New Sweden Genealogy

== History ==

New Sweden (Swedish: Nya Sverige) was a Swedish colony on the Delaware River on the Atlantic coast of North America from 1638 to 1655. It was centered at Fort Christina, now in Wilmington, Delaware, and included parts of the present-day states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. About 600 Swedes and 300 Finns, Dutch, and Germans built the colony for the purpose of producing tobacco and furs.

A lasting legacy of New Sweden was an interest among Swedish people in migrating to America. Another legacy was the log cabin, an idea from Sweden which became the most popular style of first-home on the American frontier. New Sweden also brought some of the earliest Lutheran believers and their ministers to America.

From the first, the leaders of New Sweden knew they were settling on land claimed by the Dutch of New Netherland (New Jersey), and the British Lord Baltimore of Maryland (that is, Delaware). In 1654 New Sweden captured Fort Casimir from New Netherland in what is now New Castle County, Delaware. The next year, 1655, the Dutch counter-attacked, conquered, and absorbed all of former New Sweden, but granted it some autonomy. In turn, New Netherland was conquered and absorbed by the British nine years later in 1664.