About Philadelphia

Prior to the arrival of Europeans the Philadelphia area was the location of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians village Shackamaxon. Europeans arrived in the Delaware Valley in the early 1600s, with the first settlements being founded by the Dutch, British and Swedish. The Swedes sought to expand their influence by creating an agricultural (tobacco) and fur-trading colony to bypass French and British merchants. The New Sweden Company was chartered and included Swedish, Dutch and German stockholders. The first Swedish expedition to North America embarked from the port of Gothenburg in late 1637. It was organized and overseen by Clas Fleming, a Swedish Admiral from Finland. Part of this colony, called New Sweden or Nya Sverige eventually included land on the west side of the Delaware River from just below the Schuylkill River; in other words, today's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their victory in a war against the English Province of Maryland. A series of events led the Dutch - led by governor Peter Stuyvesant - to move an army to the Delaware River in the late summer of 1655. Though New Netherland now nominally controlled the colony, the Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to enjoy a degree of local autonomy, having their own militia, religion, court, and lands. This status lasted officially until the English conquest of the New Netherland colony, in October 1663-1664, and continued unofficially until the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania, in 1682.