A History of the Kalmar Nyckel
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The Kalmar Nyckel was a remarkable ship. She was the pride of Sweden, heavily armed, able to hold a large cargo, yet more nimble and maneuverable than other ships her size. Majestic and seaworthy, this three-masted, square-rigger first crossed of the Atlantic Ocean in 1638. Unknown to most Americans, and omitted from all but a few history books, she has the distinction of being the ship that crossed the Atlantic Ocean more times than any other ship before the American Revolution. She only made four round trips, but none the less, that was the more than any other ship was able to accomplish.
The modern replica of the Kalmar Nyckel was built 350 years later to become Delaware's Tall Ship. Back in 2001 and 2003, several members of our family sailed aboard her. The new Kalmar Nyckel was constructed to resemble the original ship as closely as possible, but much guesswork had to be used. A few contemporary descriptions exist, but no blueprints, plans or drawings of the original Kalmar Nyckel have been found. Like the original Kalmar Nyckel, the replica is painted the same shade of blue as the Swedish flag and hosts a golden lion as her figurehead. Unlike the original, and hidden from view, the modern day ship has a engine for back up power to the sails, and she hosts a contemporary kitchen for her crew. Both ships were built with a square stern and a high poopdeck, underneath which the ship's captain's quarters could be found. Even if they were almost the same size, in the seventeenth century, her captain would have considered the space large and comfortable, while to a modern eye the modern Kalmar Nyckel's quarters appear to be a bit cramped. Different members of our family spent glorious and fun-filled sunny afternoons on the Delaware Bay. In contrast, when some of our ancestors crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard the original ship, they would have spent over three months in miserable quarters bringing with them all their clothes and other earthly possessions.
The first Kalmar Nyckel served her country for more than thirty years. She was a merchant ship that had been redesigned as a man-of-war. The first time the Kalmar Nyckel sailed across the Atlantic, she was under orders that should she encounter a vulnerable enemy ship, the captain was ordered to attack -- in other words, in addition to all the other remarkable things about her, the Kalmar Nyckel was also a pirate ship.
To discover the history of the Kalmar Nyckel, it is important to understand the colonial aspirations of the Kingdom of Sweden. Not to besmirch the Swedes, but Sweden is not the first (or second, or third, or fourth) country you think of as an empire-building world power. In American history surveys, New Sweden is usually considered an insignificant episode, if it is included at all. None-the-less, when the Kalmar Nyckel was setting that trans-Atlantic record, Sweden really was a "Great Power" in Europe. The Thirty Years War was raging, and the King Gustavus Adolphus II earned the nickname the Lion of the North as he became the principal military figure of Europe. He served as a great Protestant champion and did his best to vanquish the Catholic states and conquer as much of Europe as he could for Sweden. Finland and much of Scandinavia was already under Swedish domination, but he expanded his empire to include Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, plus significant parts of Russia, Poland, and Germany. When some trading company directors approached him with the possibility, he turned his eye to empire in the New World.
The trading company had several different names and was re-organized more than a few times. Names included the General Trading Company, the Swedish Florida Company, Swedish West Indian Company, the Ships' Company, the Australian Company, the South Company, the United South Ships Company, and finally the name we know it by today, the New Sweden Company.
If the directors were pleased to now have a charter, they were disappointed in two other major regards. The king left it up to the directors to find their own funding for an expedition to the new world, and he had no ships to spare while war was being waged. Fortunately for the directors, they did have some experience raising money and organizing an expedition to the new World. Most of them were Dutch who had been involved in New Amsterdam, and they had only approached the Swedish king because they had left or been fired by their Dutch patrons. Good protestant capitalists and disgruntled empire builders, they were looking for a fresh start and a second chance to make their fortune.
The company was first chartered in 1626, but not much progress was made for several years. The waging of the Thirty Years War made it difficult for a trading company to raise money, hire crews of sailors, and find willing settlers with which to establish a new colony. Then, when things finally started to look promising, but before as much as a single ship was in their possession, the king was killed in battle.
The great Gustavus Aldolphus's eleven-year-old daughter succeeded him to the throne. Fortunately for the directors of the New Sweden Company, the young queen, or in actuality the Swedish regency government lead by chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, proved to be just as keen on creating a Swedish empire as the king had been. Unfortunately for the directors, the new government was even less willing to part with money from the Swedish treasury to back the project.
Early dreams for Swedish empire appear to have included Africa, Asia, Brazil, and what someone called Magellanland, but the trading company now concentrated on North America. It was Minuit who convinced the Swedish authorities to focus on the North America rather than in African copper mines or treasures that might be found elsewhere. The trouble was, by 1630, there wasn't any part of North America left to discover. That problem was resolved when Peter Minuit arrived in Sweden. I've read that his name should really be pronounced "min WEE." Minuit, a recently fired Director-General of New Netherlands, joined the board of directors in 1632, when the company still was without a boat to its name. He is well known in history as the man who bought Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets. In defense of Peter Minuit, although he may not have been enlightened, he was acting in good faith and was probably unaware that the European and Indian concepts of land ownership were quite different.
It took two years after Minuit joined the New Sweden Company before the deal could be worked out to acquire its first ship, the Kalmar Nyckel. The Kalmar Nyckel had not been built to be a trans-Atlantic sailing ship. She started her life as a a Dutch merchant vessel sometime in the 1620s. The exact year she was built being unknown. She entered the Swedish service in 1629 when she was purchased to defend the city of Kalmar, a major port on the Baltic Sea. The citizens of Kalmar, themselves, were ordered by the king to raise the money both to purchase the ship and to rearm her as a fit warship. Her original name is unknown, but she was now christened Kalmar Nyckel, which means Key of Kalmar. In some books the name of the ship is written Key of Calmar. Despite that fact that the Swedish crown didn't pay for her, five years later, in1634, the ship was confiscated in the name of the queen without any compensation to the good people of Kalmar and presented to the private trading company.
Once a ship was in their possession, the directors still took more than a few years to raise enough funds to outfit her for a trans-Atlantic voyage. A second, smaller ship, the Fogel Grip (or the Griffon Bird), was acquired by the company to accompany the Kalmar Nyckel on her first voyage. Finally, a launch was supposed to occur during the summer of 1637. Minuit received secret orders (that he may have written himself) outlining the mission. The ships were to sail to the Delaware River (or South River as the Dutch called it) to purchase the land and prepare the land for the building the a new colony. The first expedition was also supposed to establish contacts through whom the company could establish a trade in tobacco and fur. No permanent colonists were on board, but soldiers would be left behind to construct and then defend a fort for the new colony.
The summer came and went as did most of the fall with nothing but delays. Peter Minuit was sick part of that time, and his absence may have enhanced the problems. Finally in November the Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip set sail from Gothenburg, Sweden. Minuit led the expedition, but the captain of the Kalmar Nyckel was Jan Hindricksen van der Water (which could be translated as John Henderson of the High Seas). Bleak November is perhaps not the best time to start an oceanic voyage, and only a couple days after they began the voyage, a violent winter storm in the North Sea nearly destroyed both ships. The ships were separated, and each crew thought the other was lost. However, both ships found shelter in a Dutch port city. The survival of the Kalmar Nyckel can be credited to naval skills of Captain Hindricksen and his crew.
Since the orders were secret, almost no one but Minuit and Hindricksen knew they were about to invade Dutch territory. That is perhaps important information to keep quiet about if you are in dry dock at a Dutch port. To keep the mission a secret, Peter Minuit even felt it necessary to make a deal with a friend to transport four passengers to New Amsterdam or as close to there as possible during their voyage to "Virginia. The Swedish ships remained in Dutch port undergoing repairs for about a month, setting sail again on December 31. Their route first took them to the Caribbean. This made a lot of sense back then, because of currents and prevailing winds, but in addition, there they could find supplies, goods to trade for, and, potentially, vulnerable Spanish galleons. There is no evidence that the crew of Kalmar Nyckel ever acted as pirates, but once back in Sweden the captain of the sister ship Fogel Grip got in trouble for not reporting some Spanish booty he captured. That booty apparently included a slave from West Africa, and Anthoni was delivered and took residence in New Sweden. Since Sweden had abolished slavery, Anthoni was able to become a free man. He must have become one of the first emancipated slaves in North America.
In March1638, Hindricksen and his crew proved their navigational skill as the Kalmar Nyckel reached the Delaware Bay. They proceeded cautiously for another forty miles up the Delaware River. Caution was necessary both because the river was rather shallow in places, and they did not wish to encounter any Dutch ships or settlers. At last they reached their pre-assigned destination, a western tributary that the Dutch had called the Minquas Kill. Continuing about two miles further, well hidden from traffic on the Delaware, they dropped anchor. As the Pilgrims had Plymouth Rock, the Swedes had "The Rocks," a natural rock formation that could serve as a natural loading dock in what was otherwise low and marshy land.
The crew did not immediately go ashore. Instead they shot off the ships' cannons. First they wanted to be sure no Europeans were around. Second, they wanted to attract the attention of any non-Europeans. Minuit's secret plan could now be revealed. From his personal experience as Director-General of New Netherlands several years before, he knew that the land on the West shore of the Delaware River had never been purchased by any European power. In his mind, that meant it was available for Swedish possession, if the Indian owners were willing to sell it to him. Since both the English and the Dutch both had previously claimed the land as their own, this was the best and only legal justification for the Swedish invasion.
In a matter of days, five sachem (also know as Indian chiefs) from two distinct tribes, the Lenape and the Minquas, boarded the Kalmar Nyckel. The first also known as the Delaware and the second as the Mingo or Susquahannock. Members of both tribes were present, it is understood, because even though the Lenape lived in the area, they were at the time subservient to their ancient enemy the Minquas. There aboard the mighty ship, an historical agreement was signed. Ownership of the land on the western side of the Delaware to the Swedes was officially and legally transferred to the Kingdom of Sweden. Although similar agreements had been made before between Europeans and Indians, what was unique about the Kalmar Nyckel treaty was that this time the Europeans hadn't already taken the land before making the agreement. Enlightened or not, Minuit, in founding New Sweden, was acknowledging that the people who already lived there were its rightful owners. What Minuit and every other European of the time failed to understand was that the Indian understood only that they were agreeing to share the land with the new people, only.
With this first agreement, the territory of New Sweden stretched about seventy miles along the Delaware River. The northern border was the Schuylkill River, just short of a stretch of wilderness that would become Philadelphia. In a different direction, in theory, at least, New Sweden extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean, since no western boundary was set. It is not recorded whether Peter Minuit paid more or less than $24 worth of trinkets in exchange for the territory, but it is known that the Swedes brought useful items for negotiating with the Indians, several hundred knives and axes, hoes, iron pots and copper kettles, and great numbers of lengthy bolts of cloth. Among the standard trinket items, which they brought as well, were mirrors, combs, jewelry, and Jew's harps. Peter Minuit's previous dealings with Indians provided him with the knowledge of what items would be valued. Not everything the New Sweden Company brought, however, was used to buy land. Much of that stock would have used later to barter for furs and pelts. One sacham claimed several years later to Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant (so Stuyvesant claimed) that the Swedes only paid only a "kettle and other trifles" plus some promised goods that were never delivered.
It is not clear how long the Kalmar Nyckel or the Fogel Grip remained in New Sweden on this first voyage. They left at different times. It is possible the Kalmar Nyckel remained longer than six weeks, but Minuit wished to return to Sweden as soon as he could to organize the next voyage. Before he departed, Minuit supervised the clearing of land for a fort to be built and a few acres to be tilled. The insignia of the young queen were raised on poles for all to see, even if Minuit wasn't too anxious for any Europeans to actually see evidence of a Swedish claim to the land until he returned with more soldiers and the first permanent settlers.
Construction of a palisaded fort may have been completed before the ships departed, since until some safe structure was complete, the Swedish invaders would have slept aboard the ships. The fort was called Fort Christina. This may not sound formidable, but it honored the young Swedish queen. Initially a purpose of Fort Christina may have been to protect the Swedes from unfriendly natives, but it was soon determined that the Lenape and Minquas were peaceful people and cooperative trading partners and agricultural advisors. Through the history of New Sweden, the main function of the forts became to protect the Swedes from other Europeans, not from the savages.
Finally, when Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel did set sail, twenty-four men (and on the first voyage all passengers and crew were men) were left behind. On board had been loaded 769 beaver pelts, 314 otter pelts, and 132 bearskins, with plenty of cargo space remaining to be filled with tobacco from elsewhere in Virginia. Before heading home, however, Minuit sailed up the Delaware to see the full extent of the new territory. This was not Minuit's most strategic decision, since during the trip, the ship passed by Fort Nassau, a Dutch fort on the east side of the Delaware a couple miles away from that wilderness that is now Philadelphia, and thus blew the secret of Sweden's invasion. [Another account recorded that it was the Fogel Grip, not the Kalmar Nyckel, that sailed up the Delaware past Fort Nassau.]
Once they saw the invading ship, did the Dutch fire upon the Kalmar Nyckel? No, this first encounter in the great war on the Delaware was bloodless, as would be every other battle between these two colonial powers. The keen-eyed Dutch soldiers on duty observed the Kalmar Nyckel, but, since they knew the Swedes were allies, they simply reported their observation to a superior officer, who, in turn, sent a report to New Amsterdam, where upon the Dutch governor forwarded the news to Holland, where a key government official contacted an ambassador who promptly submitted a petition to the Swedish crown asking that the Swedes to please remove themselves from Dutch territory. It was all very dignified and diplomatic, and totally ineffective in persuading the Swedes to abandon its new colony.
The Swedes responded, instead, by sending the Kalmar Nyckel back to New Sweden a second time. The response, however, was not swift. Even given the slow pace of the sailing ship era, the Swedes moved incredibly slowly in organizing the second expedition, mostly because Governor Minuit had died at sea while the Kalmar Nyckel was still in the Caribbean. He and Captain Hindricksen had been aboard a Dutch ship, presumably negotiating a trade deal, when a hurricane blew in with no warning, and the ship and all its crew and passengers were lost and never found. The remaining crew of the Kalmar Nyckel spent a long time searching for their leaders, but eventually gave up and returned to Sweden.
For the second expedition, the Kalmar Nyckel sailed alone. After returning to Sweden, the Fogel Grip had ran aground while on an unrelated voyage and was left to founder. Strapped for cash, the company was unable to purchase another ship. As seemed to be unavoidable, there were considerable delays before the Kalmar Nyckel was ready to sail again. The problems were related to the the New Sweden Company itself, not the readiness or seaworthiness of the ship. Without Minuit taking the lead, the process of organizing the second expedition crawled. It took several months after the directors learned of Minuit's before they were able to select another governor. Another Dutch citizen, Peter Ridder, was appointed, but, alas, he was a poor choice. He exhibited no commitment to the project and was ineffectual in dealing with a series of problems began to plague the second voyage. After the accountants determined that the first expedition failed to make a profit from the sale of fur pelts and tobacco, several key investors withdrew their monetary backing. Even more problematic was recruiting permanent settlers. No kind of enticement seemed to be able to attract more than a handful of Swedish men and even fewer families. The problem was solved only when the Swedish crown offered to supply the company with involuntary settlers -- army deserters. Swedish prisons were full of them. Involuntary, is not quite the right term, although coercion rather than encouragement was probably employed. The law that was passed permitted the army deserters to commute their prison sentences if they emigrated with their families to the new colony. All of the deserters were legally Swedes, but ethnically many, if not most, were Finns. The Finns had been a conquered people for several generations by this time, and few were eager to fight for the Swedish crown. The presence of prisoners did not make New Sweden a penal colony, however, since legally the deserters were emigrating by their own choice and none were transported bound and shackled. They were were even paid to accept passage aboard the Kalmar Nyckel. They would be more like indentured servants than prisoners, and after a limited term of service to the New Sweden Company, they became freemen and were given the choice to continue to live in New Sweden or return to the mother country. With this new supply of passengers, somewhere between 35 and 50 men, women, and children, the trading company was ready for the Kalmar Nyckel to weigh anchor. Shortly after she set sail in September 1639, however, the Kalmar Nyckel sprung a leak and had to return to Gothenburg. Repairs were made, but after another launch was attempted, the leaks reappeared, and the Kalmar Nyckel returned to port a second time. Before launching again, an investigation was made, and the new captain, who had replaced Hindricksen, was charged with failure to properly supervise the work. Further investigation uncovered the likelihood that the captain had skimmed money that should have been spent on fixing the leaks properly. Even further cheating was discovered. The captain had been overcharging the Company but undersupplying cargo. Key items included butter and beer. Although Ridder survived as governor, the captain was fired. Troubles mounted when several crew members then quit, either because they were loyal to the captain or in cahoots with him. A new captain and a large number of new crew members had to be recruited, and though this was done as hastily as possible, it took considerable time -- valuable time, in that the rest of the crew were ben paid just to be idle, and the passengers and the livestock that were to be taken aboard had to be housed and fed. The delays, the costs of repairs, and the fraud almost guaranteed that once again the voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel would not be profitable. Finally, when all was ready, storms delayed the launch date. Having been doubly repaired, the Kalmar Nyckel set sail for New Sweden on February 7, 1640.
Several accounts recorded that the second voyage was more difficult and unpleasant than the first. The problem was no so much bad weather, but the poor skill and discipline of the hastily recruited crew. Animosity arose between the Dutch crew members and the Swedish settlers, including the colony's first minister and the New World's first Lutheran preacher, the Reverend Reorus Torkillis. One positive note was that a healthy baby was born during the voyage, Olle Swennson.
Once again the Kalmar Nyckel set anchor at "the Rocks" outside Fort Christina. She arrived on April 17, 1640. Nearly two years had elapsed since the ship had departed from Fort Christina with two dozen soldiers behind. In much less time than that, half of the pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, had perished, but all the Swedish soldiers had survived. It appears that had the Kalmar Nyckel taken a few weeks longer they may have found Fort Christina abandoned, since the Swedish soldiers had almost given up to relocate to New Amsterdam. Not surprisingly, not a single soldier chose to remain in New Sweden when the Kalmar Nyckel sailed home again. One civilian, however, Claes Jansen, who was a tailor by trade but had been employed as a carpenter, did elect to remain in New Sweden
The Kalmar Nyckel only remained less than a month. It remained only as long as necessary for the new governor to settle into his new quarters and for fur pelts that the soldiers had traded for could be loaded onto the ship. Once back in Sweden it took less time to organize the next voyage, even if it couldn't be called expedious. There are no accounts of any particular scandals or difficulties in readying the ship for another trip across the ocean. Recruiting willing volunteers to become settlers was still difficult, but the New Sweden Company now had even greater help from the Swedish Crown to fill the quota of the passengers. The government expanded the pool of prisoners beyond army deserters, and now included a host of Finnish prisoners who had been either rebellious or otherwise trouble-making. There is no precise record of the number of Swedes who were actually Finns that came on the third voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel or eventually settled in New Sweden, but it has been estimated that the number for both was more than half. Finns found themselves being deported for a variety of offences. There were the army deserters, some might have been thieves or other petty criminals, and others could have been political prisoners who fought for Finnish independence, but a large number had been arrested for burnbeating. In the century preceding the voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel, the Sweden government had coerced Finns to settle in some previously uninhabited forest lands to produce charcoal. Sweden had no coal, so charcoal was used as the primary fuel for homes and industry. The Finns, using their ancient burnbeating method, were all too successful, and forests were noticeably starting to disappear. Burnbeating was outlawed, but the need for charcoal continued. Finns had few options to make a livelihood and continuing their foresting using the only method they knew. When the Swedish government then attempted to remove the Finns, the Finns fought back. Only a fraction of the Finns who were now filling up the Swedish prisons made a new life for themselves in New Sweden, but as a percentage of colonists there numbers were quite high.
There are few records about the third trans-Atlantic voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel once she set sail. For this trek the Kalmar Nyckel was joined by a ship called the Charitas. The ships left Gothenburg just under a year after she left New Sweden and arrived in New World. No passenger list exists to prove who came on the third voyage or who came on which ship, but since the Charitas carried mostly crew and livestock, it is expected that most of the estimated 64 permanent settlers crossed aboard the Kalmar Nyckel.
Only after the second voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel did New Sweden really begin its life as a colony. And, since there were only 28 permanent settlers on the second voyage, it was only after the third crossing of the Kalmar Nyckel that the numbers became large enough for New Sweden to be considered anything more than a trading outpost. Even so, in the history of New Sweden, the numbers never surpassed six hundred, and for most of its history were closer to two or three hundred. A large number of settlers belonged to the military. Others worked for the New Sweden Company in the fur trading business or served the governor in a civil service capacity. Some indentured laborers were employed to plant a tobacco crop, but even the farmers among them had no previous experience with this crop. Their efforts were never very successful, and after a few years they went on to other occupations or more productive farming. The colony expanded as more land cleared outside the fort, and houses were now built. The colony became widely scattered, as land was cleared for plantations by few people over a large stretch of land. The settlers built no roads but relied on boats and canoes as their principal form of transportation.
The icon of America, the log cabin, appeared in the new world for the first time, built by the Finnish settlers. The Finns, in addition to perfecting their burnbeating methods, had a unique method of building log structures which became the pattern followed by later pioneers from all ethnic groups.
Records indicate that women, Swedes and Finns alike, the did marvelous job of bearing and raising children. Families with twelve or thirteen children were quite common. In addition to childbearing and the everyday household chores of cooking and baking, the women were expected to milk cows (what few there were) and tend the other livestock, spin, weave, and sew. In many households it was the women who worked the gardens for food while the menfolk tended the cash crops or worked other occupations. Also included as women's work were mending fishing nets and brewing ale.
For several years, New Sweden peacefully co-existed with their neighbors, the Lenape -- perhaps because the settlers were generous traders and weren't very threatening. Since the New Sweden Company was interested in a profitable fur trade, they did not try to disrupt the lives of the Lenape, as some other Europeans had, but claiming or destroying their villages. The Finns continued their burnbeating practices, but they clear cut land no further than about 3 miles from the Delaware River. Their relations with the Dutch were also favorable, even if their governments were feuding, and in the absence of supplies from the homeland for as long as two years at a time, the Swedes relied on trade with the Dutch to survive.
Our family traces its roots to New Sweden through the Holstein line. It is not clear that anyone named Holstein was a passenger aboard the Kalmar Nyckel, but Anna Holstein, a nineteenth century genealogist wrote that the family tradition was passed on that the first Holstein, Matts or Matthias, was born in New Sweden in 1644 of parents who arrived on the Key of Calmar with Peter Minuit. There was the only passenger on the first voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel who remained to settle in New Sweden, an his name was Claes Jansen. The custom at the time was for children to take as part of their last name their father's first name, and indeed, Matts Holstein's original last name was Claesson. However, Jansen was from Niewkerck, in Holland, not Holstein, which was then part of the Kingdom of Denmark. A contemporary genealogist, Peter Stebbins Craig, has found a church record indicating that Matts Holstein was born in Dittmarschen, in Holstein, in 1642. Another church record brings to question this record, at least a bit. The church where old Matts Holstein was a member created a list of its members who were born in the homeland, and Matts Holstein's name is missing. The absence of his name may also be explained by the fact that he was not born in Sweden, not that he was born in New Sweden.
We did have two ancestors who were known to have come to the New World on the Kalmar Nyckel. There were likely more, but the records are not clear, and few women's names are included in any records. One of those first settlers was Peter Gunnarsson Rambo and the other Peter Larsson Cock. Three of Peter Larsson Cock's daughters married three of Peter Gunnarsson Rambo's sons, and one of these men's granddaughters, Britta Rambo, married Matts Holstein's son, who was also named Matts Holstein.
Peter Gunnarsson Rambo was both typical and extraordinary among the New Sweden colonists. Since he was the longest living of the original settlers, he later became known as the father of New Sweden. It is not known for sure whether or not he came to New Sweden voluntarily. He was indentured by the company to plant tobacco on the New Sweden Company's plantation just outside the fort. It is also not known whether his ethnicity was Swedish or Finnish. He was living in Gothenburg before he came to New Sweden, but many Finns were living there then, and his wife was from a Finnish region of Sweden, although he did not marry her until he had been in New Sweden for eight years and was a freeman. but after he became a freeman in 1644, he relocated to the eastern shore of the Schuylkill River in what is now West Philadelphia [If you are interested in seeing the old Rambo haunts, you will likely be disappointed, since the land is now occupied by a Sun Oil refinery]. Three years later he married. He became a prosperous farmer, orchardist, and something of a land speculator. He made his mark rather than signing his name on some legal documents, but that does not necessarily mean he could not read and write. His mark on one document was simply the letters P R B, and in another a very stylized X:
The senior Rambo was honored and trusted enough that he served as a ruling judge on the courts of New Sweden, New Amsterdam, and Pennsylvania. He didn't always get along with the authorities. In 1654, he was charged by Governor Printz for illegally selling grain to the Dutch, and in turn, he joined twenty-one other freemen in signing a petition to the Swedish crown complaining against Printz. At other times his word was very valued. In 1668, it was he who met with members of the Mantas Indians after members of the tribe had murdered three settlers. Rambo forwarded the message that the "Indyans in those parts have desired that there be an absolute prohibicon upon the whole River on selling Strong Liquors to the Indyans."
It has been passed down through the Rambo family the old Peter Rambo told English setters that his hands had been the very first to sow seed in the settlement. His name is also connected with an apple variety that, rare now, was once very popular, especially in the mid-Atlantic states. The first Rambo apple either grew up from a seed that Peter Gunnarsson brought with him from Sweden (or that he picked up while in port in Holland) or from apple scion wood that he brought with him from the old world. Several varieties of Rambos, or Rambour apples had been developed in France about a century before, so it is possible that Gunnarsson was familiar with one of the Rambour apple varieties before he crossed the Atlantic. A grandson wrote the the family name was first Ramberg but was changed to Rambo. A genealogist many years ago speculated that Rambo took his name from Ramberget, a mountain that overlooked his home town of Gothenburg, and that appears not have been questioned. It seems a bit wild to speculate that the man might have been named for the apple, not the other way around, but I still wonder if there is possibility of a connection. Rambo was so revered by his church, that after his death, when a new building, the Gloria Dei, was constructed, instead of moving Rambo's grave, they built the church around his remains.
Peter Larsson Cock was a passenger on the third voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel. He may have been one of those Finns who had been making lots of trouble back in Swede. If his name doesn't sound Finnish, that's because for official records, the Swedish government used the Swedish version of their names. Cock, or Kock in some records, was the name Peter adopted only while aboard ship, since he had become the ship's cook (Kock being Swedish for cook). Later generations changed the name to Cox or Cook. He married a year and a half after he arrived in New Sweden, but while still in servitude (it is not clear if he was serving with or without pay). After he became a freeman, he moved with his family to an island at the mouth of the Schuylkill. He and his wife eventually had twelve children who reached adulthood. Three of his daughters married three of Peter Rambo's sons. Cock continued to be a troublemaker of sorts. He was accused of trading guns with the Indians. Even though a jury of his peers found him not guilty, the governor sentenced him to three months of hard labor. It might have been a personal feud between Cock and the governor, for later on, Cock joined Rambo as a judge for the Swedish, Dutch, and English courts. On documents he also made his mark, which was not always identical.
appears one time, but later it was written in a slightly different form: 
One incident involving a Rambo son and a Cock daughter (not in our direct family line, however) reveals something of the social mores of the time. In 1685 Peter Cock and his daughter Brigitta (Bridget in the court record) took John Rambo to court for fornication and "criminal intercourse." On the night before Christmas the previous year, John had pulled off a plank of the house, on the loft, and jumped down to the floor and entered the room where three teenaged Rambo daughters were sleeping. John awakened Brigitta by getting into bed with the sisters and declaring loudly that he wanted to marry Brigitta -- just as his brother had married Bridget's older sister. Bridget's sisters left the bed and slept the rest of the December night on the cold floor. The court fined both John and Brigitta ten pounds and ordered John to marry Brigitta "before she be delivered" or make payments to maintain the child. Peter Cock was also fined five shillings for swearing in court. He had cried out "By God" at one point during the hearings. The relationship between John and Bridget appears to have been a bit strange, because in a subsequent trial that year Brigitta sued John for breach of promise (the first such case in Pennsylvania). John was fined one hundred and fifty pounds. Nonetheless, John and Bridget did marry eventually (after the birth of their first child), and together they had ten more children.
By the time the Kalmar Nyckel made its the fourth voyage to New Sweden, additional ships had finally been engaged transport between Sweden and its colony. There was now a new governor, the four hundred pound, third governor, Johan Printz, who was also known as Round John. After he arrived, he decided not only to extend settlement further along both sides of the Delaware River, but he wished to move the capital of New Sweden to Tinicum Island, in sight of Fort Nassau. The last voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel was made in tandem with another ship, the Fama. Both ships were commissioned to transport cargo, rather than passengers, and there were only two passengers of record on the Kalmar Nyckel. One, John Pagegoja, was later to become an officer in the New Sweden army, marry the governor's daughter, and serve as acting governor, when Round John left suddenly. According to Pagegoja, the last trans-Atlantic voyage of the Kalmar Nyckel lasted two months, and she came ashore the 27th of February, 1644.
While on the voyage, war broke out between Sweden and Denmark, and upon her return to Sweden, the Kalmar Nyckel was immediately commissioned into military service. The Kalmar Nyckel principally served as part of the fleet that protected the city of Gothenburg. Because of her fleetness, the Kalmar Nyckel was used to spy on the Danish fleet on a few occasions, once getting trapped in Danish waters before she was able to escape. Her most deadly action occurred when she engaged a much larger and better armed Danish ship, St. Peer. Only twelve officers and sailors from the Kalmar Nyckel survived, but with the reinforcement from other Swedish ships, the Kalmar Nyckel captured the St. Peer. A final assault on the Danish fleet was called off when word came that the Danes had capitulated, or at least had agreed to the Swedish peace terms.
Rambo and others had the opportunity to move to the eastern shore of the Schuylkill because Ridder, the new governor, immediately worked to expand the size of New Sweden. He was less concerned than Minuit had been about confining New Sweden to the western shore of the Delaware River. Very quickly after he arrived, he purchased territory on the eastern shore of the Delaware, in what is now New Jersey, and beyond the Schuylkill as far north as the land opposite what is now Trenton.
The English got involved, as well, although at this early time their presence along the Delaware was limited. In 1640 and 1641 representatives of the New Haven Colony purchased lands on the east side of the Delaware from the same sachem who had also "sold" the same land to the Swedish. An English settlement, however, was abandoned soon after it was started.
Because of the renewed fighting in Europe, Sweden basically abandoned its colony for almost five years. As a result, New Sweden almost collapsed on a couple of occasions. The matter wasn't helped by what became known as the "battle of the forts." The nature of the battle was one of constructing them, rather than actually acting them. Perhaps to prove that Sweden had the right to colonize on both sides of the river, Round John built Fort Elfsborg near the mouth of the Delaware on the east side of the river. For some reason, however, it was quickly abandoned. Then Round John built a fortified trading post along the Schuylkill River just further inland than any Dutch trading post or fortification.
As the bloodless war was escalating, Round John requested that the Kalmar Nyckel be sent with arms and supplies. The queen approved the request, but when it was realized the amount of damage she had received in naval battles, the admiralty deemed her unfit for further ocean crossings. In 1651, the queen signed the papers that decommissioned the Kalmar Nyckel and allowed her to be sold to an individual, Cornelius Rolofson. Alas, the identity of Cornelius Rolofson, even to his nationality, has not been discovered, and there is no further record of the mighty ship, the Kalmar Nyckel. There are two conflicting reports of her ultimate fate. One report says she went down off the coast of the city of Kalmar; another report says she sank in the North Sea, off the coast of England.
Meanwhile for the government of New Sweden, things weren't going so well. The new governor of New Netherlands was Peter Stuyvesant, and he first escalated the battle of the forts by having a Dutch fort erected even farther inland on the Schuylkill than the Swedish post. The Swedish governor responded by building a Swedish fort opposite the river from the Dutch fort. Responding on a different front, the Dutch then built Fort Casimir on the Delaware, six miles south of Fort Christina, in effect giving the Dutch control the Delaware again.
This warlike bluffing was brought to a halt when Round John made a hasty return home to Sweden. His autocratic rule had led to a petition for reform signed by 22 freeman, including both Peter Gunnarsson Rambo and Peter Cock. The governor fumed that this was "mutiny," but almost immediately afterward, on the excuse that he needed to make a personal appeal to the Queen for renewed assistance, he left New Sweden on the next ship.
In 1654, the colony's last governor, Johan Risingh, arrived, and recommenced hostilities immediately. On his way to his new home, he thought it would be a good time to lay siege to the new Dutch Fort Casimir. Although the Dutch had cannons to defend themselves with, alas they had no gunpowder. Without either side firing a shot, the Dutch surrendered. Governor Risingh claimed it for Sweden and re-named it Fort Trinity.
When headstrong Peter Stuyvesant got word of the Swedish action, however, he became furious. Instead of sending off a biting petition like previous governors had done, he decided to deal with the Swedish problem once and for all. The following summer, he put together a great armada of seven ships, three of which were even real warships. Aboard were over 600 musketeers and other soldiers, which was probably more than three times than the population of New Sweden, women and children included. This time, as a precaution Stuyvesant made sure his soldiers had both arms and ammunition.
When the Dutch fleet reached Fort Trinity, Stuyvesant ordered the captain to surrender. There were fewer than 20 Swedish soldiers to defend the fort. but the captain responded to Stuyvesant's ultimatum with an appeal for delay. Since he was not authorized to abandon the fort, he asked that he be allowed to send word to the governor concerning what action to take. Oddly or not, Stuyvesant did not agree, but threatened to commence firing. The poor captain had to now realize that resistance was useless, and rather than taking on seven ships and an army of 600, wisely, he surrendered. Once again in the contest for the control of New Sweden, not a shot was fired, not one casualty was suffered by either side. Upon conquest of the fort, Stuyvesant, nobly, did allow the Swedish captain and his company of soldiers to keep their arms. This was none the less noble, just because the Dutch discovered the Swedes hadn't resupplied the fort with any ammunition after they had taken it over the year before.
Pumped up by his military success, Stuyvesant then sailed down Christina Creek and lay siege to Fort Christina. This was the center of the Sweden empire in America. Here was the stronghold of Swedish might and power. It took a full two weeks for the negotiations to be completed, but once again with no shots fired from either side, the Swedish governor agreed to final articles of surrender. On 15 September, 1655, New Sweden no longer existed. Within a matter of weeks Risingh returned to Sweden with several of his soldiers and a tiny number of settlers. However, more than ninety percent of the Swedes and Finns decided to stay. They appeared quite willing to take an oath of allegiance to the Dutch government, especially when they learned that they could retain their land.
New Sweden was probably doomed from the start, not because of a military failure, but because of undersettlement. During seventeen years, only thirteen Swedish expeditions were launched, and several of them brought few or no permanent residents. Among the thirteen were a few that failed when the ships sank or were captured by enemies. To contrast the populating of New Sweden with that of New England, in the same time the Swedes sent twelve ships, the English sent over two hundred.
Under Dutch rule, however, the Swedes flourished as a "Swedish Nation" governed without a governor, but by a court of their choosing. Governor Stuyvesant even helped organize a few more expeditions to bring more Swedish immigrants.
Five years later, when the English brought an end to New Netherlands, the Swedes and Finns yet again proved most willing to swear an oath of allegiance to yet another crown. Once more they were allowed to keep their land and semi-autonomous court. When William Penn arrived in Pennsylvania one of the first things he did was to buy land from several Swedish landowners to build Philadelphia. The Swedes and Finns quickly assimilated into the English culture, dropped not only their native tongue, but largely abandoned their Lutheranism. The sauna never was not given a chance to take hold in America.
Even if it ultimately ended in failure for its crown and company, New Sweden proved itself to be one of the most remarkable adventures in the history of American colonization. New Sweden has the distinction of being one of the smallest and shortest lived of all of the European settlements of North America. Founded on false premises on territory already claimed by two other countries, and perhaps the most ill conceived and conducted colonial attempts, the Swedish settlers themselves became remarkably resilient. Rather than cower before the obese governor Johan Printz, the colonists stood up and petitioned against him and forced him to return to Sweden. The colony was perhaps the most peaceful in the history of colonization and established the best goodwill between the native peoples and the settlers. In matters of war, great powers could learn from New Sweden, that when it is clear that a war cannot be won, no death or injury to soldier, sailor, or civilian should be risked. The losers in this bloodless battle were the Swedish Crown and merchants of the New Sweden Company. One person might have learned a lesson. Not long afterward Queen Christina decided to end Sweden's involvement in the Thirty Years War, and was quite criticized at the time and not long after that abdicated her throne. The winners were the Swedish and Finnish settlers themselves, who willing to swear an oath of allegience to any who demanded it, continued to enjoy a high degree of local autonomy, owning their own lands, practicing their own religion, and even maintaining their own court and militia.
Weslager, C. A. A man and his ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel. Wilmington: Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, 1990.
Craig, Peter Stebbins. The 1693 census of the Swedes on the Delaware: family histories of the Swedish Lutheran Church members residing in Pennsylvania, Delaware, West New Jersey & Cecil County, Md., 1638-1693. Winter Park, Fla.: SAG Publications, 1993.
Ferris, Benjamin. A history of the original settlements on the Delaware: from its discovery by Hudson to the colonization under William Penn; to which is added an account of the ecclesiastical affairs of the Swedish settlers, and a history of Wilmington, from its first settlement to the present time. Wilmington : Wilson & Heald, 1846.
Johnson, Amandus. The Swedish settlements on the Delaware, 1638-1664. Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911.
Kalm, Pehr. Travels into North America; containing its natural history, and a circumstantial account of its plantations and agriculture in general ; with the civil, ecclesiastical and commercial state of the country, the manners of the inhabitants, and several curious and important remarks on various subjects. 3 volumes. London : Printed for the editor, 1770-1771.
Linn, John B. and William H. Egle, eds. Papers relating to provincial affairs in Pennsylvania, 1682- 1750. (Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, Vol. 7.). Harrisburg, Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1878.
Myers, Albert Cook. Narratives of early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware, 1630-1707. New York, Scribers, 1912.
[Includes: "Account of the Swedish churches in New Sweden," by Reverend Israel Acrelius, 1759; Affidavit of four men from the "Key of Calmar," 1638; Report of Governor Johan Printz, 1644; Report of Govern John Printz, 1647; Report of Governor Johan Rising, 1654; Report of Governor Johan Rising, 1655; Relation of the surrender of New Sweden, by Governor Johan Clason Rising, 1655.
Weslager, C. A. The Delaware Indians; a history. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1972.
Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, online home of Delaware's Tall Ship
Greetings from Gothenburg, a brief, illustrated history of the Kalmar Nyckel from Jan-Erik Nilsson's gotheborg.com
Swedish Colonial Society, information about forefathers, Old Swedes churches, and maps and a brief history of New Sweden
The Delaware Finns, a history of Finnish emigration and settlement by E. A. Louhi
Rambo, Beverly Nelson, and Ron Beatty. The Rambo Family Tree. 2nd edition, final pre-publication draft. 2007. [Rather than standard web format, the files are ASCII text.]
This page written and maintained by John R. Henderson (jhenderson@ithaca.edu),
Last modified: September 5, 2007
Photographs by Paul E. Henderson and Ed Lyness
URL: http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/kalmar.html
