Two-day seminar examines colonial statesman John Morton, a.k.a. Marttinen - a hero of American independence

John Morton (1725-1777) was the descendent of Finnish immigrants

John Morton (1725-1777)

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If the studies made by genealogists hold true, the Marttinen family from Eastern Finland has played an important role in the United States Declaration of Independence.
     
The world might be rather different if Martti Marttinen, allegedly a native of Rautalampi in Eastern Finland, had not emigrated to Sweden in the 17th century, from where he and his family later continued to the Swedish colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River in 1654.
      After having settled in New Sweden, Finnish immigrants lived at peace with Indians.
      ”They had the same way of living: slash-and-burn cultivation and sauna”, notes Prof. Olavi Koivukangas, the retired director of the Institute of Migration.
     
Martti Marttinen’s great-grandson John Morton was a politician from the Province of Pennsylvania.
      As a delegate to the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, he cast the tie-breaking vote for independence as a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Continental Congress in 1776.
      John Morton then signed the Declaration of Independence at great personal risk. Signatories faced the gallows if the rebellion against the British crown had failed.
      ”It is a historic coincidence that Finns have been involved in such historical events”, says Koivukangas.
     
Having a personal interest in the life of John Morton, Olavi Koivukangas says that it is quite unequivocal that Morton’s roots are in Finland. However, it remains uncertain where precisely the family originated.
      ”According to the death certificate of Morton’s greatgrandfather, he was born in Finland. It is a handwritten document that I find reliable”, Koivukangas points out.
      When Marttinen moved to Sweden among tens of thousands of other Finns, he changed his name to Mårten Mårtensson.
      His son - John Morton’s grandfather - was Mårten Mårtensson Jr. He was born in Sweden but moved to the United States at the age of 8 in the 1650s. There the family’s name was changed to Morton.
     
John Morton was born in Ridley, Pennsylvania, in 1725, and as far as is known, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 51 in 1777.
      Morton worked as a justice of the peace and a sheriff before he was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1774.
     
Chosen as a Pennsylvania delegate to the First Continental Congress, Morton was selected again for the Second Congress, where he made his most dramatic act.
      On July 2 in 1776, when the Congress called for a vote on the Declaration of Independence, the Pennsylvania delegation struggled with conflicting instructions, and Morton's vote became the deciding one.
     
The John Morton Project, begun by former U.S. Ambassador to Finland Marilyn Ware, is a collaborative effort to revive the history of John Morton, a hero of American independence.
      Ware, not herself a career diplomat, was stationed in Helsinki from 2006 to 2008.
      The aim of the project is to produce a biography and a documentary film on the significance of John Morton to the independence of the United States.
      The first John Morton Conference was arranged in Philadelphia in November 2008, and now a second gathering is being held this week in the Finnish capital.
      The participants in the American-Finnish-Swedish project have studied Morton as a hobby alongside their actual jobs.
     
     
The John Morton Conference at the premises of the University of Helsinki will be held from June 14th to 15th. John Morton Seminar at the Runeberg Hall in the main building of the university Monday from 10 am to 7 pm and Tuesday from 9 am to 5 pm. Free admission. For further information, see the link below.


Links:
  John Morton (Wikipedia)
  Institute of Migration
  The Swedish Colonial Society: John Morton Project
  The John Morton Project

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