OK, Tina et al.: I meant to write one yesterday, but this month has been the busiest....I have a list of 67 ghost stories for Delaware County, so don't think we'll run out soon. BLACK ANTHONY Few names are known of the ordinary people who made up the bulk of the early settlements along the Delaware, under the New Sweden Company. We don't have a complete list until the 1655 expedition, so mostly only the officers and Crown officials are known. But there is one exceptional member of the community who has left a record, and may be in residence still. Perhaps when one of the Swedish ships went to the West Indies for supplies, or perhaps he just jumped ship from another vessel, but a free African appeared in the Tinicum Island community very early on. His name was Anthony, and he told people had been born in Angola, captured and sold as a slave in Jamaica and escaped to be a free person. He had spent part of his life aboard a naval vessel, and so understood the casting and firing of cannon, as well as how to make black powder. Evidently Anthony was far more skilled than the soldiers sent out by the Swedish Army, and soon Governor Printz had intrusted him, so the story goes, with overseeing the artillery and the defense of the community. (There was a constant fear of attack by either the Spanish or the Dutch in those times.) Anthony did his job well and seems to have been accepted into the community, listed 9 years after his arrival as a "free man" and taxpayer, employed by the New Sweden Company. Perhaps some of the soldiers were jealous, or perhaps Anthony was just unwary when a trading vessel arrived, but he was stolen away from his home and, rumor said, was sold into bondage again to work in the sugar cane fields of the Caribbean, where the life expectancy of a slave was 2-3 years. He was never heard of again, but he must have longed to return and be free. In the 1920s, the PA Historical and Museum Commission began the first of several archaeological explorations of the site of the first Swedish settlement in Essington, and found what they believed to be the fort and government building, the Printzhof. Mary Butler and others who worked on that project said they had been trying to confirm where to dig, when a friendly African American man approached who seemed extremely knowledgeable about the early community. He pointed out the fort's perimeter, where the artillery had been posted and where the main docks were - all of which were subsequently confirmed by their dig. They even found some of the stone cannon balls brought from Sweden and other artifacts (alas, now long lost by confusion in Harrisburg). The man, who only gave his name as Anthony, told them he had been a resident "for some long time," that his happiest years had been spent in this location, and that he planned never to leave. When the dig was over, the archaeologists looked for Anthony to thank him and give him public credit for his help. According to the Mayor and the local police chief, no such man lived there. He was never seen again.... until a similar incident occurred to a worker on the most recent PHMC dig in the 1990s, who said he had met a black local resident named Anthony, who wanted them to dig on the rear of what is now the Lazaretto site, to find the main government building and church site. Was it Anthony - still residing where he had been free, valued and accepted, and trying yet again to be useful to the governmental officials presently in charge of his "home"? Happy Hallowe'en to all! Thy friend, Nancy Webster ********************************************** "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~~Benjamin Franklin~~