'50s & '60s

Penelope Van Princis-Stout

Remember when I told you the story of my ancestor, Hannah? Well, the story was true but I got the name wrong—her real name was Penelope Van Princis-Stout (more commonly known as Penelope Stout). She was born in 1622, died in 1732, and was just 22 years old when she came to what would eventually become America from The Netherlands.

The following is from her Wikipedia page (which I'll link in the comments):

"Penelope Stout was an early white settler of Monmouth County, New Jersey. According to History of the Baptists [1](cited in Stout and Allied Families by H.F. Stout[2]) she lived to the age of 110.

In 1643 [3] Penelope and her husband took a ship from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam. Their ship foundering, she and her husband and several others made land at Sandy Hook. Her husband, often identified as Van Princin, was not able to travel and after the couple were abandoned they suffered an attack from the natives. She survived the attack and sheltered in a hollow tree until she, due to hunger she said, felt compelled to make herself known to the Navesink tribe of Leni Lenapi. They bound up her wounds, and when she was well enough to travel she was, perhaps sold, to the Dutch at New Amsterdam. There she married Richard Stout. They had a large family (7 sons and 3 daughters) mostly born at Gravesend in the area of Coney Island, Brooklyn. They moved to Middletown Township, New Jersey around 1665. This was where the Leni Lenapi who had earlier helped her were living, and they were still living there when the Stouts arrived. In some versions of the story, the Native Chief who rescued Penelope many years earlier warned her of a raid being planned by the Indigenous people of the area, and she was able to thwart it.

In some versions[4] Penelope had 502 direct descendants when she died at the age of 110.

The dates and surname for Penelope are quite variable in the several references. The Gravesend Town Records[5] as written by Englishmen at the time of a slander trial in Sept 1648 name the defendant as Penelope Prince. However, this does not necessarily mean that she had not yet married Richard Stout, as married Dutch women in that time period traditionally used their maiden names. In honor of her being a pioneer in Middletown, Penelope Lane off of Kings Highway is named after her."

Her story was made so popular that she made it into a 19th century edition of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. She's my grandmother's 10th great grandmother, meaning she'd be my 12th. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother 😊