USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Annals of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania in the olden time; being a collection of the memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of the earliest settlements of the inland part of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 20
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If what was lately Doyle's Inn (Penn's Hall) had a south front, and
PENN'S COTTAGE IN LETITIA COURT .- Page 158.
SLATE-ROOF HOUSE, PENN'S RESIDENCE .- Page 163.
159
Penn's Cottage in Lætitia Court.
d " dead wall" towards High Street, it seems very difficult to con- ceive how its great gate could be vis a vis Friends' Great Meeting, on the southeast corner of High and Second Streets. But the Lætitia House, i. e. Old Rising Sun, would correspond; besides, Penn, in his instructions to his commissioners, says, "Pitch my house in the middle of the towne, and facing the harbour," &c.
Timothy Matlack also told me that he used to be told that on the southern side of that Rising Sun Inn was Penn's stable, and that they used to say he could lay in his bed or on his settee and hear his horses in the next building munching their food. Colonel An- thony Morris, when aged 84, told me expressly, he always understood the same house was Penn's residence ; that it was so talked of, when a boy, and that it is only of later years that he ever heard a hint of the house at the head of the court as being the residence. Thomas Bradford, when 80 years of age, who was born close by there, and has always dwelt there, has told me he always heard the Rising Sun Inn, western side, was " Lætitia's House," and that what was lately Doyle's Inn was never stated as Penn's till of modern times, and in its primitive state it presented a dead wall to High Street, and had its only front upon Black Horse Alley.
The aged Robert Venables, who died in 1834, aged 98, told me that he knew the Lætitia House, on the west side of the court. It was the same which has been since " the Old Rising Sun Inn." " It had a shell over the door," in his time-" was very curiously worked in stucco." The house at the head of the court was never named as Penn's House. That house had its front to Black Horse Alley-old Johnson lived there and was a painter.
This name, " Lætitia's House," I found was a name which even those who thought the house at the head of the court was Penn's, granted that Lætitia Penn dwelt in, even while the father may have occupied the other. In this they were certainly in some error ; Lætitia, being an unmarried girl, could never have had a separate house ; she was not with her father till his second visit, in 1700. It was in Penn's first visit only, in 1682, that he could have dwelt there.
I infer from all the facts, that Penn had " his cottage" built there before his landing, by Colonel Markham ;* that some of the finer work was imported for it with the first vessels; that he used it as often as not at his " palace" at Pennsbury. After him, it was used by Colonel Markham, his Deputy Governor; and afterwards for public offices. That in 1700, when he used the "Slate-House," corner of Second Street and Norris' Alley, having a mind to confer something upon his daughter, then with him, he gave her a deed, 1 mo. 29th, 1701, for all that half square laying on High Street, and including said house. Several years after this event, the people, as
* Gabriel Thomas, who said " he went out in the first ship," said he then saw "the first cellar digging for the use of our Governor."
160
Penn's Cottage in Lætitia Court.
was their custom, when the court began to be built up on each side of a "36 feet alley," having no name for it, they, in reference to the last conspicuous owner, called it Lætitia Court, in reference to the then most conspicuous house; the same house so given by Penn o his daughter. A letter, which I have, from William Penn, dated .687,* says, " Your improvements (in Philadelphia) now require some conveniency above what my cottage has afforded you in times past." He means this "for the offices of state." In 1684-5, his letter to James Harrison, which I have seen and copied, allows " his cousin, Markham, to live in his house in Philadelphia, and that Thomas Lloyd, the Deputy Governor, should have the use of his periwigs, and any wines and beer he may have there left, for the use of strangers."
It may possibly be deemed over fanciful in me to express a wish to have this primitive house purchased by our Penn Association, and consecrated to future renown. I hope, indeed, the idea will yet generate in the breasts of some of my fellow-members the real poetry of the subject. It is all intellectual ; and has had its warrant (if required) in numerous precedents abroad. We may now see written upon Melancthon's house in Wirtenburg, "Here lived and died Melancthon !" In the same city are still preserved "Luther's Room," his chair, table, and stove ; and at Eisleben is seen a small house, bought and preserved by the king of Prussia, inscribed, " This is the house in which Luther was born."+ Petrarch's house is not suffered to be altered. Such things, in every country, every intelligent traveller seeks out with avidity. Why, therefore, should we not retain for public exhibition the primitive house of Penn? Yea, whose foundation constituted " the first cellar dug in Philadel- phia !" To proper minds, the going into the alley and narrow court to find the hallowed spot (now so humble) should constitute its chiefest, interest. It would be the actual contrast between the be- ginning and the progress of our city.
Its exterior walls I would preserve with inviolate faithfulness ; and within those walls (wherein space is ample, if partitions were removed) might be an appropriate and highly characteristic place of meeting for the ordinary business of the Penn Association and the Historical Society, and also for the exhibition of such paintings and relics as could now be obtained,-such as Penn's clock, his escritoire, writing table, &c., besides several articles to be had of some families, of curiously constructed furniture of the primitive days. The hint is thus given-will any now support the idea ?
If we would contemplate this Lætitia House in its first relations,
* See the original in my MS. Annals in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
+ This house, so kept to the memory of Luther, has its rooms hung with pictures, ancient and grotesque, and the rooms contain chairs, tables and other relics of the former possessor. An Album is there, in which the visiter inscribes his name from Luther' inkstand. Vide Dwight's travels.
161
Penn's Cottage in Lætitia Court.
we should consider it as having an open area to the river the whole width of the half square, with here and there retained an orna- mental clump of forest trees and shrubbery on either side of an avenue leading out to the Front Street ; having a garden of fruit trees on the Second Street side, and on Second Street " the Governor's gate," so called, " opposite to the lot of the Friends Great Meeting." By this gate the carriages entered and rode along the avenue by the north side of the house to the east front of the premises. This avenue remained an alley way long after, even to within the early memory of Timothy Matlack, who told me that he had seen it open as a commom passage into Second Street. The same was con- firmed by Mr. Harris, a former owner, to Mr. Heberton, the present owner. Indeed, it is even now open and paved up to the rear of the house on Second Street.
This general rural appearance was all in accordance with Penn's known taste, and was doubtless so continued until the ground was apportioned out in thirty city lots, as expressed by James Logan in a letter to Lætitia Aubrey, in the year 1737, saying, " There was about 26 shillings per annum reserved upon the large city lot, divided into thirty smaller parts-seven on the Front Street, seven on Second Street, and eight on the High Street,-all of these at one shilling Pennsylvania money per annum, and those in Lætitia Court at six pence each" for the remaining eight lots there.
The following facts present scraps of information which may tend still further to illustrate the proper history of the premises, to wit :-
Penn's instructions to his commissioners, of 30th of 9 mo. 1681, says expressly, " Pitch upon the very middle of the platt of the towne, to be laid facing the harbour, for the situation of my house." Thus intimating, as I conceive, the choice of Lætitia Court, and in- timating his desire to have it facing the river, " as the line of houses of the town should be."
It is stated in the Minutes of the Executive Council of the 11th of 3d mo. 1685, that the proclamation of James II., and the papers relative to the death of Charles II., and the speech of his successor, were solemnly read before the Governor's gate in the town of Phila- delphia.
In 1721, the names of " Governor's lot" and of "Lætitia Court" are thus identified in the words of the Grand Jury, who present " the muddiness of the alley into Lætitia Court, formerly called the Governor's lot."
I have seen a letter of the 14th of 6 mo. 1702, from James Logan to Lætitia Penn, wherein he speaks of the sale of several of her lots, after the square had been divided. He says he had sold the first four of the Front Street lots for £450, which money he set out on interest, &c. Since then he had sold sixteen feet of the bank, clear of reversion, with a small High Street lot, to Thomas Masters for £230. The corner lot next the Meeting House he sold for £115, VOL. I .- V 14*
162
Penn's Cottage in Lætitia Court
and three High Street lots for 50 and £60 each ; and the remaining four in the same street he hopes to sell soon. The whole sale effected is called £895, and shall continue to sell as occasion shall offer. He mentions also that he has agreed for the value of about £100 of her 15,000 acres, new tract of land, near New Castle County-estimated, then, as to sell at £20 per hundred. Thy old mansion I do not touch with. I hope in seven years to be able to raise thee a good portion from what is already settled on thee in this province. Be not too easily disposed of ; it would be a scandal, that any of thy father's engagements should be an occasion to sacrifice thee to any but where true love officiates as priest. Thy marriage is commonly reported here, [as a measure to take place, to some one.]
We discern from the premises that lots on High Street, now so highly prized, brought only one-third the price of lots on Front Street, now so much lower. We perceive, too, distinct mention of his reservation of the one house, called her mansion.
Those who are curious to further explore this subject may find, in my MS. Annals, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, much additional matter on pages 140 to 149, giving a table of descents of title to lots on the square, as deduced from Lætitia Penn, together with the brief presented me by Samuel Chew, Esq., and the testi- mony of sundry aged witnesses appearing in court, in 1822, to testify their early recollections concerning the Lætitia Court and the Inn at the head of the court.
It appears from the whole, that William Penn, by patent or deed, conveyed to Lætitia Penn, on the 1st mo. 29th, 1701, the ground on the south side of High Street, 175 feet deep, [making the present distance to Black-Horse Alley] and from Front to Second Street, 402 feet ; granting unto her " all the houses, edifices, buildings, case- ments, liberties, profits, and commodities," thereunto belonging.
In early time it appears that Robert Ewer, a public Friend, be- came possessed of the lot, late Doyle's Inn, at the head of the court, and that he forthwith laid out the alley, since called the Black Horse Alley, so named from the sign of a tavern long held therein.
The plate given to illustrate the present subject shows the primi- tive house as it stood in earliest times, with an open front to the ver, and with a coach passage on its northern side extending to " the gate" on Second Street, " over against the Great Meeting."
163
Slate-Roof House, Penn's Residence.
SLATE ROOF HOUSE, PENN'S RESIDENCE.
"Now thou standest In faded majesty, as if to mourn The dissolution of an ancient race !"
THIS house, still standing at the southeast corner of Norris? Alley and Second Street, and now reduced to a lowly appearance, derives its chief interest from having been the residence of William Penn. The peculiarity of its original construction, and the charac- ter of several of its successive inmates, will enhance its interest to the modern reader. The facts concerning the premises, so far as may now be known, are generally these, to wit:
The house was originally built, in the early origin of the city, for Samuel Carpenter-certainly one of the earliest and greatest im- provers of the primitive city. It was probably designed for his own residence, although he had other houses on the same square, nearer to the river. His portrait is owned by Isaac C. Jones.
It was occupied as the city residence of William Penn and family, while in Philadelphia on his second visit in 1700; in which house was born, in one month after their arrival, John Penn, "the Ameri- can,"-the only one of the race ever born in the country. To that house therefore, humble, degenerated, and altered in aspect as it now is, we are to appropriate all our conceptions of Penn's employments, meditations, hopes, fears, &c., while acting as Governor and pro- prietary among us. In those doors he went in and out-up and down those stairs he passed-in those chambers he reposed-in those parlours he dined or regaled his friends-through those garden grounds they sauntered. His wife, his daughter Lætitia, his family and his servants, were there. In short, to those who can think and feel, the place " is filled with local impressions." Such a house should be rescued from its present forlorn neglect ;* it ought to be bought and consecrated to some lasting memorial of its former character, by re- storing its bastions and salient angles, &c. It would be to the credit of such Societies as the Historical and Penn Association, &c., to club their means to preserve it for their chambers, &c., as long as themselves and the city may endure ! There is a moral influence in these measures that implies and effects much more in its influence on national action and feeling, than can reach the apprehension of su- perficial thinkers; who can only estimate its value by their concep- tion of so much brick and mortar! It was feelings, such as I wish to see appreciated here, that aroused the ardour of Petrarch's towns
* The same remark is applicable to Penn's cottage in Lætitia Court.
164
Slate-Roof House, Penn's Residence.
men, jealous of every thing consecrated by his name, whereby they ran together en masse, to prevent the proprietor of his house from altering it! Foreigners, we know, have honoured England by their eagerness to go to Bread Street, and there visit the house and cham- bers, once Milton's! It is in vain to deride the passion as futile ; the charm is in the ideal presence, which the association has power to create in the imagination ; and they who can command the grateful visions will be sure to indulge them. It is poetry of feeling-scoffs cannot repress it. It equally possessed the mind of Tully when he visited Athens ; he could not forbear to visit the walks and houses which the old philosophers had frequented or inhabited. In this matter, says Dr. Johnson, "I am afraid to declare against the general voice of mankind." "The heart is stone that feels not at it; or, it feels at none !" Sheer insensibility, absorbed in its own selfish- ness, alone escapes the spell-like influence! Every nation, when sufficiently intellectual, has its golden and heroic ages ; and the due contemplation of these relics of our antiquities presents the proper occasion for forming ours. These thoughts, elicited by the occasion, form the proper apology for whatever else we may offer to public notice in this way. There is a generation to come who will be grateful for all such notices.
After William Penn had left this house, on his intended return with his family to England, he, while aboard his return ship, the Messenger, (an appropriate name for the message and business he was purposing !) writes on the 3d of September, 1701, to James Logan, saying, " Thou may continue in the house I lived in till the year is up."
James Logan, in reply, in 1702, says, " I am forced to keep this house still, there being no accommodation to be had elsewhere for public business." In fact, he retained it as a government-house till 1704, when he and his coadjutors moved to Clark's Hall in Chestnut Street, afterwards Pemberton's Great House.
James Logan, in a letter to William Penn of 5th December, 1703, says, Samuel Carpenter has sold the house thou lived in to William Trent (the founder of Trenton, in 1719,) for £850 .*
At this house Lord Cornbury, then Governor of New York and New Jersey, (son of Lord Clarendon, cousin of Queen Anne, &c.,) was banqueted in great style in 1702, on the occasion of his being invited by James Logan, from Burlington, where he had gone to proclaim the queen. Logan's letter, speaking of the event, says he was dined " equal, as he said, to any thing he had seen in America." At night he was invited to Edward Shippen's, (great house in south Second Street) where he was lodged, and dined with all his com- pany, making a retinue of nearly thirty persons. He went back well pleased with his reception, via Burlington, in the Governor's
* William Trent began his settlement at Trenton, in 1719, by erecting mills there He died there in 1724, in the office of Chief Justice of New Jersey.
165
Slate-Roof House, Penn's Residence.
parge, and was again banqueted at Pennsbury by James Logan, who had preceded him for that purpose. Lord Cornbury had a retinue of about fifty persons, which accompanied him thither in four boats. His wife was once with him in Philadelphia, in 1703. Penn, on one occasion, calls him a man of luxury and poverty. He was at first very popular ; and having made many fine promises to Penn, it was probably deemed good policy to cheer his vanity by striking public entertainments. In time, however, his extravagant living, and consequent extortion, divested him of all respect among the people. Only one legendary tale respecting this personage has reached us : An old woman at Chester had told the Parker family she remembered to have seen him at that place, and having heard he was a lord, and a queen's cousin, she had eyed him with great ex- actness, and had seen no difference in him, from other men, but that he wore leather stockings !*
In 1709, " the slated-roof house of William Trent" is thus com- mended by James Logan as a suitable residence for him as Governor, saying, " William Trent, designing for England, is about selling his house, (that he bought of Samuel Carpenter) which thou lived in, with the improvement of a beautiful garden,"-then extending half way to Front Street, and on Second Street nearly down to Walnut Street. "I wish it could be made thine, as nothing in this town is so well fitting a Governor. His price is £900 of our money, which it is hard thou canst not spare. I would give 20 to £30 out of my own pocket that it were thine-nobody's but thine."
The house was, however, sold to Isaac Norris, who devised it to his son Isaac, through whom it has descended down to the present proprietor, Sally Norris Dickinson, his grandaughter.
It was occupied at one period, it is said, by Governor Hamilton, and, for many years preceding the war of Independence, it was deemed a superior boarding-house. While it held its rank as such, it was honoured with the company, and, finally, with the funeral honours of General Forbes, successor to General Braddock, who died in that house in 1759. The pomp of his funeral from that house surpassed all the simple inhabitants had before seen in their city. His horse was led in the procession, richly caparisoned, - the whole conducted in all " the pomp of war," with funeral dirges, and a military array with arms reversed,t &c.
In 1764, it was rented to be occupied as a distinguished boarding- house by the Widow Graydon, mother of Captain Graydon of Carlisle, who has left us his amusing "Memoirs of 60 years life in Pennsylvania." There his mother, as he informs us, had a great many gentry as lodgers. He describes the old house as very much of a castle in its construction, although built originally for a Friend
* William Penn, in one of his notes, says, " Pray send me my leather stockings." + He had had great honours shown to him two years before for the capture of Fort du · Quesne, (Fort Pitt.)
166
River-front Bank.
" It was a singular old fashioned structure, laid out in the style of a fortification, with abundance of angles both salient and re-entering. Its two wings projected to the street in the manner of bastions, tc which the main building, retreating from 16 to 18 feet, served for a curtain."* " It had a spacious yard, half way to Front Street, and ornamented with a double row of venerable lofty pines, which afforded a very agreeable rus in urbe." She continued there till 1768-9, when she removed to Drinker's Big House, up Front Street near to Race Street. Graydon's anecdotes of distinguished persons, especially of British officers and gentry who were inmates, are in- teresting. John Adams, and other members of the first congress, had their lodgings in " the Slate-house."
The yard in front was two or three feet above the street, and was walled up higher than the grass plot within. Some of the lofty pines were still there in the Revolution. Mrs. Burdeau kept a ladies boarding-school in it, a daughter of General Wayne was one of the scholars.
The eccentric General Lee was buried from it, and put in Christ Church ground, close along side of Church Alley. "He wished not to lie within a mile of Presbyterian ground, as too bad company !"
RIVER-FRONT BANK.
THE history of the " bank lots" on the river-front is a topic in which all, who can feel an interest in the comfort, beauty, or fame of our city, must have a concern. It was the original design of Penn to have beautified our city, by a most graceful and agreeable promenade on the high bank of the river-front, the whole length of the city. Thus intending Front Street to have had an uninter- rupted view of the Delaware and river scenery, after the manner of the celebrated Bomb Quai at Rotterdam. How all those desirable purposes were frustrated, and how our admirable natural advantages for an elegant river display, have been superseded by a cramped and inconvenient street and houses, shall be communicated to the reader in the following facts, to wit :
We find, from the Citizens' Memorial of the 3d of 6 mo. 1684, the first open attempt to make some breach in the original plan, but the direct manner in which they were repelled by William Penn, is evidence how much he then had it at heart to preserve "the top
* We may say of this house :- "Trade has changed the scene;" for the recess is since filled out to the front with store windows, and the idea of the bastions, though they are still there, is lost.
167
River-front Bank.
bank as a common Exchange or walk." The memorialists claimed " the privilege to build vaults or stores in the bank against their re. spective lots," on the western side of Front Street. His answer is not known at full length; but his endorsement on the petition speaks thus, viz: "The bank is a top common from end to end. The rest next the water belongs to front lot men (i. e. owners on Front Street) no more than back lot men. The way bounds them. They may build stairs, and the top of the bank be a common Exchange or walk ; and against the streets, (opening to the river) common wharves may be built freely, but into the water and the shore, is no purchaser's"
The assembly too, addressed Penn on the 20th September, 1701, " concerning property," and his answer is, " I am willing to grant the ends of streets according to your request;" therein showing that the general bank was deemed out of the question.
A paper of the 26th April, 1690, from Penn's commissioners of property, combined with a confession from William Penn to James Logan, which we shall presently show, presents us the evidence of the time and the motive for the fatal concession of the bank lots to those who would become purchasers. The persons entitled to the discredit of thus marring our intended beautiful city, were Samuel Carpenter, William Markham, Robert Turner, and John Goodson. They state, that " Whereas, they have been petitioned by holders of bank lots to grant them the further privilege to build on the same, as much higher as they please, on the former terms, they therefore de- clare their concurrence with the same, because the more their im- provements are [in elevation or value] the greater will be the pro- prietor's benefit at the expiration of said fifty-one years in the said patents mentioned."
It appears from this paper, that before the year 1690, the grants were only occasional to some few special circumstances or friends, and particularly to Samuel Carpenter, whose public buildings on the wharf near Walnut Street were considerable. For these indul- gences they also allured, by a covenant, of giving back to the pro- prietary at the end of fifty-one years, one-third of their improve- ments. To a needy patron, such as Penn was, the right of selling out the purposed improvements, presented, as they may have thought, an appeal to his actual wants, which might eventually reconcile him to their extra-official concessions.
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