The New Sweden Company was founded as a joint stock enterprise in 1637 including Swedish, Dutch, and German investors seeking to trade in American furs and tobacco. Under the command of Peter Minuit, former governor of the New Netherlands colony in New York, the company sent two ships to America that arrived in Delaware Bay in March 1638. On the site of present day Wilmington, Delaware, the traders established Fort Christina, named in honor of the young Swedish Queen, and over the next 17 years, they settled over 600 colonists on farms and villages along both sides of the Delaware River, reaching north to present day Philadelphia and inland as far as Darby Creek. Old Swede's Church in Philadelphia was established by Swedish colonists in 1643.

Internal dissentions within the colony, however, plagued New Sweden under the ten year rule of Gov. Johan Printz, who was followed in 1654 by Johan Rising, who made the blundered by attempting to expel Dutch colonists from Fort Casimir (present-day New Castle, Delaware). The response of the Dutch governor of New York Peter Stuyvesant was swift and decisive. The arrival of 317 Dutch troops at the gates of Fort Christina forced the Swedes to capitulate and the colony came to a quick end.

The Records of the New Sweden Colony were selected and transcribed in 1820 from originals in Stockholm by the American minister to Sweden, Jonathan Russell. Among these are copies of the original charter of the New Sweden Company, instructions from the Queen to Governors Johan Printz and Johan Rising, and selected correspondence from the governors to the crown. Some are direct transcriptions in the original Swedish or German; most are also translated into French.

The transcriptions that comprise this collection appear to have been the result of a request by James Mease to the American consul in Sweden, William Shaler. When Shaler left office, he was succeeded by Jonathan Russell, who had them transcribed and translated into French. The translations are placed in document order at the beginning of the volume, followed by the Swedish and German transcriptions. Bound in at the end of the volume is an extract from Per Lindestrom's Déscription de la Nouvelle Suède, 1691.

Provenance

Gift of Jonathan Russell, 1820, and Williams Jones, 1822 (Lindestrom extract).

Preferred citation

Cite as: New Sweden Records, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued 2003.

Early American History Note

This bound volume contains a host of information on the early history of European settlement on the Delaware River. Translated from records in Stockholm in the early-nineteenth century, the correspondence provides a window into the governance of the colony of New Sweden. The translations are almost all in French and consist of correspondence from the Swedish government to the colony, and from colonial officials, such as Joseph Printz, to the Crown.

Genre(s)

• General Correspondence
• Official Government Documents and Records

Geographic Name(s)

• New Sweden--History
• Sweden--Colonies

Personal Name(s)

• Christina, Queen of Sweden, 1626-1689
• Du Ponceau , Peter Stephen, 1760-1844
• Mease, James, 1771-1846
• Printz, Johan, 1592-1663
• Rising, Johan, 1617-1672
• Russell, Jonathan, 1771-1832
• Vaughan, John, 1756-1841

Subject(s)

• Colonial Politics
• Pennsylvania History
• Philadelphia History
• Swedes--United States