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 42
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We have long since transferred our affections and notices to its successor, the now celebrated "Hall of Independence," (i. e. our present State-house,) now about to revive its fame under very cheer- ing auspices,-but, this Town House was once the National Hall of legislation and legal learning. In its chambers sat our Colonial Assemblies ; there they strove nobly and often for the public weal ; opposing themselves against the royal prerogatives of the Governors ; and though often defeated in their enactments by royal vetos or the Board of Trade, returning to their efforts under new forms and titles of enactments, till they worried kingly or proprietary power into ac- quiescence or acknowledgment. Within those walls were early cherished those principles of civil liberty, which, when matured, manifested themselves in the full spirit of our national Indepen- dence. Here David Lloyd and Sir William Keith agitated the Assemblies as leaders of the opposition, combining and plotting with their colleagues, and forming cabals that were not for the good of the people nor for the proprietaries. Here Isaac Norris was almost per- petually President, being, for his popularity and excellence, as necessary an appendage of colonial enactments as was the celebrated Abram Newland to the paper currency of England. Here came the Governors in state to make their "speeches." On some occasions they prepared here great feasts to perpetuate and honour such rulers, making the tables, on which they sometimes placed their squibs and plans of discord, become the festive board of jocund glee and happy union. From the balcony in front, the newly arrived or installed Governors made their addresses to the cheering populace below. On the steps, depending formerly from the balcony on either side, tussled and worried the fretted Electors; ascending by one side to give in their votes at the door at the balcony, and thence descending south- ward on the opposite side. On the adjacent ground occurred "the bloody Election" of 1742-a time when the sailors, coopers, &c., combined to carry their candidates by exercise of oaken clubs, to the great terror and scandal of the good citizens-when some said Judge Allen set them on, and others that they were instigated by young Emlen ; but the point was gained-to drive " the Norris partisans" from "the stairs," where, as they alleged, they " for years kept the place," to the exclusion of other voters. I have in my posses- sion several caricatures, intended to traduce and stigmatize the leaders in those days. Two of them, of about the year 1765, give the Election groupes at the stairs and in the street ; and appended
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to the grotesque pictures, pro and con, are many verses :- One is called " the Election Medley and Squire Lilliput," and the other is " the Counter Medley and Answer to the Dunces." In these we see many of the ancestors of present respectable families portrayed in ludicrous and lampooned characters. Now the combatants all rest in peace, and if the scandal was revived, it would be much more likely to amuse than to offend the families interested. Then arrests, indictments and trials ensued for the inglorious "riot," which kept " the towne" in perpetual agitation ! A still greater but better disposed crowd surrounded that balcony, when Whitfield, the elo- quent pulpit orator, stirred and affected the hearers, raising his voice " to be readily heard by boatmen on the Delaware !"-" praising faith," and "attacking works," and good Bishop Tillotson; and incensing the papists among us greatly. The Friends, in many instances, thought him "not in sober mood"-and, among them- selves, imputed much of his influence on the minds of the unstable " to priestcraft, although in himself a very clever conversable man." From the same stand, stood and preached one Michael Welfare, " one of the Christian philosophers of Conestoga," having a linen hat, a full beard, and his pilgrim staff, declaring himself sent to an- nounce the vengeance of the Almighty against the guilty province ! and selling his " warning voice" for 4d.
Such were the various uses to which this Town House was ap- propriated, until the time of " the new State House, erected in 1735; after which, this before venerated hall was supplanted and degraded to inferior purposes ; but long, very long, it furnished the only chambers for the courts of the province. There began the first law- yers to tax their skill to make " the worst appear the better cause,"_ enrolling on its first page of fame the names of David Lloyd, Samuel Herset, Mr. Clark, Patrick Robinson, the renter of the first "hired prison," and Mr. Pickering, for aught we now know, the early counterfeiter. Then presided judges "quite scrupulous to take or administer oaths," and " some, for conscience sake," refusing Penn their services after their appointment. In aftertimes John Ross and Andrew Hamilton divided the honours of the bar-the latter, in 1735, having gone to New York to manage the cause of poor Zenger, the persecuted printer, (by the Governor and Council there,) gave such signal satisfaction to the city rulers and people, that the corporation conferred on him the freedom of the city, in an elegant golden snuff-box, with many classical allusions. De- scending in the scale to later times, and before the Revolution, we find such names, there schooled to their future and more enlarged practice, as Wilson, Sergeant, Lewis, Edward Biddle, George Ross, Reed, Chew, Galloway, &c. This last had much practice-became celebrated in the war for his union to Sir William Howe when in Philadelphia, suffered the confiscation of his estate, and, when in England, wrote publicly to disparage the inefficient measures of his friend the general, in subduing "the unnatural rebellion" of his
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countrymen. These men have long since left their renown and " gone to their reward," leaving only, as a connecting link with the bar of the present day, such men as the late Judge Peters and William Rawle, Esq., to give us passing recollections of what they may have seen most conspicuous and interesting in their manners or characters as public pleaders.
Finally, " the busy stir of man," and the rapid growth of the " busy mart," has long since made it a necessary remove of busi ness from the old court house. Surrounding commerce has "choked up the loaded street with foreign plenty." But, while we discard the venerable pile from its former ennobling services, let us strive to cherish a lively remembrance of its departed glory, and with it asso- ciate the best affections due to our pilgrim ancestors-though disused, not forgotten.
The following facts will serve still further to enlarge and illustrate the leading history of the building, to wit :
High street, since called Market street, was never intended for a market place by Penn. Both it and the court house, and all public buildings, as we are told by Oldmixon, were intended to have been placed at the Centre square. When the court house was actually placed at Second and High streets, it was complained of by some as an infraction of the city scheme, and as marring its beauty. Proud calls it and the market buildings " a shameful and inconve- nient obstruction."
In the year 1705 the Grand Inquest resolved to recommend a tax of 1d. per £. to be levied, to build a court house on pillars where the bell now stands. They also before present the market place as a receptacle for much rainwater. On another occasion they present a dirty place in Second street over against the " Great Meeting- house," and a low dirty place in High street over against the free pump, near Doctor Hodgson's house.
As early as the year 1684, (1st of 2d mo.,) William Penn and council determined there should be a Provincial Court, of five judges, to try all criminal cases, and titles to land, and to be a Court of Equity, to decide all differences upon appeals from the county courts. Soon after the first judges were appointed, to wit : Nicholas Moore, Chief Justice; William Welsh, William Wood, Robert Turner and John Eckley.
In the year 1717, the court house being then ten years built, the Grand Jury present the county and city court house as very scan- dalous for want of being finished ; and whereas the several sums heretofore raised, for bridges, &c., have not been enough, they recommend a further tax, for those objects and to complete the court house, of 1d. per L.
In the year 1736, Mr. Abel Noble preached, on Monday, from the court house steps, to a large congregation standing in Market street, on the subject of keeping the Sabbath. In the same year Michael Welfare appeared there to give his "warning voice." OL. I .- 2 U 30*
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The old Court House and Friends' Meeting.
What was done by the celebrated Whitfield in his way will be found under his proper name.
In the year 1740, the Gazette describes "the customary feast at the court house, at the expiration of the Mayoralty," at which were present-the Governor and council, the corporation, and many of the citizens.
In 1742, on the vacation of the office of "Public Vendue, for- merly held under the court house in Second street," John Clifton proposes to pay for it £110 and Reese Meredith proposes to give £100 per annum, to be allowed to enjoy the privilege .* This office seems to have been in the north-west corner. The general vacancy was a meal market; and in the south-east corner, in Timothy Mat- lack's time, they had a temporary prison under the steps ;; in the north-east corner, in T. Bradford's early days, was the stocks. Both of these were under the stairs on Second street, depending on either side from the balcony over the arch, making an angle at the corner, so as to land the people in High street.
On page 328 of my MS. Annals in the Historical Society is an original manuscript, showing the first cost of materials, &c., em- ployed in the construction of the court house, to wit: £616.
The aged Robert Venables, a black man who died in 1834, aged 98, told me he remembered all the courts there, and such Judges as John Kinsey, Growden, William Allen, Stedman, &c .- and also such lawyers there as Ross, Molden, Francis, and John Kinsey the Judge. These were deemed the first in character. Old Lawyer Hamilton figured before his time, but was called great and acute. He told a story of his cunning in saving a criminal who had stolen a hog and was seen in the act by the owner. He got the felon to bring him half of the animal quickly, and then he testified in court against the evidence of the seer, that he mistook the man " for he had no more of the hog than he had!" Such a story, more at large, rung his fame among the commonalty.
This primitive building was demolished in March and April 1837, with far less expressions of regret, than could have been wished. Some few wrote against the measure in the public journals, but they were only ridiculed by the unpoetic and sordid utilitarians. Ameri- cans-as a people, have few or no sympathies with the antique and venerable. They, however, like well enough whatever is imposing in grandeur, costliness and show. To show out in greater things, they are willing to demolish any thing associated with the memory of their forefathers. It seems to give much more general satisfaction to sit as worshippers in new and splendid churches, where their vanity and self-importance may be felt and indulged, than to assem- ble in any ancient Temple, where they may contemplate the re-
* The vendue room in the north-west corner, was rented by Council to Patrick Baird, In 1730, at £8 per annum.
t This place under the steps, in Second street, was originally constructed by an order of the City Council, of the year 1711, "for a shop, to be let out to the best advantage."
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inembrance of a long line of forefathers, as once the occupants of the same seats, and the active vocal worshippers, within the same walls. Exactly the same love of new and splendid, induces families to change all their furniture every few years, for newer fashions. This however is a passion of modern years only. Before the year 1800, none ever dreamed of any change, even in a whole life, not even among the rich. Even the plain, unchanging Friends, have been "pulling down to build greater;" and only Christ church remains in internal structure a relic of the olden time. Yet hardly so either; for it has lately changed its former brick paved aisles, for boarded and carpeted passages ;- its straight high-backed seats are also changed ;- and its old organ is supplanted by another, of modern fabric.
All these reflections have been induced, by the fact of the demo- lition just now of the old Court house in High street. It was vain in me to try to resist its fall-it had been too long degraded to infe- rior purposes, and therefore lost its former characteristics in the con- sideration of the mass of the people. Some lament its fall! but they are only some. I might mention a fact to show how little sympathy I might expect to excite by whining or fretting about a contrary spirit in others, to my own. One of my nearest and dearest friends, who has often expressed a sincere gratification at any occasional public approval of my olden time affection and researches, has been so unconscious of the loss of " the venerable Towne house and Guild hall" as to have actually passed the place of destruction and removal twice or thrice within two or three days, and never missed the absent Towne Hall! It makes me smile while I write, to think how very blank that friend looked, when I inquired how the area looked since the demolition! [I have preserved some of the wood of its steeple and joist.]
" The Great Meeting House" of Friends, at the south-west corner of Second and High streets, was originally constructed in 1695; and " great" as it was in the ideas of the primitive population, it was taken down in 1755, to build greater. That, in time, became so shut in, and disturbed by the street-noise of increased population, that it was deemed expedient to sell off the premises, in the year 1808, and construct the large Meeting on their Arch street ground.
This "Market street Meeting," as it was often called, had its original lot through the gift of George Fox, " for truth's and Friends' sake," he giving at the same time the lot at Fairhill for a like pur- pose. His idea was, that it might be located in the centre of the town, and have as much as two acres as a ground to put their horses in! The land itself was due to him under some promise of Wil- liam Penn, and it is known that Penn was reluctant to have it chosen where it was, saying he was not consulted on the occasion by his commissioners, &c. In the final sale of it, for the present dozen houses which stand upon the original site along High street and Second street, it produced a large sum of money to the Society.
The first meeting-house was surmounted on the centre of its four-
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High Street Prison and Market Shambles.
angled roof, by a raised frame of glass work, so constructed as to pass light down into the Meeting below, after the manner of the for- mer Burlington meeting-house.
The few facts concerning this house, in some instances, have fallen into other portions of this work. Only one anecdote remains to offer here: When the Friends were rebuilding in 1755-6, for the purpose of enlargement, one Davis, who had been expelled, seeing the work progressing, waggishly observed to the overseers :- " Only continue to weed the garden well, and you may yet find room enough !" At another time the poll parrot belonging to the adjoin- ing house in High street, came into the meeting, calling out " Han- nah Roberts, poll wants her breakfast!" She had been neglected, and sought her mistress there.
HIGH STREET PRISON AND MARKET SHAMBLES.
" The gloomy jail where misery moans, --- Spotted with all crimes."
IN primitive days, when culprits were few, and society simple and sincere, the first prisons were small and of but slender materials. There was at first a small cage for offenders-next a hired house with bars and fetters-then a brick prison on the site of the present Jersey market, fronting towards the old court house, at one hundred feet of distance. The facts are these, viz :
Year 1682-16th of 11 mo .- The Council ordered that William Clayton, one of the Provincial Council, should build a cage against the next council-day, of seven feet long by five feet broad.
1685-The High Sheriff declared in court, that the hired house of Patrick Robinson, [the clerk of the Provincial Council, &c.,] used by him as a prison, was refitting, and that, with the fetters and chains, &c., and his own attendance and deputies, he has a suffi- cient gaol ; and if any escapes occurred he would not blame the county, for want of a gaol, nor for the insufficiency of said house ; whereupon, at the request of said Robinson, the yearly rent began this day for said house.
It became a matter of curiosity in modern times to learn the primitive site of such a hired prison. No direct testimony could be found ; but several facts establish the idea that it occupied the ground on the western side of Second street, between High street and the Christ Church-for instance, Mr. C. Graff, the present owner of the house on the north-west corner of Second and High streets, (the premises first owned by Arthur Cook,) has a patent of the year 1684
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High Street Prison und Market Shambles.
which speaks of the prison on his northern line, to wit : "I, William Penn, proprietary, &c. Whereas, there is a certain lott of land in said city, containing in breadth fifty feet, and in length one hundred and two feet, bounded northward with the prison, eastward with the Second street, southward with the High street, westward with a vacant lott, &c."-Then grants the same to Arthur Cook, by patent dated " 6 mo. 14th, 1684 .- Signed William Penn."
The foregoing prison is confirmed by some modern facts :- Some years ago, when pulling down an old house which stood upon Second street, on the site on which S. North, druggist., built the house No. 14, north Second street, they discovered the party walls, as they supposed, of the old jail-it was of four inch poplar plank, dove- tailed at the corners. Old Isaac Parrish, who told this and witnessed the disclosure, was pleased to add, that as he was showing it to Judge M'Kean, the latter remarked :- Times are changed indeed-formerly wood was sufficient for confinement; but now, stone itself is no match for the rogues ! On searching the original patent for North's lot, it appears to have been granted by Penn on the 1st of December, 1688, and makes no reference to a prison. Mr. North has informed me that in digging along the northern line of his yard he has found, under ground, a very thick stone wall, such as might have been a prison wall.
As late as the year 1692, we have facts to evince that there was a prison held within a private dwelling-house,-for, at that time it appears in George Keith's Journal, that William Bradford, the first printer, and John Macomb, were then its inmates, for Keithien measures, and they refusing to give securities in their case, Keith says, their opponents pretended they were not so imprisoned, but that he, to make out an affecting story for them, went to the porch of the prison to sign and date a paper of complaint against the Quakers, just as if he had been its inmate! To repel this, he ad- duces the paper of their Samuel Jennings, to show that he there admits that they, Bradford and Macomb, " signed a paper from the prison, when they signed it in the entry common to the prison and the next house." Thus evincing, as I presume, that in the hired house of Patrick Robinson, the prison was held on one side of a common entry, and the family lived on the other side of it. George Keith proceeds to say, that the real facts were, that as Bradford and Macomb were delayed to be brought to trial, the jailer, after some time, granted them "the favour to go home,-and, as they were still prisoners, when they wished to petition for their trial at the next sessions, they then went to the prison to write and sign it there ; but it happened the jailer was gone abroad and had the key of the prison with him ; so, as they could not get in, they signed that paper in the entry or porch !" Such was the simple character and state of the first prison used in Philadelphia. Something more formidable is about to be told of the
Prison on High street, to wit :- It seems that something more
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imposing than the hired house was desired as early as the year 1685, and was afterwards, from time to time, laid aside, till its execution about the year 1695.
In 1685, the Court of Quarter Sessions receives a report on the subject of building a prison, to wit: Samuel Carpenter, H. Murray, and Nathaniel Allen, &c., report that they have treated with work men about the many qualities and charges of a prison, and have advised with Andrew Griscomb, carpenter, and William Hudson, bricklayer, about the form and dimensions, which is as followeth : The house twenty feet long and fourteen feet wide in the clear, two stories high,-the upper seven feet, and the under six and a half feet, of which four feet under ground, with all convenient lights and doors, and casements-strong and substantial, with good brick, lime, sand and stone, as also floors and roofs very substantial; a partition of brick in the middle through the house, so that there will be four rooms, four chimneys, and the cock-loft, which will serve for a prison ; and the gaoler may well live in any part of it, if need be-the whole to cost £140.
The late aged Miss Powell, a Friend, told me her aged mother used to describe to her that prison as standing once in the middle of High street, eastward of the court house on Second street.
On the 3d of February, 1685-6, the Grand Jury then present the want of a prison.
In 1702 the Grand Jury present the prison house and prison yard, as it now stands in the High street, as a common nuisance.
In 1703 the Court of Quarter Sessions appoints four persons to report the cost of a new prison and court house.
In 1705, July, the Common Council order that Alderman Carter, and John Parsons, do oversee the repairs of the old cage, to be con- verted into a watch-house, for present occasion. They had before ordered, in December, 1704, that a watch-house should be built in the market place, of sixteen feet long and fourteen feet wide.
In September, 1705, the same Alderman Carter is continued by the Council to see the repairs of the watch-house, and is also ap- pointed to take care of the building a pair of stocks, with a whipping post and pillory, with all expedition.
In 1706 a petition of forty-four poor debtors, (some of them im- prisoned,) all wrote in their proper hands, in good easy free style, is offered to Governor John Evans, stating their great objections to the fee bill for debts under 40 shillings, creating an expense, in case of sheriff's execution, of 17 shillings each, which was formerly, when in the magistrate's hand, but 3 shillings ; and " some of your poor petitioners (say they) have been kept in the common jail until they could find persons to sell themselves unto for a term of years to pay the same, and redeem their bodies !" See act of Assembly in the case. It might surprise many moderns, who see and hear of so many, now-a-days, who " break" with indifference, to learn that, sixty years ago, it was the custom to sell single men for debt ; and
3 ---
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High Street Prison and Market Shambles.
:t had then a very wholesome restraint on prodigals-few then got into jail, for then those who saw their debts burthensome would go betimes and seek a friendly purchaser, and so pay off their debts.
In 1707 the Grand Jury present the jail of this city, in that the upper and middle windows of the said jail are not sufficient. And they present the want of a pair of stocks, whipping post and pillory.
In 1712 the Grand Jury present "as a nuisance the prison and wall standing in the High street, and the insufficiency of the county jail not fit to secure prisoners." This latter clause might seem to intimate two characters of prisons at once. The words " common jail" in the following paragraph might intimate some one different from that of " county jail."
In 1716 the Grand Jury " present the common jail as insufficient, and concur and agree with the County Grand Jury that the same be removed from the place it now stands upon ; and we do all concur with the County Grand Jury in laying a tax of one penny per pound, to be assessed and levied on the inhabitants-April 4th, 1716." Two years after this the act for a big prison, on the corner of Third and High streets, was passed.
In the year 1717 sundry persons offered large subscriptions for erecting a new prison at the new site.
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