Swedish Immigrants In Lincolns Time By NELS HOKANSON With a. Foreword by CARL SANDBURG NEW YORK AND LONDON Harper Brothers Publishers I - T- - Swedish Settlements in Illinois prior to 1860 with routes traveled bv Lincoln FOREWORD By CARL SANDBURG WHO was the first Big Swede to land in America The answer is one of many odd facts fished up from obscurity and presented in this book. His name was John Printz and he weighed four hundred pounds and served as the governor of the first Swedish colony in North America and the colonists didnt like him so very well and when the government over at Stockholm refused to send him the troops that he asked for he packed up and headed right home for Sweden. So he was not much of a Big Swede after all. Mention is thus made of Printz as one example of the many personalities that give this book what is termed reader interest. Besides personages of importance whose names stand as markers of movements or periods, the author puts a special lighting on one...