Last updated: October 18, 2021
Person
Anthony Swart
Quick Facts
Significance:
Anthony Swart is the first enslaved person we know of by name in the colony of New Sweden, in what eventually became the state of Delaware. Though his historical record is fragmentary, his story is nevertheless important as it gives us insight into how the institution of slavery became established in the First State.
Place of Birth:
Unknown
Date of Birth:
Early 1600s
Place of Death:
Unknown
Date of Death:
Mid-1600s
Place of Burial:
Unknown
Cemetery Name:
Unknown
Anthony Swart presents us with an intriguing story, and a frustrating one. He was the first enslaved person we know of by name in what eventually became Delaware, and yet beyond his name and a few other pieces of patchy information, he is largely absent from the historical record. Nevertheless, his story, as shrouded in mystery as it might be, is still foundational to the history of Delaware and the United States.
The first successful European colony in what eventually became Delaware was New Sweden, centered on Fort Christina, in present day Wilmington, was established in 1638. There had been an earlier attempt to establish a Dutch colony, called Zwaanendael, in the area of Lewes, Delaware, in 1631, but this failed after only a year. New Sweden’s settlers were not exclusively Swedish, but included a mix of Dutch, Finnish, and other European colonists as well. Notably absent in that first year were any enslaved people. Swedish culture had some ingrained resistance to the concept of slavery since the abolition of thralldom in the 1300s. However, this would soon change.
The following year, 1639, one of the two ships which had brought over the initial wave of colonists to New Sweden, the Vogel Grip, set sail to the south, headed towards the already well-established English colony of Virginia. Its mission was to trade for the lucrative commodity of tobacco, Virginia’s main export at the time. This was a failure however, and so the captain of the Vogel Grip appears to have made the decision to sail further south into the Caribbean, perhaps with the intention of making some easy profit by raiding Spanish shipping in the area. Sometime during this Caribbean voyage, Swart found himself aboard the Vogel Grip; how is unclear, though given his subsequent enslaved status it was almost certainly not by choice. How he was taken may not be clear, but why is easier to discern. Swart was thrust into a situation in which a number of factors came together and led to the institution of slavery in New Sweden.
New Sweden, like many European colonies in the Americas, suffered from a labor shortage. This was for several reasons, chief amongst them being the difficulty in convincing sufficient numbers of Europeans to make the dangerous trans-Atlantic voyage of their own free will. Combined with a high mortality rate among those Europeans who did make the voyage, this led to scarcity of labor, both skilled and unskilled. Swart was a capable sailor and navigator, and these skills had a high premium, especially in a colony like New Sweden which was laid out along waterways. As such, the captain of the Vogel Grip took Anthony into bondage, bringing him back to the colony.
From this point forward, Swart only appears in the historical record a few more times. He is known to have been enslaved to Johan Printz, who was the governor of New Sweden from 1643-1653. In serving Printz, Swart appears to have had extensive contact with the Lenape people, the original inhabitants of the area. It is also known that while he was the first enslaved person we know of by name in New Sweden, he was far from the last. The much larger Dutch colony of New Netherland, centered on the settlement of New Amsterdam, which would eventually be renamed to New York, was to the north. Subject to the same shortages in willing labor, the Dutch had been importing enslaved Africans for some time and were more than willing to ship more enslaved people down to New Sweden, for a price. The Dutch also sentenced Dutch colonists who had committed serious crimes to periods of forced labor, and many of those people also found themselves traded down into New Sweden. By the early 1650s, there was a significant population, probably numbering in the hundreds, of enslaved Africans in New Sweden.
The colony of New Sweden was conquered by Dutch forces in 1655, and Anthony Swart drops completely off the historical record just before then. Sometime in 1654, Swart is recorded as making a purchase of supplies from a colony store, and then that is it. What happened to him can only be guessed at now. He may have gone to live with the Lenape people, as this was a relatively common choice for many escaped and freed enslaved people. He may have returned to the Caribbean. He may have simply been forced to stay in New Sweden after the Dutch invasion in 1655.
We may never know for certain what his fate was, but what Swart can tell us about the history of the First State is important. Through him, we know that slavery was present from almost the beginning of European colonization of Delaware, despite pre-existing Swedish cultural resistance to it. The impact that slavery would have, and the legacy of its impact on Delaware and the United States as a whole, cannot be understated. Most importantly though, Swart gives a human face, however fragmentary his story may be, to the stories of the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans who were brought to North America during the 1600s-1800s.
Reflection Questions
- What is something you wish you knew about Anthony Swart’s life? How might you try and find out the answer to your question?
- Why do you think enslaved people who escaped, or freed Black people, might choose to live with indigenous people like the Lenape rather than Europeans?
- What differences do you think there might have been when you compare Anthony’s life as an enslaved man in the mid-1600s, with that of an enslaved person in the mid-1800s?
Sources
- Muhammad, Abdullah R. Africans in New Sweden: The Untold Story. Wilmington, Delaware: Cedar Tree Books, 2013.
- Reed, Paula, and Edith Wallace. 2019. A Historic Saga of Settlement and Nation Building: First State National Historical Park Historic Resource Study. New Castle, DE: National Park Service.