Thomas or Tomys Swartwout (June 1, 1607 in

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

Thomas Swartwout genealogy page
/ref> – October 1679, in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

)Municipal Archives Amsterdam, Burials book 1228, p. 26 was one of the earliest importers of tobacco from

New Netherland New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the East Coast of the United States, east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territor ...

to western and northern

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, one of earliest settlers of New Netherland (present day United States), and a founder of

Midwood Midwood is a neighborhood in the south-central part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded on the north by the Bay Ridge Branch tracks just above Avenue I and by the Brooklyn College campus of the City University of New York, a ...

(originally Midwout),

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Early life

Tomys Swartwout was born in 1607 in

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

to Rolef Swartwout (1575–1634) and Catryna Swartwout (b. 1579). Swartwout was one of the earliest

ers to buy and sell American tobacco in the Netherlands. He started a wholesale tobacco business in Amsterdam, joining his older brothers, Wybrant and Herman, in 1629.

New Amsterdam

Swartwout and family left Amsterdam for

in March 1652. Swartwout, Jan Snedeker and Jan Stryker solicited from Director-General Peter Stuyvesant the right to settle together on the level reach of wild land () or

flat bush Flat Bush (also known as Ormiston or Flatbush) is a southeastern suburb in the city of Auckland, New Zealand. It has recently become one of the city's largest new planned towns after being developed as a rural area of Auckland for several deca ...

, adjacent to the outlying farms at Breukelen and Amersfoort. Through Swartwout's suggestion, the settlement was given the name of the village of Midwout. In April 1655, Stuyvesant and the Council of New Netherland appointed Swartwout a schepen (magistrate), to serve with Snedeker and Adriaen Hegeman as the Court of Midwout. Being one of the original settlers, Swartwout was granted letters-patent by the Council of New Netherland, Director-General Stuyvesant, and the

Dutch West India Company The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ( ...

of 116 acres on April 13, 1655. Swartwout was one of the nineteen signers of the "Humble Remonstrance and Petition of the Colonies and Villages of this New Netherland Province" sent to Stuyvesant on December 11, 1653, an important early document in the campaign for democracy in America. Following

Adriaen Van Der Donck Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck (16181655) was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific ''Jonkheer'' the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colo ...

Remonstrance A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooper ...

of 1650 about governance of the colony, the document signed by Swartwout set out discontents about Stuyvesant's authoritarian method of personally selecting, rather than electing, the council. The statement later inspired

Jacob Leisler Jacob Leisler ( – May 16, 1691) was a German-born colonist who served as a politician in the Province of New York. He gained wealth in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in the fur trade and tobacco business. In what became known as Leisler's ...

's campaign late in the 1680s for fuller representative democracy in New Amsterdam.

Personal life

In March 1630, Swartwout married Ariaentjen Sijmons in Amsterdam. She died in childbirth nine months later on December 17, 1630 after giving birth to their only child, Jan Swartwout. On June 3, 1631, Swartwout married Hendrickjen Barents Smient (b. 1609), with whom he would have eight children, among others Roeloff (1634–1715; the founder of Kingston and Hurley), Cornelis, Barent, Trijntje, Jacomijntje and Rachel. Swartwout did not die in 1660 in

Beverwijck Beverwijck ( ; ), often written using the pre-reform orthography Beverwyck, was a fur-trading community north of Fort Orange on the Hudson River in New Netherland that was renamed and developed as Albany, New York, after the English took cont ...

as is sometimes claimed, but evidently returned to

in the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: ''Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden''), and commonly referred to in historiography ...

. He is mentioned as a witness there on several occasions, from 1664 on, as is his wife.Municipal Archives Amsterdam, Baptismal book 44 p. 93 November 2, 1664; p. 346 April 27, 1672; p. 503 Sep 21 1766 and Marital Banns book 497 p. 59 August 22, 1671; p. 474 April 2, 1672. These records concern the baptism of a grandson, Thomas Swartwout, two granddaughters, Hendrikje Koot and Hendrikje Swart, and the marriages of his daughters Trijntje and Jacomijntje. It is also clear from the Amsterdam records that most of Thomas and Hendrickje's children returned with them to Amsterdam and remained there. They lived on Herengracht. Thomys died in Amsterdam in 1679 and was buried there on October 15, 1679.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swartwout, Tomys 1607 births 1660 deaths Dutch merchants People from Groningen (city) People of New Netherland Tobacco in the Netherlands History of Brooklyn People from Midwood, Brooklyn