Genealogy information and records concerning 
ancestors in the thirteen original American colonies.

Colonial Delaware

  
List of the Swedish Families Residing in 
New Sweden in 1693 for Genealogy Research

Some of the names are evidently Dutch, as Van der Weer, Starke, & Meyer. These were probably recorded as Swedes, on account of their descent from them, on the female side, and from having adopted the language and customs of that people.  The Swedish and Dutch names are so very similar that it is perhaps impossible to distinguish them with certainty.  Many in the list may be Dutch with Swedish forms, owing to the mode of spelling them.

This list is very interesting and valuable for genealogy.  It leaves nothing to conjecture and in relation to the amount of the Swedish population on the Delaware, at the period of fifty-five years after the arrival of the first colony under Minuit.  That amount is 945, which of course includes all coming into the country both from emigration and by natural increase.  The number appears very shall when we consider how many ships arrived in the colonies during the first 10 years of their existence, and the time that has elapsed before the list was made.  But new countries to new comers are always sickly, and the locations chosen by the Swedes were the most unfavourable to health that could have been selected.  They settled along the tide waters, on the banks of rivers and marshy creeks, often in the neighborhood of low swamps, and the means of preventing and curing diseases were probably little understood among them at that day.  Under all these unfavourable circumstances, there is little cause to wonder that their number was so small.  A great many of the colonists under William Penn, with superior advantages in every respect, suffered severely from sickness during the early periods of their settlement in Philadelphia and its vicinity.  Most of their family records which have come down to us, show a dreadful mortality among them, within the space of ten or fifteen years after their arrival.

This list is dated 1693.  It was probably made out in the spring of that year, and sent to Sweden with the interesting letter written by Charles Springer, and signed by thirty of the principal men in the colony, giving an account of their situation, and soliciting the means of religious instruction.  That letter was dated the 31st of May, 1693.

The list is copied from "Campanius's description of New Sweden,"  printed in 1702 at Stockholm.  Many of the names have, since that day, undergone great changes in their orthography, and in some cases so great, as to destroy the resemblance.  The following short list will give some idea of the transformation to which they have been subjected.

Source:  A History of the Original Settlements on The Delaware, Benjamin Ferris, Wilson & Herald, 107 Market Street, Wilmington, 1846,  pages 304-308.

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