The subject is referred to in a few of the Resolutien van de Staten van Holland en West Vriesland. Beauchamp Plantagenet’s Description of the Province of New Albion,[938] the Breeden-Raedt aende Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien,[939] and the Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland,[940] and Beschrijvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant[941] of Adriaen van der Donck give brief accounts of the settlement. Several statements with regard to it are to be found in the Historia Suecana of Johan Loccenius.[942] David Pieterszen de Vries[943] relates the circumstances of a visit he paid to it in 1643. Lieuwe van Aitzema[944] supplies copies of treaties and negotiations between Sweden and the States-General with respect to the dominion over the Delaware, an Antwoordt[945] of the latter to Resident Appelboom also appearing separately. Something of interest may be gleaned from De Hollandsche Mercurius. This, with sundry maps elsewhere referred to, constitutes, it is believed, all the contemporaneous printed matter which is still preserved to us.
A short account of the colony is contained in Samuel Puffendorf’s Commentarii de Rebus Suecicis, published at Utrecht in 1686. It was not, however, until 1702 that a book appeared professedly treating of the settlement. This was the Kort Beskrifning om Provincien Nya Sverige of Thomas Campanius Holm.[946] The fact that the author was a grandson of the Rev. Johan Campanius Holm, who accompanied Governor Printz to New Sweden, both accounts for his interest in the topic and indicates the value of much of his material.
PRINTED TITLE OF CAMPANIUS.
This is chiefly drawn from manuscripts of Campanius’s grandfather and oral communications of his father, Johan Campanius Holm, who was with the former on the Delaware, and the writings of Governor Rising and Engineer Lindström, preserved among the Archives of the Kingdom of Sweden. From the latter are also taken a drawing of Fort Trinity, a plan of the siege of Fort Christina by the Dutch (both reproduced in the preceding narrative), and a pictorial representation of three Indians. There is likewise a map of New Sweden (appearing in this chapter) engraved by Campanius from a reduction (made by order of King Charles XI. of Sweden in 1696) of a map of the Swedish engineer, four Swedish ells in length and two in width, which was destroyed in the conflagration of the royal palace at Stockholm, May 7, 1697. Unfortunately, some inaccuracies occur in the work, which have been repeated by later historians, both European and American.[947]
The Dissertatio Gradualis de Svionum in America Colonia of Johan Danielson Svedberg[948] cites Campanius, and makes the first mention of Papegåja as provisional Governor of New Sweden. The author was a nephew of Jesper Svedberg, Bishop of Skara, who had the supervision of the Swedish Lutheran congregations in America,[949] and cousin-german to Emmanuel Swedenborg, the heresiarch, and his brother Jesper Svedberg, who taught school for over a year at Raccoon in New Jersey.
In the diplomatic correspondence of John de Witt[950] mention is made of the attempts of Sweden to obtain compensation for the loss of her colony from the States-General.
The Dissertatio Gradualis de Plantatione Ecclesiæ Svecanæ in America of Tobias Eric Biörck[951] cites Campanius and speaks of all the governors of New Sweden, giving a particular account of Minuit from statements of the Rev. Provost Andreas Sandel, who was pastor of the Swedish Lutheran church at Wicacoa from 1702 to 1719, and married a descendant of early Swedish colonists. The author himself was born in New Sweden, being the son of the Rev. Provost Eric Biörck, who built the Swedish Lutheran church at Christina in 1698 (his mother being a scion of old Swedish families on the Delaware), and cousin to the Rev. Provost Andreas Hesselius,[952] who succeeded his father in the charge of the church at Christina in 1713, and who commends the writer in a letter prefixed to his work.
The Breviate, Penn vs. Baltimore,[953] contains extracts from several of the Dutch Records in the Secretary’s Office at New York, including Kieft’s letter to Minuit, dated May 6, 1638, Hudde’s Report to Stuyvesant of 1648, an Indian deed of sale to the Dutch of land on the east side of the Delaware, dated April 15, 1649, and so forth.