212 213 214 208 215 216 16 217 218 1, Vol. VIX, 1937

“GIFT TO QUEEN WILHELMINA

It has taken six years to gather this data - the edition contains 100 volumes costing $20,000.

A copy of an attractive book is about to be presented to Queen Wilhelmina of Holland by Major William Merrill Swartwout of Troy, New York. It is entitled “The Swartwout Chronicles, 1338-1889,” and has been written and printed for Major Swartwout as a memorial history of his family in Holland and America by the historian Arthur James Weise.

As the members of this family were closely identified with the history and development of Holland from the 12th century, Major Swartwout knows that the young Queen will highly appreciate this gift.

It has required six years of research to gather the material for the book, documents having been consulted in the archives of Groningen, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Leyden.

The book contains 754 pages of which 108 are devoted to engravings, including coats of arms and maps. Among the engravings are the reduced facsimiles of the original Dutch text and embellishments of the nuptial poem and wedding songs composed in honor of the marriage of Tomys Swartwout and Hendrickjen Barentse Otsen on June 3, 1661.

The book is 11 inches long, 8 1/2 inches wide and 2 1/4 inches thick. The linen coated paper is of superior quality that will, it is said, last for centuries. The typesetting and presswork are especially fine, and it is claimed that there is not one typographical error in the volume. It is bound in fill crushed levant, with leather double and fly and richly handtooled in gold. The out cover, dark brown in color, is embossed in antique, with the Swartwout coat of arms. Only 100 copies are being published, and the expenditure will be $20,000.00, the printing and binding alone costing $5,000.00.

R. W. Smith, president of the Troy Printing and Bookbinding Company, that has bought out the work, said yesterday, “It is one of the few worthy books I have seen in my life, not only in the work that has been done, but in the subject matter.

The descent of the members of the different American branchs of the family now writing the cognonmen Swartwout, Swartout and Swartout and Swartwood is traceable to Tomys Swartwout, who in 1655, was appointed a magistrate in the court of Midwout (Flatbush) on Long Island. Tomys and his brothers, Wybrandt and Herman were the first to write the surname conformible to modern Dutch orthography. They were the first Hollanders to engage in the wholesale business of selling in the Netherlands tobacco raised in Virginia and New Netherlands.

In the 17th century the members of the family were strong upholders of the rights of the colonists, and their patriotism has led them to participate in every war.

The family derives its name from “hot Zwartewoude,” the Black Wood, which originally diversified the northern part of the low countries, known first as Frisia, and later as Friesland, and the biographer says that the emblematic bearings of the Swartwout escutcheon were early seen on shields and standards conspicuous in battles in which the Frisians discomfitted the forces of invaders.

The escutcheon represents in a foreground an alert deer bounding cross a grassy glade, denoting a love of freedom. In the 13th century the ancestral manor was a wide extent of land in the vicinage of the Black Wood.

Tomys Swartwout, the federal progenitor of the American branches of the family, was one of 19 courageous representatives of the settlers of New Netherland, who, in convention in the city hall in New Amsterdam, on December 11, 1653, dared to remonstrate against a continuance of the maladministration of the affairs of the province by the arrogant directorate of the West Indian Company, and to claim foar the taxed colonists a right of voice in the government of it. The agressive action of this first landdag of the oppressed inhabitants of New Netherland, although contemptuously ignored and regarded by the despotic guild of avaricious merchants as meriting severe punishment, so that other colonists might be deterred from “deliberating on affairs of state,” had, nevertheless, in the fullness of time, a glorious consummation in the declaration of independence of the thirteen united American colonies.

The participation of Lieutenant Abraham Swartwout in the siege of Havana and in the storming of Morro Castle and other Cuban strongholds by the English in the summer of 1762 gives prominence to the fact that the valor of the members of the Swartwout family in America, in the colonial periods, was not only notable in engagements with the French and their allies at laces near the homes of the vigilant frontier settlers, but also along the distant borders of Canada and the more remote islands in the West Indies.

The patriotism of the family was also brilliantly exhibited in the war of the Revolution by the services of 29 of its members, two having the rank of brigadier general, three that of captain, three of lieutenant and four of ensign, two of whim were institution members of the Society of the Cincinnati.

The voluntary contribution at Fort Schuyler on August 3, 1777,m by Captain Abraham Swartwout, of his valueable blue cloth cloak to form the field of the first United States flag that was made comformable to the style of the national standard established on June 14, 1777 by the American Congress is an historical fact inseparable from the genesis of the star-constellated banner of “the land of the brave.” [Reseacher’s note — true or not true, the fort had to be Fort Stanwix (now in Rome, Oneida Co., NY) not Fort Schuyler. Fort Schuyler was located at or near Utica, Oneida Co., NY and deserted after French and Indian War.]

The outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Great Britain in 1812 again quickened the martial spirit and valorous proclivities inherited by the members of the Swartwout family. Midshipman Augustus Swartwout, although seriously wounded persistently superintended the firing of a gun on the flagship Lawrence until it was dismounted in the every-memorable naval battle on Lake Erie, in which Oliver H. Perry, with a squadron of small wooden vessels, grandly obtained the distinctive reknown of having commanded the first United States fleet that encountered in a regular line of battle one of any enemy, which having been worsted in a long and desperate action, he captured entire, without losing a single vessel of his own.

The attempt, between the years 1814 and 1826, of the three energetic brothers, John, Samuel and Robert Swartwout, to reclaim for cultivation, the tide-swept marshes of New Jersey, immediately west of the Hudson River, and opposite the city of New York, by ways and means similar to those seen in Holland, obtained for their extraordinary enterprise deserved commendation. The relinquishment of the feasible project or want of adequate money has monumentally left there large areas of dry ground and bold outlines of 120 miles of wide ditching to demarcate the extent of the planned work and demonstrate the obvious utility of the vast undertaking.207

The earliest obtainable record of the family variously known as Swartwout, Swartout, Swartwoudt, Swartwood and Swarthout, begin with the names of Roeloff swartwout and his wife, Catryna, who were in the year 1616 living in Groningen, Holland on the Rechte Fath (the straight passage). The house still stands. It is built of brick and bears on its front wall the sculputured face of a bearded man and the inscription: Ick-Kick-Nock-Int (I still peep into it). Roeloff and Catryna had four sons — Wybrandt, Tomys, Herman and Aldert. Roeloff survived his wife and died in 1634. At this time three sons, Wybrandt, Tomys and Herman were married and engaged in business in the city of Amsterdam as wholesale tobacco merchants. Their place of business was on the Keizeisgracht, one of the largest of the semicircular canals in Amsterdam. Their homes were near their storehouses in the northwestern part of the city, near the wide harbor call the Ij (pronounced ee) not far from the site of the Central Railroad Station, noth of Ham. Some years later, Wybrandt and Herman owned and occupied two adjoining residences fronting on the Wagnepleiss near harlem Gate in the same part of the city.204