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 51
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The poetic description of High street, in 1729, describes it then as a plashy place-equivalent to a water lot or puddle, to wit :
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The Duck Pond.
" Along their doors the clean hard paving trends Till at a plashy crossing street it ends, And thence a short arm's throw renewed tends; Beyond,-the street is thinly wall'd, but fair,
With gardens paled, and orchards here and there."
As early as the year 1712, the Grand Jury present that the High street, near the crossing of Fourth street, is very much out of repair for want of water courses.
When Dr. Franklin visited Philadelphia, in 1723, then a lad of 18 years of age, he tells us he walked up High street as far as Fourth street, and thence down that street to Chestnut street. The reason was, I presume, that the city walk went no further westward at that time.
In the year 1740 the Grand Jury present the upper end of High street, between John Kinsey's [near the corner of Fifth street] and the widow Kenmarsh's, as almost impassable after great rains. In the same street, they presented the water course from the widow Harmen's to the common shore* across High street as very much gullied and dangerous.
In the year 1750 the Grand Jury presented the gutter of the north- west corner of Fourth and High streets, as rendered dangerous for want of a grate at the common-sewer-the passage being large enough for the body of a grown person to fall in, and that Fourth street, from Market street to the south-west corner of Friends' bury- ing ground, wants regulating, and is now impassable for carriages.
The origin of the above-named sewer is probably expressed in the minutes of City Council of August, 1737. It was then de- termined that Alderman Morris and Israel Pemberton, two of the persons appointed at the last council to get the arch made over High street at Fourth street, have prepared now to continue the said arch along the said Fourth street, until the water falls into the lots of Anthony Morris, and to pave the same, it being about 200 feet, if they can have the liberty of getting voluntary subscriptions and £25. paid, the most of the money which may hereafter be raised by a tax; which proposal being considered, was agreed to by the Board.
The late Timothy Matlack, Esq., confirmed to me what Law- rence Sickle, an aged gentleman not long since dead, said of their neighbourhood-to wit: That back from the north-west corner of Fourth and High streets, there used to be a spring in which river fish, coming up by Dock street creek in large tides, used to be caught by boys. This was before their time, but they had so often heard it, that they believed it was so.
He told me, however, that he (T. M. ) saw the spring-that it was about 70 feet north-west of the present corner house, and that one Humphreys in his time had put a blacksmith shop over it, set
· I think this may equally mean the shore at Water and High streets.
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The Duck Pond.
on stakes. The blacksmith shop was confirmed to me by others. Mr. Matlack told me that before they made the great improved tun- nel (running from this place down Fourth street to Walnut street, in 1789, ) there was some kind of small tunnel traversing High street, as a bridge, and leading out to an open gully back of the Indian Queen inn, on the east side of Fourth street. The floods of water which came down to this place, especially down High street and north Fourth street, were immense ; and once, when he was a young man, he had occasion to wade across the street at Fourth and High streets when the water was up to his waist. The old tunnel or brick bridge above referred to, was not visible above ground, and he sup- poses he should not have known of its existence there, but that he once saw a horse's leg sink very deeply into the ground, and on examining for the cause found some bricks had been forced through an arch there. I understood Mr. Matlack to say that this arch had then no communication by which to let off the above-mentioned floods, and it could have only been of use when water formerly came from ground at a distance down a creek or marsh laying up the west side of Fourth street, to somewhere near the old Academy, and thence traversing Arch street, by the north-east corner of the Christ church ground. Both he and Thomas Bradford thought they once saw the remains of such a water-course, and they understood it had been deeper.
When the long range of buildings which occupy the site along the west side of Fourth street, from the corner of High street, were erected about 40 years ago, for Jacob Miller, merchant, it was observed by Mr. Suter, a neighbour there, that he saw at the bottom of the cellar several large logs traversing it east and west, or nearly so, which, in his opinion as well as others, appeared to have been very ancient, and to have been intended to serve as a wharf, or a fence to land jutting into a water-course. The whole earth taken from the cellars ap- peared to have been made-ground, although the cellars went many feet northward; at a later period, in digging a foundation for the buildings back of the Hotel on Fourth street, it proved to be all made-ground. This range has since been all taken down and rebuilt by Joseph and Thomas Wood, with basement story stores to the same-on the 1st July, 1842, a sudden and great fall of rain, overran the culvert there and flooded all those stores! Two women and a child therein, had nearly drowned ,fore they were released !
Mr. Joseph Crukshank, when about the age of 82 years, told me that old Hugh Roberts, about 38 years ago, told him he had caught perch at about were Stanly's pot-house stood, [say in the rear of Duval's and Twells' lots on High street above Fourth street,] and that he had seen shallops once at the corner of Fourth and High streets. He was about 25 years older than Crukshank.
Mr. Grove, now alive, was present when they dug out the south east corner of the present Christ church burial ground ( on Arch and Fifth street) and he then saw that the area was made-ground to the
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Pegg's Run, &c
depth of seventeen feet, consisting of a great deal of rubbish and broken pottery. The whole depth was replaced with loam earth for burial purposes. This fact, concerning ground actually adjoin- ing Stanly's pottery, before alluded to, confirms, as I conceive the former fishing pond there.
Mr. Grove's father, born in Philadelphia, showed him a place in Arch street, near about the north-east corner of the same burying ground wall, next to Sansom's houses, where he said some of his an- cestors used to tell him a brook or creek once crossed Arch street ; a hut, he said, stood near to it, where dwelt a child which was borne off by a bear. His father believed it as a straight family tradi- tion. A note from Joseph Sansom says "the appearance of the soil, in digging for his brother's cellars, indicated the course of a ri- vulet from north to south, apparently one of the head branches of Dock Creek." The grave digger also confirms the idea of considerable depth of made-ground at the said north-east corner.
PEGG'S RUN, &C.
No part of Philadelphia has undergone such great and various changes as the range of commons, water-lots, &c., ranging along the course of this run, primarily known under the Indian name of Co- hoquinoque. A present beholder of the streets and houses now covering those grounds, and the hidden tunnel now concealing the former creek, along Willow street, could have no conception of things as they were, even only forty years ago. The description is una- voidably complicate.
At the north end of Philadelphia the high table land of the city terminated in a high precipitous bluff, at about two hundred and fifty feet north of Callowhill street. This extended from Front street, at Poole's bridge, up as high as Fifth and Sixth street, bounding the margin of Pegg's run. On the north side of this whole range of Pegg's run, which rises in Spring Garden, (where was once a spring at its source), there was an extensive marsh into which the Delaware flowed, and into which, in cases of freshets or floods, boats could be used for amusement. Beyond the north side of this marsh, in the writer's time, (say till within the last forty years,) from near Front quite up to Second street, was a high open and green grazing com- mon ; it also had a steep but green hill descending into the marsh, at about one hundred and fifty feet in the south rear of Noble street.
* See a picture of this place on page 280 of my MS. Annals in the Philadelphia Library.
PEGG'S RUN, NORTHERN LIBERTIES .- Page 436.
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Pegg's Run, &ºc.
On this common there was Joseph Emlen's tanyard, with a spring on the south rear, and on the east side of it a powder magazine, then converted into two dwelling houses; these were the only lots oc- cupied. From Second to Third street, beyond the same north side of the marsh, was a beautiful green enclosure, with only one large brick house, now standing on the south-west corner of Noble and Second streets, called Emlen's haunted house, and then occupied by the Rev. Dr. Pilmore. Not one of the present range of houses on either side of Second street, from Noble to the Second street bridge, was standing there till within the last thirty years. Before that time, a low causeway made the street and joined the two bluffs, and was universally called " the Hollow." Even the Second street and Third street stone bridges were made since the writer's time, (forty years) and the Second street one was worked at by the "wheelbarrow-men," who were chained felons from the prisons. The writer, when a boy, remembers two or three occasions when the floods in the Delaware backed so much water into all this marsh from Front to Third street, as that boats actually rowed from bank to bank, even on the top of the causeway, several hundred feet in length. In that time, the descent of the Second street from Callowhill to the bridge, was nearly as great as at Race and Front street now; and it used to be a great resort for boys in winter to run down their sleds on the snow ; they could run at least one hundred and fifty feet. In that time, the short street (Margaretta) south of the bridge did not exist; but the brick house which forms the south side corner house, was the utmost verge of the ancient bluff. On the west side of Second street, south of the bridge, were a few houses and a sheep-skin dresser's yard, which seemed almost covered up (full the first story) by the subsequent elevation of the street. In raising the street, and to keep the ground from washing off, the sides of the road were supported by a great number of cedar trees with all their branches on, laid down and the earth filled in among them, and water-proof gutter ways of wood were laid over them, to conduct the street water into the water channels of the bridge. The wheelbarrow-men, who worked at such public works, were subjects of great terror, even while chained, to all the boys; and by often seeing them, there were few boys who had not learned and told their several histories. Their chief desperado, I re- member, was Luke Cale. Five of them, whom we used thus to know, were all executed on Centre Square (the execution ground of that day) on one gallows and at the same time, for the murder of a man who dwelt in the then only house near that square-(say on the south side of High street, five or six doors east of the centre street circle, all of which was then a waste common.) From St. John street (now, but not then, opened) up the whole length of Callow- hill street to Fourth street, beyond which it did not then extend, there were no houses in the rear of any houses then on the north side of Callowhill street, and of course all was waste grass commons down to Pegg's run. This high waste ground had some occasional
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Pegg's Run, &c.
slopes, which gave occasion to hundreds of boys to " sled down hill," as it was called, in the intervals of school .* As the snows lasted long then, this was a boy-sport of the whole winter. The marsh ground had much of vegetable production in it, and when not flooded, had some parts of it green with vegetation ; this, therefore, was a great resort for snipe, kildear, and even plover, and many birds have been shot there. Doctor Leib was a frequent visiter there for shooting purposes. In other places, earth had been taken to make an embankment all along the side of Pegg's run, and this left such ponds of water as made places where catfish, brought in by the floods, were left, and were often caught by boys. In the summer the water which rested in places on this marsh, gave life and song to thousands of clamorous frogs ; and in the winter the whole area was a great ice pond, in which all the skating population of Philadelphia, even including men, were wont to skate. This was more particu- larly the case before the i .e in the Delaware closed for the season, which was usually by New-year's day, and lasted till March. There were two springs, and perhaps several rills near them, proceeding from the north bank of this marsh-one at Emlen's tanyard east of Second street, and one west of Second street; from these springs went an embankment on the marsh side parallel with the bank, and inclining east until one reached Second street, and till the other reached the rear of the house (say Rogers' glue factory) on Front street ; thence they went each at right angles south until they seve- rally struck into Pegg's run. In these channels the tides of the De- laware flowed, and especially the lower one near Rogers', over which was once a little foot bridge to pass on to the marsh in dry seasons. In process of time, (the time of my day,) these embankments got so wasted away, as to precisely answer the purpose of holding all the water which high tides could deposit, and so kept it in for shallow ponds, (at the eastern side of the marsh chiefly,) for the great amuse- ment of the boys. Now, while I write, all these descriptions are hid for ever from our eyes ; the marsh is intersected by streets, and filled up with houses. The filling up was not a short work; it became long a deposit for all the loose rubbish of the city-first, the corpora- tion who filled up the streets, then the occupant or builder of each house would bring a little earth for his yard, and support his enclo- sure with stakes, &c., until another would build alongside of him ; and he would frame rough steps up to his door until successive de- posits of earth, as time and means would enable, have enabled them, at last, to bring their streets now to a general level. From Third street to Fourth street, on the north side of Pegg's run, the land was nearer the level of Pegg's run, and was filled to Noble street with many tanyards, and one very fine kitchen garden of about one acre of ground. The tanyard which bounded on the west side of Third
* From Third to Sixth street on the south side of Pegg's run, being ve y high, rur. nished all the gravel used in the city end of the Germantown turnpike.
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Pegg's Run, g.c.
street, (as the Commissioners filled up Third street) rested at least one story below the common walk; and the house at the south-west corner of Noble street, which went up steps to the door sill, is now levelled with the street. New Fourth street, across Pegg's run, was not opened at all until lately, nor none of the houses were built be- tween it and Callowhill street. The causeway at Second street was something narrower than the present street; and the footway, which was only on the west side of it, was three feet lower than the street ; (for they were for years casting refuse earth, shoemakers' leather, and shavings, &c., into it.) At the north end, where it joined to the present pavement way, it was separated by so deep and yawning a ravine, caused by the rain floods rushing down it into the marsh and pond below, that it was covered with a wooden bridge. Such are the changes wrought in this section of the Northern Liberties in from thirty-five to forty years !
The name of Pegg's run was derived from Daniel Pegg, a Friend, who, in 1686, acquired the three hundred and fifty acres of Jurian Hartsfelder's patent of the year 1676. He therefore once possessed nearly all of the Northern Liberties south of Cohocksinc creek, in their primitive state of woody waste. He appears to have sold about one hundred and fifty acres of the northern part to Coates, and to have set upon the improvement of the rest as a farm-to have diked in his marsh, so as to form low meadows, and to have set up a brick- kiln. His mansion, of large dimensions, described to me as of two stories, with a piazza and double hipped roof, was always called, in the language of early days, " the big brick house," at " the north end." It was situate upon Front street, west side, a little below Green street. Whatever was its appearance, we know it was such that William Penn, in 1709, proposed to have it rented for his resi- dence, that he might there be in the quiet country. Back of Pegg's house, from Front to Second street, and from Green to Coates' street, he had nearly a square of ground enclosed as a field, by numerous large cherry trees along the fences. This same space was a fine green meadow when the British possessed Philadelphia, and they cut down the fine cherry trees for fuel.
When we see the present compactly built state of the Northern Liberties, so like another city set beside its parent beyond the run, it increases our wish to learn, if we can, from what prior condition it was formed.
To this end, the will of Daniel Pegg, formed the 9th of January, 1732, a short time before he died, will lead us into some conceptions of things as they were, to wit :
To his wife Sarah he gave " his northernmost messuage or tene- ment and the piece of ground thereunto belonging, bounded on the north by land in the tenure of William Coates, on the east by the great road leading to Burlington, [i. e. Front street,] southward by a lane dividing that tract from his other land, and westward by the New York road," [i. e. old Fourth street.] To his nephew, Daniel Pegg,
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Pegg's Run, & c.
(son of Nathan,) he gave all his " southernmost messuage or tene ment, where he then dwelt, together with the piece of ground bound- ed northward by the lane aforesaid, eastward by the Burlington road, southward by the second row of apple trees in his orchard, carrying the same breadth westward to a fence at the west end of an adjoin- ing pasture, and westward by the said fence." He further gives his said nephew "all his ground and marsh between the front of the house and ground, therein before given him, and the Delaware river, of the same breadth aforesaid." To his daughter, Sarah Pegg, he gave "the ground bounded northward by the ground before given to his nephew, Daniel Pegg; eastward by the Delaware river; south- ward by a forty foot road, beginning at ten feet southward of the south fence of his orchard, and to extend the same breadth west- ward to the westernmost fence of his pasture, (lying west of his orchard,) and westward by the same fence."* To his nephew, Elias Pegg, (the second son of Nathan,) he gave " the ground, of fifty feet breadth, bounded northward by the forty feet road, east- ward by Delaware river, southward by his other ground, and west- ward by other ground, then or late his, at the extent of three hun- dred feet from the west side of Burlington road aforesaid." He grants similar lots lying along the same to his nephews, Daniel Coates, and John Coates, (sons of 'Thomas,) extending in length from John Rutter's, north-west corner on the New York road, to Edmond Wooley's bars." His small fenced pasture of two and a half acres, lying near the brick-kilns, he orders to be sold, to pay off his debts, &c."
This farm, at its wildest state, is marked by William Penn's letter of the year 1700, showing there were then Indians hutted there, he saying he wishes that "earnest inquiry may be made for the men who fired on the Indians at Pegg's run, and frightened them," saying, " they must be appeased, or evil will ensue."
The value of this farm in primitive days is shown in a letter of Jonathan Dickinson's, of December, 1715, saying, "he can buy Daniel Pegg's land fronting the Delaware, and lying in N. Liberty Corporation, at 50s. per acre, having thereon a well built brick house, a piece of six to eight acres of meadow," &c.
In the year 1729 Daniel Pegg advertised his land for sale, and then he described it thus, viz. " To be sold or let, by Daniel Pegg, at the great brick house at the north end of Philadelphia, thirty acres of upland, meadow ground and marsh." The house, about the period of the Revolution, was called " the Dutch house," both because its form was peculiar, and especially because it had long been noted as a place for holding Dutch dances, called hupsesaw-a whirling dance in waltz style.
In 1724 there was erected on his former premises the first powder house ever erected in Philadelphia; it was at the expense of William
* To this daughter Sarah he also gives " his southernmost pasture adjoining his mea dow, with all his adjoining marsh or meadow and improvements."
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Pegg's Run, &c.
Chanceller, a wealthy sailmaker, who placed it on the northern bank of Pegg's marsh-say a little south of present Noble street, and about sixty yards westward of Front street. It now exists as a dwelling house. Chanceller was privileged as exclusive keeper, for twenty-one years, at 1s. a keg per month.
As the name of Pegg has thus connected itself with interesting topographical facts, it may possibly afford further interest to add a few items of a personal nature, to wit : It appears he must have had at least two wives before the widow Sarah, mentioned in his will; for I found his name as married on the 28th of 2d mo., 1686, to Martha Allen, at her father Samuel Allen's house, at Neshamina, in the presence of twenty-two signing witnesses ; and again in 1691 he marries, at Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia, Barbara Jones. His brief history shows the vicissitudes of human affairs: Possessed of the fee simple of three hundred and fifty acres of now invaluable building lots, he left no rich heirs ; and, the possessor of three wives or more, he left no male issue to keep up his name, even in our City Directory ! It appears, by the letter of Secretary Peters, of 1749, that the heirs of D. Pegg then appeared to make a partition. He left an only daughter.
Connected with Pegg's marsh meadows are some curious facts of Subterrane and Alluvial Remains, to wit :
Christian Witmeck, a digger of wells, told me, that in digging a well for Mr. Lowber at Pegg's run, by St. John's street, at thirteen feet depth he cut across a fallen tree; at thirty-four feet came to wood, which appeared to be decayed roots of trees, in pieces of six inches square; near the bottom found what looked like isinglass- so they called it-then came to black sand; they dug through twenty-four feet of black mud ; the volume of water procured is large. These facts were confirmed to me by Mr. Lowber himself. The same C. Witmeck, in digging a well near there for Thomas Steel, at No. 81 St. John street, at forty feet northward from the run, found, at the depth of twenty-one feet, real black turf filled with numerous reddish fibres of roots-it was ten feet in depth, and below it the well rested, at the depth of thirty feet, upon white sand ; at twenty-six feet depth they found the crotch of a pine tree ; between the well and the creek they found a brick wall, two feet under the surface, of six feet of depth and apparently thirty feet square. May not this have been the ruins of some ancient mill ?
The well of Prosper Martin, at No. 91 St. John street, at about one hundred feet northward from Pegg's run, is a great curiosity, although it has excited no public attention. A single well of fifteen feet diameter at surface, and narrower at bottom, having its surface full sixteen feet lower in the yard than the present St. John street, (which has twenty feet depth of made earth,) being dug thirty feet, has the surprising volume of discharge of sixty thousand gallons a day without ever running out! It (by aid of steam to elevate it) VOL. I .- 3 F
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Pegg's Run, &c.
turns the machinery of two mahogany saws, which are running all day, every day-(save Sundays.) Prosper is a young man, and deserves great credit for his perseverance in prosecuting this digging. To use his own words, he was determined on water power, and determined to get below the bed of the Delaware and drain it off! His name, and the prosperity likely to crown his enterprise, seem likely to be identified. The original spring which I used to see, when a boy, is about forty feet west of it, on the west side of St. John street, at Dunn's cellar, No. 96.
Mr. Martin tells me he first attempted a well of smaller diameter nearer to the natural spring, but did not succeed to get through the mud deposit, owing to the narrowness, which did not allow him to repeat enough of curbs into it. He, therefore, undertook this second one; he went through twenty feet of black mud, and came for his foundation to coarse round pebbles, and manifest remains of shells. They seemed like (in part) crumbled clam shells. Several springs flowed in at the bottom; but in the centre there bursted out a volume of water of full six inches diameter, which sent forth such a volume of carbonic acid gas as to have nearly cost the life of the last of the two men, who hurried out of the well when it flowed in. Previously to this great discharge, there was so much of the same gas issuing as to nearly extinguish the candle, and to have made it, for some time previously, very deleterious to work there. The water thus flowing has uniformly a purgative quality on any new hands which he may employ, and who drink it. It deposits a concretion, a piece of which I have, which makes an excellent hone; this con- cretion enters so readily into ropes laying in it, as to make them calculous, and when the works on one occasion lay idle for some repairs, he found a deposit of full three bushels of salt ; a large por- tion of which seemed to possess the quality of Glauber's salt. I intend now, for the first time, to have some chemical examination of its properties .* The hone, when triturated, gives out a nauseous smell, arising from the sulphur in it, as well as in Glauber's salt. The lime came from the shells, and the sulphureted hydrogen gas from the animal matter once in them.
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