BTW, welcome to FRee Republic.
Posted on 11/20/2004 4:58:13 PM PST by SantaLuz
In late winter of 1654, four-year-old Lars, and nine-year-old Mårten, followed their father’s icy breath forward, as they hurried with their few belongings toward the ship. They paused in awe as they got closer to the Eagle. It was largest ship they had ever seen, as it laid anchor in Gothenburg Sweden. It was the largest ship yet to sail to America. The boys wished their mother were alive to see it, as she used to tell them bedtime stories about the "tall ships" that sailed from Sweden to far away places.
Like most of the 350 passengers who boarded that cold, gray morning, Mårten Mårtensson was a poor Finnish farmer who had left the Savo region of eastern Finland, to rye farm in Sweden. Only to be forced to leave for distant America, when they were made to feel no future remained for them in Sweden.
Although Mårten was a “freeman”, many of the passengers on board were not. But the difficult, and dangerous route would take it’s toll on both free and “servants” alike. Most would become sick and nearly starve; and more than 100 of the ship’s passengers would not survive the five month trip. The dead would be unceremoniously dumped over the side of the ship in passage. When they finally sailed up the Delaware River, Mårten prayed and thanked God that he and his sons had survived. And he prayed that God would bless them in this distant new land.
Mårten held young Lars’s hand as he climbed into the row boat which would take them from the Eagle to American soil, and their new home. Indians and Delaware Finns who had arrived only seventeen years since the first Thanksgiving, were waiting on shore to welcome them.
Like most of the settlers in New Sweden and New Finland, they knew how to live deep in the forests, and off the land. How to farm, and fish, canoe up and down the Delaware river. These “Forest Finns” would first build their smoke sauna to live in, until their house was completed around it. They would learn how to live under Swedish rule, and then Dutch colonial rule. And they would quickly learn to govern themselves, tasting freedom long before British rule, and 1776.
Many of those in Delaware’s New Finland would live in peace with the Lenni-Lenape Indians. They would hunt, fish and live on friendly terms, and learn the Indian language. Once the Lenni-Lenape would even take over a colonial ship Mecurius with Finnish passengers on board, to prevent them from being deported.
Twenty-seven years later some of these Finnish Americans would act as interpreters between the Indians and William Penn, in what would later become Pennsylvania. They would cross the Delaware River in their canoes, 140 years before George Washington would do the same. And a descendent of these Finns would sign the Declaration of Independence, and another create the first US flag to be granted the Star-Spangled Banner in Europe. They would play an important part in colonial American history.
Mårten would marry again in America. He would have more children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and lived to be a hundred years old. His son Matthias would build the oldest standing log cabin in America at the Morton Homestead in Pennsylvania. And he would help his son-in- law build one of the oldest stone homes in the US. Another son Morton, would build one of the oldest savo saunas left in the US, later to be used in the underground railroad to hide slaves in the Civil War.
His great grandson, whose family had already tasted some freedom from colonial rule, would go against the will of British friends, neighbors, and constituents and cast the deciding vote, and sign the Declaration of Independence. Only a year later John Morton would be the first of the signers to die, and his son would starve to death as a POW on a British ship shortly thereafter. The early Mortons sacrificed a great deal to help cultivate this new American “experiment in Democracy” ; in toil, riches, and blood. And since the War of Independence Morton men have served in every American war, right up to the recent Gulf Wars.
Mortons have become doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers, executives, psychologists, professors, and teachers. Some are still farming American soil today. Lutherans would later become Baptists, Catholics, and some non-denominational. Some are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Some send their children to public schools, to private schools, and some are homeschooling them, just as the first Mortons did more than three centuries ago. Morton roots now spread across all of America. From Washington DC to Southern California, and from Ohio to Florida.
We are all truly thankful to God for all his many blessings to us, and for allowing us to live freely in America for these past 350 years.
One Morton Family lives near San Diego, California, and can be reached at: sdmortons.marten@sbcglobal.net
Historical References and pictures can be found at: http://www.santaluz-software.com/mortons
I'd been wondering why so many Mortons show up in our genealogical records over on that side of the family, and this may be the reason.
After it was disbanded these folks moved to York (Yoik) Pennsylvania. The Apostolic Charismatic Church of the First Born, virtually peculiar to the Sa'ami, got a start in that town and then moved West.
It's probable that the trail back to the Smolt Sa'ami was lost with the Russian Revolution which ended up cutting off their homeland of Pechenga from the outside world from about 1918 to the election of Yeltsin.
Anyway, the trail is now open and it's worth taking a look.
Danged Scandahoovian "Johnny-come-latelies".
These new immigrants are always cluttering up our country. They should just go back where they came from.
Given the large number of children my ancestors had back and multiplied over the last 350 years, adds up to a lot of us to send back to Finland :-)
BTW, welcome to FRee Republic.
Try http://www.familysearch.org/ from the Mormon website. You would be amazed at how much genealogical data they have in their archive - just pick an ancestor from the great-grandfather level or before, and try out the search. I managed to trace reliably back to the twelfth century.
Little things I've remembered about New Sweden over the years are quite helpful here ~ one of them is that everybody but the half dozen officers did not speak Swedish. Another is that virtually 100% of the non-Swedish speaking members of the company were simply shanghaied from the tents where they were encamped ~ it'd been a cold winter in the far North and many Sa'ami moved nearer the cities and towns. "Finn" almost always means "Sa'ami" in the 1600s in Swedish records ~ Finns from Finland are identified as Swedes at the time, and I'm guessing Estonians are probably also identified as Swedes, and with a great deal of regularity people living on islands between Sweden and Denmark are identified as Swedes as ownership was exchanged several times.
All of it gets much worse when you get into the early 1800s because of a Fimbul Winter that was so bad it drove Sa'ami fishermen to sail in their small boats all the way to Philadelphia. The drought that followed was the first of the many to hit portions of Europe in the early 1800s.
The other thing you want to remember about the Sa'ami and New Sweden is this ~ there were 5 Sa'ami settlements founded in York County, PA. There were 2 Sa'ami settlements founded in Maryland, possibly Deer Park and Deer Park, or even Elkins.
We are also discussing an exceedingly small number of people who hale from Europe's 9 smallest ethnic groups.
The New Sweden Colony disbanded when it's Swedish officers went to work for Nieuwe Amsterdam Colony (aka New York City).
I've encountered this many times ~ the Finns are not negative on the Sa'ami ~ in fact, it's quite the contrary. They have an ambition to prove that the Sa'ami are just other Finns, albeit those who speak a strange, though corrupted, dialect of the more widely spoken Finno-Ughric language used in Finland and Estonia. Some Sa'ami claim that it's just another method for extinguishing Sa'ami landclaims in Finland.
The problem for the Finns is that the 9 Sa'ami languages (some count 11) have as their nearest cognate the Sumerian language written down in cuniform wedge fashion in clay bricks 5,000+ years ago in Mesopotamia.
All the other so-called Finno-Ughric languages were, at that time, spoken by half naked primitive peoples wondering around North of Kazan!
It is presumed that the Sumerians and the Sa'ami derive from the same background. Ever since the end of the last Ice Age glaciation the tribes followed the herds as far North as you could go, and then down into the fertile crescent. The next nearest language group is that of the Dravidian people in Southern India, and there is yet another written language discovered in China they seem to have developed. Claims are made that one American Indian language spoken in California was closely related to Sa'ami if not Sumerian.
The Finns are correct only in claiming that the early New Sweden Colony settlers came originally from Finland. The error is in identifying them as ethnic Finns. That happened because the historian didn't bother following up on that particular colony and finding out where the people moved after it disbanded, and it did disband, and the formerly friendly Lene Lenape were replaced by the less friendly Nanticokes in that area.
Essentially, the Sa'ami "enlisted personnel" relocated to the vicinity of what is now called York Pennsylvania and founded 5 settlements, including York (Yoik). They also founded 2 settlements in Maryland, and as best I can figure, named them both "Deer Park" (for pretty obvious reasons).
I'm happy the Finns have bothered to notice that New Sweden was actually made up of non-Swedes. At least we agree on that point. Still, in a Swedish record of the time, a "Finn" notation beside a name in a list meant "Sa'ami".
BTW, it was about 1828 when the final boundary was drawn between Czarist Russia and Norway. This cut the Sa'ami land in two pieces. Those who could escaped West to Norway. Earlier herding Sa'ami used to live a migratory life all over the Arctic Coast and down into the low mountains of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Kerala (now Russia). Due to intermarriage it's sometimes difficult to tell one group from the other although their very round heads ought to give the Sa'ami away in a crowd of Swedes or Danes.
If you'd read my earlier posts on the Sa'ami these last two years you would discover that the Sa'ami and the Lene Lenape had a mutual interest in the use of hypnotics and hallucinogenics for the purpose of achieving satori in real time. I have no doubt whatsoever that the American Indians found in the Sa'ami kindred spirits who also had a vital knowledge of European technology. These guys were undoubtedly very popular wherever they went.
Hello and thanks for the welcome. I'm a new "immigrant" here at FreeRepublic, but feel at home already.
The Mormons did a study for my parents about 20 years ago, but they made some mistakes that Dr. Peter S. Craig of the Swedish Colonial Society pointed out. Of course that study was a long time ago.
I went to the family search site and did a couple of searchs and it looks accurate so far. Thanks for the tip!
Happy Thanksgiving all!
Does anyone know of anyone who attended this Symposium? I'd like to contact them if so.
New Sweden and Native America:
A Symposium to Explore Economic and Political Relations Between Native Americans and Europeans in the 17th-Century Delaware Valley
New Sweden and Native America, the Fourth Annual New Sweden History Conference, will take place on Saturday, November 20, at the Delaware Museum of History, Wilmington, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The conference will focus on relations between Native Americans and European Americans in the Delaware Valley of the 17th century, especially those among the Lenape and Susquehannock Indians and the settlers of New Sweden.
http://www.colonialswedes.org/Headlines/NSHC4.html
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