Project: New Sweden

Categories: New Sweden | United States Projects | Pre-1700 Projects

Welcome to the New Sweden Project!

1 Mission

Mission

Nieuw Nederland and Nya Sverige

New Sweden was located in parts of present-day Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. The goal of this project is to document families who were part of New Sweden (1637-1655) both before it was acquired by New Netherland and during the interstitial period before Penn arrived in 1683 and set up English law. This project is a sub-project of United States and is related to both Sweden and New Netherland Settlers.

Some sources for New Sweden researchers are available on New Sweden Research Sources. The major source for this project is the work of Dr. Peter Craig for the The Swedish Colonial Society.

Are you interested in the New Sweden Project?

Top Level Project: United States
Project Leaders: Jim Angelo
Coordinators: Heather Husted
Answer our G2G welcome post to join the New Sweden project and get a badge.
Add New_Sweden to your followed tags.
We use G2G for communication.
Look at one of the New Sweden project's example profiles to see what we hope for in profiles that are part of our project. Other excellent examples from our project and others can be found in the Examples Gallery.

Project members

Add NEW_SWEDEN to your followed tags to receive word of project discussions. If you have a question about a New Sweden ancestor, ask in g2g, including tag NEW_SWEDEN so the rest of us see it & can pitch in.

List of people following tag NEW_SWEDEN

Project Goals

Help Out However You Can...

Add the tag NEW_SWEDEN to receive updates of project-related discussions in G2G.

Share any sources you find with us on New Sweden Sources

Populate the Forefathers of New Sweden category, using Peter Craig's list. There's a shared New Sweden Forefathers Google spreadsheet where we track progress of this goal.

Create categories for locations, New Sweden Ships, churches, and possibly graveyards

Locate profiles of New Sweden colony residents.
- Add project categories
- Merge duplicates & decide LNABs. Many profiles often do not following patronymic convention and there are often surname changes in the descendants.
- Locate/create profiles of New Sweden notables (Johan Björnsson Printz, his daughter Armegot Printz, Johan Papegoja, Peter Minuit, Sven Gunnarsson, Pehr Kalm, etc.)
- Work on New Sweden Unsourced Profiles

Templates

New Sweden Project Template

To have the New Sweden project profile added as a profile manager of a particular profile, add the project box template, and (if you have the necessary permissions) make the New Sweden Project a profile manager.

Note: When we add the project account as a manager on a profile, it is to partner with current profile managers, never to replace them. Project members, project leadership, and other profile managers are expected to collaborate on maintaining and improving the quality of profiles included in the project.

Add {{New Sweden}} to a profile to display the following template and add the profile to Category:New_Sweden (the name of the person will be automatically added where ... ... ... is shown below):

... ... ... belongs to a New Sweden family.
Join: New Sweden Project
Discuss: New_Sweden

Migrating ancestor template

... ... ... migrated from Sweden to New Sweden in YEAR aboard the SHIP.

To use this template, add the following code to the profile:

{{Migrating Ancestor
| origin = Sweden
| destination = [[Space:New_Sweden|New Sweden]] in YEAR aboard the ''SHIP''
| origin-flag = Swedish_Flags.png
| destination-flag = Swedish_Flags.png
}}

Categories for New Sweden Ships

There are 16 ships with passengers that were bound for the colony of New Sweden.

These ships have been known in various sources and sites under up to three names: Dutch, Swedish, and English. A couple so-far reliable source for information are the geni.com New Sweden Immigrant Ships project and the New Sweden ships on Rootsweb. Have you found other sources? Please share them in the comments.

It may be that the best source is Peter Craig's series of articles where he attempts to identify every known settler who stayed in New Sweden and left descendants. There is a separate page The Expeditions to settle New Sweden which further explains his method and results. Note that some of the details on individuals on the Geni lists are derived from Dr. Craig's work.

Proposed format for names of ship

Name in Swedish (Name in English), sailed dd mm yyyy

Kalmar Nyckel, sailed 1637 see: Category: Calmer Sleutel (Key of Kalmar), sailed Dec 1637. Ship name in category is Dutch; half the passengers were Dutch and the ship stopped in New Amsterdam).
Fågel/Vogel Grip (Bird Griffin), sailed 29 December 1637 (Should name be Fogel Grip / Fågel Grip / Vogel Grip?)
Kalmar Nyckel, sailed September 1639 (suggest we use the Swedish spelling? apparently no one bound for New Netherland was on board.) (geni.com)
Freedenburg, sailed July/August 1640 (aka Fredenburg) (geni.com, could be NNS Ship too)
Kalmar Nyckel, sailed July 1641 (geni.com)
Category: Charitas, sailed May 03 1641 --currently an NNS ship, but were there New Netherlanders aboard?
Fama, sailed 1642 (geni.com)
Svanen (Swan), sailed 1642 (what date to use; she sailed from Stockholm August 16, 1642 and from Gothenburg November 1, 1642) (geni.com)
Fama, sailed 29 December 1643 (geni.com)
Gyllene Hajen (Golden Shark), sailed May 1646 (geni.com)
Svanen (Swan), sailed 25 September 1647 (geni.com)
Kattan (Cat), sailed 3 July 3 1649 (Also known as Katt or Katten, she was wrecked off Puerto Rico & never made it to New Sweden. I'd still categorize her as a New Sweden ship, a handful of her survivors made it to the colony.) (geni.com)
Gyllene Hajen, sailed 1653 but was badly damaged and never left Sweden; its colonists transferred to the Örn--do we need/want a category? (geni.com)
Örnen/Örn (The Eagle), sailed 2 February 1654 (rootsweb list and geni.com)
Gyllene Hajen, sailed 15 April 1654 (geni.com)
Mercurius, sailed 25 November 1655, arriving after New Sweden has fallen to Dutch (geni.com)

I suggest we create a parent category named either New Sweden Ships or New Sweden Settler Ships. In some cases, a ship carried settlers bound for both New Netherland and New Sweden. In that case use NNS Ships and/or Category: New Sweden Ships as appropriate.

So for example The Kalmar Nyckel in its 1637 voyage had settlers for both colonies, so should be in both parent categories. The Charitas contained no settlers for New Netherland, so would be in the New Sweden Ships category (current it's in parent category NNS Ships).

New Sweden ships could also be sub-categorized in any of the following:

Category:Middle_Colony_Ships

Category:1630s_Ships

Category:1640s_Ships

Category:1650s_Ships

Categories for New Sweden Locations

See this cool map of New Sweden Landmarks created by the SCS!

Locations in 1671 Census

Tinnacum Island (now part of Philadelphia), capital from 1642-1652
[Fort] Christina, capital from 1652-1655, (now Wilmington, Delaware)
Matinicum Island (now Burlington Island, part of Burlington, NJ)
Shackamaxon (now part of Philadelphia)
Wicaco (now part of Philadelphia)
Moyamensing (now part of Philadelphia)
Passyunk (now part of Philadelphia)
Aronameck (formerly Torne) (now in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania)
Kingsessing (now part of Philadelphia)
Carkoens Hook (now in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania)
Calcon Hook (now in Chester County, Pennsylvania)
Ammansland (now in Ridley Township, Pennsylvania)
Upland (now in Chester County, Pennsylvania)
Printztorp (link, now in Chester County, Pennsylvania)
Marcus Kill
Marcus Hook (now in Chester County, Pennsylvania)
The Bought (now in New Castle County, Delaware) -- not to be confused with Boughttown on 1693 Census (now in Salem County, New Jersey)
Verdrietige Hook (aka Bochten, now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Skilpot Kill (now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Deer Point (now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Bread & Cheese Island (close to Wilmington, DE) article)
Swart Nutten Island
Feren Hook (aka Fern Hook, now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Long Hook (now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Mill Torp (aka Mill Dorp, now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Turkey Island
Crane Hook (now in New Castle County, Delaware)
Swanwyck (Paerden Hook, now in New Castle County, Delaware)
New Castle (New Amstel), (now New Castle, Delaware)

Other Locations

New Stockholm/Bridgeport
Fort Nya Gothenborg
Fort Casimir/Fort Trinity (now part of New Castle, Delaware)
Fort Nya Elfsborg
Nya Vaasa (now part of Kingsessing in West Philadelphia)
Raccoon (now part of Swedesboro, Gloucester County, New Jersey) Brief History of Swedesboro
Sahakitko (now Elkton, Cecil County, Maryland)
add more locations here

New Sweden Church Categories and Links

The Swedish Colonial Society defined eight "Old Swedes" churches founded and attended by the settlers and their descendants. Below are links to Wikitree categories for church cemeteries, and other source pages for visiting and researching the churches. See also New Sweden Churches, which contains photos and brief architectural histories of Gloria Dei, Trinity, St. George's, and St. Mary Anne's. While founded as Lutheran congregations, all are now Episcopal churches.