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 12
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In 1699 the attention of the Swedish king was called to the great destitution of the colony, and he despatched two ministers to it. In the year 1702 a settlement was made by the Swedes in this immediate locality. In 1733 a school-house was estab- lished. Dr. Wrangel, who dedicated Christ Church in 1760, brought with him substantial aid from the king of Sweden. By degrees the Swedish service came into disuse, and that of the Protestant Episcopal Church was substituted.
Swanson street, p. 149 .- "SINGULAR DISCOVERY .- In digging in the cellar of an old house in Swanson street above Shippen, known as the ' Washington Hotel,' a vault was discovered which extends to a considerable distance, and seems to have been used as a place of confinement. A large leaden pipe was found running along .it of four or five inches in diameter, the use of which it is difficult to conjecture. In the wall was a large iron ring with a chain attached, and the bones of a human skeleton were found along- side of this."-Bulletin and Inquirer, April 18, 1855.
Samuel Hazard and others visited the place, and they saw nothing to warrant such a conclusion, but many things to lead to a belief that it was a hoax. Afterward, the Evening Bulletin, in which the above first appeared, came out with a considerable article leading to the same conclusion-i. e., " bogus." (See that paper of April 28, 1855.)
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Swedish Settlements on the Delaware.
PROVOST STILLÉ'S ADDRESS.
Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, p. 153 .- A meeting of the Historical Society was held April 16, 1877, to receive from the trustees of the Publication Fund a portrait of Christina, queen of the Swedes, the Goths, and the Vends, copied by Miss Elise Arn- berg of Stockholm from the original by David Beek, a pupil of Vandyke, in the National Museum at Stockholm. The cere- monies were very interesting; President Wallace and Vice-Pres- ident Jones made short addresses, and the venerable member Richard S. Smith presented the painting. The Swedish Quar- tette also sang several of their charming Swedish songs. The president then continued : "The name of Stille is found among those of our early Swedish settlers, and is one of the not very many names of them which come down to us, and come down in form unchanged. For some have, by a very slight modification of a vowel or consonant, passed, I think, into forms not distin- guishable from those of our British colonists; and some, through female lines or failure of issue, have in the course of near three centuries disappeared altogether. That of Stillé, as I say, re- mains, and in this day has received new honor in the person of the accomplished provost of the University of Pennsylvania.
" No man among us is at all so capable to speak about these ancient colonists who came here under Queen Christina as the provost Stillé; and, if he will allow me, I will ask him to say something to us on this interesting occasion, where, with heredi- tary right, he is so naturally present."
Mr. Provost Stille then addressed the meeting :
" MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN : I think that the Historical Society is to be congratulated upon the acquisition of a portrait of Queen Christina. It will serve not merely to re- call an important epoch in our own local history, but also to em- phatically mark the period when the principles of European colon- ization on this continent, then quite novel, were established. It is true that the Swedish colony settled here in 1638 under the queen Christina was not the one projected on so magnificent a scale by her father, Gustavus Adolphus. The colony remained a dependency of the Swedish crown for only seventeen years; its members were merely a few Swedish peasants, not exceeding, even sixty years after its settlement, a thousand in number ; it held within its bosom the germ of some of our characteristic American ideas, but it had little to do with their growth; its in- habitants were a God-fearing, simple-hearted, law-abiding race, who, while they had, like all adventurers, dreams of a brighter home beyond the seas (for they named the first land they saw on Delaware Bay, Paradise Point), yet knew well that an earthly paradise can only be found by dint of hard work and self-deny- ing virtue.
VOL. III .- H 10 *
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Annals of Philadelphia.
" Yet in the general history of American colonization the sim- ple annals of these people are not without interest. It is not uninstructive, for instance, to find them at that early day, in op- position to the notions of public law then current in. Europe, firmly holding that a true title to lands here should be based upon a purchase from the natives, followed up at once by the occupancy of Europeans ; it is pleasant to think of them, patient, contented, prosperous, never suffering from that restlessness of spirit which has in this country violated so many rights of neigh- borhood; above all, they are to be honored for their persistent devotion to their religion and their Church-that Church which they and their children were able to preserve, in its complete organization, for more than one hundred and twenty years after the crown of Sweden had lost all power here, and which decayed only when the language of her ministrations became a strange tongue to her children.
" The early Swedes, unlike the early settlers from other coun- tries, did not dwell in towns. They were simple farmers, living on the shores of the Delaware and of its many affluents on both sides of the river. Their labors soon made the wilderness to blossom as the rose, and although they found not, as they had been promised, whales in Delaware Bay, nor a climate suited for the cultivation of the vine or the production of silk,* yet they gathered the abundant fruits of their toil in thankfulness, living in peace and quietness, serving God after the manner of their fathers, and, while jealous of the honor and dignity of the royal crown of Sweden, full of kindness and forbearance toward those who denied their claim to the lands upon which they dwelt. There is, indeed, a pastoral simplicity in the lives of these rugged chil- dren of the North when transplanted to the shores of the Del- aware which, to say the least, is not a common feature in our American colonization. Their ideal of life seems to have been a sort of modern Arcadia, where,
'Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray ; Along the cool, sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.'
"It is, I think, to be regretted that while we possess the por- trait of Queen Christina, we have not those of her great father, Gustavus Adolphus, and of their illustrious chancellor, Oxen- stiern. I firmly believe that these two men, in their scheme for colonizing the shores of the Delaware, are entitled to the credit
* Of course whale-fishing as a pursuit is meant. At that time whales were not uncommon, and even now an occasional one is seen. A right whale of the lar- gest size was not long ago caught in Delaware Bay, and its fine skeleton is among the rich collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences. The vine can be culti- vated and silk produced, but whether with profit is yet to be determined.
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Swedish Settlements on the Delaware.
of the first attempt in modern times to govern colonies for some higher purpose than that of enriching the commercial and manu- facturing classes of the mother-country.
" The gloomiest chapter in modern history, it has always seemed to me, is that which shows the result of the policy adopted by near- ly all the European nations toward those of their subjects who emigrated to this continent. It was based upon a desire to grat- ify the insatiable cupidity of the commercial spirit which had been evoked by the discovery of America. It was carried out persistently, with an utter disregard of the rights of the inhab- itants or subjects, or their interests as colonists.
" Far different was the policy which led to the Swedish colon- ization of the shores of the Delaware. The colony was projected by a king with all the resources of a powerful state at his disposal, and his wish was to establish here an empire upon a new basis, and not merely to provide another home beyond the seas for a few hundred Swedish peasants. It must be remembered that the Swedish emigrants were not fugitives from the persecution and oppression of their rulers at home, but that they were, on the contrary, favored subjects of their sovereign, proposed to be sent out under his express protection as the vanguard of an army to found a free state, where they and those who might join them, from whatever nation they might come, might be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, and especially of their rights of conscience. No doubt the expectation of extending Swedish commerce was one of the motives which led to the founding of the colony, but it seems always to have been a subordinate one. If we wish to understand the real significance of the scheme, its paramount and controlling impulse, we must look upon the colony as the outgrowth of the Thirty Years' War, and its establishment as a remedy for some of the mani- fold evils of that war which had suggested itself to the capa- cious and statesmanlike minds of Gustavus Adolphus and Ox- enstiern. It seems true that it was designed not so much as a place of settlement for Swedish freemen as a refuge where Ger- mans and Danes, who had been persecuted for conscience' sake, might live in peace under the protection of the champion of Protestantism and Swedish law.
" It is true that this grand conception of the king and Oxen- stiern was never fully carried out. This was due to causes which neither of them could have foreseen or controlled, and it in no wise lessens the claim which the memory of both these great men has upon the gratitude of posterity.
" A glance at contemporaneous history will serve to show how novel and comprehensive were the views of colonization held by the great Gustavus. We are told that in 1626, Usselinx ob- tained from the king a charter for a commercial company with the privilege of founding colonies. The charter provided that
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the capital might be subscribed for by persons from any country, and colonists were invited to join the expedition from every part of Europe. In this invitation the proposed colony was described as a benefit to the persecuted, a security to the honor of the wives and daughters of those whom war and bigotry had made fugi- tives, a blessing to the ' common man' and to the whole Protest- ant world.
" What, then, was the condition of the Protestant world in 1626 that it needed such a refuge beyond the seas? I need only remind you of the gathering of the storm in England which three years later drove the Puritans across the ocean to found the colony of Massachusetts Bay. The Protestants in Germany and Denmark were at that time in the midst of that storm, exposed to all its pitiless fury. The Thirty Years' War -a war unexampled in history for the cruel sufferings which it inflicted upon non-combatants-was at its height. The Protest- ants were yielding everywhere; nothing could resist the military power of Wallenstein, who, supporting his army upon the pillage of the miserable inhabitants of the country, pressed forward to the shores of the Baltic, with the avowed intention of making that sea an Austrian lake. The great Protestant leaders, Mans- feld, Christian of Brunswick, the king of Denmark, were dead, and their followers and their families were a mass of dispersed fugitives fleeing toward the North and imploring succor. Gus- tavus had not then embarked in the German war, but his heart was full of sympathy for the cause in which these poor people were suffering as martyrs, and I think it cannot be doubted that this scheme of colonization occurred to him as a practical method of reducing the horrors which he was forced to witness.
"The faith of the king in the wisdom of this scheme seems never to have wavered. In the hour of his complete triumph over their enemies he begged the German princes whom he had rescued from ruin to permit their subjects to come here and live under the protection of his powerful arm. He spoke to them just before the battle of Lützen of the proposed colony as 'the jewel of his crown,' and after he had fallen a martyr to the cause of Protestantism on that field his chancellor, acting, as he says, at the express desire of the late king, renewed the patent for the colony, extended its benefits more fully to Germany, and secured the official confirmation of its provisions by the Diet at Frankfort.
" The colony which came to these shores in 1638 was not the colony planned by the great Gustavus. The commanding genius which could forecast the permanent settlement of a free state here, based upon the principle of religious toleration-the same principle in the defence of which Swedish blood was poured out like water upon the plains of Germany-had been removed from this world. With him had gone, not perhaps the zeal for his
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Poole's Bridge-Penn's Cottage.
grand and noble design, but the power of carrying it out. It has been said that the principle of religious toleration which was agreed to at the peace of Westphalia in 1648, which closed the Thirty Years' War, and soon after became part of the public law of Europe, is the corner-stone of our modern civilization, and that it has been worth more to the world than all the blood that was shed to establish it. With this conflict and this victory the fame of Gustavus Adolphus is inseparably associated, but we ought not to forget that when, during the long struggle, he some- times feared that liberty of conscience could never be established upon an enduring basis in Europe, his thoughts turned to the shores of the Delaware as the spot where his cherished ideal of human society, so far in advance of the civilization of the age in which he lived, might become a glorious reality."
Poole's Bridge, p. 156 .- See Hazard's Colonial Records, vol. ii. p. 561, where a petition from Philadelphia asks for " an alteration of a new road lately laid out from the river Delaware in the county of Bucks, opposite John Reading's landing, to Philadelphia, and that in lieu thereof the road formerly laid out from Nathaniel Poole's to William Coates's corner, and so over the Governor's Mill Creek to the said mill's landing-place, and from thence in a direct course to the end of the lane between the lands of Isaac Norris and Job Good- son, may be made the public road from this city to join said new road at the lane aforesaid." Commissioners were appointed to lay it out accordingly-viz. R. Hill, Jonathan Dickinson, Thomas Mas- ters, Job Goodson, Richard Waln, and William Coates, or " some four of them," Oct. 16, 1712. (See their report and record of it Jan. 14, 1712-13, Col. Recs., vol. ii. p. 562.)
LETITIA COTTAGE.
Penn's Cottage-" Penn's gate over against Friends' Meeting," etc., p. 158 .- This is not the language used in Colonial Records, vol. i. p. 132. It is ordered to be read " before the governor's gate in the town of Philadelphia." (See it correctly quoted in I. p. 161.) "The new laws from their originals, under His Ex- cellency's hand," etc., are to be published by the sheriff and con- stables " at the market-place " in Philadelphia. (Col. Recs., vol. i. p. 376.) And on p. 153 of same volume it is ordered that a " notice" (of a meeting of Council) be "Sett up at ye Gate." " Friends' Meeting," moreover, was not built till 1695. (See further notes to p. 159.) Doyle's inn resembled the engraving opposite p. 158 very much.
P. 159. This old house or inn " at the head of the court " was removed about 1855, and the whole street opened to its width
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Annals of Philadelphia.
with the ten feet (?) passage over and beyond Black Horse alley (formerly Ewer's alley). The old stables on the south of the alley were also removed, and a row of several fine brick stores running north and south built thereon, fronting upon the street or court formerly occupied by the stables. The street was after this extended through to Chestnut street, purchased by holders of property on each side, and fine stores were erected on it in 1856.
See Hazard's Col. Records, vol. i. p. 317, afterward repeated on p. 328, where the Proprietary says in a letter to his commissioners read 2d 11th mo., 1689-90: "If the Province will build me a house in the city for my reception, upon my lot, leaving me to make additions thereto if there be occasion, I hope to be there as soon as that is finished. I have sent Col. Markham my model."
There is a plan of this court and the neighborhood of Market and Second streets on record in Book M, No. 14, Recorder's office, which places the Letitia or some other house at the head of the court in 1698; it is the only building on the court, none being then on the west side. This would seem to fix the question as to the "Letitia House," and that Penn had then no other house in the court.
But this plan places the court nearer to Front street than the present court seems to be, though the shape of it appears to be the same. The plan was surveyed and drawn by Edward Pen- ington, surveyor-general .* On the site of the old "Jersey mar- ket," standing in 1855, is placed "the prison ;" twenty-four feet east of it " the prison-yard," and farther east "plot designed for court-house." The "Cage" and the "Bell" are placed at the intersection of Second and High streets, and the "Meeting- house " (Quaker) is at the south-west corner of Second and High, and Arthur Cook's lot is at the north-west corner. The lot west of the court to Second street, and south upon it one hun- dred and twenty feet, and east to Front, is called "Letitia Penn's lot." The plan is " drawn this 23d day of the 12th month, 1698," by Edward Penington, S. G. (See Bulletin or Inquirer of May 24, 1855.) "Fishey court, Market street," is mentioned in the Penna. Archives, vol. ix. p. 364. Was this Letitia court ? and was the fish-market ever held there?
Upon reviewing the testimony as to the location of Penn's Cot- tage, we are inclined to believe, with Mr. Watson, the Rising Sun Hotel on the west side of the court to have been the original house constructed in 1682 or '3 for William Penn, and afterward the property of his daughter, though in all our younger days we heard the house at the head of the court spoken of as the spot.
* Edward Penington is called by Penn "my brother-in-law." He was the son of Isaac Penington, husband of the widow Lady Springett, the mother of Penn's first wife, Gulielma Springett. It was therefore only courtesy in Penn calling Edward Penington his brother-in-law, he being only a half-brother to Gulielma Penn. He was appointed surveyor after the death of Thomas Holme. He died in 1701.
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The Slate-Roof House.
Yet it is very hard to get over the testimony we give of Pening- ton's plan and survey. What other house could have stood there ? and if another house, why did he not put two houses down in his plan of 1698 ? If the house stood at the head of the court, it might have faced the river and yet been at the end of the court. This house of Penn's might have afterward been torn down and a new one built on its site facing Market street, as the one torn down when the court was opened through did. About 1760 a house was built across the head of Letitia court, which was first occupied by Benjamin Jackson, then by William Brad- ford, and afterward by John Doyle, who changed the name from Leopard Tavern to Penn Hall. Gottlieb Zimmerman established after 1830 a "free-and-easy," the first of its kind, to which he charged a " fip " (or six and a quarter cents) admission, giving as a ticket a copper token on which his initials, "G. Z.," were stamped. As above stated, this inn was torn down in 1855.
William Penn gave his daughter the house and lot on which it stood, and on her marriage to William Aubrey he agreed to in- crease the value up to two thousand pounds. The lots not sell- ing very rapidly, she and her husband became very urgent for her agent here to sell the lots into which the estate was cut up, and he even charged her father interest on whatever balance there was due of the two thousand pounds, until Penn himself became angered at their importunities and his grasping character. Her husband died before her, and she died in 1746. The house has for perhaps a hundred years been used as a tavern; it was known as the Rising Sun Inn, and now as the Woolpack Hotel.
P. 161. Penn's instructions are dated Sept. 30th, 1681. (See Hazard's Annals.)
SLATE-ROOF HOUSE.
P. 165. The Slate-Roof House, south-east corner of Second and Norris's alley (now called Gothic street), was built by Sam- uel Carpenter about 1699. It is not exactly known who occu- pied it during the Revolution. The house was occupied as a boarding-house by somebody during the Revolution, and Baron Steuben and his aide, Major Peter S. Duponceau, put up there immediately after the British evacuation, in June, 1778.
Isaac Norris removed from this house to his country estate of Fairhill in 1717.
During Mrs. Graydon's occupancy, besides many British officers and other distinguished persons, a number of distinguished ladice boarded there, many of them belonging to the nobility. After Mrs. Graydon's time Hancock and Washington stayed here in 1775. In after years it came to be occupied by various trades- men-tailors, engravers, silversmiths, jewellers, and a variety of
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Annals of Philadelphia.
others. The space between the bastions was filled and made into two stores. The property got to look very dilapidated and an- tique, and its tenants sunk to lower grades, and in my time I remember it a second-hand clothing shop, a fruit-store, shell- and curiosity-shop, etc.
Elliott Cresson had left ten thousand dollars to purchase it for the Historical Society, but it was nothing like its value, and it was not bought. It was sold to the Commercial Exchange in 1868 by the Norris family heirs, and the present Commercial Exchange's fine building stands upon its site. It was finished in March, 1869, burnt in the following December, and soon rebuilt.
The eccentric General Charles Lee, etc., p. 166 .- He died Octo- ber 2, 1782, at the sign of the Conestoga Wagon, in Market street, second story, almost unattended except by his two faithful dogs. He was buried in Christ's Church yard, and it may have been from the Slate House. (See Shallcross's Tables, vol. ii. p. 259; Letter from Dr. Clarkson to Rev. Dr. Belknap in Life of Dr. B., pp. 94, 95 ; and Cymry of 1776, by Dr. Alex. Jones, p. 24, but which contains several errors.) Others have stated that General Lee died at the City Tavern, which was at the south-west corner of Second street and the street now called Gold street.
Act November 12, 1861. A portion of Christ Church yard having been sold to the city to widen the street through to Third street, the wall on the north side of the small alley was moved back to a line with the stores, which made it necessary to remove General Lee's and other remains farther inward toward the church.
A paper of the 26th April, etc., p. 167 .- See it at length in Lowber's edition of the city ordinances and acts of Assembly, published for Councils by Moses Thomas, 1812, p. 280; also, Penn's answer to remonstrance, etc., dated 3d 6 mo., 1684.
P. 170. The Crooked Billet store extended nearly to the water, leaving only a footway along its south side ; it was a blockmaker's shop of frame, with a dock running up near to the stores below it. Before 1850 the building was removed and the dock filled up, so that now there is a passage and stores built all along the wharf. It stood at the north-east corner of the first alley north of Chestnut, just above Jones's iron stores. (See p. 47 for the story of the cave at the Crooked Billet.)
The Caves, p. 171 .- See Hazard's Col. Recs., vol. vii. pp. 160, 163, 167, 199, 201.
On the 17th of 9th mo., p. 171 .- It was the 5th of 9th mo. (See Col. Recs., pp. 161, 163.)
P. 171. William Frampton's petition for the removal of the caves before his door ; owners allowed a fortnight. (Pp. 167, 199.)
P. 171. 13th 2d mo., 1687, to be removed by 20th 3d mo. (P. 201.)
P. 171. The letter received from Governor Penn was dated 26th 5th mo., 1685. (See Col. Recs., vol. i. p. 163.) This letter was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer at length in 1861.
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The Wardrobe of Franklin.
P. 173. Tennant's church was the Second Presbyterian Church, corner of Third and Arch streets, which had a steeple.
P. 173. A contemporary, speaking of Rev. George Whitefield's preaching in Philadelphia, says : "So loud was his voice that it was distinctly heard on the Jersey shore. So distinct was his speech that every word he said was understood on board a shallop at Market street wharf, a distance of upward of four hundred feet from the court-house on Market street-the place of preaching." Dr. Franklin says that to try the capacity of Whitefield's voice, when he was speaking from the balcony of the court-house at Second and Market streets, he walked toward the river Delaware, and he could hear, and he understood what he said, almost as far east as Front street. This, of course, implies that his words were undistinguishable at Front street; and if so, there would have been less ability to understand them by persons on the deck of a vessel moored in the river opposite Market street wharf. Of course the sound of his voice might be heard there, and even, with a westerly wind, upon the Jersey shore-the city being at the time very quiet, and there not being any distracting noises.
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