN IMMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK, 1630—1674 BY JOHN O. EVJEN, Ph. D. (LEIPZIG) PROPESSOR OF CmjBCH HISTOEY IH AUHSBIIBG [THEOMBICAll SEHIHiRT, HINIIEAFOLIS, MINK. ILLUSTRATED MINNEAPOUS. MINN. K. C. HOLTER PUBLISHING COMPANY 1916 2>^ COPYRIGHT, 1916. BY K. C. HOLTER PUBLISHING COMPANY. TO MY REVERED TEACHER ALBERT HAUCK, Ph. D., D.Th. D.Jur. PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED ON HIS 70th birthday DECEMBER 9, 1915 IN SINCERE GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION PREFACE. This volume is a collection of biographic articles on Nor- wegian, Danish, and Swedish immigrants who settled in New Netherland, or the present state of New York, between the years 1630 and 1674. It is the result of research work begun seven years ago while I was teaching in Pennsylvania College, Gettys- burg, Pennsylvania. The most elementary, but also the most difficult, task con- nected with this work was to establish by documentary evidence which persons in the materials examined were Dutch or German, and which persons were Scandinavian. The English and French names were easily recognized. But the more strictly Teutonic names appeared to be fully as much Scandinavian as Dutch. In most instances the Dutch and Scandinavian nomenclature — es- pecially the ending "szen" or "sen" in surnames — necessitated my making excursions into the personal history of the candidates for septentrional glory until their nationality was established. Hundreds of possible Scandinavian names were traced in the documents until they proved to be the property of other Teutons than the Scandinavians. Some of them turned out to be the property of members belonging to the Celtic, to the Mongolian, and to the Ethiopian stock. Thus, a Jan Andersen and a Hendrick Hendricksen were two promising Scandinavian candidates until 1 discovered that they were Irish. Jan Swaen was one of my Swedish candidates until I had traced him to his original home, Africa. Promising candidates for my volume were also Emanuel Pieterszen, Lucas Pieterszen, and the latter's wife, Anna Jans. But these, too, proved to be of negro stock. Less promising were the candidates Hans and Hendrick, both without a surname, but Hans proved to be a Mohawk Indian, and Hendrick a plain Indian. My field would have been more inviting, if it had been better viii PKBPAOB. cultivated. Judging by a statement made by Professor George T. Flom, it had hardly seen a plow as late as 1909, when he published his valuable "A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States," which says: "In the early days of New Netherlands colony, Norwegians sometimes came across in Dutch ships and settled among the Dutch. The names of at least two such have been preserved in the Dutch colonial records." Professor Flom then gives the names of Qaes Carstensen and Hans Hansen. In addition he refers to Anneke Hendricks and Helletje Hendricks as Norwegian immigrant women. However, Helletje had the surname Noorman, not because she was a Norwegian, but because she was married to Claes Carstensen. But Anneke, the first wife of the ancestor of the Vanderbilts, was from Norway. Professor Flom's phrase "at least two," coming, as it does, from a careful scholar of recognized ability, a graduate of Colum- bia University (which has derived some of its wealth from a parcel of the farm of two of the earliest Norwegian immigrants, Roelof Jansen and his wife Anneke Jans), may be taken as an index of the knowledge which the average public, six years ago, had of the first Norwegian immigrants in New York, of whom I have registered in the present volume no less than fifty-seven. Mr. Hjalmar Rued Holand, M. A. (Wisconsin) unknowingly corroborates my statement regarding the knowledge the public has of Scandinavian immigration in the seventeenth century. In "De norske Settlementers Historic" (1909) he gives the names of twenty persons in early New York, who, in his opinion, were Scandinavians. Only eight of these, however, prove to be that, while the total number of Scandinavians treated in the present work is 187. "Danske i Amerika" (1908f), published by C. Rasmussen Publishing Company, Minneapolis, has devoted considerable space (e. g. pp. 39—i3, 358—384) to Danish immigrants. However, the sources used are not primary, but secondary at the best. And the treatment is uncritical. A number of immigrants are mentioned as Danes, though they belonged to other nationalities. And a great number of real Danish immigrants have escaped the notice of "Danske i Amerika," otherwise in many respects a work of which the Americans of Danish ancestry can be proud. Less ambitious but far more scholarly than the endeavors in PREFACE. ix "Danske i Amerika" are two articles by Mr. Torstein Jahr, in "Symra" (V., 2, 1909; IX, 1, 1913), a magazine in Norwegian, published at Decorah, Iowa. They are chiefly based upon the "Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts" published in Albany, 1908. Mr. Jahr's articles in "Symra" tell in some forty pages aboui the Norwegian immigrants who came to Rensselaerswyck. He dwells especially on the family of Bratt and of Anneke Jans, devoting some twenty-five pages to the latter. He makes good use of the well-known Anneke Jans literature, but offers nothing new to scholars beyond the claim—and this is important^that An- neke Jans and her husband Roelof Jansen were Norwegians. Mr. A. J. F. van Laer, the editor of the "Bowier Manuscripts," had called attention to the fact that Anneke and her husband did not come from Holland, as it had been supposed, but from Marstrand, "an island of the coast of Sweden." It would then appear that they were Swedes. Mr. Jahr, however, called attention to the fact that Marstrand was a Norwegian town, founded by the Norwegian king Haakon Haakonsson about the year 1230, and that it became a Swedish possession in 1658. And hence Anneke and her husband were, in all probability, Norwegians. As for the Swedish immigrants in New York, but little ap- pears to have been written concerning them, the Swedish settle- ment on the Delaware having engaged the attention of the more capable writers on Scandinavian immigration to our country, whose efforts have been crowned in the elaborate work of Dr. Amandus Johnson. Sporadic statements concerning Scandinavian immigrants have not been wanting in general works on New York (state and city), but the attention bestowed upon these early pioneers from Northern Europe is almost insignificant. J. Riker's "Harlem, Its Origin and Early Annals" (revised edition, 1904) and J. H. Innes' "New Amsterdam and Its People" (1902), particularly the latter, belong to the exceptions. They avoid the common error of making every resident of New Amsterdam or New Netherland Dutch or English. However, the number of Scandinavians they mention is very limited, and the treatment ac- corded them meagre. The present volume is in the main based on primary sources The most important of these sources, at least for genealogical data X PEEFACE. and personal history, are the lists of passengers which the im- migrant ships of the seventeenth century kept; parish records, or church registers, kept in New York, Brooklyn, Albany, etc., record? stating whence the several immigrants came, whom they married, the date of their marriage, the names of the children, the date of the baptism of the children, the names of the sponsors; court records, legislative records, municipal protocols, municipal orders; deeds; marriage contracts, and general contracts; petitions and proclamations; wills; private account books, inventories; lists of soldiers; war dispatches; letters; rent rolls and tax rolls, general business papers and accounts, etc. Some of the material is published in Dutch, but most of the other published material is available, to the general public, only in English translations. Some of these translations are excellent, e. g., that of the "Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts." But many of them are admittedly poor, a fact that the New York State Library is trying to remedy. It planned some five years ago (see: Educational Department Bulletin, No. 462, Albany) to translate and publish the manuscript Dutch records of the govern- ment of New Netherland 1638—74. According to the plan adopted, three or four volumes of this projected publication should have appeared by this time. But the Albany Capitol fire of March 29, 1911, did havoc, destroying not only the first volume of the records but also a copy of the Dutch text and the translations which Mr. van Laer had prepared. My aim in writing "Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630—1674" has been to present facts, in detail and chronological order. Wherever I have found it feasible, I have used the words of published sources. I have given verbatim many excerpts from the court records. I have quoted at length public and private documents, in order to illustrate or illumine certain facts, in the selection of which I have been guided by various considerations, which it would be useless to enumerate.