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 47
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In the year 1741, John Shewbart makes an advertisement in the Gazette, saying, he is about to remove "from the London Coffee House, near Carpenter's wharf," to the house in Hanover square, about half a mile from the Delaware, between Arch and Race streets, " which is a short walk and agreeable exercise."
* I since perceive that Edward Bridges, in 1739, advertises his dry goods store "at the corner of Front and Walnut streets, commonly called the Scales."
+ The Philadelphia Mercury, of 1720, speaks of the then Coffee House in the Front street.
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STATE-HOUSE AND YARD.
THIS distinguished building was begun in the year 1729, and finished in the year 1734. The amplitude of such an edifice in so early a day, and the expensive interior decorations, are creditable evidences of the liberality and public spirit of the times.
I have in my possession the original bills and papers, as kept by Andrew Hamilton, Esq., one of the three commissioners charged with the erection of the same. It seems to have cost £5600, and the two wings seem to have been made as late as 1739-40; Edmund Woolley did the carpenter work, John Harrison the joiner work, Thos. Boude was brick mason, Wm. Holland did the marble work, Thos. Kerr, plasterer, Benjamin Fairman and James Stoopes made the bricks ; the lime was from the kilns of the Tysons. The "glass and lead" cost £170, and the glazing in leaden frames was done by Thomas Godfrey, the celebrated. The interior brick pavement was made of clay tiles, by Benjamin Fairman.
I may here usefully add, for the sake of comparison, the costs of sundry items, to wit . Carpenter's work at 4s. per day, boys at 1s., master carpenter, E. Woolley, 4s. 6d. ; bricklaying by Thos. Boude, John Palmer and Thos. Redman, at 10s. 6d. per M. ; stone work in the foundation at 4s. per perch ; digging ground and carting away 9d. per yard; bricks 31s. 8d. per M .; lime, per 100 bushels, £4; boards 20s. per M .; lath wood 18s. per cord ; laths 3s. per C .; shingles 20s. per M. ; scantlings 1}d. per foot ; stone 3s. per perch, and 5s. 5d. per load. Laborers receive 2s. 6d. per day ; 2100 loads of earth are hauled away at 9d. per load.
Before the location of the State-House, the ground towards Chestnut street was more elevated than now. The grandmother of S. R. Wood remembered it when it was coverd with whortleberry bushes. On the line of Walnut street the ground was lower, and was built upon with a few small houses, which were afterwards purchased and torn down, to enlarge and beautify the State-House square.
The late aged Thomas Bradford, Esq. who has described it as it was in his youth, says the yard at that time was but about half its present depth from Chestnut street-was very irregular on its surface, and no attention paid to its appearance. On the Sixth street side, about fifteen to twenty feet from the then brick wall, the ground was sloping one to two feet below the general surface-over that space rested against the wall a long shed, which afforded and was used as the common shelter for the parties of Indians occasionally visiting
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the city on business .* Among such a party he saw the celebrated old King Hendrick, about the year 1756, not long before he joined Sir William Johnson at Lake George, and was killed.
In the year 1760 the other half-square, fronting on Walnut street, was purchased. After pulling down the houses there, among which were old Mr. Townsend's at north-east corner of Walnut and Sixth street-a brick house with a large walnut tree before it, which he la- mented over as a patrimonial gift forced out of his possession by a jury valuation, the whole space was walled in with a high brick wall, and at the centre of the Walnut street wall was a ponderous high gate and massive brick structure over the top of it, placed there by Joseph Fox. It was ornamental but heavy ; vis-a-vis to this gate, the south side of Walnut street, was a considerable space of vacant ground.
About the year 1783-4 the father of the late John Vaughan, Esq , coming to Philadelphia from England to reside among us, set his heart upon improving and adorning the yard, as an embellishment to the city. He succeeded to accomplish this in a very tasteful and agreeable manner. The trees and shrubbery which he had planted were very numerous and in great variety. When thus improved, it became a place of general resort as a delightful promenade. Windsor settees and garden chairs were placed in appropriate places, and all, for a while, operated as a charm. It was something in itself alto- gether unprecedented, in a public way, in the former simpler habits of our citizens ; but after some time it became, in the course of the day, to use the language of my informant, Mr. Bradford, the haunt of many idle people and tavern resorters; and, in the evening, a place of rendezvous to profligate persons; so that in spite of public interest to the contrary, it ran into disesteem among the better part of society. Efforts were made to restore its lost credit ; the seats were removed, and loungers spoken of as trespassers, &c .- but the remedy came too late ; good company had deserted it, and the tide of fashion did not again set in its favour.
In later years the fine elms, planted by Mr. Vaughan, annually lost their leaves by numerous caterpillars, (an accidental foreign im- portation,) which so much annoyed the visiters, as well as the trees, that they were reluctantly cut down after attaining to a large size. After this, the dull, heavy brick wall was removed to give place to the present airy and more graceful iron palisade. Numerous new trees were planted to supply the place of the former ones removed,t and now the place being revived, is returning again to public favour ; but our citizens have never had the taste for promenading public walks, so prevalent in Londoners and Parisians-a subject to be regretted, since the opportunity of indulgence is so expensively provided in this and the neighbouring Washington square.
* This shed afterwards became an artillery range, having its front gate of entrance upon Chestnut street
+ Doctor James Mease has been active in getting trees planted before the State house, and also at our public squares.
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We come now to speak of the venerable pile, the State-house, a place consecrated by numerous facts in our colonial and revolu- tionary history. Its contemplation fills the mind with numerous as- sociations and local impressions-within its walls were once witnessed all the memorable doings of our spirited forefathers-above all, it was made renowned in 1776, as possessing beneath its dome " the Hall of Independence," in which the representatives of a nation resolved to be "free and independent."
The general history of such an edifice, destined to run its fame co-extensive with our history, may afford some interest to the reader.
The style of the architecture of the house and steeple was directed by Doctor John Kearsley, Sen .- the same amateur who gave the architectural character to Christ church. The carpenter employed was Mr. Edward Woolley. The fact concerning its bell, first set up in the steeple, (if we regard its after-history, ) has something peculiar. It was of itself not a little singular that the bell, when first set up, should, in its colonial character, have been inscribed as its motto- "Proclaim liberty throughout the land, and to all the people thereof !" But it is still stranger, and deserves to be often remembered, that it was the first in Philadelphia, and from the situation of the Congress then legislating beneath its peals, it was also the first in the United States to proclaim, by ringing, the news of "the Declaration of Independence! The coincidents are certainly peculiar, and could be amplified by a poetic imagination into many singular relations!
This bell was imported from England, in 1752, for the State house, but having met with some accident in the trial-ringing, after it was landed, it lost its tones received in the fatherland, and had to be con- formed to ours, by a recasting! This was done under the direction of Isaac Norris, Esq., the then speaker of the Colonial Assembly, and to him we are probably indebted for the remarkable motto so indica- tive of its future use! That it was adopted from Scripture (Lev. 25, 10,) may to many be still more impressive, as being also the voice of God-of that great Arbiter, by whose signal providences we after- wards attained to that " liberty" and self-government which bids fair to emancipate our whole continent, and in time to influence and meliorate the condition of the subjects of arbitrary government throughout the civilized world !
"The motto of our father band Circled the world in its embrace : 'Twas " Liberty throughout the land, And good to all their brother race !" Long here-within the pilgrim's bell Had linger'd-tho' it often pealed- Those treasured tones, that eke should tell When freedom's proudest scroll was sealed 1 Here the dawn of reason broke, On the trampled rights of man; And a moral era woke, Brightest since the world began!
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And still shall deep and loud acclaim Here tremble on its sacred chime ; While e'er the thrilling trump of fame Shall linger on the pulse of time!
It was stated in the letters of Isaac Norris, that the bell got cracked by a stroke of the clapper when hung up to try the sound. Pass and Stow undertook to recast it; and on this circumstance Mr. Norris remarks: " They have made a good bell, which pleases me much that we should first venture upon and succeed in the greatest bell, for aught I know, in English America-surpassing too (he says) the imported one, which was too high and brittle-[sufficiently emble- matic !]-the weight was 2080 lbs."
At the time the British were expected to occupy Philadelphia, in 1777, the bell, with others, was taken from the city to preserve them from the enemy. At a former period, say in 1774, the base of the wood work of the steeple was found in a state of decay, and it was deemed advisable to take it down, leaving only a small belfry to cover the bell for the use of the town clock. It so continued until lately, when public feeling being much in favour of restoring the venerated building to its former character, (as seen when it be- came the Hall of Independence) a new steeple was again erected as much like the former as circumstances would admit. 'The chamber in which the representatives signed the memorable declaration, on the eastern side, first floor, we are sorry to add, is not in the primi- tive old style of wainscotted and pannelled grandeur in which it once stood in appropriate conformity with the remains still found in the great entry and stairway. To remove and destroy these, made a job for some of the former sapient commissioners, but much to the chagrin of men of taste and feeling, who felt, when La Fayette pos- sessed that chamber (eighteen years ago) as his appropriate hall of audience, that it was robbed of half its associations! For that eventful occasion, and duly to honour " the nation's guest," (who cordially invited all our citizens to visit him) all the former interior furniture of benches and forms occupying the floor were removed, and the whole area was richly carpeted and furnished with nume- rous mahogany chairs, &c.
To revert back to the period of the revolution, when that hall was consecrated to perpetual fame, by the decisive act of the most talent- ed and patriotic convention of men that ever represented our country, brings us to the contemplation of those hazards and extremities which " tried men's souls." Their energies and civic virtues were tested in the deed. Look at the sign-manual in their signatures ; not a hand faltered-no tremor affected any but Stephen Hopkins, who had a natural infirmity .* We could wish to sketch with pic-
* Their plain and fairly legible hands might shame the modern affectation of many who make signatures not to be read. When John Hancock signed his name, he did it in a large strong hand, and rising from his seat, said, "There ! John Bull can read my name without spectacles, and may now double his reward of £500 for my head. That is my defiance.'
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turesque effect the honoured group who thus sealed the destinies of a nation. The genius of Trumbull has done this so far as canvass could accomplish it. Another group, formed solely of citizens, was soon afterwards assembled by public call, to hear the declaration read in the State-house yard.
It is a fact, that the Declaration of Independence was not actually signed on the 4th July, nor was there that intrepid and concurrent enthusiasm in all the members of Congress which has been generally imputed. The facts, as I have seen them stated by Judge M'Kean, were in substance these, viz. : On the 1st July the question of Inde- pendence was taken in committee of the whole, when the whole seven representatives of Pennsylvania voted against it, and Dela- ware, which had but two members present, divided. These were the only states which so demurred ! It was at this crisis that Judge M'Kean sent an express for Cæsar Rodney, the other member for Delaware ; and soon after his arrival, the important question was put, when Mr. Rodney arose, and in a few words said he spoke the voice of his constituents and his own, in casting his vote for Independence. On the 4th of July, five representatives from Pennsylvania (Dickin- son and Morris, who before voted against it, being absent,) gave their votes three to two, Messrs. Humphries and Willing voting in the ne- gative.
No person actually signed on the 4th July. Mr. Read, whose name appears among the list of subscribers, was then actually against it; and Morris, Rush, Clymer, Smith, Taylor and Ross, whose names also appear, were not members on that day, for, in truth, they were not appointed delegates by the State Convention till the 20th July. The Declaration was only ordered to be engrossed on parch- ment on the 4th July, and it was not until many days after that all the names were affixed ; for instance, Thornton of New Hampshire, who entered Congress in November, then placed his name,-and Judge M'Kean, though he was once present and voted for Indepen- dence, did not sign till after his return from Washington's camp, where he had gone at the head of his regiment of City Associators, of temporary soldiers, gone out to support the general until the for- mation of the flying camp of 10,000 men.
It has been said that it was a secret resolution of the house, that no member of the first year should hold his seat, unless he became a subscriber ; this, as a measure to prevent the presence of spies and informers.
When the regular sessions of the Assembly were held in the State- house, the Senate occupied up stairs, and the Lower House in the same chamber since called the Hall of Independence. In the former, Anthony Morris is remembered as Speaker, occupying an elevated chair facing north-himself a man of amiable mien, contemplative aspect, dressed in a suit of drab cloth, flaxen hair slightly powdered, and his eyes fronted with spectacles. The representative chamber had George Latimer for Speaker, seated with face to the west-a
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well-formed, manly person, "his fair large front and eye sublime de- clared absolute rule."
The most conspicuous persons which struck the eye of a lad was Mr. Coolbaugh, a member from Berks, called the Dutch giant, from his great amplitude of stature and person ; and Doctor Michael Leib, the active democratic member, a gentleman of much personal beauty, always fashionably dressed, and seen often moving to and fro in the House, to hold his converse with other members.
But these halls of legislation and court uses were not always re- stricted to grave debate and civil rule. It sometimes (in colonial days) served the occasion of generous banqueting, and the consequent hilarity and jocund glee. In the long gallery up stairs, where Peale afterwards had his Museum, the long tables had been sometimes made to groan with their long array of bountiful repast. I shall mention some such occasions, to wit :
In September, 1736, soon after the edifice was completed, his honour, William Allen, Esq., the Mayor, made a feast at his own ex pense, at the State-house, to which all strangers of note were invited The Gazette of the day says, "all agree that for excellency of fare, and number of guests, it was the most elegant entertainment ever given in these parts."
In August, 1756, the Assembly then in session, on the occasion of the arrival of the new Governor, Denny, gave him a great dinner at the State-house, at which were present "the civil and military officers and clergy of the city."
In March, 1757, on the occasion of the visit of Lord Loudon as Commander-in-chief of the King's troops in the colonies, the city corporation prepared a splendid banquet at the State-house, for him- self and General Forbes, then commander at Philadelphia, and southward, together with the officers of the royal Americans, the Governor, gentlemen strangers, civil officers, and clergy.
Finally, in 1774, when the first Congress met in Philadelphia, the gentlemen of the city, having prepared them a sumptuous entertain- ment at the State-house, met at the city tavern, and thence went in procession to the dining hall, where about five hundred persons were feasted, and the toasts were accompanied by music and great guns.
For many years the public papers of the colony, and afterwards of the city and state, were kept in the east and west wings of the State-house, without any fire-proof security as they now possess. From their manifest insecurity, it was deemed expedient about nine- teen years ago to pull down those former two-story brick wings, and to supply their place by those which are now there. In former times such important papers as rest with the Prothonotaries were kept in their offices at their family residences. Thus Charles Biddle long had his in his house, one door west of the present Farmers and Mechanics' Bank, in Chestnut street ; and Edward Burd had his in his office, up a yard in Fourth street below Walnut street.
In pulling down the western wing, Mr. Grove, the master mason, VOL. I .- 3 A 34*
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told me of several curious discoveries made under the foundation, in digging for the present cellars. Close by the western wall of the State-house, at the depth of four or five feet, he came to a keg of excellent flints ; the wood was utterly decayed, but the i npression of the keg was distinct in the loam ground. Near to it he found, at the same depth, the entire equipments of a sergeant-a sword, musket, cartouch-box, buckles, &c .- the wood being decayed left the im- pressions of what they had been. They also dug up, close by the same, as many as one dozen bomb-shells filled with powder. And two of these, as a freak of the mason's lads, are now actually walled into the new cellar wall on the south side. But for this explanation a day may yet come when such a discovery might give circulation to another Guy Faux and gunpowder-plot story !
An elderly gentleman requests me to add as supplemental to the State-house and its yard, that the wall along Fifth street was much older than that along Sixth street, and that the ground at Sixth and Walnut, where once stood James Townsend's brick house, was much the lowest part.
He says, that in the first construction of the State-house, there was no place assigned for the stairs, and to remedy the mistake, the great stairs in the rear are made so disproportionate. The Convention which met to form the Constitution of the United States, met up stairs, and at the same time the street pavement along Chestnutstreet was covered with earth to silence the rattling of wheels.
The Declaration of Independence was read publicly on the 8th of July, from the platform of " the observatory" before erected there, by Rittenhouse, to observe the transit of Venus. Captain Hopkins, who read it, belonged to the Navy. It was about twenty feet high, and twelve to fifteen feet square, at fifty to sixty feet south of the house, and fifteen to twenty feet west of the main walk. It seems to have been used occasionally as a stand for public addresses, it being referred to as such by Stansberry, in his militia poem.
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State-House Inn.
STATE-HOUSE INN.
THE crowds of gay passengers who now promenade the line of Chestnut street, especially the younger part, who behold the costly edifices which crowd the whole range of their long walk, have little or no conception of the former blank and vacant features of the street, devoid of those mansions in which they now feel their pride and admiration. It is only forty years ago since the north side of Chestnut street, facing the State-house, now so compact and stately in its houses, had but two good houses in the whole line of the street from Fifth to Sixth street ; but one of these now remain-the present residence of P. S. Duponceau, Esq., at the north-east corner of Sixth street. The whole scene was an out-town spectacle, without pavement, and of uninviting aspect. In the midst of this area stood the State-house Inn, a small two-story tavern, of rough-dashed con- struction, very old, being marked with the year 1693 as its birth- year. It stood back a little from the line of the street, but in lieu of a green court-yard to gratify the eye, the space was filled with bleached oyster shells-the remains of numerous years of shells left about the premises at occasions of elections, &c. It looked like a sea-beach tavern. That single and diminutive inn for a long time gave all the entertainment then taken by the court-suitors, or by those who hung about the colonial Assemblies and the primitive Congress. But desolate as it looked in front and rear, having a waste lot of commons instead of garden shrubbery, and the neigh- bouring lots equally open and cheerless, there was a redeeming ap- pendage in a range of lofty and primitive walnut trees, which served as distant pointers to guide the stranger to the venerable State-house --- itself beyond the verge of common population.
Of those trees we have something special and interesting to say : They were the last remains within the city precincts of that primi- tive forest which had been the cotemporary of Penn the founder. There they had stood at the infant cradling of our nation, and had survived to see our manhood and independence asserted in that memorable "Hall of Independence" before which they stood.
When Richard Penn first came to this country, and was shown by Samuel Coates these primitive remains of his grandfather's eventful day, the crowd of associations which pressed upon his mind made him raise his hands in exclamation, and his eyes burst forth in tears.
It would have been grateful to have retained those trees, but they came to the axe before their time, to make way for city improve. ments. The last of them was taken down in 1818, from before the
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office of Mr. Ridgway, No. 183, from a fear that its height and heaviness, in case of being blown over, might endanger the houses near it. In falling across the street diagonally, it reached with its branches the eastern end of the State-house-as if to take its last leave of the Hall of Independence there. It was found to be sound, and to have had one hundred and forty-six years' growth. Several snuff-boxes, inlaid with other relic wood, have been made from its remains, and distributed among such as have fellowship with such local recollections .*
As early as the days of William Penn, the inn had been used as an out-town tavern. The ancient black Alice, who lived there, used to tell with pleasure, that Master William Penn would stop there and refresh himself in the porch with a pipe, for which she always had his penny.
In the colonial days it was long known as " Clarke's Inn," at which he had the sign of the " coach and horses." All that we can say of "mine host" is, that he prepared dogs-real dogs !- for cooking the meat of the epicures and gentry ! In 1745 he advertises in the public prints, that " he has for sale several dogs and wheels, much preferable to any jacks for roasting any joint of meat." Few Philadelphians of modern times would be likely to understand what was meant. Our modern improvements are so great that we have little conception of the painstaking means they once employed for roast meats. They trained little bow-legged dogs, called spit- dogs, to run in a hollow cylinder, like a squirrel, by which impulse was given to a turn-jack, which kept the meat in motion, suspended before the kitchen fire. We pity the little dogs and their hard service while we think of them! As cooking-time approached, it was no uncommon thing to see the cooks running about the streets looking up their truant labourers. What a relief to them was self- moving jacks! and, still more, what have tin kitchens since pro- duced for us !
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