Antony Sadowsky, son of Martin Sadowski, came to America to escape religious persecution in Poland during the Great Northern War in 1701, it is said that he was taken prisoner along with his brother at Riga but he escaped and made his way to Scotland and England. He was born of minor nobility and was well educated and a scholar in the classical tradition and an accomplished linguist. It is said he could speak seven languages and then learned several Native American languages as an early Indian trader in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. He is famous as one of the earliest pioneers and Indian traders who settled along the Schuylkill River in William Penn's new settlement Pensylvania in 1712. Served in the Provincial government as a messenger-interpreter during negotiations with Indian tribes in 1728. He reached New Amsterdam (New York) around 1703. He made his way westward to the community of Monmouth, now in Monmouth County, New Jersey, where he lived and prospered for a few years. Monmouth at that time was populated largely by Dutch settlers who moved there from Long Island. Here he met and married a young Dutch girl, Marya Bordt, anglicized, Mary Bird, between the years 1704-1706. Records show that he quickly fit himself into the ways and the society of colonial New Jersey. On May 21, 1709, he was a witness to the will of Benjamin Cook, a planter of Freehold, New Jersey. In 1710, he made the inventory for the estate of William Laing. He had also established an account with Captain John Bowne, an established merchant at Matawan, a village on the south side of Raritan Bay, across from Staten Island, New York. When William Penn was opening up new land for settlement in eastern Pennsylvania, Antony with his family journeyed to Philadelphia, where he bought 400 acres of land from Thomas Andrews on January 21, 1712 for thirty English pounds. Andrews was a Philadelphia barber-surgeon who, speculating in real estate, acquired the land in 1706 from Mathias Holstein, a native Philadelphian of Swedish descent who did not care to join the pioneers in the wilderness. The land had initially been acquired from a Swedish company, a parcel out of a ten thousand acre tract obtained by the Swedes from Penn's Pennsylvania Company, in exchange for the annual rent of one hundred bushels of wheat. The land Antoni purchased is located some fifty miles north and west of Philadelphia along the east bank of the Schuylkill River in what is now Amity township in Berks County, Pennsylvania, near the present town of Douglassville. The town was known at that time as Manatawany, and later, as Molatten or Morlatton. They were neighbors of Squire Boone, father of Daniel Boone and several other children and Mordichi Lincoln, the Grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln. Well pleased with his purchase of prime wilderness land, and he and Mary set about the business of developing the property that was to be their family home and they were active in the new community. The virgin land, partly timbered with oak, hickory, ash and maple, offered building material and the well watered meadow lands were ideal for field crops and grazing livestock. The two previous owners never touched the land. A trail from Philadelphia along the river's east bank ran through Antoni's farm leading to a group of Indian villages at the forks of the Susquehanna. The road came to be called The Kings Highway and was an avenue for trade that became a major enterprise for him throughout his life. By the year 1728 Antoni had established a trading post at Shamokin and was involved in peace negations with the Indians. By 1729 he founded another trading post much farther west on the Allegheny River, deep into the interior of Pennsylvania. At that time it was one of the most westerly outposts of civilization in the American Colonies, preceding the earliest permanent settlement west of the Allegheny by a quarter of a century. As trade expanded, Antoni made excursions beyond the Allegheny. He made expeditions into the Ohio country and became one of the foremost Indian traders of his time. He became one of the first whites to penetrate into Ohio and even reached what is the present Clark County, Kentucky; long before the French and Indian War. On September 15, 1734, Sadowski acted as interpreter at the meeting of John and Thomas Penn, the Provincial Council and Oneida Indians at Philadelphia. Antoni earned and enjoyed an influential relationship with the Indian tribes and with the Colonists in his official capacity as a negotiator, interpreter and peace maker between the two. He was a pioneer on a historic scale, as were his descendants, the Sadowskis and Sodowskys/Sanduskys who inscribed their names gloriously in the early annals of the Middle West and Kentucky exploring with Daniel Boone and his brothers, fighting Indian Wars that had flared up by then and being the first settlers at Fort Harrod in Kentucky then establishing their own settlement named Sandusky Station near Fort Harrod. A resolution was passed by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on August 2, 1966 to dedicate a highway marker in his memory on September 18, 1966, at St. Gabriel's Cemetery, Douglassville, fourteen miles southeast of Reading, Pennsylvania. According to records from the original St. Gabriel's Lutheran Church founded in 1720, Antoni died at age 67 on April 22, 1736, in the community that he and his family helped establish. Written records for St. Gabriel's begin in 1735, Antoni's death is the third entry under the heading, "Dead & Buried" and reads, "Anthony Zadosky, 67 year old, born in Poland". The signature on his will made in 1735 is spelled Antoni Sadowski, the spelling of his name used by him throughout his lifetime. The commonly accepted anglicized form of spelling today is Anthony Sandusky. Antony and Mary Bird were the parents of five or six children: Jonathan Jacob Sadowski, who is said by some sources to be Antoni's son from his first marriage, Justina Sodowski Waren, Andrew Sadowski, Soffia Sadowski Johnson Darling, Ann Sadowski Miller, and the sixth child, a daughter, name not known. It is believed that Jonathan Jacob, or Jacob Sadowski, moved to Virginia about 1730 where he married Hannah Inskeep, the daughter of a Virginia planter. Since he was not mentioned in his father's will, it is believed that Johnathan Jacob may have died before 1735. The eldest daughter, Justina, married James Waren and had two sons, James and John. Both Justina and her husband, James died in an epidemic of smallpox that swept through the community in 1931, and their children were taken to rear by Justina's parents, Mary and Antoni Sadowski. The young Waren brother's baptism is the earliest entry in the written records of St. Gabriel's Church, dated September 28, 1735. Under the heading, "Children & other Persons Baptized", it reads, "James Warin, born May ye 3d-1722 & John Warin, born 1731. Children to James and Justina Warin." The two sons of Justina Sadowski and James Warin remained in the community of Douglassville and left a long line of descendants. They are buried at St. Gabriel's Church, where their grandfather, Antony Sadowski is buried. Anna Sadowski married Increase Miller, born November 4, 1707, the son of Captain Johnathan and Sarah Holmes Miller. They were married in about 1732 in Bedford, Westchester County, New York, where they raised their family*. They were the parents of ten children: Mary, born c. 1733; Justina, born c. 1735; Sophia, born c. 1737; Sarah, born c. 1739; Enoch, born c. 1741; Keziah born March 13, 1744, married Jesse Miller; Anna born c. 1746; Cloe born c. 1749; Rachel born c. 1750; and Samuel born April 10, 1752. Sophia Sadowski married Isaac Johnson sometime between 1735, when her father's will was written, and 1748, when she was included in the will of her step-father, Thomas Palmer. She later married William Darling in Hampshire Co., Virginia between 1752, when her mother's will was written and 1758, when it was probated. We have no record of her children. Andrew Sadowski married Katherine, last name not known, sometime before 1748 when he was included in the will of his step-father, Thomas Palmer. Andrew, who probably followed his father's tradition as an Indian negotiator and trader, was killed near the Cumberland Gap by white men masquerading as Indians in about 1774. They were the parents of seven children, all of whom followed in the pioneer spirit of their forefathers.
Children of Antoni Sadowski and Mary Bird:
Jacob Sadowski (M) Hannah Inskeep (Inskip) c. 1700-1735
Justina Sadowski (M) James Waren (Warin) c. 1705-1731
Anna Sadowski (M) Increase Miller c. 1707-....
Sofia Sadowski (M) 1. Isaac Johnson c. 1708-....
2. William Darling
Andrew Sadowski (M) Katherine c. 1710-1774
Antoni's will is a lengthy document, the first paragraph of which contains a declaration of his religious conviction. He recognizes that time of death is near, and affirms his belief in God, firm in his expectation for life in the hereafter. It is also a remarkable legal document in his attempt to foresee possible family changes. His concern over an equitable distribution of his estate among remaining family members, and his concern over two male servants reveals he was a man of wisdom and compassion well ahead of his time.