This didn't seem to get on the Monmouth List. I'll send it in installments. First installment is below-- Patty Myers The following material is verbatim from The Stout Family of Delaware: with The Story of Penelope Stout, compiled and published by Thomas Hale Streets, Philadelphia, PA 1915. Please note that there are a number of footnotes in this book. I have put the references to them in parentheses in the text, and then they are shown at the bottom of the page. page 5 The story of Penelope Stout--one of those thrilling stories of capture by and of rescue from the Indians, which were so often associated with the early settlements of our country--has been preserved in the memory of her numerous offspring, wherever found, for more than two hundred and fifty years. It reads more like romance than reality. The marriage of Penelope Stout serves as a date for the beginning of Dutch and English history in East Jersey, and no account of the first settlement of Monmouth county would be complete with her story left out. I propose to show that much of the legend is capable of verification by the undisputed events of history and by the records of the county courts. Probably the earliest historian to refer to the story was Samuel Smith, in his History of the Colony of Nova Caesaria, or New Jersey, published in 1765. Another version, said to have been written about 1790, is given in Benedict's History of the Baptists. There is a third account by Nathan Stout, entitled A Small Genealogical Account of the Family called Stout. At the conclusion of his narrative the writer says: "I now close this history, which I began in the seventy-third year of my age. I have ended it in the seventy-fifth, and my name is Nathan Stout, the fifth son of John Stout, who was the first son of James Stout, who was the first son of David Stout, who was page 6 the seventh son of Richard." The history was begun in 1821, and was completed in 1823. Nathan Stout states that he was born in 1748. He died in 1826(1). Of the more modern writers, Ellis, in his History of Monmouth County, and Salter, in his History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties, give the story more or less prominence. The former characterizes it--to the great indignation of the Stout descendants--as a romance. It is, however, too well authenticated by the thruths of history to be viewed altogether in such a light. Mellick incorporated it in his Story of an Old Farm, and it forms one of Frank Stockton's Stories of New Jersey. Smith begins his narrative in the following manner: "While New York was in possession of the Dutch, about the time of the Indian war in New England, a Dutch ship, coming from Amsterdam, was stranded on Sandy Hook." Now the only Indian war which occurred in New England while the Dutch were in possession of New York, was the Pequod war, which began in 1636 and ended in 1637, and resulted in the almost complete destruction of that tribe. So severe was the lesson taught the Indians by that war that peace continued between them and the white settlers for nearly forty years, or until King Philip's war in 1671. The Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to the English in 1664. The date of the stranding of the (1)Nathan Stout was commissioned captain in the Second Regiment, Hunterdon County Militia, 1 May 1776. (See Records of the Adjutant General's Office, Trenton, N.J.; also, Roster of Captain Nathan Stout's Company.)