Johan Anderson STAHLKOFTA

                   John Stalcop shows as living on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania in 1680.

Stalcopp, John
(illegible)ones Hook

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/28987491/story/b9b9871a-88d0-41a4-ad82-4143129bf695?o_iid=41125&o_lid=41125&o_sch=Web+Property


"In 1671, two Swedes, Johan Andersson Stalcop and Dr. Tymen Stidham, had
owned between them all the land from the Christina River to the
Brandywine, and from the neighborhood of The Rocks [where the Swedes
landed near the mouth of the Brandywine in 1638] to Rattlesnake Run
[behind current Trolley Square]. Stalcop's land extended North from the
Christina; Stidham's south from the Brandywine. Across the Brandywine
was the land of Jacob Vandever, a Dutch settler; across the Christina
was Long Hook, owned by Jean Paul Jacquett, and east of Jacquett's land,
that of Peter Alrichs...

The Christina and Brandywine Rivers come within a couple of blocks
distance of each other at the south end of Wilmington, DE near "The
Rocks" where the Swedes landed in 1638. In fact, just a few blocks
north:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/wilmingtonde/ 2263024195.html

"The downtown business area [of Wilmington], wedged between the
Brandywine and Christina, is laid out in a grid system, less than 20
blocks wide or long."

The distance from "The Rocks" to "Rattlesnake Run", the northern
extension of the Stalcop/Stidham land, is about 2 miles. Stalcop's
land was originally about 800 acres. An acre of land is 43,560 sq.
feet, or somewhat less that a football field which is 48,000 square feet
(from goal line to goal line and 160 feet wide). A good deal of land
but still well within the limits of present day Wilmington.

Stalcop, who died before 1685, had granted half of his land to Samuel
Peterson and Lars Cornelison. He willed the remainder in two plots, one
each to is wife and son Andrew. Peterson kept his land; Cornelison sold
his to Matthias de Foss, who sold it to Charles Pickering. The
Pickering tract became the glebe of Old Swedes Church by gift of John
Stalcop, Jr. Later, Peterson's son sold the Peterson land to Andrew
Justison.

Tour, Rt. 13, from DE/PA border south: "at 5.8 miles, the highway
crosses Shellpot Creek, a tributary of the Brandywine Creek. The name
is a corruption from the Swedish Skoldpadde Fallet (Turtle Falls). The
first gristmill was erected here soon after 1662 by John Stalcop, aided
by other Swedes and Dutchmen. Mills flourished on the stream well into
the 18th century. William Penn, writing in 1683, included the lower
reaches of "Skilpot" Creek with the Christina, Brandywine, and
Schuylkill as each having "room enough to lay up the Royal Navy of
England"."

"Among the artist-joiners of that [18th] century...Israel Stalcop
descendant if John (Johan) Anderssen Stalcop, who in the 17th century
owned half of the present Wilmington."

Wilmington Reminiscences..., published 1851:

"Opposite the Almhouse was the estate of Hannah Stalcup, the descendent
of a wealthy Swede. She was long deranged and confined to her own
house, but at times would make her escape, to the terror of the
children. Though mischievous, she was inoffensive compared with Tamar
Way. Her [Hannah] paternal inheritence was valuable, and it was
supposed that riches caused her insanity, which continued to her death.
A part of her property is now owned by Rev. S. M. Gailey, a Presbyterian
clergyman, who has a respectable classical school there, and calls his
school Mantua."


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Johan Stalcop Biography

. JOHAN ANDERSON STALCOP was born about 1627 in Sweden, and died about June 1685, New Castle County, Delaware. He married CHRISTINA CARLSDOTTER, the daughter of CARL JÖNSSON.

Event: STALCUP FAMILY HISTORY (see notes) Interesting Note:

All Stalcops everywhere, no matter how they spell the surname, are descended from a Swedish immigrant named Johan Anderson. Johan was born about 1627 somewhere in Sweden. He was hired in Strängnäs, Sweden, by Måns Kling to go to America and be a farm worker in the New Sweden Colony. He sailed May 3, 1641 aboard the ship Charitas. He was to have a salary of 10 riksdalers per year and he was paid 10 dalers copper money, about half of his annual pay just before departing. The ship arrived in November at Fort Christina, New Sweden after the 6-month voyage. He served as a farm worker for five years until about the age of 19. On October 1, 1646, he hired into the military detachment of the colony as a soldier. He was one member in a contingent that probably never exceeded 70 soldiers.

He acquired his nickname soon after becoming a soldier. It probably was a reference to a piece of plate body armor he likely bartered from English traders. There is no record of plate armor being shipped from Sweden to the New Sweden Colony but the English in Virginia did import plate armor. Body armor had all but disappeared by the early Seventeenth Century because it was heavy, cumbersome, and mostly ineffective, especially against a firearm. The men who fired cannons, however, found it useful to continue using the piece called a breastplate since it provided burn protection from the powder flash when heavy weapons were fired. Nicknames were more or less a necessity in the Swedish community because of the patronymic naming system in use. There were nine men in the New Sweden community plus two Dutchmen in the area all with the name of Johan Anderson. One of these was Johan Anderson, Soldat, already in the military unit. Our Johan Anderson is consistently identified in the colony's records prior to his becoming a soldier as Johan Anderson von Strängnäs. The nickname he adopted was Stålkofta soon after hiring into the military. In Swedish stål means steel and kofta means jacket or short coat. A stålkofta was a garment worn mostly by Swedish nobles. It was made of chain mail and usually was the middle layer in a personal body armor system. Chain mail was completely unknown in New Sweden therefore the reference in this case must have been to a piece of plate armor. Stålkofta is usually translated today as steelcoat. After becoming a soldier our Johan Anderson became known as the Steelcoat. He was trained to be a gunner and rose to the rank of Constaple (gunnery sergeant).

After passing through the Dutch language as Staelcop, a phonic transliteration rather than a translation of the meaning of the words, this Swedish nickname, Stålkofta, became the English Stalcop. In turn this is the basis for all of the current spellings of the name. It became a family surname simply because the English forced everyone to adopt a surname after their custom.

Colonial Conflicts:

In 1653 Johan Printz resigned as Governor and returned to Sweden. He was replaced by Governor Johan Risingh. In 1654 upon arrival and before he even landed at Fort Christina Risingh expelled the Dutch from Ft. Cassimir near what is now the town of New Castle. The next year a large Dutch force led by Peter Stuyvesant arrived in the South River and forced the surrender of Governor Risingh and the entirety of the New Sweden Colony. Stuyvesant quickly returned to New Amsterdam to defend the Dutch colonists there from an Indian uprising. He appointed Jean Paul Jacquet as Vice-Director on the South River. Jacquets first court session was held 1655 and the first matter to be considered before the court involved Johan Anderson Stålkofta. The Dutch military commander, Dirck Smit, appeared to petition for a certain table and wardrobe which he allegedly bought from the gunnery sergeant, Jan Staelcop, the aforesaid gunnery sergeant, was heard and declared to have sold the same to him, and whereas the aforesaid Dirck Smit was offered payment for the table to be used by the vice-director, he would not, however, give up what belonged to him. Smith had purchased these items from Stålkofta and they were then simply taken from him by Vice-Director Jacquet for his own personal use. Smit refused the later offer by Jacquet for payment for the table alone made and wanted an order from the court for the return of both pieces of furniture.

Other early Dutch court cases very clearly show that Johan had wasted no time at all in making the most of his new opportunities available under Dutch rule. Within a year he had formed partnerships and was taking an active part in the business affairs of the community.

In 1664, the English seized New Netherlands. The Delaware territory then became part of the lands held by the Duke of York. In 1669 Johan Anderson becoming involved in an ill-fated event known as the Long Finn Rebellion and was heavily fined. There was no actual rebellion or insurrection. Several Englishmen overheard some drunken rabble rousing between a man named Marcus Jacobson and Armagot Printz, the daughter of the former governor, Johan Printz. The English allowed their paranoia to take hold and simply arrested everyone in sight. Trials were held and all but two were fined.

The entire story underlined below is a complete fabrication by a modern writer who was trying to spice up an otherwise dull story so that he might sell more copies of his book. It must be deleted because it is totally false.

"Johan Anderssen and John Coleman were members of the inner circle. Each had secret motives. None too successful farmers, they covete d theestate of Englishmen. The Steelcoat, it was whispered, looked lecherously at lovely ladie s and dallied with the thought that hecould have a harem. His trim, gold-laced uniform [the o ne he wouldn'tgive up], especially designed to set off his best features and todivert attenti on from a certain physical peculiarity [what could thisbe?], was always glittering where th e women of the colony were wont tocongregate. It was, in fact, his longing for the wives of o ther menthat first caused his fellows to band together for overthrow."The plan of rebellio n came to the ears of the English authorities before its execution, and the leader Marcus Jacobsen was apprehended and placed in prison to await trial. The punishment for the "simpler sorts " was requested as labor. Johan was to be secured in like manner as the lone Swede, since he w as perceived as a chief instigator of this tragedy.

Marcus Jacobson, called by the English the Long Finn, was sentenced to be whipped, branded on the face with the letter R and transported from the colony. This last means that he was taken to Barbados and sold into slavery in South America. Everyone else except Armagot Printz was fined. She was ignored. There is some evident to suggest that the fines were set at one-half of each person's property (land). Johan Anderson appears on several lists of those fined with an amount of 1500 Dutch guilders. This may be an estimate of the value of one-half of his property for he soon sold one-half of his land. The actual division of the land involved in this sale was not made until after is death.

In 1682, the Duke of York conveyed his lands to William Penn. Immediately the inhabitants of the Delaware territories were invited to take an oath of allegiance to the Penn form of government. Johan took this oath in 1683 along with three of his sons.


The stories underlined below are quite inaccurate and greatly confused fact with fantasy. They must be deleted. There is no evidence whatsoever that any Stalcop was a Loyalist. In fact, a number actively fought against the British. The Stalcop families moved out of Delaware in the general exodus of all of the Swedish and Dutch families mostly between 1755 and 1770. About half of the families went west toward the Ohio River and about half went south into North Carolina. There are almost no land transfer records existing that date during Johan Anderson's lifetime. The one concerning the grist mill is merely a mention in a letter found in the New York State Archives.

Colonial Growth: Surprisingly, it was after the British takeover and failed revolt that Johan came to most prominence. The Stalcop families would maintain central ro es during the colonial period throughout the bay area in Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland . Family members were large landowners and operated businesses that were vital to the community. By the time of the American Revolution there were no Stalcops found in Delaware. Perhaps due to these Loyalist political leanings, they had decided to move to more hospitable locations . Most of the Stalcops moved westward prior to 1800 and in years following have settled in nearly every state throughout the United States. Johan was engaged in an assortment of business v entures. A grant of land from the Dutch vice-director and the help of two other investors provided the backing to build a grist mill between 1658-1662 at "Turtle Falls-kil". This business stayed in the Stalcop family for three generations. Many land transfers and transactions were recorded during these years for Johan. The most lucrative was the eight hundred acres of land on which Wilmington, Delaware now stands; granted by the Duke of York to Johan about 1671.


Johan died about June 1685 and his wife, Christina, died before 1697. By the time of his death all of his children were permanently known as Stalcop. All family members bearing the Stalcop surname today (or one of the many spelling variations including Stalcup, Stallcup, Staulcup, Stallcop) are descendants of this man. Stalcup seems to be the most numerous spelling today. Stalcop is used as the spelling throughout most of this article because it is the first English spelling. Research on any member of the family will almost certainly reveal many spellings variations.

From the second generation through the fifth the Stalcop family was very active in the affairs of the Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church. A portion of the land on which to build the church was given by John Stalcop. Various other family members, from time to time, worked on the church or donated money and materials. John Stalcop later sold land for the glebe of the new church. There are many references in the records of the Old Swedes Church concerning the Stalcop family. There are twenty-three known Stalcop burials in the churchyard. Since the site of the church was the near the site of the old Swedish burial ground perhaps even Johan Anderson Stålkofta and Christina Carlsdotter are also buried somewhere nearby. Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church has been designated as a National Historical Site. Regular services are still held there. The church began as a Swedish Lutheran Church but is now an Episcopal Church.

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Land Owned by Johan Stalcop - Wilmington Delaware


"In 1671, two Swedes, Johan Andersson Stalcop and Dr. Tymen Stidham, had
owned between them all the land from the Christina River to the
Brandywine, and from the neighborhood of The Rocks [where the Swedes
landed near the mouth of the Brandywine in 1638] to Rattlesnake Run
[behind current Trolley Square]. Stalcop's land extended North from the
Christina; Stidham's south from the Brandywine. Across the Brandywine
was the land of Jacob Vandever, a Dutch settler; across the Christina
was Long Hook, owned by Jean Paul Jacquett, and east of Jacquett's land,
that of Peter Alrichs...

The Christina and Brandywine Rivers come within a couple of blocks
distance of each other at the south end of Wilmington, DE near "The
Rocks" where the Swedes landed in 1638. In fact, just a few blocks
north:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/wilmingtonde/ 2263024195.html

"The downtown business area [of Wilmington], wedged between the
Brandywine and Christina, is laid out in a grid system, less than 20
blocks wide or long."

The distance from "The Rocks" to "Rattlesnake Run", the northern
extension of the Stalcop/Stidham land, is about 2 miles. Stalcop'