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Jonas Bronck (alternatively, ''Jonas Jonson Brunk'', ''Jonas Jonasson Bronk'', ''Jonas Jonassen Bronck'') (died 1643) was an immigrant to the Dutch colony of New Netherland after whom the Bronx River, and by extension, the county and New York City borough of The Bronx are named. A mural at the Bronx County Courthouse depicting Bronck's arrival was created in the early 1930s by James Monroe Hewlett. ==Origin== There are different theories as to Bronck's origin. In Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands there is a street bearing the name Jónas Broncksgøta ("Jonas Bronck's Street", translated). One theory holds that Jonas Bronck was born ca. 1600, son of a Lutheran minister, Morten Jespersen Bronck, and was raised in Tórshavn. The family may have originated from the Norwegian district of Elverum.〔 (At the time, the Faroe Islands were part of a political entity also comprising Denmark and Norway, as well as Greenland.) In 1619 the younger Bronck went to school in Roskilde, Denmark, and eventually made his way to Holland. A number of sources published in the early 20th century state that Bronck was Danish, an idea espoused by A.J.F. van Laer, archivist at the New York State Library. ''Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898'', winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History, also parenthetically claims Bronck to be a Dane. A 1908 publication states that Bronck was a Mennonite who fled the Netherlands to Denmark because of religious persecution. In a 1977 pamphlet commemorating the founding of the borough a publication of the Bronx County Bar Association states that it "is widely accepted that Bronck came from Denmark, but claims have also been made by the Frisian Islands on the North Sea coast and by a small town in Germany." In 1981, the Manx-Svenska Publishing Co. released a now out-of-print 19-page pamphlet ''The Founder of the Bronx'' authored G.V.C. Young O.B.E., after he had conducted research in the Netherlands, Sweden, and New York. Young reported that he examined crucial references: Bronck’s betrothal certificate dated June 18, 1638 and Bronck’s document of guarantee from April 30, 1639. The theory of Bronck’s Swedish origin fundamentally rely on Young’s interpretations of two key words found in these Dutch-language documents. In conjunction with John Davidson of Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands and Eva Brylla from the Ortnamnsarkiv in Uppsala, Sweden, the archival texts were transcribed from their traditional script. Young states that words referring to Bronck’s birthplace were spelled “Coonstay” and “Smolach” and it was decided that it was most likely that “Coonstay” was Komstad in Jönköping and that “Smolach” was a misrecording of Småland. Young concludes Jonas Bronck was born circa 1600 in Komstad, Småland, a historic province of Sweden adjacent to the then-Danish province of Skåne. (He is silent regarding another town named Komstad located in the Simrishamn municipality in Skåne in southeastern Sweden, a region which prior to 1658 was part of Kingdom of Denmark.) ''The Founder of the Bronx'' speculates Bronck made his way to the coast on the Baltic Sea where he became a sailor in the Danish merchant marine, and later transferred to the Dutch fleet. The New York Times cites Sävsjö the seat of Sävsjö Municipality in Jönköping County, Sweden, of which Komstad was part. The theory that Bronck was a Swede has been adopted by the official historian of the Bronx, Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx Historical Society, and other publications. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jonas Bronck」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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