The neighbor of Johan Andersson Stålkofta, TIMEN STIDDEM of Gothenburg, Sweden, a barber-surgeon for the New Sweden Colony and his family were aboard the ship “CAT”. Stiddem’s first wife and children all perished in the incident. 

The following is quoted from the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 8, p. 28-32.
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When he was hired in 1640 to go to New Sweden his starting salary was set at 10 R.D. (Riksdalers per year) and he was advanced 10 dalers copper money just prior to sailing. This advancement of pay, probably in hard currency, was not typical. Only a relatively few of the colonists to receive a salary advancement. Most received nothing at all. At the time one Riksdaler was worth about two and a half dalers meaning that his annual starting salary was 25 dalars. His hefty 40 percent advancement on his first year salary was probably paid so that he could buy supplies for his journey and things that were not likely to be available in New Sweden.

It is nearly impossible to determine the equivalent value of what he was paid in terms of today’s money. Suffice it to say that as a very young, about age 13, farm laborer it probably was equal to a minimum wage. For comparison the pay of the priest serving the colony was set at 10 dalars per month or twelve times his rate of pay.

Johan Andersson probably received the 10 dalers copper money advancement in the form of copper coins called an Öre. See the photo on the PICTURES page. In general at the time thirty-two of the smaller öre coins made up one daler. These 10 dalers, or 320 Öre, paid and likely spent in Sweden, was the only Swedish money Stålkofta was ever paid. This strange fact became highly significant years later when New Sweden was surrendered to the Dutch.

In July of 2004 Hans Ling of Uppsala, Sweden kindly provided this explanation.

“Öre is a Viking pronunciation of the Latin word “or”. It was a measure of gold. Until the meter system was introduced it was often used to tell the size of land. A farm could consist of, for instance, an amount of land valued at 10 Öre. In the 1500s the value of a Öre had decreased so that it was possible to make coins with the value of one Öre. As the devaluation continued other coins were introduced such as the mark and daler. In the 1700s it was decided that the Swedish coins should only be the riksdaler (national daler) and the skilling (change). One riksdaler was 48 skilling. In the beginning of the 1800s the riksdaler was renamed to krona (crown) and the skilling replaced by a new öre. One krona is 100 Öre. Today (mid-2004) one Öre is of so little value that the smallest coin is 50 Öre”.

The operating primus of the New Sweden Colony was the classic “Company Store” model. Everyone who went to the colony was expected to deal only with the Company. The colonists were forbidden to privately trade with the natives, the Dutch or the English. Needless to say there was a lot of backdoor trading going on anyway. The Company owned everything. The use of everything; land, tools, farm animals, etc., was on a rental basis and could only be rented from the company.

No money was sent over to pay wages and salaries. To receive pay each person had first to return to Sweden and then to petition the company for his back pay. Of course, anything purchased or rented from the Company Store, either aboard ship coming or going, or while in New Sweden, was carefully recorded and deducted from any pay earned. Settlement often was a long delayed process, years in some instances, as the company waited until the books were returned from New Sweden.

This currency system, or total lack of, was based upon the assumption that all jobs in New Sweden were temporary. That is, that everyone, including the settlers were simply Company employees and all would eventually return to Sweden. It was not considered that anyone would make the colony into a permanent home.

Depending on which bookkeeper was making the record entries in the company books were kept either in terms of Dutch or Swedish money. Dutch bookkeepers translated everything into terms of Dutch guilders. Later, back in Sweden, the accounts were re-translated back into Swedish currency. Dutch guilders were the only hard currency actually in circulation in the New Sweden area. For trade there seems to have been at least three prevalent mediums of exchange, Dutch guilders, sewant and beaver pelts. Some years later tobacco and grain was added to the list. Sewant is more widely known as wampum or Indian money. It was strings of small, white cylindrical beads. The Printz 1646 to 1653 account books show his bookkeeper was Swedish and the amounts are given in Swedish riksdaler terms. This record begins when Stålkofta became a soldier and ends when Printz returned to Sweden.

At the Dutch invasion Stålkofta had long since left farm work and had become a soldier. He had advanced rapidly in rank to that of Gunnery Sergeant. He had a similar rapid advancement in pay up to a salary of 144 Riksdalers per year.

Since Johan Andersson Stålkofta, like most, elected to remain in America under Dutch rule and never returned to Sweden it follows that he never received any hard currency pay for his fourteen years of service. The only exception was the 10 dalers he was advanced in Sweden, and surely spent in Sweden, just before he went aboard ship to begin his journey to the New World. Being a young boy this advanced money may have been the only Swedish money he ever held in his hands.

It follows that when he returned to Fort Christina in 1655 at the surrender he was again in a very poor financial condition. His assigned house and his garden at Bee Island, actually both owned by the Company, was reported by Governor Risingh both badly damaged if not completely destroyed. His employment as a Swedish soldier had just come to an abrupt end. The entire Company Store purchase/charge system no longer existed. Governor Risingh threats to hold all the officers serving at Fort Trinity responsible for the loss of the entire colony made it unsafe for him to return to Sweden to petition for his pay.

He must have realized that he would never receive any of his back pay. Stålkofta, and everyone else, were suddenly flat broke and faced with having to do business on a cash basis in the Dutch currency system. What was he to do?

Well, from the wreckage of his house he managed to salvage several pieces of furniture, a table and a wardrobe. He quickly sold them, and perhaps other items, to a Dutch sergeant to raise immediate cash. Maybe some of the others colonists facing the same dilemma did the same. These two pieces of furniture were soon to be in the center of an argument between the Dutch sergeant and the new Dutch Vice-Governor which is why we know about the sale.

Governor Risingh also had a money problem. He had no money in his pocket for his return to Sweden. Having lost the entire colony he surely knew he would have a difficult time trying to collect his pay. He did not have a Swedish ship to use on the return trip but that was not a worry. By treaty arrangement the Dutch paid all travel expenses for everyone returning to Sweden, including the Governor, and the trip was made on a Dutch ship. Risingh could not take with him any of the company property, the supplies on hand, or any of the goods he had available for trading with the Indians. He held a “Going Out of Business” sale to get rid of the goods and stores of the colony.

Johan Andersson Stålkofta was one of the largest purchasers of these goods during the sale. Stålkofta surely realized that if he could never receive his back pay then he would never actually have to pay for any of the items he purchased. They were simply being charged to his pay account that would never be settled. One of the items he purchased was the entire stock of shoes, forty plus pairs. One could speculate Stålkofta probably immediately resold most of these goods, probably to Dutch soldiers, to raise money.

The ‘Going Out of Business Sale’ idea did not work out well for Risingh because it did not produce a single öre of cash for him. Risingh then did something no one else in New Sweden could do. He wrote a secret article, No. 10, into the surrender treaty. He took out a loan from the Dutch by putting up the nine cannons from Fort Christina as collateral. The loan amount, 300 Pounds Flemish, was to be repaid within six-months. This was an impossible condition because no one could travel to Sweden and return to New Sweden with money within the six months. The loan could have been repaid in Amsterdam but this was not done and even if it were paid in Amsterdam notice of the payment could not reach Stuyvesant before the due date. Stuyvesant dutifully foreclosed on the loan and moved the Fort Christina cannons to New Amsterdam about seven months after the surrender.

An interesting side of this story is that apparently Risingh was very successful in keeping the entire article, and the loan money, very secret in Sweden. It apparently was not among the documents he arrived home in Sweden with when he returned. In accordance with the terms in the Secret Article Risingh and his bookkeeper were put ashore in England and the two traveled together overland from where they landed to London. This apparently was to exchange the draft Stuyvesant had given him for the 300 Pounds Flemish. From London the two men traveled to Amsterdam. From there Risingh went to northern Europe to make his report on the loss of New Sweden to the King. The bookkeeper went directly to Sweden.

So far no mention in Sweden has been found of the document containing the Secret Article (See Gehring, NYHM 18:19), or any record of anything relating to Risingh mortgaging the weapons of Fort Christina. Likewise there is no record of what Risingh did with the money he collected except that it appears he clearly did not turn it over to the Company.

It is difficult to accurately determine the present day value of the loan money Risingh collected in London but one estimate put the amount at approximately $860,000.00. The amount he split with the bookkeeper is unknown.

While the available records do not directly address the currency problem the New Sweden settlers faced after the surrender it is clear they adapted quickly and thrived in the Dutch monetary system. Having title to their own property and being able to trade directly with the Indians and with English and Dutch traders surely made life easier for them. By the time the 1693 Census was conducted, less than forty years later, the population of New Sweden had nearly tripled.

The patronymic naming system - the name of the father - was used in all of Scandinavia and most of northern Europe. The system added sen, son, datter, dotter, or dottir to the name of the father. It formed a patronymic name. A person named Johan Andersson was literally "John, the son of Anders (Andrew)." Christina Carlsdotter was literally, "Christina, the daughter of Carl (Charles)." Because of this system there could be many people living in the same place at the same time with the same name who were completely unrelated to each other. Seven different Johan Anderson’s have been identified as being associated with the New Sweden Colony. There were two more who were Dutch. The sons of all of them would be “Johansson’s” but would be related to only their siblings but not to the sons of the other men.

The patronymic naming system is very different from what we're used to and Americans are prone to forcing them into being English style surnames. The system was the best for the times and for the culture. Because of the short life expectancy it was rare that three generations in a family were living at the same time. Most given names were chosen to honor either a Biblical figure or an older member of the family hence lots of names were repeated generations after generation.

Scandinavian females did not assume the name of their husband when they married. They carried their maiden name for life. If you find an Olof Andersson and a Christina Andersdotter married to each other she is not "Mrs. Olof Andersson" in the traditional American sense. The record simply means that Olof was the son of an "Anders", and Christina was the daughter of an "Anders" and they were unrelated before their marriage.

Record keepers recorded what their ears heard and they spelled what they heard the way they thought it should be spelled in their own language. In the case of New Sweden three different languages, Swedish, Dutch and English, were heard and spelled each in its own way. A Dutchman trying to use the English language wrote out Johan Anderson Stalcop’s Will. The spelling of Swedish patronymic and the phrasing he used has a decided Dutch influence.

The Swedes followed the laws of the government in control so after William Penn took over the naming system was ordered changed. The English surname system came into use among the New Sweden settler families after about 1682. A person could chose a surname to be known by out of thin air, their father's nickname, patronymic or perhaps a trade mentor's name. Rarely was it a place name. Some families split with some family members taking one surname and others taking a different surname.

In Sweden the patronymic system gave way to surnames about 1880.

Every family has myths made up about their past and we are not an exception. More than a usual number seems to be associated with our origins so this is presented to shatter some of them. They serve only to waste a lot of valuable research time and miss-lead those not inclined to verify such stories. Sorry if I take away some of your favorite colorful stories but I think the true origins are far more interesting than these made-up and erroneous myths.
 

THE SEACOOK MYTH

In 1846 historian Benjamin Farris published his History of the Original Settlements on the Delaware. In it he included a story about the origin of the Stalcop family name. Farris said that the founder of the Stalcop family was a Dutchman who worked for his passage to the new world as a cook aboard a Dutch ship. He wore a woolen cap that he often used as a towel. The cap was supposed to have been so saturated with grease that it took on the look of polished steel. The greasy woolen cap made the seacook the butt of jokes with the Dutch sailors. They supposedly called the seacook 'Staelkappe', meaning ‘steel head’ or ‘steel cap’.

Farris' Dutch seacook story is colorful and seems logical which probably accounts for its ready acceptance. This story has spread far and wide all across the country. Lawrence Dillon (LD) Stallcup repeated it in his 1937 outline of the family only changing the seacook to a Swede aboard a Swedish ship. The story is still widely quoted to this day.

The Dutch seacook/greasy cap story is completely false! Farris simply made it up in 1846. It has no basis in fact.

The first Stalcop was not Dutch. He did not arrive in America aboard a Dutch ship and he was   not a seacook. The Dutch seacook story does not relate in any manner to the origin of the Stalcop family or the family surname.  Farris' complete fabrication is supported only by his own imagination. Farris' false story has been repeated and passed on, and even worse, it has been believed by entire generations of Stalcops. Exactly a century after Farris fabricated his seacook story Harry G. Staulcup completely demolished it in his 1946 thesis for his Masters Degree from the University of Delaware. This thesis, Notes on the Early Stalcop Family, has not received wide distribution, at least not nearly wide enough to stop the spread of the false Dutch seacook/greasy cap story.

PARENTS OF JOHAN ANDERSSON

In the early twentieth century some family researchers found a couple in the area, Anders Andersson the Finn, and his wife Christina Coolbrant, who had a son named John Andersson alias Cock (cook). In an effort to force this younger John Andersson into becoming the founder of the Stalcop family and to fit into the false Dutch sea cook story they changed Anders Andersson into a Dutch spelling, Andres Andriessen, and invented birthdates for the couple that are at least 30 years too early. Anders Andersson the Finn, and his wife Christina Coolbrant, are not, and never have been, related in any way to the Stalcop family. Pietter Stallcop sued Anders Andersson and won his case. The court judgment was settled by a transfer of 390 acres of land from Anders to Pietter.

THE GOLD-LACED UNIFORM

The story about Johan Andersson Stålkofta wearing a gold-laced uniform about town to impress the ladies is a complete and very modern invention. This story dates back only to 1940. It was published in a book called THE DELAWARE by Henry Emerson Wildes.

Johan Andersson Stålkofta never wore any sort of uniform, military or otherwise. None of  the Swedish soldiers in his era wore a uniform any sort. Arm scarves of distinctive colors were used to identify troops.

There are a large number of errors in Wildes invention. It was Hendrick Coleman, not John Coleman, involved. The phrase, 'wirepuller' probably would not have been used at the time since metal wire was nearly unknown in the colony. It is hard to imagine that Armegot Printz could have the 'secret motives' ascribed to her. Governor Printz's account books are extant. There is no mention of a brewery lost by her father and commercial breweries did not exist in the colony at the time. Governor Printz did not own a pleasure yacht. Such things did not exist in the colony.

The only place in the Colony where ladies ever gathered was at weddings, funerals and for Church services. The Church had wardens to make sure everyone behaved themselves inside and outside. Stålkofta's son John was a warden. The wardens were the community police force and had arrest powers. 

NOVEL DISCOVERY

Thanks to our cousin, Hans Ling, an exciting recent discovery has come to light. While it has not been all that far back in time, only about three quarters of a century, it was written a continent away and in a different language making it obscure in America. Please keep in mind that the following discussion concerns a Swedish language novel, a complete work of fiction. Some, but not all, of the characters are fictional. The real persons mentioned are doing fictional things. On the other hand the setting for the novel, the New Sweden Colony, is quite accurate. Johan Printz was Governor of the New Sweden Colony from February 15, 1643 to October 1653.

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The following report is from e-mail messages exchanged between Hans Ling and Larry Stallcup. A wonderful Christmas present for all Stalcops.
 

December 15, 2008
Dear Larry,

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to both of you.  In 1932 Maths Holmström published a novel for children/teenagers with the title Lasse Stålkofta, berättelse från Nya Sverige (Lasse Stålkofta, a tale from New Sweden). The book is very rare. I have not been able to find it elsewhere that at The Royal Library in Stockholm, the Dioceses Library in Skara and the municipal library in Umeå. You may not borrow it from Stockholm and Skara, but I have today asked the municipal library here in Uppsala to order the book from Umeå.  Let us see what happens.

Hans (Ling of Uppsala, Sweden)

Now I have got the book Lasse Stålkofta – Berättelse från Nya Sverige I have not read it, and I doubt that I will ever do it. The story is about the young man Lasse Stålkofta who has come to New Sweden with his parents Anders Stålkofta and his wife. Her name is never told. She is just called “mother Stålkofta”. Some of the Swedes have hidden away from Printz around Schokill River and Printz has heard that they plan to conquer a ship and become pirates. He sends Lasse to spy at them and find out what is going on. After a lot of adventures among the bandits and the Indians Lasse finds a cave where Indians have been buried long ago and where he finds a box filled with gold coins. After still more adventures he can return to his parents as a rich man. He falls in love with Kristina Printz and together they go to Sweden to start a new life with all the money.

Obviously Maths Holmström has found it fun to write the book. He has also written long songs he says were used in New Sweden and also some poems connected to the text. And the characters talk in different dialects from the time. Also he seems to have studied New Sweden rather well and tries to give a correct historic surrounding to his story.

But the book has nothing [to do] with the real Stålkoftas. Holmström has just found the name and got fond of it. It modern Swedish the name sounds funny because stål/steel and kar/cardigan are two so very opposite things.

I attach illustrations from the book.

Hans (Ling of Uppsala, Sweden) 

I have now had a little closer look in the book about Lasse Stålkofta.  His father Anders has a very poor farm in Småland and heard about the possibilities to get a better life in New Sweden. He emigrated with his family on Kalmar Nyckel. One son died but his wife Barbara, son Lasse and daughter Gertrud who came over. At first Anders worked at a tobacco plantation at Christina, but after some time he got his own farm at New Upland. Lasse became friends with the Indians after having saved the life of White Falk, who was attacked by a bear.

Later he won a competition in wrestling between different tribes arranged by Johan Printz. He defeated the strongest Irokes (I do not know if that is the correct English name for the tribe) Hissing Snake and was then by his friends the Lanape given the name Strong Panther.  After a lot of adventures together with his friend Mats Pipare (piper) during his job to spy on the deserters and bandits he went back to Sweden on Gyllene Hajen. Standing on the deck hand in hand with Kerstin Printz he saw New Gothenburg disappear. Her eyes were wet by tears thinking of Mats Pipare who had been killed by Hissing Snake. That was the end of the book.

I have tried to find out something about the author Maths Holmström and been asking about him.  Perhaps when I can get some information I will let you know.

Hans (Ling of Uppsala, Sweden)