Brita Mattsdotter Rambo

Biography

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Matsdotter-126

Britta Mattsdotter was an ethnic Swede from the port city of Vasa, Finland. She was born about 1630[1] and emigrated to New Sweden as a child. As a child immigrant, she would have been attached to a household, and neither of the two immigrant men in the colony named Mats could have been her father (unmarried and too young). Therefore, it's logical to assume she either came with a stepfather or as a maidservant. Ron Beatty, citing a 1999 letter from Dr Peter Craig, postulates that she was the "unnamed servant girl who came to New Sweden in 1641 with Lieutenant Måns Nilsson Kling and his wife and child." Kling was also an ethnic Swede from Finland; he commanded the Swedish fort on the Schuylkill by 1647 and returned to Sweden with his family in 1648.[2]

On 7 April 1647, in the newly consecrated (4 September 1646) Swedish Lutheran log church on Tinicum Island in the Delaware[3][4] Britta Mattsdotter, about age 17, married Peter Gunnersson Rambo, age 35. Peter was a prominent colonist, a magistrate, and highly respected. Britta and Peter had four sons and four daughters and were married for 46 years. One of the daughters died at age 8, but the other seven grew up and married. By the time she died, on 12 October 1693, she and Peter had thirty-seven grandchildren.[5]

Sources

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Matsdotter-126
• Dr Peter Stebbins Craig, 1990. "Peter Gunnarsson Rambo" biography on the Swedish Colonial Society website; accessed 21 February 2019. Originally published in Swedish Colonial News, volume 1, number 2 (fall 1990). <PDF>
• 1. Rambo & Beatty 2013, volume 1, page 6, and all other editions. In the 1693 letter to his sister in Sweden, Peter says his wife Britta was from "Wassa." Britta's Find a Grave memorial gives her birth place as Stockholms län, Sweden (query pending). It's possible that both of these are true, if her family antecedents have magically become known.
• 2. Rambo & Beatty 2013, volume 1, page 10.
• 3. Rambo & Beatty 2013, volume 1, pages 11–12. See these two maps: 1— "1693 Service Area of the Swedish Log Church at Wicaco," (by permission of Dr Peter Craig, from the 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware); 2—"The Site of Philadelphia about 1681" (by permission of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania). Compare the first map with the second, which shows the 1677 distribution of Rambo-owned lands along the Schuylkill. The Schuylkill flows into the Delaware. Note too that the Rambo-Cock-Dalbo holdings stretch for miles along the Schuylkill, near its junction with the Delaware. Three of Peter's four sons married Cock sisters and one of his daughters married Peter Mattsson aka Dalbo (his stepfather's name).
• 4. Rambo & Beatty 2013, volume 1, page 18.
• 5. Rambo & Beatty 2013, volume 1, pages 5–7, Peter Gunnerson Rambo's 31 May 1693 letter to his unnamed sister in Sweden. This is one of three May 1693 letters sent together to Sweden and preserved in the Royal Archives in Stockholm. It was translated into English in 1986 by Dr Richard Hulan and published in Rambo & Beatty by permission of Dr Peter Craig.
• Burial Record: "Four Pages of death records from the church from Wicaco were found by Peter Craig.
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Dec 26 2019, 5:25:04 UTC
• Reference: WikiTree Genealogy - SmartCopy: Dec 26 2019, 5:30:49 UTC
• Reference https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Matsdotter-126
• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Dec 26 2019, 5:34:11 UTC