Penelope Stout

Her story

In 1643 Penelope and her husband took a ship from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam. Their ship foundering, she and her husband and several others made land at Sandy Hook. Her husband, John Kent, was not able to travel due to illness and she remained with him. After the couple was abandoned, they suffered an attack from the natives and her husband was killed. She survived the attack and sheltered in a hollow tree until she, due to hunger she said, felt compelled to make herself known to the Navesink tribe of Leni Lenapi. They bound up her wounds, and when she was well enough to travel she was, perhaps sold, to the Dutch at New Amsterdam. There she married Richard Stout. They had a large family (7 sons and 4 daughters) mostly born at Gravesend in the area of Coney Island, Brooklyn. They moved to Middletown Township, New Jersey around 1665. This was where the Leni Lenapi who had earlier helped her were living, and they were still living there when the Stouts arrived. In some versions of the story, the Native Chief who rescued Penelope many years earlier warned her of a raid being planned by the Indigenous people of the area, and she was able to thwart it.

In some versions Penelope had 502 direct descendants when she died at the age of 110.

The dates and surname for Penelope are quite variable in the several references. The Gravesend Town Records as written by Englishmen at the time of a slander trial in Sept 1648 name the defendant as Penelope Prince. However, this does not necessarily mean that she had not yet married Richard Stout, as married Dutch women in that time period traditionally used their maiden names. In honor of her being a pioneer in Middletown, Penelope Lane off of Kings Highway is named after her.