HistoricSiteMarkers
Colonial America

New Sweden

Eddystone, Delaware County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

In 1643 the colony's Governor, Johan Printz, established its capital here on Tinicum Island. Earlier, in 1638, New Sweden had been founded at the site of present Wilmington. Although the colony was captured by the Dutch in 1655, many Swedish and Finnish settlers remained. This was the region's first permanent European settlement, some four decades before William Penn's 1681 founding of Pennsylvania.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Decades before William Penn arrived, Sweden planted a colony along the Delaware. Founded in 1638 at the site of present Wilmington, New Sweden moved its capital in 1643 to Tinicum Island, where Governor Johan Printz took charge. The Dutch seized the colony in 1655, but the Swedish and Finnish families who had settled here stayed on, becoming part of the region's foundation.

Why it matters

New Sweden was the region's first permanent European settlement, a reminder that the Delaware Valley's roots reach back to Scandinavian and Finnish immigrants who came a generation before Penn's Pennsylvania.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

When most people picture the founding of Pennsylvania, they picture William Penn and the year 1681. This marker asks you to look back further — to a time, decades earlier, when the lower Delaware Valley was already being claimed and settled by Europeans from across the Baltic. The colonial history of this riverside ground begins not with the English, but with the Swedes and Finns.

In the first half of the seventeenth century, the Delaware River was contested territory, eyed by more than one European power. Sweden, then a major force in northern Europe, reached across the Atlantic to plant a colony on its banks. This was the era of small, vulnerable colonial footholds — settlements of a few hundred people, dependent on the river for trade and survival, and always exposed to rivals.

The result was a colony called New Sweden, and its story unfolds a full generation before Penn's Pennsylvania took shape around it.

People & events

New Sweden was founded in 1638 at the site of present-day Wilmington. A few years later, in 1643, the colony's governor, Johan Printz, moved its capital here to Tinicum Island and took charge of its affairs. A governor establishing a seat of government on a river island is a vivid image of how these early colonies worked — small, concentrated, and organized around a strong hand at the center.

The colony's independent life was not long. In 1655 the Dutch, who also claimed the region, captured New Sweden. On paper, that was the end of Swedish rule on the Delaware.

But the more lasting part of the story is what did not change. Many of the Swedish and Finnish settlers simply stayed. Their farms, families, and communities remained rooted in the valley long after the flag over them changed, becoming part of the enduring population of the region.

Its place in the American story

This spot marks the region's first permanent European settlement — the deep foundation beneath everything that came later in the Delaware Valley. It's a reminder that American colonial history is not a single English thread but a weave of many peoples, and that the story here reaches back to Scandinavian and Finnish immigrants.

The pattern New Sweden set — settlers who outlasted the government that brought them — is a distinctly American one. Colonies were captured and reorganized; the people who worked the land tended to remain, carrying their skills, customs, and family lines into the society that formed around them.

So when Penn arrived in 1681 to found Pennsylvania, he was not writing on a blank page. Communities descended from these first settlers were already here. New Sweden is where the European history of this ground truly begins, four decades before the name Pennsylvania existed.

If you visit

Stand here and do a bit of time travel. The most rewarding thing you can bring to this site is a sense of sequence: this is not where Pennsylvania's story ends up, but where the region's European chapter opens — well before the more famous founding most visitors have in mind.

Let the river orient you. Tinicum Island and the surrounding lowlands sat on the Delaware for good reason; the water was the highway, the boundary, and the lifeline all at once. Looking toward the river, you can imagine why a small colony would plant its capital right here, and why rival powers thought it worth taking.

For a road trip through the region's origins, this makes a powerful first stop, because it resets the clock. Visit it before the sites tied to Penn's era, and everything afterward reads differently — as chapters built on a foundation laid by Swedish and Finnish families a generation before.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · Johan Printz

Related events

  • · Founding of New Sweden

Themes & tags

ImmigrationLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Governor Printz Park

Tinicum Township, PA · est. 1948

On this low island in the Delaware, Swedish colonists founded New Sweden's foothold in 1643, the first permanent European settlement in what is now Pennsylvania. Here stood the Printzhof, the fortified residence and capitol of Governor Johan Printz, the imposing leader who governed the tiny colony. Though New Sweden was short-lived, this ground marks where organized European settlement in Pennsylvania began, decades before William Penn's arrival.

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Lazaretto Quarantine Station

Tinicum Township, PA · est. 2008

Established in 1799 after a devastating yellow fever epidemic, the Lazaretto stood as Philadelphia's line of defense against imported disease. For nearly a century, ships bound for the port stopped here first so that cargo could be inspected or fumigated and passengers examined; the sick were hospitalized and held until they recovered — or died. For countless arriving immigrants, this quarantine station was their very first taste of America.

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Morton Homestead

Prospect Park, PA · est. 1966

This riverside homestead was begun around 1654 by Morton Mortonson, part of the Swedish and Finnish settlement of New Sweden along the Delaware, and it is among the oldest European-built structures in the region. The family line ran forward to John Morton, the Pennsylvania delegate who cast a decisive vote and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

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Tinicum

Tinicum Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1643 Colonel Johan Printz, the imposing governor of New Sweden, established his seat at Tinicum, founding what is recognized as the first permanent European settlement in present-day Pennsylvania. For a dozen years the Swedish colony held this ground along the Delaware, until the wider contest for the river swept it away — first to the Dutch in 1655, then to the English in 1664. Tinicum's brief Swedish chapter left a lasting mark on the region's earliest colonial identity.

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