Here are Google Earth placemarks indicating the location of four early American military installations that were important to the Swedish, Dutch, and English settlements in the second quarter of the seventeenth-century.
Fort Nassau, built downriver from what is now Camden, New Jersey, was an outpost for the Dutch which caused trouble for the Swedens at Fort Christina. For a good introduction to the early settlements and claims of the Dutch, Swedes, and Germans in North America, see Carla Mulford et al., Early American Writings (New York: Oxford UP, 2002) 698-701. This fort is not to be confused with the original Fort Nasau, built and soon destroyed by flood near the location of Fort Orange in New York.
Download 1623FortNassau.kmz (0.7K).
Fort Orange, near Albany, was built by the Dutch in 1624 after a flood destroyed the original Fort Nasau in 1617.
Download 1624FortOrange.kmz (0.7K).
Fort Saybrook, built near what's now called Old Saybrook, was Connecticut's first military installation. John Winthrop, competing with the Dutch, who also had plans for this piece of land, ordered the construction of this palisado fort. Roger Williams records a visit to this site in his 1643 Key into the Language of America. See Roger Williams, "from A Key into the Language of America," Early American Writings, ed. Carla Mulford et al. (New York: Oxford UP) 260.
Download 1636FortSaybrook.kmz (0.8K).
Fort Christina, one of many deeply-historical locations in New Castle County, Delaware, was built by Peter Minuit as the center of New Sweden.
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