Hello Stouts, Here is another version. It comes from a first cousin of my father. She is Marion Demerest Stout Johnson and still alive with a keen mind at 92. I discovered her in August of 99. I have never met her face to face, but I call her about once a month and mine her mind for memories. She and I enjoy these conversations and I almost always take some notes. I wish I had done that before my grandmother died at 101 years of age 20 years ago. I tapped out a copy of her version. She did genealogy work fifty or sixty years ago. I write these vignettes for my children and nieces and nephews, so that is who I am addressing. I sent this on May 26, 2000. Hello everyone, Sometime along the way in Marion's life she became interested in her family history. Remember? She is the daughter of great Uncle Will, dad's uncle, making her dad's first cousin. She is finally home again after the March 8th fall when she broke her hip. She had put the stamps on the envelop that held these pages the morning she fell and now, after ten weeks mending her 91 year old self, she was able to actually post this work to me. I am going to type what she has written. This is her version which differs from all the others I have read. It is the first time I have learned that the name Thomson was ever part of this saga. I really like it: In 1634, Penelope Thomson was a pretty twelve year old living in Amsterdam. Built about 1300 on wooden piles over soft ground, Amsterdam in the 1630's was a fortunate place to be growing up in- a city of beauty and bustle, teeming with Flemish merchants, Jewish diamond cutters from Spain and Portugal, and French Huguenots setting up leather-working and glass-blowing shops in their adopted country, where they fled from religious persecution. the city enjoyed an intellectual life perhaps second to none in Europe. The sciences of physics, astronomy, and biology were burgeoning alongside the arts. Not far from Penelope's home lived a young portrait painter, Rembrandt van Rhyn, who was the rage of Amsterdam. At age twenty, Penelope married Kent van Princes. There is little record of him except that he is about his wife's age, and that the two were married in Amsterdam in 1642. When her young husband proposed that they leave Holland set forth for New Netherland to see if they could make a home there, Penelope Thomson van Princes "went with willingness." Had Kent van Princes lived past his twentieth year, there would probably have been more in the records kept by Penelope and her descendants. On the fifty-eighth day of their voyage, the ship was wrecked on Sandy Hook. The passengers and crew reached shore safely. Fearing an Indian attack, the settlers held a short conference and decided to press on toward their destination, New Amsterdam, that very night. They urged Penelope to come along; it must have been obvious to her that her husband was about to die. Penelope pleaded with them to help her carry Kent. Carrying van Princes would slow down the party on their way to safety to the town. They left, promising to return as soon as possible with reinforcements. Early the next morning, a party of Indians found the young couple. One blow of a weapon she later learned was a tomahawk immediately killed Kent. The Indians then deftly scalped Penelope; slashed a knife into her shoulder, and with another stroke drove into and across her abdomen, leaving her partially disembowelled. They left her for dead. For what happened next one turn to Penelope's account of her adventures of 1643. "I crawled to the edge of the wood...found dew in the hollow of leaves." "I ate fungous excrescences and the gum growing on trees." Her physical and emotional pain can only be imagined. "On the fourth day I saw a deer run by with arrows stuck in its flanks, and I his in a tree hollow. Then came a dog racing across the beach, it stood barking at me and baring its rotted teeth till the wild men came up." She was severely bruised, and her bowels protruded from a cut across her abdomen: She kept them in with her hand. She had been in this fearful condition for seven days when the Indians found her. This time there were only two of them, one younger, one older. The young one raised his tomahawk, but the older one stepped in front of him. The older wild man apparently won the argument, because "he threw his coat over my body and carried me off." In his compassion he took her out of the tree and carried her to his wigwam where he treated her kindly and healed her wounds. Penelope was to learn that his name was Tisquantum, and he was chief of his people, the Leni Lanapes. She discovered why he intended to keep her in the camp. He wanted to practice his English. Once she began to recover, Penelope ventured out of the wigwam. She noticed lights across the bay at night, and believed them to be a friendly settlement. She had to escape. One night, as the Leni Lenapes were celebrating victory over their enemy, the Mohawks, she ran from her tent to the shore of the bay, where she had seen a canoe. No one noticed her, they were too caught up in their fun. She ran through the woods, stumbling and falling. She had made up her mind that if she could not find the canoe, she would swim until she reached land or drowned. She found the canoe, lifted it, and scrambled over the side. It was a longer way than she had imagined. The lights in the houses were beacons of encouragement. Her left shoulder, its muscles severed by the Indian's knife, gave her such agony that she lost consciousness from time to time. Finally the little squares of lighted windows were drawing nearer. The canoe tipped over, and Penelope sank under. Instinct took over and she struggled to the surface. Then the realization came that her feet were touching ground. She collapsed on the shore. Lady Deborah Moody was preparing for bed when she heard the commotion outside. As the head of the community, she felt responsible, as well as curious, and opened the top half of the door. Coming up the path were two of the young guards in her employ, supporting what seemed to be a half-drowned boy. As they entered her parlor, Lady Deborah could see that what they had was a young woman. Apparently her youth and good health had saved her. Her hair began to grow as a soft blonde halo around her head; and one of Lady Deborah's young guards was interested in her. He was Richard Stout and an Englishman who had been one of the governor's guards for about a year, but having heard of a new community of Englishmen he was interested in joining it. Accordingly, Richard Stout was allotted a "plantation," Lot No 18 in Gravesend, was made a guard in Lady Deborah Moody's "army," given a red uniform and a newly invented firing piece. Lady Deborah Moody had been granted a patent to lands for the purpose of erecting a town upon them in the year 1643. She was the first woman in America to be given this privilege. The plans for the town had been laid out by Lady Deborah herself. The town was to have a square in the center comprising about sixteen acres, which would be enclosed by a palisade fence for protection against the Indians and wolves. Forty triangular lots would radiate outward from the square for a few rods (a rod being 5.5 yards), their apexes resting on the town fence. In this manner, each owner could leave his house and farm his acreage without trespassing even a foot on his neighbor's land; and each might quickly retire within the palisade to take up common defense. Every night the cattle would be herded into the square. the square would also be the location of the church, school, town hall and burial ground. The town was to be named Gravesend. Penelope was still living with Lady Moody until more permanent arraignments could be made. There was another waif in Gravesend that year, Anne Hutchinson, and the two became friends. Soon, Stout came calling; and soon Penelope was appearing at the dinner table with shining eyes. With Lady Deborah's blessing they soon planned to marry. Having survived being scalped, partially disembowelled, and her shoulder slashed at age twenty-two, Penelope Stout may have felt that the rest of her life seemed positively charmed. In the hostile environment of the 1600's in America there was always somebody around to save her life. The old Leni Lenape, Tisquantum, had managed this feat twice- once when he had her patched up by his squaws after the scalping, and again when he went to Gravesend to warn her of an Indian uprising. Next in order of Penelope-savers came a midwife named Trijn Jonas, a Dutch woman from new Amsterdam, who came over on a ferry to assist at the delivery of Penelope's first child. It was a difficult birth, and the midwife had to stem a hemorrhage, saving both mother and child. Her advice was "no more birthings." The baby, born in 1645, was named John. John did not have a lonely childhood. After him came Richard, James, Mary, Alice, Peter, Sarah, Jonathan, David and Benjamin. In 1705, at the age of ninety-five, Richard Stout succumbed. His wife wrote a single line, "I was never unhappy with him." Perhaps there has never been a better tribute. She was now herself aged seventy-three, a frail woman but still interested in the progress of her grandchildren. And so she lived on. And on and on. She had been born when William Shakespeare was only six years in the grave, had endured to see the city of Philadelphia rise, and the beginnings of democracy set down their tentative roots. She was a hundred and ten when she died in 1732, and was buried beside her husband on a farm three miles west of the village of Middletown. She left over five hundred descendants. (An appendage) History tells us that the early Stouts were prominent Crusaders, but early European history is a notorious liar. However, several arms of the family bear the "pale" of the Crusaders, merited or not. Stouts were found historically in Germany as early as the Fourteenth Century. Similarly the name is recorded in legal documents of England in the same period. Staudts were mentioned in both the Palatinate and Rothenburg country in Germany. In 1500 there were patricians in Worms and Speyer, both independent towns on the Rhine. We find them owning the seigniorial estate of Stadterhof, north of Kaiserlautern, also in the Palatinate. In 1549 Christoph Staudt, a member of the city council of Worms, died, and as was the custom, a plaque was hung in his memory. It shows a family crest; the crest carries one of the devices of the city, a dragon or griffin. The dragon apparently degenerated into a fox, today the ensign of the family. In England, the crest is a talbot. Unfortunately, the Palatinate was a battlefield of many armies and suffered accordingly. The family remained collective, however, until the beginning of the Eighteenth century, when religious pressure following the French occupation, forced those who had embraced the faith of the Reformation to seek healthier climes. This they did in adjacent Protestant provinces and in the new world. John Michael Staudt arrived in Philadelphia in 1773 as the first of a series of Germanic immigrants to that port. Little is known of the background of the most prominent English ancestor, Richard Stout. He apparently disagreed with his father as a result of a youthful attachment and either joined or was impressed into the English navy, where he served for seven years. leaving his ship at (then) New Amsterdam, (probably jumping ship), became a Netherlands subject by bearing the arms and is listed as "a soldiere at ye fforte in Monmouth." This citizenship apparently held, as when the English took over New Amsterdam he remained unmolested. If they had considered him still English, they would have hanged him as a deserter. Whatever else my ancestors may have lacked, it was not courage. It took fortitude to face life in the new world and there are many historical recordings of disastrous endings to early members of the family. Despite the hardships and perils, each family seems to have thrived almost without exception; comparatively few of the family dying in youth or infancy, for the times. So it is now that we are more numerous here than in any other country. Auntie Linda's appendage I am going to call Marion tonight and let her know I have received this wondrous and romantic coverage of our ancestry. She is vague about where she got her information. "From books," she says. And indeed she did connect me with my special new book that no one else seems to know about. I will ask her particularly about the Gravesend account. it seems very clear and probable in those paragraphs. I will not ask how a scalped woman can grow a soft blonde halo. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.236 / Virus Database: 114 - Release Date: 3/5/01