I was born, raised, and have spent all my life on the mainland portion of New York City. New York City is made up, for the most part, of islands. Manhattan Island and Staten Island are obvious by their names. Brooklyn and Queens are situated on the westernmost part of Long Island. And then there is The Bronx. Make sure you capitalize that "T." Native New Yorkers and even Bronxites wonder why it's called "The Bronx" and not just Bronx. After all, you don't call Manhattan "The Manhattan" or Brooklyn "The Brooklyn." And The Bronx certainly isn't as distinguished as The Hague or The Netherlands. So what's with the "The"? And how does this tie into genealogy? Permit me to illustrate this with a few stories.
History Lessons
My earliest memory of a history lesson was when an uncle explained the origin of the place-name Fordham. Fordham Road runs east to west and bisects the western Bronx from the Harlem River to the Bronx River. Fordham University is located there. It is where I was born and grew up. But the name comes from a place where early native Americans would wade, or ford, from northern Manhattan Island to the mainland and back, when the tide was right. At the time of European settlement, the town or hamlet that became established there recognized this fact. Thus the hamlet near the ford became "Fordham." The name recognizes an early and established way of life and method of travel-and a strategic reason for a settlement there. To be able to repeat this story for my teachers and friends gave me a reputation as a budding historian.
Growing up in The Bronx, I went to our parish elementary school in the Fordham Road/University Heights section of the borough. Roughly 90% of my classmates were Irish American, mostly second and third generation. One day my teacher casually remarked that my last name of Anderson wasn't an Irish name. My B.I.C. (Bronx Irish Catholic) credentials were being questioned? I was devastated. Of my three living grandparents, all three had brogues; they had been born in Ireland and had emigrated between 1900 and 1924. I was named Brian for my mother's maiden name, O'Brien, and for Brian Boru, the great Irish king. Boy, did my father have some tough questions in store when his eldest boy, his third-grader, got home that day.
My father was of the generation that really didn't have an interest in the old country. After all, his parents had left there to become Americans, and he saw no need to delve into the past. His family had survived the Depression and the Second World War, and had maintained a strong cultural pride, but felt that they were Americans and that was what was important. But for me, there was this matter of who my father's father was. I had seen plenty of pictures of him: one in which he looked tall and strapping, in his New York National Guard uniform, and another of him posing with Jimmy Cagney after the premiere of the The Fighting Sixty-Ninth, in which he had served as a colonel. My father's father, Henry J. Anderson, was the only grandparent I hadn't known, as he had died four years before I was born. The little bit that I was able to wrench out of my father was that he was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and came here as a kid with his mother and sister, and that he fed seagulls off the back of the ship that brought him to America. That bit of information had to suffice for the time being.
The New Pursuit
My grandmother's death in the early 1970s prompted the emptying of a few closets and strongboxes. By this time, I recognized a treasure when I saw it, and this cache of musty old documents was it. I discovered that my grandfather was predeceased by his own mother by only three years. But more surprises were in store-I had to figure out why Johanna Anderson's parents had Swedish names: Nils Christensson and Elna Rosenquist. I had lots of questions, for which my father and his sister had few answers. But as the questions were fine-tuned, the shards of memory were stirred. My aunt could not forget the fact that her father always jokingly referred to himself as "the Great Dane." But his parents were Swedes! I was older now, so I was off and running on a new and exciting pursuit.
This new world brought me in touch with a host of libraries, historical societies, lectures, and personalities. While perusing photos and information on the early history of The Bronx and the conditions which made it so attractive to young immigrant families of the time, I overheard a librarian's conversation. The librarian mentioned that a pre-eminent historian had stumbled upon some research showing that Jonas Bronck-for whom The Bronx is named-may not have been Danish or Dutch (no one really knew) after all, but Swedish. This was too much for me to ignore. I had just discovered that I had Swedish roots, and, now, so did the founder of my borough. My Viking blood was stirring!
A River Runs Through It
The borough of The Bronx is named for its major geographical feature: the river which flows though its center. Just as the name of any river includes "the" in front of it, the borough named after the Bronx River came to be called The Bronx. (No other borough of New York has a river running through it.)
The Bronx River took its name from the first recorded inhabitant of the area, Jonas Bronck. On some early maps, it is even referred to as "Brouncksland." (This spelling is a corruption of the possessive form of Bronck's name, based on the way the strange Dutch and Indian names sounded to the English map-makers' ears.)
In 1638, Bronck and his new bride arrived on the Brandt van Troijen from Hoorn, Holland. He had contracted with the Dutch East India Company to purchase a tract of land on the mainland portion of the New Netherland colony, well outside the area in which safety could be guaranteed. (At this time, Wall Street, which was the northernmost part of New Amsterdam, was really just that-a wall to keep marauding natives out.) Bronck, to his credit, also signed a deal with the local tribal chief, recognizing local custom and insuring (as much as possible) his survival.
Bronck's home was later the site of a peace treaty signed by the natives and Dutch authorities; religious leader Anne Hutchinson and her family were casualties of that treaty being broken. An inventory of Bronck's estate done after his untimely death in 1643 indicated that he was a man of culture, having brought to his wilderness home a rather large library, filled with navigational books; a silver table service; fine clothing; and even a Japanese cutlass. The fact that an inventory was being done seems to indicate that his estate was intact and did not fall victim to an Indian onslaught, so he seems to have won the tribe's respect to some degree.
That had been the extent of our knowledge of the historical Bronck. There were many accounts calling him Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and German. But none of these offered any real proof, and certainly none applied a genealogist's eye. The most formidable account referred to a divinity student at the University of Copenhagen called Johannes Faroelinneus, or some Latin variation, which essentially meant "Johannes of the Faeroes." When a Danish Lutheran minister by the name of Morten Jespersen Bronck was found to have resided in Torshaven in the Faeroes, the Danes felt their case had been made. This was all well and good, except that there was no proof of any connection between Morten and the divinity student, nor between the divinity student and the Bronck who arrived in 1638. But it had been good enough all these years to pass as fact.
The Swedish Link
I consulted the historian who had come across the tenuous Swedish link for Bronck. He had consulted a researcher with expertise in Swedish genealogy living on the Isle of Man, who had self-published a booklet which featured good genealogical documentation. The booklet took the man we thought to be the right person backward in time, a step at a time.
Two documents came to light: Bronck's guarantee of 30 April 1638, in which Dutch merchants underwrote his voyage, and-more to a genealogist's liking-the betrothal certificate of Jonas Bronck and Teuntie Joriaens of 18 June 1638. These established Bronck's date of birth as being around 1600 and his birthplace as being "Coonstay" in "Smolach." Examination of the betrothal certificate's translation showed Bronck's full name as Jonas Jonasson Bronck-thus his father's name was not Morten, and our man Bronck was therefore not the son of the Danish pastor. Furthermore, documents from Torshaven showed that Morten Jespersen Bronck died prior to 15 August 1583, almost seventeen years before the birth of Jonas Jonasson Bronck. It was thought that the place-names "Coonstay" and "Smolach" were most likely Dutch misrecordings of the Swedish town Komstad and the province of Smaland. The matter carried on into Komstad (close to what is today Savsjo), Jonkoping County, province of Smaland, where, sure enough, a Bronck family lived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. That period of history is lacking in birth or baptism citations, but enough documentation was uncovered to enable genealogists to accept the Swedish connection of Jonas Jonasson Bronck.
At this point, I was comfortable enough with my knowledge of genealogy and history to submit an article on the topic to Nordstjernan-Svea, the oldest Swedish-American newspaper, which they published in 1982. Since that time, I have met the King and Queen of Sweden at Ellis Island, where I was able to inform them of the Swedish roots of a person whose name graces a large portion of New York City. (So large a portion, in fact, that it is the largest land mass and the area with the largest population to have a Swedish place-name outside of Sweden.) And on a personal level, I have taken to using the original spelling of my name—Andersson.
Brian G. Andersson has been pursuing genealogical research for over twenty-five years. Specializing in New York passenger arrivals, he has profiled numerous listorical and prominent individuals.
Ancestry Magazine
