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. III > Part 10
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When Peale, etc., p. 104 .- (See Penna. Archives, vol xi. p. 95.)
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ONE OF THE PEALES.
One of the Peules, p. 104 .- Miss Sarah M. Peale, artist, daugh- ter of James Peale, miniature-painter, and niece of Charles Wil- son Peale, has lately returned to reside in this city after an absence of over thirty years in St. Louis and nearly twenty years else- where. Besides her connection with a family of painters, Miss Peale's ancestry on the maternal side is traced back to Oliver Cromwell. Her great-grandfather, John Claypoole, grandson of the Lord Protector, was one of the seven who accompanied Wil- liam Penn to America in 1682, and his son, James Claypoole, built the first brick house in Philadelphia. James Peale had six children, only three of whom are now living-Miss Sarah, Miss Margaretta, and the widow of General William Duncan. Mrs. Duncan resides at the south-east corner of Seventh and Wood streets, and her sisters are with her. The three ladies are far advanced in years, Miss Sarah being about seventy, although still having the appearance of mental and physical vigor in her pleasing face. She has never had necessity for the use of eye- glasses, and can read fine print by lamplight. In conversation the old lady is lively and interesting, but her memory of events that occurred in her youth is not so good as it generally is in persons of her age. The descendants of the Peales are numerous in this city.
Miss Peale is self-taught in painting. "My first work," she says, " was a portrait of myself. My father, when we lived in Baltimore, mixed the colors and told me to sit before a mirror and paint it. He left me alone till I had finished; then re- turned and criticised it, found some fault and said, a little im- patiently, 'D-n it! why didn't you do as I told you ?' That was the only time I ever heard him use anything like pro- fanity." Subsequently Miss Peale painted with her uncle, in Philadelphia.
Her portraits had won reputation for excellence, and the Mar- quis de la Fayette, when on his second visit to this country, in 1825, was among the notable personages who gave her sittings. Generally five sittings of about two hours each were required for a portrait. La Fayette, having finished the fourth sitting, visited the scene of his Revolutionary achievements at Brandywine, and there, being called upon at once to fulfil an engagement farther South, he sent a note to Miss Peale with reference to the fifth sitting. The note was afterward mislaid, and the lady gave it up as lost. But since her arrival in this city she has found it in a box of old papers at Mrs. Duncan's house. Although it is fifty-three years old, the paper is well preserved and the ink but little faded. The writing is on the first page of a sheet of note- paper, runs gracefully, and is perfectly legible :
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The Peale Family.
" BRANDYWINE, July 26, 1825.
" I have every day expected the pleasure to wait on Miss S. Peale, and am obliged now to present a double apology for my non-attendance, and for my not having answered her note. The latter she will the better excuse as it was mingled with a daily hope to present myself to her. I am on my way to Baltimore, Washington, and Virginia, and will pass at Washington and Baltimore the ten last days of August, the vicinity of Baltimore permitting my paying there a visit of at least one full day before I come back. Should the arrangements of Miss Peale, who is often at those places, give me an opportunity to wait upon her, I would be very happy to give her the last sitting she is pleased to request. I have the honor to offer to the ladies my best respects. LA FAYETTE.
" My affectionate regards wait on the whole family. " MISS SARAH PEALE."
But an opportunity for the fifth sitting never occurred, and the unfinished portrait was subsequently lost. Later, Miss Peale painted portraits in Baltimore and Washington, among those who sat for her being Congressmen Caleb Cushing, Thomas Benton, Lewis F. Linn, Dixon H. Lewis, Abel P. Upshur, Henry A. Wise, and William R. King, who was subsequently Vice-President of the United States. Of Mr. Cushing the old lady says: "He was in the Congressional Library. I sent my card to him. He came out. I requested sittings from him, but he behaved so rudely that I felt mortified for having asked him. He promised to sit, however, and named a day when he would meet me at my house. He came according to appointment. I was up stairs. When the colored boy who had shown him in came up to me, I told him to request the gentleman to take a seat in the parlor. The boy did so, but Mr. Cushing said gruffly, ' Never mind; I can take care of myself, can't I?' and he con- tinued pacing up and down the hall until I presented myself. Throughout the first and second sittings his conduct was so care- less and rough as to disgust me. He was vain, too, and very particular about the color of the dress. To provoke me further, he demanded to know all about the materials composing the colors, and spoke as though he knew more of my business than I did myself. When the picture was finished he said, "Why, madam, you have made it too handsome.' 'Ah,' I replied ironi- cally, 'but not so handsome as the original.' That sentence made the vain Senator my firm friend. He at once paid me my price-sixty dollars-and took away the picture. He was so pleased with it that some days afterward, when I was sitting with other ladies in the Senate gallery, the Senator, seeing me, came over and chatted with me so long as to make me feel em- barrassed, for the eyes of many Senators were upon us."
Not long after Judge Upshur's sittings he was killed by the
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explosion of the big gun on the " Princeton." Mrs. Upshur then bought the portrait and blessed the artist for having painted it. For Dixon H. Lewis, "the fat member from Alabama," Miss Peale used a canvas thirty inches wide, and yet " couldn't get the gentleman all on it." The head was right, but the shoulders had to be painted off. Mr. Lewis weighed four hundred and sixty pounds. His seat in the Congressional hall was of twice the or- dinary width. In sitting for the portrait, however, he managed to get along with an ordinary chair, without letting it divide him into two equal parts. But, as he said himself, "it was a terrible job."
When William R. King sat he showed scrupulous care in the choice of every article of his dress and the manner of its arrangement. So precise was he in matters of this kind that his fellow-members rarely called him, outside the halls of Congress, by any other name than " Miss Betsey."
Shively-above Chestnut, p. 104 .- Below ?
Wells and pumps, p. 104 .- The Green Tree pump was famous in its day and after 1800. It stood in Front street above Wal- nut, east side, a few doors above the stores of Robert Ralston. It was afterward covered over or filled up.
P. 104. See p. 425 for an account of the riot at this house in 1779.
THE PENN FAMILY.
P. 105. William Penn's mother was Margaret Jasper, a Dutch woman.
P. 110. William Penn died July 30th, 1718, in his seventy- fourth year, at Ruscombe, Buckinghamshire. A week afterward he was buried in the ground of Jordan's Meeting, Buckingham- shire.
P. 117. There is a letter in the Poultney family dated "29th day of 2d mo., 1695," by Rees Thomas and Martha Thomas, and addressed "most dear and tender father," "ffor William Aubrey att Landbrod in Breckenocke Shire, South Wales, to be delivered with care," which says : "I and my wife and two chil- dren are at this present time" [in health]. "My son Aubrey was born ye 30 day of the 11 month on the fourth day of the week, 1694; his mother and he now very hearty. I do under- stand y thee was not well pleased y my eldest son was not called an Aubrey. I will assure thee I was not against it, but my neighbors would have him called my name, being I bought ye land and I so beloved amongst them. I do admit to what thee sayest in thy letter y+ an Aubrey was better known than I, though I am here very well acquainted with most in these parts:
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The Penn Family.
He is the first Aubrey in Pennsilvania, and a stout boy he is of his age, being now a quarter. My uncle John Beevan came over very well, and a good voyage he had."
He then owned land in the township of Merion, county of Philadelphia, S. E .; the other land is pretty far in the woods. Speaks of Edward Prichard's land, also land joining John Eckly's plantation formerly, and to John Humphreys and to Philip Price and Morris Lewelen and Stephen Eckly. "Have built a barn and a shed for cattle and a stable, and am going to make a stone house for corn, and also built a cellar and one room with a chimney." 1695 was a hard winter, and cattle died.
Motto of the Penn Arms, p. 121 .- The motto of Admiral Penn, the father of William Penn, was Dum clavum teneam, literally, " While I hold the helm," meaning, according to in- ference, " While I hold the helm the ship sails safely." Admiral Sir William Penn, at the time of his death, left two sons and one daughter. Richard, the younger son, survived him only three years. William was the elder. His sister Margaret married Anthony Lowther of Maske, who was a member of Parliament, and their son became a baronet.
During the American war, etc., p. 126 .- A law was passed November 27, 1779, for vesting the Penn estate in the Prov- ince, for which the State agreed to pay one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling to the legatees and devisees of Thomas and Richard Penn, late Proprietaries, and the widow of Thomas Penn-the first payment to be made in one year after the peace was signed. On April 2, 1785, the Council, being ready to pay, order an advertisement for the proper parties to appear and re- ceive their shares. (See Colonial Records, vol. xiv. p. 397.)
P. 126. Granville John Penn, son of Grenville Penn, ar- rived here in 1852. He was about forty years of age, intelli- gent, a modest and unassuming man, a little deaf. It was pro- posed in the Legislature to give him a public reception at Har- risburg, but it did not carry.
April 13, 1857, Granville J. Penn, after an absence of about a year, having returned from Europe, presented to the Pennsyl- vania Historical Society the belt of wampum delivered by the Indians to William Penn at the Treaty under the Great Tree in 1682, it having been preserved in the family till now. (See the U. S. Gazette of April, 1857, for an official account of the in- teresting proceedings at the presentation.)
A very neat lithographic chart of the Penn family, prepared and distributed to his friends, was published by Thomas Gilpin in 1852, and dedicated to Gr. J. Penn. Its author, Thomas Gilpin, an excellent and intelligent man, died March 32, 1853 and was buried at Laurel Hill.
William Penn's Descendant in America .- The hall of the His VOL. III .- G 9
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torical Society was visited by the great-great-great-grandson of William Penn, now resident in London, Peter Penn-Gaskell, Esq., of Shanagarry Castle in Ireland, and his wife, an English lady. The party were received by the president and other offi- cers of the society, and some hours were spent in examining the "Penn Manuscripts " (now contained in about eighty large vol- umes) and the numerous very curious and authentic memorials of the founder of our Commonwealth-among them his Bible. The volume contains an engraved book-plate, with Penn's name thus given in an antique letter : "William Penn, Esqr., Pro- prietor of Pennsylvania, 1703."
One of the Descendants of Penn .- In 1877 the funeral of Mary Penn-Gaskell, wife of Dr. Isaac T. Coates of Chester, Pa., took place from the residence of her mother, No. 4058 Chestnut street, Philadelphia. ] Deceased was a daughter of Peter Penn-Gaskell, who was descended from Peter Gas- kell, the husband of one of William Penn's granddaughters. At this marriage the family name was changed to Penn- Gaskell, its members being the only descendants of Penn in America.
The Penn Society was established about the year 1824 to commemorate the landing of William Penn. In Independ- ence Hall is a large portrait of William Penn which was painted for the Penn Society. (For various accounts of the commemoration of the landing of William Penn by the Penn Society, see Hazard's Register, vols. ii. to xvi.) The last account of a celebration by the society in that publication is in October, 1835. At that time J. Parker Norris was president of the so- ciety, and Peter S. Duponceau vice-president. The latter, in his speech on that occasion, said that the society had been in operation eleven years. It built the small monument at the Treaty Ground in Kensington in 1827.
The Penn Society celebrated the one hundred and ninety-fifth anniversary of the landing of William Penn at New Castle on October 27th, 1877. The celebration ought to have been on November 7th, 1877, according to new style. It was on the 27th of October, 1682 (old style), that the Founder arrived at New Castle. By the reformation of the calendar in 1752 eleven days were dropped, and it is still necessary to drop eleven days ; which operation pushes forward a real anniversary or turning of a year eleven days. Thus, we celebrate the birthday of Wash- ington-who was born February 11th, old style-on the 22d of February.
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The Character of Penn.
THE CHARACTER OF WILLIAM PENN.
The following eloquent address was delivered by the Hon. Wayne McVeagh before the Penn Club of Philadelphia on the one hundred and ninety-fifth anniversary of the landing of Wil- liam Penn, the Founder of Pennsylvania. The audience included prominent men of the city, and as special guests the members of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.
GENTLEMEN : The executive committee of the Penn Club thought it not unbecoming to gather its friends together upon this anniversary of the landing of him whose name it bears upon the soil of the State he founded, and their partiality has devolved upon me the agreeable duty of expressing the gratification the members of the club feel at your presence, and the heartiness of the welcome they desire to proffer you. They are especially glad to receive the learned members of the Historical Society of Penn- sylvania, and to avail themselves of this opportunity to bear their testimony to the inestimable value of the distinguished services that society has already rendered, and the services more distin- guished, if possible, which it is destined to render, in enlightening and elevating the patriotism of the citizens of the imperial Com- monwealth whose early history it has caused to be investigated with so much patience and illustrated with so great discernment. It is, indeed, on no less an authority than my Lord Bacon, who, in " the true marshalling of the sovereign degrees of honor," assigns " the first place to the conditores imperiorum, founders of states and commonwealths;" and cultivated communities have always com- memorated with pride the virtues of the heroic men who laid the foundations of their strength and greatness. Apart, however, from any patriotic interest natural to us, the story of American colonization is one of the most interesting and attractive episodes in human history. It was an age of marvellous ambition and of marvellous achievements; and except those sunny years at Athens during which the human spirit attained and preserved the serenest and completest culture it has ever known, perhaps blood was never less sluggish, thought never less commonplace, lives never less monotonous, than in the early days of the settlement of America. Great scientific discoveries had filled the minds of men with thirst for wider knowledge. Mechanical inventions of price- less value had awakened in them an eager desire to avail them- selves of their advantages. By the aid of movable type wise books could be cheaply printed. By the aid of the mariner's compass great ships could be safely sailed. By the aid of gunpowder vir- gin lands could be rescued from savage tribes. The illustrious names of that illustrious time crowd upon our recollection, for their renown still kindles the flame of a generous emulation in all the leading departments of virtuous human effort-in art, in ad- venture, in discovery of new lands, in philosophy, in poetry, ir
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searching for the secrets of Nature, in subjecting the forces of Nature to the will of man, in heroism in war by sea and by land, in sacrifices for liberty of conscience. It cannot therefore do us harm to stand, as it were, a little while in the presence of any emi- nent man of that formative period, and by the contemplation of his spirit to quicken our own as by coals of fire from off an altar. In Sir Thomas More's portrayal of the perfect state we are told that "they set up in the market-place the images of such men as had been bountiful benefactors to the commonwealth, for the per- petual memory of their good acts, and also that the glory and renown of the ancestors might stir and provoke their posterity to virtue." This is an anniversary of the most momentous event in the eventful career of him who has been our most bountiful bene- factor, and we may wisely, therefore, withdraw a few moments from the social enjoyments of the evening to look once more upon a likeness of our Founder. It is true that when he landed at Up- land he entered into possession of a Province which had before attracted the attention of great statesmen, and been selected by them as the theatre of a novel and lofty experiment in govern- ment ; for it was here that Gustavus Adolphus hoped to secure a city of refuge for the oppressed, and the sagacious Oxenstiern hoped to realize his beneficent scheme of colonization ; and it was here that Christina had founded a New Sweden, whose simple- minded, pious, and frugal citizens purchased the lands they cov- eted, and tilled them with their own hands, living in peace with all their neighbors ; but nevertheless the coming of William Penn was the founding of Pennsylvania, and in spite of all abatement, though he
Was flamed For Adam, much more Christ,
yet he was eminently worthy of the greatness of his trust. He had inherited a distinguished name and a great opportunity. His grandfather had been a captain in the English merchant service in the latter years of the reign of Elizabeth, when that service was perhaps the best school which ever existed to render men alert, brave, self-reliant, and capable of confronting any peril with an equal mind. His father had been raised in the same school, and had developed at a very early age remarkable capacity for naval warfare. To this capacity he added a handsome pres- ence, courtly manners, and such political virtue as was not incom- patible with regarding his own advancement as the principal duty of his life. At twenty-one he was a captain in the English navy, at thirty-one he was vice-admiral of England, at thirty-four he was a member of Parliament, at forty-three he was captain-com- mander under the duke of York, and died shortly after his retire- ment from the naval board, before he had attained fifty years of age. The rapidity of his promotion to great offices is very re-
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markable when it is remembered that he served the Parliament, Charles I., the Lord Protector, and Charles II., and continued to rise steadily notwithstanding the civil war and the frequent changes of administration it produced. He was quite evidently a worldly-minded man, but he was also wise with the wisdom of the world, and by adding to his great services the favor of his sovereign he laid the foundation of a noble house, needing only for its security that his son should follow in his footsteps and with filial piety accept the wealth and rank and fame which were proffered him. The son had been born near the Tower of Lon- don while his father was sailing down the Thames to join Lord Warwick in the Irish seas, and had passed his childhood with his mother, Margaret Jasper of Rotterdam, at their country-house at Wamstead in Essex. He was only eleven years of age when his father returned from the fruitless attack upon Hispaniola and was consigned to the Tower by Cromwell. But at that early age he was profoundly impressed by his father's misfortune. When about sixteen years of age he was sent to Oxford, and was matric- ulated as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church. At that time the world certainly appeared to be opening before his youthful vision in undimmed radiance and beauty. The son of a great admiral, who was also a great favorite of the king and of his royal brother, he entered upon his academical career under the most brilliant auspices. Fond of study and athletic sports, a diligent reader and good boatman, he easily won his way to the esteem of his teachers and the regard of his fellows, and for a time he satisfied all expectations ; but for students of high intel- ligence and sensitive conscience venerable and beautiful Oxford, " spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages," possesses a charm which may be a danger. Walking in the spacious mea- dows of his college or meditating beneath her noble elms, Wil- liam Penn became possessed by the genius of the place, for the chief university of the world has always been " the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impos- sible loyalties." It was while under the influence of this spirit that he was attracted by the doctrines of George Fox, and for his stubborn loyalty to what he was then pleased to call his con- victions he was finally expelled. To withdraw him as much as possible from the thoughts upon which he was at that time intent, his father sent him to the Continent, and at Paris he was pre- sented at the court of the Grand Monarch and heartily welcomed. He entered with becoming spirit into the enjoyments of the French capital, and proved his title to its citizenship by fighting a duel in its streets. Thence he went to the famous College of Saumur, where he finished those liberal studies which made him not only an accomplished linguist, but a man of most varied and generous culture. He afterward travelled through France and
9 *
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Italy, and returned to England to dance attendance at Whitehall for a brief period, and to share in the perils of a naval engage- ment on board the flagship of his father. He afterward devoted some attention to the law as a student at Lincoln's Inn, but he soon joined the staff of the duke of Ormond, then viceroy of Ire- land. While acting in this capacity he saw some military service, and apparently contracted a strong desire to devote himself to the career of a soldier. Indeed, he earnestly and repeatedly sought his father's permission to enter the British army, but the permis- sion was steadily refused. It was at this interesting period of his life that the authentic portrait of him now in possession of our Historical Society was painted-a portrait which dispels many of the mistaken opinions of his person and his character generally entertained. It presents him to us clad in armor, of frank coun- tenance and features delicate and beautiful, but resolute, with his hair " long and parted in the centre of his forehead," " falling over his shoulders in massive natural ringlets." This portrait bears the date of his twenty-second birthday and the martial motto, " Pax quæritus bello."
It is to William Penn, as presented by this portrait, that I es- pecially desire to attract your attention this evening-to William Penn as an accomplished cavalier, a ripe scholar, a brave soldier, and in the full glow of his youthful beauty, the product of the quiet years of motherly companionship at Wamstead, of the rest- less, aspiring, combative years at Christ Church, of the gay society of Paris, of the studious vigils at Saumur, of Italian air and sky, of the depraved court at Whitehall, of the chambers of Lincoln's Inn, of the vice-regal staff at Dublin, of the joy of battle on the deck beside his father in the Channel, or joining as a volunteer in the attack at Carrickfergus.
This portrait fitly represents him in mail, for his life thencefor- ward was one long battle, relieved only by the brief repose of his courtship and his honeymoon in the attractive and historic circle in which he found his wife-a circle which included Isaac Pen- nington, Thomas Ellwood, and John Milton. It is not my pur- pose, as it is not my privilege, to detain you upon this occasion with any elaborate statement of his subsequent life or any elabo- rate estimate of his character. Ample opportunity will be afforded in the recurrence of this anniversary and the celebration of it for the diligent historical students who honor us with their presence to-night to arrange the details of that life in lucid order and to praise his character with discriminating eulogy. Its main outlines only concern us now, but those outlines are full of instruction and of interest for us all. We know, and we are glad to know, that his desire to be useful to his fellow-men could not exhaust itself even by preaching the gospel as he understood it, in season and out of season, but that to this great labor of love he added other like labors scarcely less great. He defended the rights of con-
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