What is known about Jacob Swart

Jacob Swart (b 17 July 1796, Amsterdam, d 14 May 1866, Amsterdam) was a very well known mathematician, cartographer, publisher and expert on navigation – with a set of books on navigation to his credit. His grandson Jacob (b 12 April 1858, Graaf Reinet, Cape) writes of him as follows:

'During the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s he was a midshipman on the Man-o'-War “Prince Frederick”. The officers and men were loyal to the Prince of Orange and, on returning from the East, finding that Holland was a Republic and virtually in the hands of the French, entered Torquay on the Devon coast and were interned for about two years. The officers were placed on parole and my grandfather soon made friends, especially among the landed proprietors in the vicinity. These people treated him so well that, until his death, he retained a great affection and admiration for the English. He often visited England in later years and made friends with the people in the same line of business as himself. One of these, a Mr Finlay, invited my father Nicolaas to stay with him and his family and, on three occasions, he spent his vacations with them.

When my grandfather was 28 years old he was appointed Professor of Navigation and Mathematics at the College for Naval Cadets and, later, a member of the Royal Commission for the examination of officers for the Royal Dutch Navy.

When my grandfather was 32 (1823) he became Director of the publishing firms of “Het Hydrographische Huis van Lurie to London en dat van Keulen te Amsterdam” and later sole proprietor. In 1847 he was created Ritter der Order van het Eiken Kroon, by William H. Prince of Orange'.

Our family is in possession of a first edition copy of the original Statenbijbel authorized by the States General in the Netherlands in the years 1618 and 1619 – with the translation being completed in 1636. Single copies of the Stanbijbel cost 100 Gold Gulden in those days and our family's copy has been passed down through the years via Jacob Swart and his predecessors and successors with a fairly complete record of the families genealogy entered by hand. The first entry in the bible records the marriage of Adriaan Dirksz Swart to Aefije Jans on the 27th of April 1692. There is some evidence that there may have been previous pages – now missing – containing earlier records.

The profile photograph is a photograph of a painting of Jacob Swart