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 56
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+ Thus determining, as I presume, that Shackamaxon began at Cohocksinc creek, and went up to Gunner's creek.
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water is very deep." At the same causeway was quicksand, in which a horse and chair and man all sank !
When the long stone bridge was built, in 1790, (its date is marked thereon and done by Souders,) they came, at the foot of the founda- tion, to several curiosities, described to me by those who saw them, to wit :- a hickory hand-cuff, perfectly sound-several leaden weights, for weighing-a quantity of copper farthings, and a stone hollowed out like a box, and having a lid of the same.
Old Mr. Wager (the father of the present Wagers,) and Major Kissell have both declared, that as much as sixty-six to sixty-eight years ago they had seen small vessels, with falling masts, go up the Cohocksinc creek with grain to the Globe mill-the same before called the Governor's mill. Old Captain Potts, who lived near there, told me the same thing when I was a boy.
While the British army occupied Philadelphia, in the years 1777 and '78, they dammed in all the Cohocksinc meadows, so as to lay them all under water from the river, and thus produced to themselves a water barrier of defence in connexion with their line of redoubts across the north end of the city. Their only road, and gate of egress and ingress northward, was at the head of Front street where it parts to Germantown, and by Kensington to Frankford.
On the 29th July, 1824, the course of the Cohocksinc creek was overwhelmed with the heaviest and most sudden torrent of rain ever before remembered. The water rested four feet on the lower floor of Craig's factory. White's dwelling house had nine inches depth on its lower floor. It flowed four feet above the crown of the arch of the bridge at Second street. All this unprecedented flood was occasioned by three hours of rain at midnight. The general desolation that was pre- sented at daylight will be long remembered by those who witnessed it.
Formerly, the Delaware made great inroad upon the land at the mouth of the Cohocksinc, making there a large and shallow bay, extending from Point Pleasant down to Warder's long wharf, near Green street. It is but about thirty-six years since the river came up daily close to the houses on Front and Coates' street, and at Coates' street the dock there, made by Budd's wharfed yard, came up to the line of Front street. All the area of the bay (then without the pre- sent street east of Front street, and having none of the wharves now there,) was an immense plane of spatterdocks, nearly out to the end of Warder's wharf, and on a line with Point Pleasant. The lower end of Coates' street was then lower than now; and in freshets the river laid across Front street. All the ten or twelve houses north of Coates' street, on the east side, were built on made ground, and their little yards were supported with wharf logs, and bush willows as trees. The then mouth of Cohocksinc was a wooden drawbridge, then the only communication to Kensington, which crossed at Leib's house opposite to Poplar lane ; from thence a raised causeway ran across to Point Pleasant. The stone bridge north of it, leading to Kensington, was not then in existence. On the outside of this
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causeway the river covered, and spatterdocks grew, and on the inside there was a great extent of marshy ground alternately wet and dry, with the ebbing and flowing of the tide; the creek was embankeil on the east side. The marsh was probably two hundred feet wide where the causeway at the stone bridge now runs. The branch of this creek which ran up to the Globe mill, [on the place now used as Craig's cotton manufactory,] was formerly deeper than now. Where it crosses Second street, at the stone bridge north of Poplar lane, there was in my time a much lower road, and the river water, in time of freshets, used to overflow the low lots on each side of it. The houses near the causeway, and which were there thirty-six years ago, are now one story buried under ground. The marsh grounds of Cohocksinc used to afford good shooting for woodcock and snipe &c. The road beyond, " being Front street continued," and the bridge thereon, is all made over this marsh within the last twenty-six years; also, the road leading from the stone bridge across Front to Second street-the hill, to form that road, has been cut down full twenty to twenty-five feet, and was used to fill up the Front street causeway to the York road, &c. The region of country to the north of this place and of Globe mill, over to Fourth street mill dam, was formerly all in grass commons, with scarcely a single house or fence thereon, and was a very great resort for shooting kill- deer and snipe. It was said the British had burned up all the former fences, and for many years afterwards no attempt was made to renew them. On these commons bull baiting sometimes occurred, and many military trainings. None of the present ropewalks were then there; but one ran where Poplar lane now lies, from Front to Second street-that not having been a street till within thirty-five years ago. The British redoubts remained till lately-one on the Delaware bank in a line with the stone-bridge street-then no houses were near it; now it is all built up, and streets are run where none were seen. The next redoubt, west, stood in an open grass lot of Captain Potts, on Second street, and in front of where St. John's Methodist church now stands. [John street was not then run there.] Another redoubt stood on Poplar lane and south-west corner of Sixth street,-another back of Bush Hill house, and another was on Fair- mount,-another on the hill south of High street, where the water- works were located. Barriers of trees and stockades extended from one redoubt to another. All the Cohocksinc marsh is now filled up and built upon, and an immense long wharf and a bridge from it is made to join a street to Kensington.
There was a creek or inlet of water as told to me by the aged John Brown, which went up from the river at the north side of Coates' street and Front street, and thence westward over Second street at midway from Coates' to Brown street (named after this Brown, who is a large owner) up to the south side of Coates' burial ground. Up this creek he has gone in a boat as high as Second street, and gathered wild plums from small trees which overhung
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the sides of it; this was only done in times of floods. At the burial place were several springs, and all the vaults there have sinks in them to drain off the water. He gave it as his opinion that several springy pieces of ground lay under the present St. John's church there.
From Coates' street to two hundred feet up Front street, it used to be formerly overflowed from the river, even after the causeway there was formed. John Brown has seen boys many times ferrying passengers up and down Front street in times of spring-tides. Before the causeway was formed spatterdocks grew there, and the tide flowed in there as high as Budd street.
I remember that when the present Butler's row, near the said creek, was built, the cellar foundations were begun upon the then surface, and the ground was then filled up around them one story high. Between this low ground and Coates' street was a descending hill, and on that hill, a friend, aged 66 years, tells me they used to dig deep pits, in his boyhood, in search of pirates' money. The ame they did also at Pegg's run from Front to Third street.
At the spot of ground east of Oak street, and on the north side of what was called Warder's wharf, then a water dock for vessels, (now firm ground) a young woman of good connexions was driven into the river there at night and stoned and drowned by some miscreants who had abused her person. It occurred about forty-five years ago, and the perpetrators have never since been found out. It was then a very forlorn place at night.
There were no wagon-pavements in any part of the Northern Liberties till within the last thirty-five years, and in many streets within twenty years; several of the present streets were not even run, and of course there were no houses built. Thus Fourth, Fifth and Sixth streets from Vine or Pegg's run out to the Germantown road are all opened, and the bridges built thereon, and the low grounds filled up (some places running over deep brick-kiln ponds and gullies, &c.) within the last twenty-two and twenty-six years. The market houses from Coates' street to Poplar lane, were only begun thirty-six years ago, and the northern end was finished within twenty years. The Presbyterian church, at the corner of Coates' and Second streets, and the Episcopal at the corner of St. John street, and the Methodist church at the north end of St. John street, are all within twenty-eight years. The Baptist church, now on Budd street near Noble street, is placed on a street now opened down to Vine street, which was not even run (and when it did, it run down some small houses) twenty-six years ago. Old Fourth street was, indeed, an old road, and was called the Old York road before the Revolution.
Within forty-five years the whole of Third street from Noble lane up to Coates' street, out westward from thence, was all in grass lots, commons, or ponds. At the north-east corner of Green and Old Fourth streets was a great skating pond, and near it, towards Third VOL. I .- 3 L 41
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street, was another. Ponds were also beyond Fourth street. These had been dug out for bricks in former years. The Northern Liber- ties were incorporated in 1803.
Mr. John Brown told me that all the lots on the western side of Second street, from Green to Coates' street, were originally let for lower ground rents than will pay the present taxes, so that they were virtually lost to the primitive owners.
Thomas Bradford spoke of his sometimes visiting what was called Coates' woods ; they consisted of four or five acres, near about the present Coates' burial ground, at the south-east corner of Brown and Third streets. The most of it was cut down by the late Colonel Coates, for pocket money, when he was young. Another aged gentleman, W. W., informed me that he used to go out to the neighbourhood of Robin Hood, on Poplar lane, to gather chestnuts and hickory nuts, there being there plenty of such trees when he was a youth-say seventy five years ago. Mr. John Brown said that in his youth the woods thereabout were so far primitive and wild, as that he and other boys used to go there of nights with a dog to tree rackoons, and then shake them off to let the dog seize them.
1741 Thomas Penn laid out the plot up town, at Callowhill street and Cabal lane, for a market house and town, and endeavoured to have the adjacent lots sold. "Arbuckle's Row," along Callowhill street, and the market houses were made in consequence, but none of them answered. It was then a speculation too far off from Philadelphia.
In 1743 the scheme was also first projected of making a Second street over Pegg's marsh-called then " the Swamp"-but it did not quickly take.
Since my edition of 1830 this North End, far out in the Northern Liberties, Kensington, and in Spring Garden and Penn Township, has been very fully built up with excellent new houses-thus effacing all appearance of former commons.
SOUTH END AND SOCIETY HILL.
THE southern section of the city, although incorporated nine years earlier than the Northern Liberties-say in 1794-did not make such rapid improvements. About the New Market square the change, as a place of business, has been greatest, occasioned in part by the lengthening of the market house, building it up from Lombard street to Pine street, and by the increase of wealthy population out Pine and other southern streets. Forty-five years ago no dry-goods, hardware,
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South End and Society Hill.
or fancy stores, as now there, were then seen. Thirty five years ago none of the streets below South street running westward, were laid out beyond Fifth street; and Catharine and Queen streets were only laid out as far as Second street. All beyond was commons or fenced lots. The south-western part of the city was always a wooden town, with a surplus population of the baser sort; and the general level of the ground there was lower than the general level now re- quired for Southwark, especially all that part lying south of Pine street and westward of Sixth street. Numerous houses still there show the streets now raised above their door sills one or two steps. Toward the river side, however, the ground was high, so much so, that along Swanson street from below Almond street, the oldest houses now remaining there show themselves much higher than the present level of the street. From this cause the old house at the south-west corner of Swanson and Almond streets may be seen to have its original cellar, once under ground, now at least ten feet out of ground; and several houses now on western side of Swanson street, below there, may be seen to have a high ascent of steps. Similar notices may be made of houses north of Catharine and Queen streets, which show that their doors, once on the ground floor, are now in their second stories. The same, too, may be seen of houses in Front and Penn streets below South street. At one time a great portion of the south-western end of Southwark belonged to Edward Shippen. In the year 1730, after his death, his estate was advertised as containing "240 acres on the south side of said city."
Southwark, especially in the neighbourhood of the present market house, by Pine and South streets, was so new and unsettled as late as the year 1767, that then we see public advertisement is made by Joseph Wharton and others, proposing to bestow lots " for the pro- motion of religion, learning, and industry," and, sub rosa, to benefit themselves, by making grants of lots for school houses, meeting houses, and market houses ; saying also that the market place was already fixed upon, having a length of 1200 feet, and a width of 100 feet.
By this fact we learn the measures which were taken to hasten the improvement of the South End, and to convert the former com- mons of Society Hill into something more productive to the land- holders .* Before this time it had been the locality for field trainings or for field preachings, and before Penn street was formed through the high bluff formerly along the line of that street, the flag staff possessed the ground a little north of South street, to designate the Water Battery which lay at the base of the bank.
As late as the year 1750 there was a place called " the Vineyard,"
* Mr. Powel, who dwelt there about that time, to encourage the establishment of the market there used to give out he would buy all the butter which should be left unsold on market days. His ancestor, Samuel Powel, built the row of houses on the north side of Pine street, east of Second street; and although three stories, they brought but £15 rent, eighty years ago!
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South End and Sociely Hill.
and sometimes " Stanly," [William Stanly was an original purchaser of five thousand acres,] which belonged then to Edward Jones, and contained eight and a half acres of meadow, orchard and garden, having its garden front on the south side of South street, not far from Second street, an abundance of cherries and peaches, and a spacious house with a piazza on its eastern and southern sides.
Anthony Cuthbert, Esq., now aged, remembers when woods were general in Southwark from Third and Fourth streets to Schuylkill, and when a ropewalk extended from Almond street and Second street westward. Mrs. H. S., now 88, remembers gathering whortle- berries at the new market place, and blackberries at the corner of Pine and Fourth streets.
" Society Hill," a name once so prevalent for all the region south of Pine street, even down to the Swedes' church, has been discon- tinued for the last sixty-eight or seventy-eight years. In olden time we used to read of " Cherry Garden on Society Hill," the " Friends' Meeting on Society Hill," the " Theatre (in 1759) on Society Hill," " George Wells' place on Society Hill, near the Swedes' church," &c. The name, we take for granted, was derived from the "Free Society of Traders," who originally owned all the land " from river to river, lying between Spruce and Pine streets," including of course part of the promiment hill once a knoll at and about Pine and Front streets. The aged Thomas Bradford, however, suggests that it took its name from the Welsh Society of Landholders, who, he says, once had a residence there in a large long building made by them. As I never met with any other mention of such a Society and building, I can only speak of it as his opinion.
From Robert Venable, a black man, aged ninety four, I learned the following facts :
" The flag staff" on Society Hill stood near the bank, east side of Front street, precisely between Pine and Union streets. Had not heard of a battery near it. Whitfield preached on the ground below Pine street. He said he heard and saw him often; had great crowds; Friends did not like his ways, but some Friends joined him. " They who built the old Academy for him, hoped thereby to keep him here among them always." He could hear Whitfield preaching on Society Hill, by the flag staff, corner of Pine and Front, while he, (Robert) stood in his yard in Walnut street near Front street, not as to sense, but sound.
Since my former edition of 1830, the South End has extended southward and westward, with numerous well constructed houses,- The former commons being now no longer open,-nor requiring any particular notice of mine.
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Western Commons, g.c.
WESTERN COMMONS.
WITHIN the short period of forty years of the memory of the writer, the progress of change and improvement in the western bounds of the city has been very great. If we take a survey of that section of the city lying south of Walnut street and westward of Sixth street, we shall say that it does not exceed thirty-five years since all the houses out Walnut street were built, a still shorter period for those out Spruce street, and still later than either out Pine street. Before the houses were built they were generally open commons, clothed with short grass for cows and swine, &c.
When the Roman Catholic church at the corner of Sixth and Spruce streets was built, it was deemed far out of town,-a long and muddy walk, for there were then no streets paved near to it, and no houses were then nigh. From this neighbourhood to the Penn- sylvania Hospital, then having its front of access on its eastern gate, was quite beyond civilization. There were not streets enough marked through the waste lots in the western parts of the city to tell a traveller on what square he was travelling. Jamestown weeds and briers then abounded.
We shall be within bounds to say, that 35 years ago so few owners enclosed their lots towards Schuylkill, that the street roads of Walnut, Spruce, and Pine streets, &c., could not be traced by the eye beyond Broad street, and even that was then known but upon paper drafts. Roads traversed the commons at the convenience of the traveller; and brick kilns and their ponds were the chief enclosures or settle- ments that you saw. The whole area, however, was very verdant, and of course agreeable in summer.
The ground forming the square from Chestnut street to Walnut street, and from Sixth to Seventh streets, was all a grass meadow under fence, down to the year 1794,* when it was sold out for the benefit of the Gilpin and Fisher families. On the Chestnut street side it was high, and had steps of ascent cut into the bank, and across it went a footpath as a short cut to the Almshouse out Spruce street ; towards the Walnut street side, the ground declined, so as in winter to form a little ice-pond for the skaters near the north-west corner of Sixth and Walnut streets. On page 238 of my MS. Annals in the City Library, is a picture of a military parade as seen there in 1795, and showing that then there was nothing but open field-the fences being then removed. The only houses to be seen,
* Persons of but seventy years of age remember when they were accustomed as boys to gather blackberries there.
41*
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Western Commons, g.c.
were the low brick building once the Logan Library, on Sixth street in 1793 made an asylum for the orphans; and the Episcopal Academy, built in 1780, on Chestnut street, vis-a-vis the Arcade, converted afterwards into Oeller's hotel. About the year 1797 or '98, "Ricket's Circus," of brick, was constructed upon the south-west corner of Chestnut and Sixth streets, which burnt down in 1799. As it stood vis-a-vis the Chestnut street Theatre, and combined theatrical farces, it excited rivalship. The theatre, to cast the Circus into ridicule, used to exhibit " scrub races," and performances called " Across the Gutter."
At the south-east corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets, where Waln's house was afterwards erected, stood an old red-painted frame house, looking strangely to the eye, by being elevated at its ground floor full fifteen feet higher than the common level of the street. By cutting through the street there, the whole cellar stood exposed, and the house was got up to by a coarse flight of steps on the outside of the house. The next square beyond, westward, was Norris' pasture lot, where the boys sometimes made their battle ground-afterwards made into Morris' square, to ruin him in the erection of an intended palace. On the north-west corner of Chestnut and Seventh streets was a high grass lot in a rail fence extending half-way to Eighth street. Except one or two brick houses at the corner of Eighth street, you met not another house to Schuylkill.
There were no houses built out Arch or Race street, save here and there a mean low box of wood beyond Sixth street,-of course no pavements, but wide ranges of grass commons "close cropt by nibbling sheep." None of the present regular and genteel rows, in long lines of uniformity, were known there beyond 35 years ago, and those now beyond Tenth street are the fabric of the last twenty years.
'Tis but lately that about sixty large houses have been constructed by William Sansom, Esq., and others, at the place called Palmyra square, out Vine street beyond Tenth street. Thirty years ago, or even twenty, to have made such an investment of capital would have been deemed gross folly, but now such is the march of improvement westward, that the houses are all occupied, and the whole is fairly united to what was before the older city.
From the west side of Fourth street north of Vine street out to Spring Garden, except a row of two story brick houses called the " Sixteen Row," on the present Crown street, there was not to he seen a single house, nor any line of a street,-it was all green com- mons, without any fences any where, till you got among the butchers at Spring Garden, where they formed a little village far off by themselves. From the corner of Vine and Sixth streets the commons was traversed to Pegg's run in a north-easterly direction by a deep and wide ravine-the same route in which a concealed tunnel is now embedded. The run was called Minnow run, and afforded many of them and cray-fish too.
Finally, we shall close this article by some of the observations and
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Western Commons, g.c.
musings of Robert Proud, the historian, made by him in the year 1787, as he made his walk over these western ranges, at a period an- terior to those scenes and impressions, which I have also attempted to trace. They may afford some interest by their comparison with things now. Withal it comes to us like the visit of an old friend, and leaves us almost the only specimen we have from the historian -- of the picturesque or sensitive, to wit :
" In the afternoon of the 18th of 8 mo. 1787, I left the place of my usual residence in Fifth street, about three o'clock in the afternoon; I went up Arch street two or three squares, from which, turning up to Race street, I passed between the brick-kilns and Byrne's, then turning to the right I proceeded directly to Vine street, or the north boundary of the city plan, which led me westward to near the place called Bush Hill, formerly the property of Governor Hamilton, where, opposite to his former mansion house, I went over the fence, and stood and sometimes walked under a grove of trees for about a quarter of an hour.
" Here I contemplated a small water-course which ran pleasantly under these trees, near Vine street, south of Hamilton's house, and which, as far as I could here observe, came hither from the north- east through some low meadows, and in appearance might probably originate somewhere about John Pemberton's ground, near Wissa- hiccon road, westward of Joseph Morris' old villa. From the place where I now was, this stream runs west, southward, to the Schuyl- kill, being increased in its passage by some springs issuing from the high grounds about Bush Hill and Springetsbury, &c., but wasting nearly in proportion." [We may now (in 1842) make the general re- mark, that all of the western commons is so far built upon and the streets so generally run and paved, as no longer to present any open commons,-well built houses now extend out to the Schuylkill, and from Callowhill to South streets, so as to leave little room for any further remark or observation. The most of this change has been effected on the Schuylkill side in the course of only ten years.]
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