The New Sweden Company was founded as a joint stock enterprise in 1637 including Swedish, Dutch, and German investors seeking to trade in American furs and tobacco. Under the command of Peter Minuit, former governor of the New Netherlands colony in New York, the company sent two ships to America that arrived in Delaware Bay in March 1638. On the site of present day Wilmington, Delaware, the traders established Fort Christina, named in honor of the young Swedish Queen, and over the next 17 years, they settled over 600 colonists on farms and villages along both sides of the Delaware River, reaching north to present day Philadelphia and inland as far as Darby Creek. Old Swede's Church in Philadelphia was established by Swedish colonists in 1643.
Internal dissentions within the colony, however, plagued New Sweden under the ten year rule of Gov. Johan Printz, who was followed in 1654 by Johan Rising, who made the blundered by attempting to expel Dutch colonists from Fort Casimir (present-day New Castle, Delaware). The response of the Dutch governor of New York Peter Stuyvesant was swift and decisive. The arrival of 317 Dutch troops at the gates of Fort Christina forced the Swedes to capitulate and the colony came to a quick end.
From the guide to the New Sweden Records, 1650-1655 (1820), (American Philosophical Society)
