"Bronx" New York Times
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By: Sam Roberts New York Times August 20, 2014 Nobody would mistake the municipality of Savsjo for the borough of the Bronx. Savsjo, surrounded by dense forests in southern Sweden between Stockholm and Malmo, has about 5,000 inhabitants (about one-tenth as many as the Co-op City section of the borough alone, but about 10 times as many as the number of Bronxites who claim Swedish heritage). Its medieval churches date to the 12th century (the oldest existing house in the Bronx was built in 1748). Savsjo’s best-known sports team plays handball, not baseball. And yet the two localities share one largely forgotten favorite son, whose Swedish heritage has only recently been confirmed: Jonas Bronck. Bronck was born in 1600 just outside Savsjo (pronounced SEV-sho) in the hamlet of Komstad. He emigrated to Denmark, where he became a mariner, and then to the Netherlands, where he married a local woman. In 1639, after the local economy was roiled by a boom-and-bust mania for tulip bulbs, the couple sailed on the Fire of Troy for New Amsterdam. The Broncks built a stone house they named Emmaus (after a site where Jesus appeared after his resurrection) at what would become East 132nd Street and Lincoln Avenue, on a bluff overlooking what would become a 680-acre farm flanked by the Harlem River, the Bronx Kill, which separates the borough from Randalls Island, and the Aquahung, which later became known as Bronck’s River. The 375th anniversary of Bronck’s arrival and settlement as the first European in the Bronx will be celebrated this weekend in Savsjo by his descendants and dignitaries from both countries. (This year is also the centennial of Bronx County, New York State’s youngest.) “The invisible hand of the Almighty Father,” Bronck wrote to a friend in Amsterdam, “surely guided me to this beautiful country, a land covered with virgin forest and unlimited opportunities. It is a veritable paradise and needs but the industrious hand of man to make it the finest and most beautiful region in all the world.” Bronck died childless at age 43 of unknown causes. His widow remarried and moved to what would be called upstate New York. Several descendants of his nephew or cousin Pieter, whose stone house in Coxsackie is now the headquarters of the Greene County Historical Society, plan to attend the commemoration. A mural in the rotunda of the Bronx County Courthouse depicts Jonas Bronck arriving in Westchester County. Credit... Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times “We have always been very proud of the fact that you do not go to Bronx but to the Bronx, meaning to visit that family or what remains of it,” said Audrey Bronk of Pinehurst, N.C., whose husband, Charles, 85, born in Brooklyn and raised in New Jersey, a former salesman for a plumbing and heating company, is a 10th-generation descendant of Pieter. (The name, which gained an X from the Dutch, lost a C in English.) The celebration was largely conceived by Brian G. Andersson, a Bronxite of Swedish ancestry. He is the former commissioner of records for New York City and a founding director of the Jonas Bronck Center in Savsjo, which is hosting the commemoration. “The story behind Jonas Bronck will serve as a model and be the power behind Jonas Bronck Center’s goal — to make the cultural and historical treasure in Smaland and Savsjo, the focal point of tourism in this part of Sweden,” said Curt Wrigfors, the chairman of the center, which is also conducting historical and genealogical research. The center, a former hotel, also houses a Vietnamese restaurant and a tattoo parlor. Until recently, when it has begun a modest rebound, the Bronx has been famous for the Yankees, the zoo and the New York Botanical Garden, but also disparaged for the Bronx cheer and Ogden Nash’s ultimate contumely (later retracted) “The Bronx? No thonx,” and mocked at home as a national symbol of urban blight (Howard Cosell: “The Bronx is burning;” Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities”). So New Yorkers may be surprised that Jonas Bronck himself has been claimed as a native of Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and the Frisian and Faroe Islands. His Swedish roots were established only in the last few decades by Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx borough historian, and further authenticated by an Irish historian and Mr. Andersson. “It’s a big deal in Sweden,” Mr. Ultan said. “Rural areas are always looking for ways to make themselves a tourist attraction — ‘this is where Jonas Bronck came from, come and see’ — and it’s a bit of pride for people who live in the area.” The Rev. Harold Raymond Bronk Jr., an 86-year-old Brooklyn-born Episcopal minister also descended from Pieter, said he was proud of his Bronx heritage, but never flaunted it. When it comes to loyalty, he draws the line at baseball. “I was a Dodger fan, and then I never adopted any team,” said Mr. Bronk, a Massachusetts transplant. “And wearing a New York Yankees cap in Boston is an invitation to getting beaten up.” Jonas Bronk and his family at their home near Los Angeles. They will attend the 375th anniversary celebration of the arrival of his ancestor, Jonas Bronck, in the Bronx. From left, Alexandra Bronk, Zoe, Mr. Bronk and Bresnan. Credit... Monica Almeida/The New York Times This weekend’s program will include the unveiling of a monument to Bronck, exhibitions about Swedes in the Civil War, the auto industry and professional hockey; a service in the church where Bronck was baptized, a Viking drama and a selection from the musical “Kristina from Duvemala,” inspired by a Swedish family’s migration to America in the 19th century (it includes a bilingual joke about flatulence, not unlike a Bronx cheer). The borough will be represented by Lenny Caro, president of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce, who will deliver an official proclamation and a Bronx flag. (The borough’s motto, Virgil’s admonition “Ne cede malis,” or “Do not yield to evil,” is supposedly adopted from the Bronck family crest.) The Bronx is the only borough with an article before its name (a shortcut of the possessive case, associated either with the river or the family), the only one mostly on the North American mainland and the only one, in modern times, at least, to invade another’s territory (in 1939, when the Bronx borough president, James J. Lyons, symbolically claimed the Manhattan enclave of Marble Hill, an island created by the Harlem ship canal and geographically separated from the mainland by the original course of the Harlem River until a century ago). The wellspring of hip-hop, the Bronx has been the birthplace of or home to Woody Allen, Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo, the Belmonts, Lloyd Blankfein, Mary J. Blige, Stokely Carmichael, Louis Farrakhan, Lou Gehrig, John Gotti, Calvin Klein, Edward I. Koch, Ralph Lauren, Tito Puente, Carly Simon, Sonia Sotomayor, Leon Trotsky and Mark Twain. “It’s a pretty incredible list of people who grew up there,” said Jonas Bronk, 40, a Los Angeles real estate developer, who was raised in upstate New York, plans to attend the celebration with his wife and two children, and last visited the borough for a Yankees game about six years ago. Rolf Egeborn, a 64-year-old school counselor from Taberg, Sweden, said he visited New York only once, in 1980, but did not know then that he was descended from Bronck through his grandfather, so he never made it to the Bronx. What would he have wanted to see? “Of course, the Yankee Stadium,” he replied. “That’s the one and only thing I know.” Mr. Andersson said, “I’m surprised how many Swedes are aware of the connection and how many of the kids wear Yankee caps.” Invoking a Yiddish word still more colloquial in the Bronx than Swedish, he added, “I’m sure, after this, they’ll kvell even more.” Correction: Aug. 25, 2014 Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about Jonas Bronck and the connection between Savsjo, his hometown in Sweden, and what is now the Bronx — where he arrived 375 years ago as the first European settler — misidentified the source of the quotation “the Bronx is burning.” The comment was made by Howard Cosell during a 1977 World Series game, not by Tom Wolfe in “The Bonfire of the Vanities.”.