Four lines of reasoning support the theory that Penelope was of English
heritage.
1. Historically, only in Greek and English cultures was Penelope a
common first name. It is implausible that she was Greek because Greece was
under the restrictive rule of the Ottoman Empire from the 15th century until
its independence in 1821. The original Penelope was the patient wife of Odysseus in Homer's classic, The Odyssey.
2. My Dutch friends have never heard of a Dutch woman named Penelope. In
June 2005 I spent a day in Amsterdam and visited a municipal archive building
where the Amsterdam marriage records for several centuries have been
transferred to cards and sorted by first and last names. I found no records for
the name Penelope in the 1600s and 1700s. I know very little Dutch but the hand-printed
cards were quite legible. Unfortunately the clerk spoke only conversational
English and I have no idea how complete their collection is. On a whim, I checked
for Smith and found several entries.
3. After her rescue, Penelope settled in Gravesend, composed entirely
of English families in 1645 and for many years afterwards. Her other choices
were the new English (and Puritan) village of Hempstead, several Dutch villages
or else New Amsterdam, a very cosmopolitan town where seventeen languages were
spoken and only half the population was Dutch. Admittedly, Gravesend was the
closest village to her shipwreck site across the bay at Sandy Hook but
Gravesend was located about a mile from the coast and wasn’t convenient for
boats.
4. Penelope married an Englishman, Richard Stout, and lived in the
English village of Gravesend. Around 1665 the Stouts moved to New Jersey and
helped found the village of Middleton, also comprised only of English settlers.
All ten of their children had English first names and married into English
families.
On the contrary side, Edward Morgan’s 1790 pamphlet Materials Towards a History of the Baptists says
Penelope was born in Amsterdam in 1602. However, it also says she sailed to New Amsterdam about 1620, several years before the colony was founded. Which parts of Morgan's information that was gathered by a clergyman talking to Penelope's descendants 50 years after her death are plausible? Besides, she could have been born in Amsterdam to English
parents.
I welcome discussion about Penelope and my conjectures. Together, we
can combine our incomplete knowledge and arrive at better conclusions.
