Tomys Swartwout

Tomys Swartwout (born 1607 at Het Rech te Fath, Groningen, Netherlands, baptized at Oude Kercke, Amsterdam, d. after 1662 in Amsterdam) was one of the earliest importers of tobacco from New Netherland to Western and northern Europe, one of earliest settlers of New Netherland (present day United States), and a founder of Midwood (originally Midwout), Brooklyn, New York.

Tomys Swartwout was one of the earliest New Netherlanders to buy and sell American tobacco in the Netherlands. He started a wholesale tobacco business in Amsterdam, joining his older brothers Wybrant and Herman, in 1629. Around this time, he married Hendrickjen Otsen, with whom he had several children, including Roeloff Swartwout

Swartwout and family left Amsterdam for New Netherland in March 1652. Swartwout, Jan Snedeker and Jan Stryker solicited from Director-General Peter Stuyvesant the right to settle together on the level reach of wild land (de vlacke bosch) or flat bush, adjacent to the outlying farms at Breukelen and Amersfoort. Through Swartwout's suggestion, the settlement was given the name of the village of Midwout. In April 1655, Stuyvesant and the Council of New Netherland appointed Swartwout a schepen (magistrate), to serve with Snedeker and Adriaen Hegeman as the Court of Midwout. Being one of the original settlers, Tomys Swartwout was granted letters-patent by the Council of New Netherland, Director-General Stuyvesant, and the Dutch West India Company of 116 acres on April 13, 1655.

Swartwout was one of the nineteen signers of the "Humble Remonstrance and Petition of the Colonies and Villages of this New Netherland Province" sent to Stuyvesant on December 11, 1653, an important early document in the campaign for democracy in America. Following Adriaen Van Der Donck's Remonstrance of 1650 about governance of the colony, the document signed by Swartout set out discontents about Stuyvesant’s authoritarian method of personally selecting, rather than electing, the council. The statement later inspired Jacob Leisler's campaign late in the 1680s for fuller representative democracy in New Amsterdam.

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