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The earliest dates of these Swedish papers are 1640, and seem to refer to an earlier colonization.

The early Dutch and Swedes' papers published in Hazard's Register, from the MS. in the Historical Society, are not interesting to me for extracts. Besides these, were several extracts from the Minutes of Council, extracted by Mr. Sargent.

I here add some facts concerning Tinicum, once a place of head quarters to the Swedish authorities, to wit:

Tinicum consists of big and little Tinicum islands. The larger is nine miles round, three long, and one and a half wide, and has twentysix houses. It was on this island stood the fortress of New Gottenburg, and near it Printz's hall, (the mansion of Governor Printz,) and sundry houses and grounds of the Swedes. The house occupied by the governor is said by tradition to be the same now standing on the upland. It bears many interior marks of great antiquity, much of it was burnt by fire in 1822. The island now is worth 150 to 200 dollars an acre, and the whole island is worth $400,000, but in 1696, it was all sold for £500. It originally contained but five hundred acres, but now, by embanking and reclaiming from the water, it contains twenty-seven hundred acres, and is rendered much more healthy, and free from fevers and ague. The smaller island, "little Tinicum," fronts the other, out in the Delaware, was dry and embanked before the revolution, but in 1777 our people opened the banks to river invasion, to prevent its use by the British against Mud fort, and it still is flooded in high tides.

The following few facts concerning the Swedes, the earliest cultivators of our soil, may be worthy of some brief notices, to wit: Penn's letter says the Swedes and Fins came soon after the Dutch; while the latter pursued traffic the others turned to husbandry, settling chiefly about the freshes of the river Delaware. Such as Penn saw them, they were a plain, strong, and industrious people, but had made no great improvements. Their houses were full of fine children.

Numbers of Swedes lived about Kensington and on Gunner's creek, before the arrival of Penn. They had grants of land from Alexander Henoyon, the governor of New York, as early as 1664, that is the date of the deed to old Peter Cock for Shackamaxon. On that creek, three-fourths of a mile from its mouth, now so diminished, they once built large sloops, and afterwards a brig at its mouth. The Swedes dwelt in numbers on Tinicum, calling the place New Gottenburg. At their church there, the first corpse ever buried was Catharine, daughter of Andrew Hanson, October 24, 1646.

All the Swedes, settled along the Delaware, used to go in their canoes from long distances to the church upon Tinicum island. They did the same in visiting the primitive log church at Wiccaco, almost all their conveyances were preferred by water. There was a store upon Darby to which they always went by water, even when the land route was often nearest.

The old Swedish inhabitants were said to be very successful in raising chick turkeys; as soon as hatched they plunged them into cold water, and forced them to swallow a whole pepper corn, they then returned them to the mother, and they became as hardy as a hen's chick. When they found them drooping, their practice was to examine the rump feathers, and such two or three as were found filled with blood were to be drawn, and the chick would revive and thrive.

Kalm, the Swedish traveller, who was here among his countrymen in 1748, has left us such notices as follows concerning them, to wit:

The ancient Swedes used the sassafras for tea, and for a dye. From the persimon tree they made beer and brandy. They called the mullein plant the Indian tobacco; they tied it round their arms and feet, as a cure when they had the ague. They made their candles generally from the bayberry bushes; the root they used to cure toothache; from the bush they also made an agreeable smelling soap. The magnolia tree they made use of for various medicinal purposes.

The houses of the first Swedish settlers were very indifferent; they consisted of but one room; the door was so low as to require you to stoop. Instead of window panes of glass they had little holes, before which a sliding board was put, or, on other occasions they had isinglass; the cracks between logs were filled with clay; the chimneys, in a corner, were generally of gray sandstone, or for want of it, sometimes of mere clay; the ovens were in the same room. They had at first separate stables for the cattle; but after the English came and set the example, they left their cattle to suffer in the open winter air. The Swedes wore vests and breeches of skins; hats were not used, but little caps with flaps before them. They made their own leather and shoes, with soles (like moccasons) of the same materials as the tops. The women, too, wore jackets and petticoats of skins; their beds, excepting the sheets, were of skins of bears, wolves, &c. Hemp they had none, but they used flax for ropes and fishing tackle. This rude state of living was, however, in the country places principally, and before the English came, who, rough as they must have also lived for a time, taught a comparative state of luxury.

The Swedes seem, however, to have retained an hereditary attachment to skin garments, for within the memory of the aged Mrs. S. she had seen old Mauntz Stille, down the Passyunk road, in his calfskin vest and jacket, and buckskin breeches.

Many Swedes settled along the western side of the Schuylkill. Matthias Holstein, a primitive settler in Upper Merion, took up one thousand acres there. Mauntz Rambo, an aged Swede, alive about sixty years ago, born near the Swedes' ford, was a celebrated hunter in his day; he killed numerous deer in the neighbourhood in his time-once he shot a panther which he found attempting to attack

his dog. He remembered many Indians still among them, in his younger days.

My friend, Major M. Holstein, fond of his Swedish descent, tells me, that when he went to the Swedes' church, in Merion, as a boy, all the men and women came there on horseback, and all the women wore "safe-guard petticoats," which they took off and hung along the fence.

His grandmother, born at Molothan, four miles from Pottsgrove, remembered the Indians once about them, and that she herself, when young, had been carried some distance on a squaw's back. They then did all their travelling by canoes on the Schuylkill. When married, she and her wedding friends came down to the Swede's ford in their canoes. In the same manner they always made their

visits to Philadelphia.

In 1631, the Swedes built a fort at " Fort point," the present estate of Benjamin Holmes, in Elsinborough. It was fronting upon the Delaware, and not up Salem creek. It was at this place they found the parent stock of the Elsinborough native grape. They built another at Finnsport New Jersey, opposite to Fort Delaware. They also built a fort at Elsinborough, which was afterwards destroyed by the Renappi Indians.

The Swedes settled several places on the Morris river, at Buckshutem, Dorchester and Leesburg; at the first place they had a church, but now all have disappeared, so that no Swedish names remain. Their graves, however, are still seen at Leesburg, on the brink of the river.

At Salem, one can still see remains of the earliest brick houses; they may be known, by being regularly intermixed with the glazed brick, always one-story high, with high double roofs. They are now generally raised into two-stories, without the glazed brick in the upper stories, and at the gable-ends may be still seen the lines which marked the former double roofs; and now the roofs have a single pitch. In the large grave ground opposite to the Friends' meeting, well filled with graves without any stones, is a very large oak tree of admirable spread and beauty in its wide branches. From being once deemed unhealthy as a residence, it has become, by the regular draining of the meadows, a healthy town, and has much of taste and beauty and neatness in the style of its houses and improvements. Philadelphians should visit it oftener, as the place where the first English emigrants began their first settlement on Delaware. entitled to their regard for the sake of its early associations.

22

It is

THE GERMANS.

THIS hardy, frugal, and industrious portion of our population in Pennsylvania, so numerous and exclusive in places as to preserve their manners and language unaltered, are so often the subject of remark in the early MSS., which I have seen in the Logan collection, &c., as to deserve a separate notice, to wit:

When the Germans first came into the country, save those who were Friends and settled in Germantown in 1682-3, it is manifest there was a fear they would not be acceptable inhabitants, for James Logan, in 1717, remarks, "We have of late great numbers of Palatines poured in upon us, without any recommendation or notice, which gives the country some uneasiness, for foreigners do not so well among us as our own people," the English.

In 1719, Jonathan Dickinson remarks, "We are daily expecting ships from London which bring over Palatines, in number about six or seven hundred. We had a parcel who came about five years ago, who purchased land about sixty miles west of Philadelphia, and prove quiet and industrious. Some few came from Ireland lately, and more are expected thence. This is besides our common supply from Wales and England. Our friends do increase mightily, and a great people there is in this wilderness country, which is fast becoming a fruitful field."

Kalm, the Swedish traveller, here in 1748, says the Germans all preferred to settle in Pennsylvania, because they had been ill-treated by the authorities in New York, whither they first inclined to settle. Many had gone to that colony about the year 1709, [say 1711,] and made settlements on their own lands, which were invaded under various pretexts. They took great umbrage, and beat some of the persons who were disposed to dispossess them. Some of their leading men were seized by the government. The remainder in disgust left the country, and proceeded to settle in Pennsylvania. After that, even those who arrived at New York would not be persuaded to tarry, but all pushed on to Pennsylvania, where a better protection was granted to their rights and privileges. This mortified the New Yorkers, but they could not remove the first unfavourable impressions. As many as twelve thousand came to Philadelphia in 1749.

This emigration from New York to Pennsylvania is further incidentally explained by James Logan, in his MS. letters to the proprietaries. In writing to them in the year 1724, he manifests considerable disquietude at the great numbers coming among them, so numerous that he apprehends the Germans may even feel disposed to usurp the country to themselves. He speaks of the lands to the northward, (meaning Tulpehocken) as overrun by the unruly Germans, the same who, in the year 1711, arrived at New York at

the queen's expense, and were invited hither in 1722, (as a state policy,) by Sir William Keith when he was at Albany, for purposes of strengthening his political influence by favouring them.

In another letter of 1725, he calls them crowds of bold and indigent strangers from Germany, many of whom had been soldiers. All these go into the best vacant tracts, and seized upon them as places of common spoil. He says they rarely approach him on their arrival to propose to purchase; and when they are sought out and challenged for their rights of occupancy, they allege it was published in Europe that we wanted and solicited for colonists, and had a superabundance of land, and therefore they had come without the means to pay. The Germans in after time embroiled with the Indians at Tulpehocken, threatening a serious affair. In general, those who sat down without titles acquired enough in a few years to buy them, and so generally they were left unmolested. Logan speaks of one hundred thousand acres of land so possessed, and including the Irish squatters also.

"Bold master-spirits, where they touch'd they gain'd Ascendence where they fix'd their foot, they reign'd!" The character of the Germans then known to him, he states, are many of them a surly people-divers of them Papists,-the men well armed, and, as a body, a warlike, morose race. In 1727, he

states that six thousand Germans more are expected, and also many from Ireland; and these emigrations he hopes may be prevented in future by act of parliament, else he fears these colonies will, in time, be lost to the crown!-a future fact.

In 1729, he speaks of being glad to observe the influx of strangers, as likely to attract the interference of parliament, for truly, says he, they have danger to apprehend for a country where not even a militia exists for government support. To arrest their arrival in some degree the Assembly assessed a tax of 20 shillings a head on newly arrived servants.

In another letter he says, the numbers from Germany at this rate will soon produce a German colony here, and perhaps such a one as Britain once received from Saxony in the fifth century. He even states as among the apprehended schemes of Sir William Keith, the former governor, that he, Harland and Gould, have had sinister projects of forming an independent province in the west, to the westward of the Germans, towards the Ohio-probably west of the mountains, and to be supplied by his friends among the Palatines and Irish, among whom was his chief popularity at that time.

In later time, say about the year 1750 to '55, the Germans having become numerous, and therefore powerful as make weights in the political balance, were much noticed in the publications of the day. They were at that period of time in general very hearty co-operators

* It was at Tulpehocken, Conrad Weiser, a German, so often employed as Indian inter preter, was settled and died-say at present Womelsdorf, where he had his farm.

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