Penelope Kent ^460,461

  General Notes:

BIOGRAPHY: STORY: There is a remarkable story told about Penelope when she was a young woman. It goes has follows: She and a first husband a Jan VanPrincin, had left Holland and were on their way to America. Their ship wrecked off the coast of New Jersey, by a place called Sandy Hook. This was in about 1642. The crew and some of the passengers made it to shore. But Penelope's husband was either sick or injured, and so they were left behind, as she would not leave him. They, the crew promised to send help back. They had not been alone long when some Indians killed them both (or so they thought) by skinning them alive. However Penelope came to after the Indians had left. Although her skull was fractured and her left shoulder was so hacked that she could never use that arm like the other. She also was cut across the abdomen so that her bowels were hanging out, she pushed them back in with her hands. She continued this way for about 7 days, taking shelter in a hollow tree and eating the excrescence of it. About the seventh day she saw two Indians and hoped that they would put her out of her misery. One went to do exactly that but the other Indian an older man stopped him. This Indian put his coat around her and took her to his wigwam and doctored her cuts and bruises. As soon as she was well enough to travel he took her to New York and made a present of her to her countrymen, viz: an Indian present, expecting ten times her value in return. She lived in New York and it was there that she meet and married Richard Stout and bore him 7 sons and 3 daughters. She lived to be 110 years of age and she had 502 decendants when she died.

BIOGRAPHY: STORY: Now about Penelope. She was the daughter of the Rev. Kent from England and Holland. I have not been able to find his first name yet. She was married to Jan VanPrincin first in Holland around 1642. Shorthly after their marriage they left Holland for America. Close to the New Jersey shore a severe storm hit and the ship crashed on the rocks. Most of the crew and passengers died, however, Penelope and her husband Jan along with a few crew members made it to shore. Jan was hurt pretty bad as were a few of the crew members. There were maybe 4 or 5 that weren't hurt and so they left to go find help. Penelope stayed with her husband and the other men and tried to doctor them the best she could. A day or so later Indians found them and killed all the men including Jan. They scalped Penelope and skinned her alive, however she did not die. Then they slit open her belly and pulled her intestines out and she still was alive. About this time an old Indian stopped the warriors and said to leave her alone and she would die eventually. The Indians left and the old Indian sewed up her stomach and then doctored her with plants from the forest and kept her feed. At least a month or two past and then the old Indian took her to a fort up around New York somewhere and traded her for some food and supplies. The men at the fort did not think she would live and were surprised when she told them how long ago it had been since the ship wreck and since the Indians had tortured her. No one ever heard about the men that had left them in the forest and it was assumed that the Indians that found her probably had killed them before finding Penelope and the others. Penelope, however, did survive the ship wreck and the torture and in about 1644 she married James Stout who was living there at the fort that the old Indian had taken her to. Penelope eventually had 10 children and none of these children died young. They all married and had families. For that time period it was very unusal as the mortality rate was very high for infants. They say she never grew much hair back just a few tufts here and there and she always wore a stocking cap to cover her head and long sleeves always so that no one could see her arms. Her body was covered in scars similiar to 3rd degree burns. She lived to be 110 years of age and when she died it is said that she had 502 descendants also living at that time. The story has been told along the New Jersey coast ever since with very little varation over the last 360 years. Her husband Richard Stout lived to be 90 years of age, so between the two of them they must have come from some very sturdy stock.

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Newspaper article - Newspaper name and time of publication unknown, author was John T. Cunningham

------------ THE STORY OF PENELOPE STOUT -----------
There is cause to dispute the traditional claim that Penelope vanPrincis Stout of Monmouth County lived to a mature 110 years before she died in 1712, but no one can deny that for indomitable will to live and in number of descendants Penelope has had few equals.
Penelopes's story is obscured slightly by discrepanceies in the dates of her birth and other occurrences in her life, but consider first the narrative as it is usually told.
Born in Holland (in 1602 according to the usual version,) Penelope vanPrincis joined her young husband and other Dutch settlers headed for New Amsterdam in 1620. Violent storms caught their ship, drove it off course and finally wrecked it off Sandy Hook.
--- ON THE BEACH ---
All survived, and the passengers and crew set off for New Amsterdam on foot, leaving Penelope on the beach to nurse her desperately ill husband (whose name was never recorded by Penelope and all of the large brood she would later rear.) Indians found the Dutch couple on the beach, killed the husband and left Penelope viciously hacked.
The young widow lay unconscious, her skull fractured, her left arm so mangled that it would never again be normal and her abdomen slashed open. Somehow she revived and crawled into a hollow tree, where two Indians found her several days later.
---- SHE PRAYED ---
Penelope prayed that they might end her misery and the younger Indian was willing to oblige. The older Indian dissented, carried her over his shoulder to camp, and there nursed her back to health. She stayed with the Indians, working, learning their language and their ways.
Some of her shipwrecked friends returned after a time and asked the Indians to give her up. Penelope's Indian benefactor said he would let the young woman decide for herself. Penelope decided to leave, "very much to the surprise of this good Indian," according to Frank Stocktons's version.
About two years later Penelope met Richard Stout who had left Nottingham, England, because of parental disapproval of his love affair with a girl they considered socially inferior. He enlisted in the navy, served for seven years and left ship in New Amsterdam when his enlistment ended.
Penelope vanPrincis and Richard Stout were married in 1624 (according to tradition), when she was 22 and Richard was 40. Some time after, they moved to Middletown, where through the years their family grew and prospered.
Several years after the Stouts came to Middletown, Penelope's old Indian benefactor called on her to warn of an impending attack by his tribe. Penelope and her children fled in a canoe, but Richard Stout and his neighbors stood up to the Indians and argued them out of an attack. So the Stouts lived on into the 18th century.
Dr. Thomas Hale Streets questioned the time sequence in a study he made of the Delaware branch of the Stout family in 1915.
He said that all dates in recorded accounts were about 20 years too early, thus making the date of the shipwreck about 1640 rather than 1620 and making the date of the marriage to Richard Stout about 1644 rather than 1624. This logic seems sound.
For example, there was no New Amsterdam in 1620 and certainly there was no Middletown at the time when the Stout allegedly moved over. Advancing all dates 20 years, however, makes New Amsterdam, Middletown and all else fall in line.
His most telling rebuttal hinged on the known birh date of Penelope's 10th and last child, David, born in 1669. That would have made Mrs. Stout a mother at age 67 and Richard a father at 85. Speaking of the mother, Dr. Streets commented drily:
"No medical man, it is safe to say, ever knew of such a case."
Penelope vanPrincis Stout died in 1712, either at the age of 110, if you believe traditional accounts, or at the age of 90 if Dr. Streets is correct.
Before dying, Mrs. Stout saw her seven sons and three daughters multiplied into 492 other descendants.
One son, Jonathan, bought a large tract of land at Hopewell in 1706 and quickly the number of Stout descendants in and near Hopewell became almost as numerous as those in Monmouth. Today huge numbers of Stout descendants cherish a noble name; they recognize that without Penelope vanPrincis, a stout-hearted woman if ever there was one, they wouldn't be here at all.

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12 Sep 1648": Ambrose London plaintive agt:ye wife of Tho: Aplegate defent in an action of slander for saying his wife did milke her Cowe"

"The defent saith yt shee said noe otherwise but as Penellopey Prince tould her yt Ambrose his wife did milke her Cowe"

"Rodger Scotte being deposed saith yt being in ye house of Tho: Aplegate hee did heare Pennellopy Prince saye yt ye wife of Ambrose London did milke ye Cowe of Tho: Aplegate"

"Tho: Greedye being deposed saith yt Pennellope Prince being att his house hee did heare her saye yt shee and Aplegates Daughter must com as witnesses agat: Ambrose his wife milking Aplegates Coew"

"Pennellope Prince being questationed adknowled her faulte in soe speaking and being sorrie her words she spake gave sattisfaction on both sides."

Source: Gravesend Town Book, vol. 1, Sept 12, 1648.

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Excerpts from a STOUT-L posting by Linda Stout Deak:

I traveled today to Amsterdam and went to the Scheepsvaart (maritime or Ship Navigation, esp. Atlantic) Museum. It is a splendid old granite building on the water a fifteen minute walk from Amsterdam Central Station. I was looking for Penelope's name on a passenger list. I had to find the ship upon which she sailed.

107.1 Kath Hans Jelisz. (owner) Jacht (yacht or sailboat) WIC (West Indies Company) 1647 Nieuw Amsterdam voor 06-06-1647

Kreeg in Juni 1647 de opdracht tot kaapveren. November 1648 bij Sandy Hook gestrand. Did not return

This has to be Penelope's ship. I scanned the doctoral thesis (in Dutch) of a J.A. Jacobs from Leiden University on the ships sailing to the new world from Holland between 1609-1675. The average was 3.75 ships per year, about five ships per year in the period 1639-1648. It is very unlikely that a ship other than the Kath was beached at Sandy Hook.

Penelope married Jan Van Princin about 1642 in Holland.⁴⁶⁰ (Jan Van Princin was born about 1615 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands and died about 1643 in New York.)

Penelope also married Richard Stout, son of John Stout and Elizabeth Bee, about 1644 in Gravesend, Kings, New York ⁴⁶⁰.^,461 (Richard Stout was born about 1615 in Burton Joyce, Nottingham, England and died on 23 Oct 1705 in Middletown, Monmouth, New Jersey.)