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| The Cannonball House near Fort Mifflin |
The Rambo family was among those early Swedish pioneers who settled in the virgin forests and swamps along the Delaware River decades before William Penn arrived.
The Cock (or Koch) family were also early Swedish settlers.
The Rambo noted in history was the young horny John Rambo. This Rambo was charged in the colonial court in Chester, Pa., with criminal intercourse.
In 1684, Rambo was accused of climbing onto the roof of Peter Cock’s farmhouse at midnight and “by pulling off a plank of the house on the loft near (the bed) chamber, he jumped down to the floor.”
Rambo was now in the bedroom of his sweetheart, Bridget (also called Britta). He then got into bed with Bridget and her two sisters, ages 16 and 19.
“Saying he was resolved to be the husband of Bridget – even as his brother before him had taken another sister – and must there lie. Whereupon, there being a crowded place, the two sisters, with strange submission, withdrew and lay upon the floor all night in a cold December.”
The court ordered Rambo to marry Bridget “before she be delivered and then maintain the child”. Both had to pay a 10-pound fine.
Some accounts say the couple married while other accounts say Rambo was fined again for non-compliance.
Historians say Peter Cock’s farmhouse was later known as “the Cannonball House". It was close ro Fort Mifflin and during the battle at Fort Mifflin in 1777, a cannonball went through one wall and exited another wall.
The house had great longevity and was moved about half-a-mile in the 1970s to the grounds outside Fort Mifflin. It was considered the oldest structure in Philadelphia.
There it sat on wood supports in total disrepair - an old relic of revolution and romance. In 1995 the old Cannonball House was demolished by the city claiming it was beyond saving.