Jonas Bronck
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Jonas Jonson Bronck (1600?–1643), also known as Jonas Jonasson Bronk or Jonas Joanssen Bronck, was a Dutch immigrant, born in Sweden, to New Netherland (nowadays North America) after whom the Bronx River in New York is named.
Bronck was born in the small village of Komstad, Norra Ljunga socken, outside Sävsjö in the Swedish province of Småland, some time around the year 1600. Rather than take over his family's farm, he became a sailor, and it is known that he traveled to Japan and India. He married his Dutch wife, Teuntje Joriaens, on July 6, 1638, in the Nieuwe Kerk ('New Church'), Amsterdam. He and his wife subsequently decided to emigrate to North America.
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[edit] Bronck's Land
In June, 1639, Bronck navigated up the East River in a ship, De Brant Van Troyen (or The Fire of Troy), and made home in a piece of land he had acquired across the Harlem River from the village of Harlem. His farm (known as Bronck's Land, and then just Broncksland), covered roughly the area south of today's 150th Street in the Bronx.
Bronck died in 1643 in an Indian raid and his land was sold off. The area was known as Broncksland only through the end of the 1600s - so the modern name of the NYC borough does not come directly from that farmland. However, the river which runs North-to-South through the mainland area, and which his farm butted against, kept the name Bronck's River, eventually being abbreviated to Bronx River. This name stuck, and it was this river (which splits the modern borough in two) after which The Bronx was named.
[edit] Pieter Bronck
Pieter Bronck Given the relative closeness in age (Jonas was born about 1600, Pieter, born in 1616) it is more probable that Pieter was a brother or cousin to Jonas Bronck, and not a son as had been surmised. Pieter Bronck House is a registered historic place in Coxsackie, New York.
[edit] Trivia
- There is a street in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands that is named "Jónas Broncksgøta."
- There is a public school named after him.
