"THE YOCUMS OF ARONAMECK IN PHILADELPHIA
1648-1702"
By Peter Stebbins Craig and Henry Wesley Yocum
The fifth expedition to New Sweden on the Delaware River in 1642-43 brought the new governor, Johan Printz, to the Swedish Colony. He was a gargantuan man weighing 400 pounds and was later called "Big Belly" by the Delaware Indians. Among those who came on the ships "FAMA" and "SWAN" with Governor Printz was a soldier, a Dane from Schleswig-Holstein, named Peter Jochimson.
At the time of their arrival New Sweden had been in existance only five years. Founded in 1638 by Peter Minuit, the young colony then had only one settlement, Fort Christina (located at present Wilmington), and numbered about sixty persons. The reinforcements from Sweden tripled the population and permitted expansion of the colony in scattered hamlets northward as far as the Schuylkill.
PETER JOCHIM: SOLDIER, FREEMAN, EMISSARY
Peter Jochimson, or Jochim as he was frequently called, was stationed between 1643 and 1648 at Fort Elfsborg (called "Fort Misquito" by the soldiers), built at Printz's direction near present-day Salem, N.J., to command and control ship traffic on the Delaware, then called the South River by the Swedes and Dutch.
Peter Jochimson made some modest contributions to the history of the Swedes on the Delaware, first as Printz's loyal supporter, later as one of his chief critics and finally as his successor's diplomatic courier.
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In 1648, after becoming a freeman and taking up residence at Aronameck on the west bank of the Schuylkill River near present day Bartram's Garden, Peter Jochimson single handedly destroyed the palisades at Ford Beversreede, s small trading post built by the Dutch across the river in Passyunk in an attempt to intercept the Swede's trade in beaver skins with the Minquas Indians. In 1651 he served as interpreter and witness to a treaty with the Delaware Indians confirming New Sweden's ownersip of land claimed by the Dutch. Soon thereafter Peter Jochimson turned against his governor. On 27 July 1653 he was one of 22 settlers who signed a petition to Governor Printz protesting his allegedly oppressive rule.
Printz considered this petition an act of mutiny. Accusing one of the signers (freeman Olof Stille), the Swedish minister (Rev. Lars Carlsson Lock) and one of the soldiers (Anders Jonsson) as being ringleaders of this rebellion, he summarily executed the soldier on 1 Aug 1653 and scheduled the other two for trial at the next court. The freeman's petition, signed by an overwhelming majority of the settler's living in present Pennsylvania, was the last straw for Printz. He had made numerous requests to Sweden to be replaced; he had pleaded for more supplies and more settlers-but to know avail. Finally, in September or October 1653, without permission from Stockholm, he packed up and, taking 25 settlers and soldiers with him, sailed for New Amsterdam (present New York City) to catch the next ship to Europe, leaving the colony, soon reduced to about 70 souls, in the of his son-in-law Johan Papegoja.
Printz's successor as governor of New Sweden was Johan Rising. Upon his arrival at the South River, Rising made what proved to be a tactical error on 21 May 1654 in capturing the recently-built Dutch stronghold at Fort Casimir (present New Castle) which he renamed Fort Trinity. Gerrit Bicker, the Dutch commander, yielded the fort without firing a shot-he had no gunpowder. Three days later the Dutch were convened at Rising's headquarters at Fort Christina and pledged their allegiance to Swedish rule. Later, however, a majority of the Dutch soldiers, the clerk, and one Dutch freeman reneged and fled on Cornelis Jansen Coelen's yacht to New Amsterdam with the news of Bicker's surrender.
Probably unaware of this defection, Governor Rising tended to the immediate problems at hand and then retired on 26 May 1654 to begin drafting a carefully written letter to Governor Stuyvesant explaining his actions in taking Fort Casimir. The letter advised that the fort had been "voluntarily surrendered" and that the Dutch colonists, upon learning the "reasonable conditions" offered them, had taken an oath of allegiance to Swedish rule. To ward off prospects that Stuyvesant might unilaterally take retaliatory action, he closed by saying: "As this is a matter of greater consequence than can be decided among servants, who must only obey orders, the sovereigns on both sides have to settle this matter among themselves." The letter pledged good neighborliness and asked Stuyvesant to confirm his peaceful intentions.
To deliver this letter to Manhattan, Rising sought a bekvamlig karl (a suitable fellow) who was known in New Amsterdam and "would know how to mix with the Hollanders to our best advantage."
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