[Compiled from multiple sources, in 2012, by J.W. Christensen-- sources listed after history]
Early settler of Schenectady, Farmer, Commissioner of Schenectady, Father of 8
Theunis Cornelis Swart was born about 1626, in Holland, Netherlands, and immigrated to the area of Beverwyck, near Fort Orange, (which later became Albany), New York, before 1649, when he married Elizabeth Van der Linden. [Some of the alternate spellings on record for the name of Theunis Cornelis Swart, include: Tuenis Cornelisse Swart; Teunis Cornelissen; Teunis Cornelissen Swart; Theunis Cornelisse Swart; Teunise Cornelis Swart; Teunes Swart; Teunise Cornelise Swart; Teunis Cornelise Swart] [Some of the alternate spellings on record for the name of Elizabeth Van der Linden include: Elisabeth de Lendt; Elizabeth Lendt; Leysebeth Van Der Linden; Elizabeth Van De Linde; Elizabeth vander Linden; Elizabeth Vanderlinde]
The Settling of Schenectady “Two brothers of the name of Swart were among the early settlers of Schenectady; — Frederic Cornelise [Swart], who was proposed by Secretary Ludovicus Cobes in 1676 as one of the magistrates of the village [a magistrate was a village officer having power to issue a warrant for the arrest of a person charged with a crime], and Teunis Cornelise [Swart] from whom all the families of this name in this vicinity are descended.” In 1663, Theunis was in Schenectady, as one of the original patentees [early founders]. In “1642,” “Arent Van Curler” while traveling up the “Mohawk River,” visited the Indian villages to “rescue some captive Frenchmen” from the “Mohawks.” Arent, a farmer at heart, was impressed by the lands which he saw in the area. When he returned home, “he wrote to the Patroon (Kilian Van Rensselaer) in Amsterdam, that a half day’s journey from the Colonie, on the Mohawk river, there lies the most beautiful land that the eye of man ever beheld. [In Dutch, according to O’Callaghan’s Hist., N.N., I., 335, 456 “Daer leyt qualyck een halven deaegh Van den Colonie op de Maquaas Kil, dat Schoonste landt men met oogen bezien mach.”] Twenty years later, a settlement later known as, Schenectady, was started. “No other spot in the neighborhood of the bouwland [farmland] offered such facilities for a village.” It was “a warm dry spot, easily fortified against an enemy and sufficiently elevated to be safe from the annual overflow [yearly flooding] of the Mohawk river. This little flat contains but 175 acres and it was the site of an earlier Indian village who numerous dead have been from time to time found buried along the Binne Kil [Binne creek bank].” According to tradition, many years previous, the Indian village had been “a former seat or capital of the Mohawks.” “In the summer of 1661 Arent Van Curler the leader of the first settlement, made formal application to Governor [Director-general Peter] Stuyvesant for permission to settle upon the ‘Great Flat’ [flat lands] lying west of Schenectady.” The following is an excerpt translation of his letter: “Right Honorable Sir, My Lord When last at Manhatans I informed your honor that there were some friends and well wishers, who were well inclined with your Honor’s knowledge and approbation to take possession of and till the Groote Vlachte (Great Flats) well known to your worship; whereto six or eight families are already inclined, and for which your Honor promised me a warrant authorizing us to purchase said lands” but, “nothing came of it.” The natives were “inclined to abandon the land for a moderate price” because the trade in the area had dwindled. So, in Arent’s opinion, it was “high time” “that the people provide themselves with hay and fodder for their beasts and like to lay out the road thither.” Arent felt it was the time “to seize good fortune.” “Doubtless as your Honor is likewise a lover of agriculture, your Honor will yield to the just request of the people” who will purchase “the aforesaid land” with their own money. “Finally I pray your Honor to be pleased to favor the people’s good intentions so far as possible, and conclude by commending your Honor to God’s grace with the wish for a long and happy administration, and further I remain ever Sir,
Your Honor’s most humble Servant
A. Van Curler.”
“Rensselaerswyck
The 18th June, 1661.
P.S. If your Honor falls short three or four Muds of oats as feed for your Honor’s horses, please command me to supply your Honor with the same from my small store.
Your Honor’s servant
A. V. Curler.”
The Director General and Council decided to give permission to Arent, on “June 23, 1661,” “provided the said lands” after they were purchased by the settlers from the natives, be legally transferred to the “Director General and Council aforesaid as representatives of the Lords Directory of the Privileged West India Company [DWI];” and whatever the settlers pay to the natives, “shall in due time be returned to them” in other words, refunded by the Dutch West India Company, or be “be discounted to them against the tenths.” [In other words, the settlers, who were already under contract to work for the DWI Company to pay for their immigration to the colony, would get a ten percent discount on their debt owed to the DWI.]
At this point, what was known as a “freshet” occurred in the area. This means that there was heavy snowfall in the winter, and record cold temperatures, followed by temperatures rising rapidly and then followed by heavy rains. The resulting large amount of melting snow and days of rain, swelled the area rivers and streams to bursting, and then flooding. “Before the Governor’s” permission was received, a “freshet laid the country for miles around under water.” This means that days of heavy rain had swollen the creeks and rivers so much that they had flooded the area. The flooding “forced the inhabitants to quit [abandon] their dwellings and fly with their cattle for safety to the woods on the adjoining hills. Incalculable damage was caused” by the flooding. “The wheat and other grain” [which had been planted by the early settlers] were soaked and laid flat in the fields, ruining it, so that it was only good for animal feed, or “fodder.” The farmers were barely able to save enough seed from their damaged crops to plant “the next spring.” This delayed the settlers moving to the “Great Flat” until July, when the deed was “obtained from the Indian owners.”
“On the sixth day of April, 1662, [early settler and spokesman for a group of friends] Arent Van Curler again addressed the Director General [Peter Stuyvesant] and Council [of Fort Orange] stating” “he and his associates had purchased and taken possession of the Great Flat behind Fort Orange and were now ‘engaged in constructing houses, mills and other buildings upon this plain,’ and that inasmuch as it was necessary to sow and cultivate these lands [plant gardens and crops] this season, which cannot be well done before they have been surveyed [officially measured] and allotted;” so he asks the Director General “to authorize the surveyor Jacques Cortelyou, to measure and divide the same.”
The reply given to settler Arent Van Curler and friends, stated that the settlers who desire to live on the ‘Groote Vlachte’ or Great Flat area “ought to number at least twenty families” and they should register their names with the “Director General and Council” and promise “not to trade with the savages.” The Director General and Council wanted to keep their monopoly on the lucrative fur trade of the area, and were in no hurry to grant permission to settle the Great Flat. They preferred the settlers to “confine themselves exclusively to agriculture.” [In other words, keep being farmers.] Finally, in 1663, Governor Stuyvesant sent the surveyor to measure and survey the land of the Great Flat, on condition of the potential settlers to sign an indenture, or contract, as follows:
“INDENTURE, Wee landholders on the Plain called ------- promise hereby that we will not on the aforesaid Plain nor in its vicinity undertake to trade in any manner under any pretext whatsoever, with the savages either directly or indirectly under the penalty, if we or any of us violate this our solemn promise, without any opposition for the first offence of fifty beavers [beaver pelts], for the second offence, one hundred, and for the third, forfeiture of our solicited and acquired lands on the aforesaid Plain.
In witness whereof this was signed by us in Fort -------1663.”
Theunis Cornelis Swart owned land on Lot. No. 10, “on the Groote Vlachte” [Great Flat] comprising “forty-eight acres, westward of Pontias Kill [River].” That was his land for farming and raising crops. Within the village stockade, where the settlers could build small cabins to live in, for protection, Theunis Cornelis “occupied the lot on the east corner of State and Church streets, 170 feet front on the former and 200 feet on the latter street,” “lying over the Third Kill.” Theunis Cornelis was granted the land by Dutch Governor Peter (Petrus) Stuyvesant. Each settler had a piece of farmland and pasture, outside the fort, on which to grow crops, and a small lot within the village stockade, on which to build a small home, for safety.
On 10 Sep 1670, Theunis Cornelis Swart purchased additional land in Schenectady, “on the north side of Front street, consisting of two and a half morgens of land, which was confirmed to him by patents Sep. 10, 1670.”
On 11 Aug 1676, Theunis Cornelis Swart, now around age 50, was appointed as a Schenectady Commissioner (local judge, to help resolve disagreements between local settlers) at the [town] Court of Schenectady. On 21 Jul 1677, Theunis Cornelis, about age 51, wrote a will in his native Dutch language, which is preserved in the “Ulster County, New York, Probate Records” it reads, translated in English, as follows:
Ulster County, New York, Probate Records
[pp. 73-74]
""Page 431.---SWART, CORNELISSE, THEUNIS and VAN DER LINDEN, Elizabeth,
Will dated July 21, 1677, and written in Dutch.
"Naar de middagh ontrent 7 uren voor my Lodevicus Cobes Secrets: van Schanegtede ende voor de naargenoemde getuygen gecompareert ende Verschenen zyn, den Eersamen Theunis Cornelisse Swart, ende Elizabeth vander Linden Echte beyden my Secretario wel bekent" knowing the shortness of the human life, etc., the longest liver to have "actien en Crediten, gelt, gout, zilver, gemunt en ongemunt, Juweelen, Kleederen, linnen, woolen, huysraat en de anders" and if the longest liver were to marry "de helft eene Schifinge en de Deelinge gemaakt Sal worden voor haare Elf kinderen te Samen gepoucureert ende in 't leven zynde Insgelyke Soo sy byde testateuren mogten komen te everlyden sonder in eenander heuwelyk te treden, is haar begeeren dat de minder jaarige kinderen uyt de Effecten Sullen groot gemaakt worden."
(Near noon about 7 o'clock (!) before me, Lodevicus Cobes, Secretary of Schenectady and for the undersigned witnesses, appeared the worthy Theunis Cornelisse Swart and Elizabeth van der Linden, his wife,--the longest liver to have bonds, book-debts, money, gold, silver, coined and uncoined, jewels, clothing, linen, woolen, household-goods.
"If the survivor should marry, one half to go to their" children, begotten by them, and if so should happen that both the testators should die without having married again, the minors shall be brought up from the proceeds of the estate.)
THEUNIS CORNELISSE (het mark)
LEYSEBETH VAN DER LENDEN”
Theunis Cornelis Swart likely passed away soon after his will was written, in 1677, and was buried in Schenectady, Albany, New York. He left behind a wife, Elizabeth Van der Linden, and eight children: the oldest, Neeltje, being married by that time, and the youngest, Adam, being about six years old. The two oldest sons of Theunis: Cornelis Teunissen Swart and Esais/Jesaias Teunissen Swart, inherited their father’s farm, and continued working there. Apparently, Theunis had left the family in a comfortable position, as his Will mentioned money, gold, silver, coined and uncoined, and jewels. This likely was part of the reason why Elizabeth, with her seven other children, still living on the farm, had little trouble finding a stepfather. Elizabeth married Jacob Meese Vrooman, sometime after her first husband’s death.
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