Summer Archives Series Part One: New Sweden in America

Did you know the Swedes were here in Pennsylvania before William Penn came in 1682? Come hear the Rev. Dr. Kim-Eric Williams give an interesting presentation on New Sweden!

New Sweden was a colony of the Swedish Empire along the lower reaches of the Delaware River between 1638 and 1655 in present-day Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania in the United States. Established during the Thirty Years’ War when Sweden was a great power, New Sweden formed part of the Swedish efforts to colonize the Americas.

About Our Guest Speaker:
Rev. Kim-Eric Williams is the Historian of the Swedish Colonial Society; translator for the multi-volume series, “Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania”; Curator for the Augustana Museum at the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia; and Archivist at the Lutheran Archives Center in Philadelphia. He lectured on Swedish at the University of Pennsylvania for 15 years and has no fewer than three ancestors from the New Sweden colony. A graduate of Muhlenberg College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, he has served as pastor in New Jersey and Sweden.