G2G: Resources for 1675-1715 period in the Crane Hook Area?

Question

Does the old church have a documented graveyard from that period? Pew assignments? Any wills or patent records archives?

Answer 1

Undoubtedly, I had ancestors that went there. There were only a handful of Swedish Lutheran churches from that era, yet I can never keep them straight. I know I've found records on ancestors in some of them.

I found reference to the historical marker for that place. It says, in part: "According to a pew list of the congregation from the 1690s, about 50% of the congregants came from New Castle County, 10% from Cecil County Maryland, and 40% came by boat from across the Delaware River in New Jersey." (My guys would have been among those crossing the river).

https://archives.delaware.gov/historical-markers-map/crane-hook-church/

Anyway, apparently there IS a pew list, somewhere.

Comments

Thanks Frank, I appreciate your introducing me to the Delaware.gov archives. I may hire a researcher to poke around there when C19 threat diminishes, since I live in the far NW.

Answer 2

The late Peter Craig's book, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (1993), p. 12 and pp. 17-18, asserts that the original document is divided into separate columns for the Lutheran congregations of the greater Philadelphia area (Wicaco) and the greater Wilmington, DE area (Crane Hook).  Jeannette Eckman's earlier study, Crane Hook on the Delaware (1957, reprinted with a 1986 copyright renewal) has a wealth of background material, much of it translated from Swedish (not very well) in 1890, and also from sources in Dutch.  It includes three fold-out maps that are very useful and not very well known.  Those basic reference works are footnoted, and cite the available records.  Note that the extant flagship "Old Swedes" churches for those areas were built during the pastorates of the ministers (Rudman at Gloria Dei, and Björck at Holy Trinity) who arrived later (1697) in response to the plea that had been sent to the Swedish king, with the said 1693 census.  And there were six or eight more Lutheran congregations (not to mention a couple of Moravian ones) organized later than 1697 by Swedish missionaries.  Almost all had become Episcopalian by the mid-19th century, but still exist.  I wrote the pertinent article in the New Sweden issue of Lutheran Quarterly, 1988, which by the way also includes a large fold-out map locating settlements and churches of the extended New Sweden.  Both Peter and I were sensitive to the felt need for distinguishing the many Finns of New Sweden, where possible.

Comments

Thanks Richard.

I acquired Craig's 1693 Census book but have not yet received it from Swedish Colonial Society. I'll look for Eckman's tome as well.

The problem with 17th century and earlier history is its usual 30000 ft fly-over perspective; the little people are seldom cataloged and indexed, even when known. Thus I appreciate Craig's bottom-up interest in our small community. I have all his SAG articles on New Sweden Settlers.

Do you know of any published research regarding migrations of New Sweden settlers into Virginia post 1700?

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The Eckman book was published by the Delaware Swedish Colonial Society.  https://www.delawareswedes.com/home 

I did a small museum exhibit on the Swedes and Finns in Colonial Maryland, in 1984, with a printed "gallery guide," From Northern Shore (sponsored by the Delaware Valley Finnish Americans, then based in North East, MD). 

I also read a paper on 18th century Swedes and Finns, primarily in the Shenandoah Valley, for a meeting of the VA Folklore Society, but it wasn't published.  I think I still have the typescript, it wasn't a digital word-processor document.

I quit working on this stuff in about 1999 but have not yet died, nor cleaned out my garage.  So there is a lot of it still around here somewhere.

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Richard, 

Hoping you are still living and still avoiding your garage cleanup.  Just doing an annual reorg of my email inbox and found your reply, which I hadn't acknowledged. 

Any chance of getting a copy of your Shenandoah migrants paper, or a summary of the findings. My Smith ancestors seem to originate in the Shenandoah Valley and nearby West VA. 

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I'm alive and well, vaccinated and boosted.  And was in my garage only yesterday, but didn't clean it up.  (I did replace some light bulbs; small steps.)  My paper was written to be read aloud, so it has no footnotes.  It's a 12-page typescript, I can't post it digitally, but could scan and zap it to you via email.  My address is known to WikiTree, but yours is not known to me.  This process can get a bit Byzantine.

PS -- I have zapped you jpegs of the 12 page paper (10/6/21).