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 29
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Graydon, in his Memoirs, says, that in 1755, "in passing from Chestnut street up Fourth street, the intervals took up as much space as the buildings, and, with the exception of here and there a house, the Fifth street might then have been called the western extremity of the city."
Colonel A. J. Morris, whose recollections began earlier, (ninety years ago,) says he could remember when there were scarcely any houses westward of Fourth street. The first he ever saw in Fifth street, was a row of two story brick houses (lately standing,) on the east side, a little above High street. He was then about 10 years of age, and the impression was fixed upon his memory by its being the occasion of killing one of the men on the scaffolding.
The wharves along the city front on the Delaware have under- gone considerable changes since the peace of 1783, and still more since 1793. Several of them had additions in front, so as to extend them more into the channel; and at several places stores were built upon the wharves; but the greatest changes were the filling up of sundry docks, and joining wharves before separated, so that you could pretty generally go from wharf to wharf without the former frequent inconvenience of going back to Water street to be able to reach the next wharf. For instance, before the present Delaware avenue was made, you could walk from Race to Arch street along the wharves, where forty years ago you could not, short of three or four interruptions. We now wish another and final improve- ment,-a paved wharf street the whole length of the city, with a full line of trees on the whole length of the eastern side. This would invite, and perhaps secure, a water promenade, and be in itself, some
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Local Changes in Streets and Places.
reparation for destroying the once intended promenade of the eastern side of Front street.
Munday's Run was once a brook which crossed High street at Tenth street, as seen and remembered by old Butler. Arch street at the same time was only laid out to Eighth street, and all beyond was woods. Woods in that street, came down as far as Fifth street in his time, say in 1748. When he was 18 he used to drive his father's wagon down that street from his father's place at the Gulf.
Elliott, in his "Enoch Wray," gives an emphatic description of a city, when advancing from its state of out-commons to the form of streets and houses-saying :
" Now streets invade the country ; and he strays, Lost in strange paths, still seeking, and in vain, For ancient land marks, or the lonely lane, Where oft he played at Crusoe, when a boy."
" All that was lovely then is gloomy now. Then, no strange paths perplexed thee, no new streets, Where draymen bawl, while rogues kick up a row- And fish-wives grin, while fopling, fopling meets."
It may be worthy of remark, that in the earliest construction of build- ings in the city, there must have been some difference from the present, in the magnetic influence of the poles, or other causes of error in ranging the houses for instance Wigglesworth's old house in Second street above Chestnut, stood too much westwardly at its northern corner, and stood out too much on the pavement. So too Savial's house in Front street opposite to Combes' alley. The old house at the southwest corner of Walnut and Water streets did the same. In the streets ranging east and west, the oldest houses stood into the street too far north-for instance, the old Inn once on the corner where the Philadelphia Bank now stands, stood out so far on Chestnut street as to leave only two or three feet of pavement, and seven or eight of the houses on the opposite side of Chestnut street, stood as much back from the present range of houses. The bake house at the southwest corner of Walnut and Fifth streets, ' stood out too near the present gutterway in Walnut street. We have so often. seen other old houses in sundry other places in the city, having the same relations and bearings, as to produce the conviction that there was, for a while, some prevailing misconception or error.
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Innovations, Changes and Business
INNOVATIONS AND NEW MODES OF CONDUCTING BUSINESS, &c.
IT is very natural that the youth at any given time, should, with- out inquiry, infer that all the familiar customs and things which they behold were always so before their time, when, often, many of them may have been just introduced. This fact I often realize in my observation even now among the rising generation. This re- flection leads us to think that hereafter many customs may be intro- duced, after the practices of older cities, to which we are now strangers, but which, without some passing notice here, might not be known to be new after they had been familiarized among us a few years. I mention, therefore, customs which do not exist now, but which will doubtless come to our use from the example of Europe-such as shoeblacks soliciting to clean shoes and boots on the wearer, in the streets-dealers in old clothes bearing them on their shoulders and selling them in the public walks -men draw- ing light trucks with goods, in lieu of horses-men carrying a tele- scope by night to show through to street passengers-women wheel- ing wheelbarrows to vend oranges and such like articles-cobblers' stalls and book stalls, &c., placed on the sides of the footpaths- men and women ballad-singers stopping at corners to sing for pennies -porters carrying sedan chairs-women having meat and coffee stalls in the street for hungry passengers, &c.
From thoughts like these we are disposed to notice several of the changes already effected within a few years past, as so many inno- vations or alleged improvements on the days by-gone.
Candidates for Office .- Those who now occasionally set forth their claims to public favour, by detailed statements in their proper names, would have met with little or no countenance in the public suffrages in the olden time. Sheriffs have usually taken the prece- dence in these things, and it is known that the first person who ever had the boldness to publish himself as a candidate for sheriff, and to laud his own merits, occurred in the person of Mordecai Lloyd, in the year 1744, begging the good people for their votes by his publica- tions in English and German. At the same time Nicholas Scull, an opposing candidate, resorted to the same measure, and apologized for " the new mode," as imposed upon him by the practice of others.
Rum Distilleries .- Rum distilled from molasses was once an article largely manufactured and sold in Philadelphia. It bore as good a price as the Boston or New England rum, and both of them nearly as much as that imported from the West Indies. About the
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Innovations, Changes and Business.
year 1,762, there used to be frequent mention of Wharton's "great still-house," on the wharf near the Swedes' Church ; also, Sims' and Cadwallader's still-house below the Drawbridge; one in Front above Arch street ; two large ones in Cable lane ; one at Masters', above Point Pleasant, in Kensington ; one out High street, between Eighth and Ninth streets.
Pot and Pearl Ashes .- A manufactory of these was first esta blished in Philadelphia in the year 1772, in the stores on Goodman's wharf, (since Smith's) a little above Race street.
Millinery Stores .- It is still within the memory of the aged when and where the first store of this kind was introduced into the city. It was begun by the Misses Pearson, (one of whom married Capt. Sparks,) in a small frame house in South Second street, a little below Chestnut street, and long they enjoyed the sole business without a rival.
Hucksters .- A genus now so prevalent in our market-an irre- sponsible, unknown, but taxing race, odious as " the publicans" of old, were without their present motives or rewards in the former days.
Pawnbrokers are altogether of modern establishment among us, rising in obscurity and with little notice, till they have spread like a malaria over the morals of the community. Their alarming progress is a real blur upon our character, as it evidences so power- fully the fact of bad living among so many of our population. Only thirty years ago a pawnbroker would have starved among us! Since those in the city have been put under some legal surveillance and control, we are enabled to arrive at some estimate of the contributors taxed to their onerous support. In making some researches among the records of the city police it has been ascertained, as the result of one year's waste in these founts of wretchedness and misery, that there have been 180,000 pledges, and that the exhibit for one week in winter, has shown an array of articles to the following effect, to wit:
Articles of women's dress, 945
Do. of men's dress,
825
Clocks and watches,
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Gold watches, 45
Silver, table and tea spoons,
235
Ear and finger rings, chains and brooches, 224
Bibles,
9
Other articles not enumerated,
966
Total 3489 in one week !
There were, indeed, poor among us in former years, but then they were in general a virtuous poor, who had the compassion of their neighbours, and, for that reason, could have found temporary relief from articles such as above stated, without the resort to usurious imposts. In short, they did well enough without pawnbrokers, and the change to the present system is appalling !
Lottery Brokers .- These also are a new race, luxuriating on the imaginative schemings of some, and the aversion to honest labour in others They are a race who hold "the word of promise to the ear
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Innovations, Changes and Business.
and break it to the hope" of thousands! Their flaring and intrusive signs and advertisements, which meet the eye at every turn, are so many painful proofs of the lavish patronage they receive from the cre- dulity of their fortune-seeking votaries. I never see their glaring signs without a secret wish to add a scroll, both as a satire on them, and as a sentence conveying in much point the pith of all they promise, to wit:
" Batter'd and bankrupt fortunes mended here!"
Our forefathers, it is true, much resorted to lotteries for raising money wanted for public purposes before the Revolution, (as will be noticed in another place,) but then, as " the public good was the aim" the citi- zens cordially lent their aid to sell the tickets without fee or reward, and in effect gave the price of their tickets as so much willing gift to the object intended by the lottery.
Second-hand Clothes and Shoeblacks .- Shoe blacking and the sale of cast off clothes, as now opened in cellars by the blacks, is quite a modern affair. Old clothes were never sold formerly ; when it was rather a common practice to turn them, or to cut them down for chil- dren ; and all boots and shoes were blacked at home, by children, apprentices, or domestics, with spit-balls held in the hand, and much less shining than now. Even the houses now so common for sell- ing ready made garments for gentlemen's wear is quite a new thing, and was first began at the Shakespeare buildings by Burk, who made enough thereby to allure others to his imitation.
Oyster Cellars .- These, as we now see them, are the introduction of but a few years. When first introduced, they were of much infe- rior appearance to the present; were entirely managed by blacks, and did not at first include gentlemen among their visiters. Before that time, oysters were vended along the streets in wheelbarrows only; even carts were not used for their conveyance, and gentlemen who loved raw oysters were sufficiently in character to stop the barrow and swallow their half dozen without the appendage of crackers, &c.
Intelligence Offices .- These offices for finding places for servants, began within a very few years and upon a very small scale, were very little resorted to except by strangers, and were generally conducted at first by blacks. There was, indeed, an " Intelligence Office" adve- tised in the Pennsylvania Journal before the Revolution, but it com- bined other objects, gained no imitations, and died unnoticed. A better scheme than any of these has been recently got up by the citizens themselves, to help servants to places, and to guard and im- prove their morals, which promises to be a general benefit.
General remarks on various Items of Change .- I notice as among the remarkable changes of Philadelphia, within the period of my own observation, that there is an utter change of the manner and quantity of business done by tradesmen. When I was a boy, there was no such thing as conducting their business in the present whole- sale manner, and by efforts at monopoly. No masters were seen ex- empted from personal labour in any branch of business-living on the
24
Innovations, Changes and Business.
profits derived from many hired journeymen; and no places were sought out at much expense, and display of signs and decorated win dows, to allure custom. Then almost every apprentice, when of age, ran his equal chance for his share of business in his neighbourhood, by setting up for himself, and, with an apprentice or two,* getting into a cheap location, and by dint of application and good work, re commending himself to his neighbourhood. Thus every shoemaker or tailor was a man for himself ; thus was every tinman, blacksmith, hatter, wheelwright, weaver, barber, bookbinder, umbrella maker, coppersmith, and brassfounder, painter and glazier, cedar cooper, plasterer, cabinet and chairmaker, chaisemaker, &c. It was only trades indispensably requiring many hands, among whom we saw many journeymen ; such as shipwrights, brickmakers, masons, car- penters, tanners, printers, stonecutters, and such like. In those days, if they did not aspire to much, they were more sure of the end-a decent competency in old age, and a tranquil and certain livelihood while engaged in the acquisition of its reward.
Large stores, at that time, exclusively wholesale, were but rare, except among the shipping merchants, so called, and it is fully within my memory, that all the hardware stores, which were intended to be wholesale dealers, by having their regular sets of country customers, for whose supplies they made their regular importations, were obliged, by the practice of the trade and the expectations of the citizens, to be equally retailers in their ordinary business. They also, as subservient to usage, had to be regular importers of numerous stated articles in the dry goods line, and especially in most articles in the woollen line. At that time, ruinous overstocks of goods imported were utterly unknown, and supplies from auction sales, as now, were neither depended upon nor resorted to. The same advance " on the sterling" was the set price of every storekeeper's profit. As none got suddenly rich by monopo- lies, they went through whole lives, gradually but surely augmenting their estates, without the least fear or the misfortune of bankruptcy. When it did rarely occur, such was the surprise and the general sym- patny of the public, that citizens saluted each other with sad faces, and made their regrets and condolence a measure of common concern. An aged person has told me that when the inhabitant and proprietor of that large house, formerly the post office, at the corner of Chestnut street and Carpenter's court, suddenly failed in business, the whole house was closely shut up for one week, as an emblem of the deepest family mourning ; and all who passed the house instinctively stopped and mingled the expressions of their lively regret. Now how changed are matters in these particulars! Now men fail with hardy indiffer- ence, and some of them have even the effrontery to appear abroad in expensive display, elbowing aside their suffering creditors at public places of expensive resort. I occasionally meet with such, by whom I have been injured, who indulge in travelling equipages, with which
* Apprentices then were found in every thing ;- now they often give a premium or find their own clothes, &c.
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they delight to pass and dust me, and who, nevertheless, would feel their dignity much insulted at even a civil hint to spare me but a little of the disregarded debt. It might lower the arrogancy of some such, to know, there was once a time in our colony when such heedless and desperate dealers and livers were sold for a term of years to pay their just debts.
The overworked and painfully excited business men of the present day, have little conception of the tranquil and composed business habits of their forefathers in the same line of pursuits, in Philadelphia. The excited and anxious dealers of this day, might be glad to give up half of their present elaborate gains, to possess but half of the peace and contentment felt and enjoyed by their moderate and tranquil progenitors. In the former days, all prices were alike ; the percentage of gain was uniform-there was no motive to run about town to seek out undersellers. They aimed at no such thing. They would have deemed the spirit of monopoly a sin of discredit- able selfishness. The selfish spirit since introduced, has had its own reward; and the generation which now aims to engross, have become their own tormentors. They have increased their necessary cares and labours, without producing the proposed monopoly ; for where all are necessarily constrained to aim at rivalry, and to struggle for self-existence, the competition has to become general, and thus we go on afflicting ourselves without avail! Truly, in all these matters, our tranquil, contented, moderately prosperous forefathers, far surpassed the present race of business men in their just estimate of life and happiness. They understood and practised upon the word comfort in all they did ! At that they steadily aimed.
It strikes me as among the remarkable changes of modern times, that blacksmith shops, which used to be low, rough one story sheds, here and there in various parts of the city, and always fronting on the main streets, have been crowded out as nuisances, or rather as eyesores to genteel neighbourhoods. Then the workmen stood on ground floors in clogs or wooden-soled shoes, to avoid the damp of the ground. But now they are seen to have their operations in genteel three story houses, with warerooms in front, and with their furnaces and anvils, &c., in their yards or back premises.
" Lines of packets," as we now see them, for Liverpool and for Havre abroad, and for Charleston, New Orleans, Norfolk, &c., at home, are but lately originated among us. The London packet in primitive days made her voyage but twice a year. And before the Revolution all vessels going to England or Ireland used to be ad- vertised on the walls of the corner houses, saying when to sail and where they laid. Some few instances of this kind occurred even after the war of Independence. In those days vessels going to Great Britain, were usually called " going home."
Kalm, when here ninety years ago, made a remark which seemed to indicate that then New York, though so much smaller as a city. was the most commercial, saying, " It probably carries on a more
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Progress and State of Society.
extensive commerce than any town in the English colonies, and it is said they send more ships to London than they do from Phila- delphia."
From the period of 1790 to 1800 the London trade was all the channel we used for the introduction of spring and fall goods. The arrival of the London ships at Clifford's wharf used to set the whole trading community in a bustle to see them " haul into the wharf." Soon the whole range of Front street, from Arch to Walnut street, was lumbered with the packages from the Pigou, the Adriana, the Washington, &c.
Great and noisy were the breaking up of packages, and busy were the masters, clerks and porters to get in and display their newly arrived treasures. Soon after were seen the city retailers, generally, females in that time, hovering about like butterflies near a rivulet, mingling among the men, and viewing with admiration the rich displays of British chintses, muslins and calicoes of the latest London modes. The Liverpool trade was not at that time opened, and Liverpool itself had not grown into the overwhelming rival of Bristol and Hull-places with which we formerly had some trade for articles not drawn from the great London storehouse.
PROGRESS AND STATE OF SOCIETY.
WHEN foreigners speak scoutingly of us, because we have not this and that refinement of foreign luxury, they do not consider, as a cause, that we are still a "new world," and a still newer nation ; and that the wonder is not, why we are not so finished as they desire, but that we are already so wonderfully advanced and im- proved. Our own people, too, are not sufficiently aware of this as a cause, just because so very few of the middle aged among us are acquainted with the facts of things as they were, even so recently as the Revolution. We were then, in Pennsylvania, but one hundred years of age as colonists ; and it is only since the period of 1800, when, as self-ruled and independent, we " went ahead" in wealth, improvement, credit and renown. Till then, we had the plain sim- plicity and frugal habits of colonists, and were still struggling through the immense debt of costs and losses, incurred as the price of our independence. Before the year 1800 we were unacquainted with the use of carpets, sideboards, massive plate, gigs, barouches and coaches; and were sufficiently satisfied with sanded floors, white- washed parlours and halls, rush chairs, plain chaises, corner chininies, corner clocks and glass door buffets and cupboards. Since then.
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I rogress and State of Society.
our roads, bridges, farms, houses, hotels and villas, were all to be made from the rough, by the power of the woodman's axe, &c., and especially so in the state of New York, all westward of Albany and Schenectady. Our mechanism, machinery and manufactures were all to invent and fabricate. Our colleges and schools of learning, and churches, to raise and endow ; our literature, publications and press concerns, to originate and sustain ; authors, artists, poets and painters, to create and cherish. These, and hundreds of other achieve- ments, not here named in so brief a review of our progress from in- fancy to manhood,-all done in one hundred and sixty years, since Pennsylvania was " a waste howling wilderness," the home of the abo- rigines ; or in about sixty-six years, since we were set free as a little people, to begin a national establishment for ourselves! These are things which ought to be our perpetual praise, and ought to excite the admiration, and not the spleen, of the Halls, Hamiltons and Trol- lopes, and other visiting journalists, of the day. We have sufficient answers to all their sneers and self-complacency, if we duly respect ourselves, when we point them to the rapid growth of our cities, and inland improvements ; to our canals, railroads, steamboats and steam inventions ; our commerce, and naval enterprise and glory ; to our expensive improvements and embellishments, every where manifest where we journey ; and last, but least, if justly estimated, our rapid progress in the luxury of decoration, entertainment and display. For these last, as republicans pledged to simplicity of manners and economy of government, we have least cause to glory or exult ; and could we but duly appreciate our own best interests, we should scout the most of them, as being, at best, but corrupting and enervating imitations of kingly pride and exotic vain-glory-not becoming either our profession or our wants. Our proper character and just dignity, as a self-ruled people, should be to make our country a pattern and praiseworthy example, to the corrupt governments and oppressed people of the old world ; not the servile and debased imi- tator of courtly modes and forms, from which our fathers so earnestly and devotedly divorced themselves and their posterity. It might be pertinently remarked, that it is a fact, that all the foreigners who visited us as colonies, and they were chiefly British, gave us full commendation for every thing ; but, as soon as we set up for our- selves, and especially when we went fearfully ahead, then we excited their envy and jealousy, and gave full vigour to their carping at every thing! It is still, however, true, that while a class of Englishmen scout at our state of society, another portion of them are actually overrunning us with the number who desire to unite them- selves to our state and condition forever.
Our kind and quantity of reading, and polite literature, is wholly changed since the great increase of our printers and publishers. Since the year 1800 there has been an entire change, rapidly invading all the formerly received principles. New books, in every form, have since been flitting across the Atlantic-mere ephemera to Jive
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Progress and State of Society.
and perish in the month ! As good old Bishop Usher said, even in his day, " the press must be kept going, and if a good book could occasionally be eked out, it might be endured!" But how vastly has times changed since then! Who now can tell the number of forgotten books, which have had their popularity and run, within the last thirty years, in this country ! It requires but the time of a middle aged person among us, to remember when we possessed a stable and standard course of belles-lettres reading ; and when it was such, the quotations from them were much more frequent in writing and conversation. A man then could provide himself with a library at one purchase, and deemed it an affair finished for a life of good reading ; but now paper-covered books come out, and must be bought, to keep current with the times, faster than we can conve- niently find binders to re-cover and finish them! Novels, romances and fictions were scarcely known,-Fielding had furnished our needed supply. The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote and Gil Blas, were conned almost by heart. We read, for style in compo- sition, Addison's Spectator, Johnson's Rambler, and Blair's Lectures and Sermons; but since then, we have quite a new formation of sundry adverbs, made on the authority of sundry popular writers. " The invaluable works of our elder writers, (says Wordsworth,) even Shakspeare and Milton, are driver into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse." All the poetic works of Pope and Dryden had to be read numerous times; and the Essay on Man was frequently wholly committed to memory. Shakspeare was ten times as much read then as now. Grecian, Roman and English history were really and effectively studied-not at the schools, as now pretended, but at home, in reading families. Blackstone's Commentaries, and Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, were then fully read by unprofessional gentlemen, as a necessary part of English literature. Milton's, Young's, Thomson's, Wolcott's and Gold- smith's poetry, possessed the mind, and influenced the imagination, of every instructed person. Even the school books of that day were wholly different, and children's minds were beguiled to story reading by a course of class books, now unknown. Thomas Dobson gave the first impulse to book printing. He came soon after the peace of 1783. Before his time, five or six printers used to join to print a Testament, &c .! Aitkin got Congress to help him to print a small Bible, in two volumes !
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