Jonas Bronck
[4][5] A number of sources published in the early 20th century identify Bronck as Swedish,[6][7] an idea espoused by A. J. F. van Laer,[8] archivist at the New York State Library.
[11] In a 1977 pamphlet commemorating the founding of the borough a publication of the Bronx County Bar Association states that it "is widely accepted that Bronck came from Sweden, but claims have also been made by the Frisian Islands on the North Sea coast and by a small town in Germany".
[12] In 1981, the Manx-Svenska Publishing Co. released a now out-of-print 19-page pamphlet, The Founder of the Bronx, authored G. V. C. Young O.B.E., after he had conducted research in the Netherlands, Sweden, and New York.
In conjunction with John Davidson of Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands and Eva Brylla from the Ortnamnsarkiv in Uppsala, Sweden, the archival texts were transcribed from their traditional script.
This farm or small village was at this time inhabited by Jon Nilsson and his wife Marit Brunk who could be Jonas Bronck's parents or other relatives.
During the late 1630s, events in both Holland and America induced significant changes in the governance of New Netherland, territory controlled by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers, and north along tidewaters of the Hudson.
Faced with possible government expropriation, the company appointed Willem Kieft as director of New Netherland with a mandate to increase the territory's population and vitality.
Arriving in 1638, Kieft promptly purchased additional Lenape lands in the environs of Manhattan and encouraged private settlement by enterprising colonists of diverse backgrounds.
In the spring of 1639, Jonas Bronck and a party of other emigrants, including his good friend, the Dane Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, departed the Dutch port of Hoorn on the Zuiderzee.
Bronck and Kuyter navigated up the East River to land that was within the territory of the Siwanoy and Wecquaesgeek groups of Wappinger who inhabited it at the time of colonialization.
It is said that Bronck wrote of his new home: "The invisible hand of the Almighty Father, surely guided me to this beautiful country, a land covered with virgin forest and unlimited opportunities.
Teuntje and Jonas Bronck's house was built by a promontory at the juncture of the Harlem River and the Bronx Kill across from Randalls Island and was constructed like "a miniature fort with stone walls and a tile roof".
[29] Expansionist Mahican and Mohawk in the North (armed with guns traded by the French and English)[30] had driven them south the year before, where they sought protection from the Dutch.
The inventory lists contents of the farm Bronck and his family had built in the wilderness during the period of less than four years following his arrival in America.
By contrast, Jonas Bronck's personal library provides evidence he was literate in four languages, suggesting his education might have been as high as university level.
Four years later, Colonel Morris obtained a royal patent to Bronck's Land, which afterward became the Manor of Morrisania, the second Lewis (son of Captain Richard), exercising proprietary right.
[38] The American biophysicist (and president of Rockefeller University) Detlev Bronk claimed to have been a Bronck descendant, but no evidence of lineage to Pieter's line was ever found or indicated.
The celebration was mainly the idea of Brian G. Andersson, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, a specialist in Bronck's genealogy, a founding director of the center, and a Bronxite of Swedish origin.
