English, Swedish, Finns, Susquehannocks, and Marylanders

An account of the early settlement of southeastern Pennsylvania, illustrating just how messy the process was. From a document in Ancestry.

Europeans arrived in the Delaware Valley in the early 1600s, with the first settlements founded by the Dutch, English and Swedish. After Sweden's first expedition to North America embarked in late 1637, the Swedes took control of land on the west side of the Delaware River from just below the Schuylkill River: today's Philadelphia, southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. The Swedish named this New Sweden. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their military defeat of the English province of Maryland. In 1647, the Swedes built a fort and named it Fort Nya Korsholm or New Korsholm, after a town that is now in Finland. 11 years later the Dutch sent an army to the Delaware River, nominally taking control of the colony, though Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, court, and lands. The English conquered the New Netherland colony in October 1663–1664, but the situation did not really change until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.