USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. II > Part 21
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taries' favor: so, with the secreting from the People as practised in that day, and as still tolerated from representative governments in matters of diplomacy, this address was never made public, until Gov. Thomas quoted from it, ten years later. Then the plausible explanation was given that it had not been proper to print it before it was presented. The Act itself was never laid before the King in Council, but was carried out.
Kearsley and Horne, of those Assemblymen ordered to transmit the address to the Proprietaries, asked Springett or John Penn to come to the Province, in- stead of depending upon agents' reports as to the in- habitants. By this time much had been done toward clearing the estate of William Penn, the Founder. The three sons by the second wife wrote on Nov. 11, 1728, that, as they expected sufficient to pay all the debts, which then amounted to about £2900, no manors nor reversion of lots on the river bank should be sold.
The aforesaid £2900 may or may not have been ex- clusive of the balance on the mortgage, which was to be met by the purchase money due from the Dickinson family for part of the Springettsbury manor in Phila- delphia County. Jonathan Dickinson, the Councillor, having agreed in 11 mo., 1717-8, to the terms of £1. 6s. 8d. stg. per acre for the northern part of Springetts- bury, Philadelphia Co., there had been conveyed to him by lease and release of 5 mo. 9 & 10, 1718, all the 1230 acres, as then computed, in the present City of Phila- delphia between Ridge Avenue and the Schuylkill River from Fairmount Avenue to a line running southwest- wardly from near the intersection of Ridge Avenue and Montgomery Avenue, except 134 acres previously sold. He gave a mortgage for all or part of the purchase money, and left the plantation to his son John. The balance due on the mortgage, viz: £1100, with interest, appears to have been paid to the surviving mortgagees
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of the Province and Territories before the end of 1728. . By lease and release of Jany. 13 and 14, 1729, when Joshua Gee and John Woods were the only mortgagees living, they released the Province and Territories, ac- knowledging full payment of the money borrowed by William Penn in 1708 and interest.
The Proprietaries, in the Spring of 1729, were still wishing to sell the government to the Crown, and had thought of getting a bill for the purpose passed by Parliament, but had not undertaken it, having had enough trouble in preventing an enactment which would have hindered the making of any bar iron in Pennsyl- vania.
A new county to cover the region west of the northern branch of the Octorara, and south of the Schuylkill, was erected under the name of Lancaster County by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council on May 2, 1729, and, by Act passed May 10 following, provision was made for judicial proceedings &ct. therein, and for the choice by the qualified voters therein of four represen- tatives in the Assembly. The first officers appointed were not Scotch-Irish, with the exception of Thomas Reid, a Justice, and Andrew Galbraith, the Coroner. Robert Barber, Sheriff at the organization, and for the year beginning in October, 1729, was from Yorkshire, had 1000 acres on the Susquehanna below Chickies Hill, and built a house at the site of the present town of Columbia, together with a building used as a jail. John Wright from Manchester, England, who had the ferry at Columbia, and Samuel Blunston, son of deceased Councillor John Blunston, were among the Justices.
The Assembly on May 10, 1729, also imposed a duty of 40s. upon all aliens arriving, and of 20s. upon every Irish servant or passenger whose transportation was to be redeemed or paid for after arrival. This, how- ever, was repealed nine months later.
The last temporary Act for imposing a duty upon
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negroes imported being about to expire, an Act of May 10, 1729, permanently imposed the reduced duty of 2l. on the same "human chattels." This Act, like many others, was never submitted to the King, but continued in force until after the period of this history.
In 1729, the Five Nations, or, rather, the Six Nations, having gone on the war path, there were several battles between bodies of them and bodies of Southern Indians combined with colonists of the provinces from which they came. The Pennsylvania tributaries became in- volved, and suffered losses which their small numbers made considerable. The Shorry Indians (Cherokees ?) of South Carolina are mentioned as killing fifty-nine men, probably including Conestogas, at the Five Nation town. Carondowana, alias Robert Hunter, was cap- tured, and died, perhaps being put to death. Nine Shawnees who had settled on a branch of the Potomac near the Great Mountains were killed or captured.
Traders from Pennsylvania had followed the Indians who had gone to Allegheny. To all the remote traders Gordon wrote on Oct. 4, 1729, a letter of instructions : among other means of preserving tranquillity,-fol- lowing justice, courtesy, and humanity,-they were not to furnish strong liquor, not to drink with or deal with drunken Indians, not to raise dislike against any white person, but to enter into a mutual agreement fixing reasonable prices, and not to undermine one another.
In October, 1729, the Assembly of Pennsylvania elected Hamilton as Speaker. He did not go through the farce of asking to be excused, but boldly accepted the office, when appearing before the Lieutenant-Gov- ernor. Hamilton was often reelected. A number of Germans were naturalized by an Act of the Assembly of 1729, Gordon expecting that this would increase his party at the polls.
On Feb. 11, 1729-30, the House considering a proposi- tion to reemit for sixteen years the bills of credit paid
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back, Gordon declared that he would not enact another law to issue bills, unless he heard of the royal allowance of the last Act on the subject, he being led by reports from England to believe that any further steps in rela- tion to paper money would endanger the whole of it.
From the founding of the colony, debtors, who, after a temporary imprisonment, were found unable to pay, were to satisfy by servitude, if the creditor desired it, under direction of the court, the period of servitude being limited by Act of Jany. 12, 1705-6, to seven years for an unmarried debtor under the age of fifty-three, and five years in the case of married men under forty- six. It had become common for husbandmen and others to purchase the labor of those so ordered to serve. On Feb. 14, 1729-30, an Act was passed for the discharge of debtors owing less than 100l. who disclosed all their property, unless the creditor allowed to the prisoner a weekly sum fixed by the court, not exceeding 3s., the property, in case of a discharge, to be sold to pay all creditors. By an Act passed a year later, prisoners unable to pay were allowed to satisfy by servitude; and this law was not repealed until after the American Revolution.
Nathaniel Newlin's place among the Trustees of the General Loan Office had been filled by the appointment of Philip Taylor. The business had been left largely in the hands of William Fishbourn, and the auditing Assemblymen had met with trouble and delay, and found irregularities : so by Act of Aug. 15, 1730, Fish- bourn, Carpenter, and Taylor were discharged, only Langhorne being continued, and Hamilton, Charles Read, and Richard Hayes of Chester Co. were made Trustees. In October following, Fishbourn was to pay over the money in his hands, but, the day before, according to his representation, his house was broken into, and the money stolen. This being disbelieved, after a hearing by both Assembly and Council, he was
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by Act passed on Feb. 6, 1730-1, disqualified for five years after its publication from being a member of Assembly, or holding any office of trust or profit, but, the inability to pay 1779l. 18s. 3 farth. belonging to the public being no more than the failure of a bank, he was allowed to give the Trustees a mortgage upon real estate for that amount, so enormous in those days that the Trustees were subsequently authorized to release on part payments from time to time.
The Council, on Jany. 29, 1730-1, with Logan and Norris present, unanimously favored the reemission of the bills of credit coming in as instalments of principal before Oct. 15, 1737. On Gordon's recommendation, the Assembly decided to employ a regular Agent for the Province in London. Choice was made of Ferdinand John Paris, and £50 yearly salary voted to him. On Feb. 6, the Lieutenant-Governor passed the Act for the reemission.
In the Summer of 1731, Sassoonan, the Delaware King, being drunk, killed his nephew Sam Shacka- tawlin. Then the old King began starving himself, from grief. Opekasset, too, was dead. Gov. Gordon sent for Sassoonan, who, touched by the letter written to him, began to take food, and came with Shikallima, and protested against the great quantity of rum taken to the Indians, and talked with the Proprietary trustees about land, they awaiting the arrival of one of the Penns in the Province for any purchase. As to the rum, Sas- soonan asked that none be taken to Shamokin to sell, that some be lodged for sale at Tulpehocken and Pex- tan, so that, when the women were sent for it, they would not have far to go, and that only four men be allowed to take it to Allegheney.
David Lloyd having died, and Isaac Norris having declined the Chief Justiceship, Logan was appointed to the position in the Fall of 1731. He filled it until Aug. 9, 1739. Displeased by the repeal of the Act of
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1726 superseding the law of 1722 for courts, the Assem- blymen and Lieutenant-Governor, however, construed the law of 1722 to be still in force, and passed a law on Nov. 27, 1731, to confirm process and judgments.
As the reader may have observed, the advance into the wilderness designated in Charles II's letters patent had been by various leaps, made in various directions, by various companies or groups respectively, the com- panies or groups being different in race, recent resi- dence, religion, or reason for coming. The character of the population of these townships, districts, or re- gions except the built-up part of the city, was changing very little. Among the people from Continental Eu- rope there had been some adoption of the ideas of preachers newly met with, but the influence of later comers from home was to reintroduce old ways of liv- ing. The Germans and the Scotch-Irish followed the routes taken respectively by their advance guards ; and greatness in number warded off aliens in blood and habits. In the Quaker country, or the land settled before this history begins, population outside of Phila- delphia, Chester, and Bristol increased subsequently by a high birth-rate, not by immigration, and the ideas and mode of living spoken of in the chapter on the People remained. The water front, and particularly Philadelphia, was the abode of a diversified crowd. How far life there had changed since Quakerism was as strong as it remained in Bucks and Chester counties, is indicated by Theobald Hackett, lately from England and Ireland, in August, 1738, opening a dancing school, and, in 1742, by fencing being taught. In August, 1749, after this history closes, mention is made of the tragedy of Cato being acted: but, on Jany. 8, 1750, attention being called to some persons having lately taken upon themselves to act plays, and intending "to make a fre- quent practice thereof," the City Council asked the
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magistrates to suppress the same. (See Scharf and Westcott's History of Philadelphia.)
As the emporium of the prosperity which we have seen restarted, and also the chief station of the immi- grants, Philadelphia was said by Gov. Gordon in March, 1730-1, to contain about 1000 houses, and was destined before many years to be the largest city in the British colonies. Its importance was crowned by the building of a home for the legislature, the State House, now widely celebrated as Independence Hall. Of the three commissioned to build, Hamilton and Kearsley, mem- bers of opposite factions, could not act in unison, and perhaps Lawrence was unwilling to decide. Hamilton determined to change the location from what had been contemplated, and, with this view, induced the wealthy William Allen, who afterwards became his son-in-law, to secure 198 ft. on the south side of Chestnut between Delaware 5th and 6th, by deed of Oct. 15, 1730. Other lots in the same block were added, and Hamilton, either upon his own responsibility, trusting to his influence as Speaker &ct., or, probably, with the tacit consent of his fellow-commissioner Lawrence, started operations. Frank M. Etting's Historical Account of the old State House says that ground was actually broken in the Spring of 1732. In August of that year, the Assembly ordered Allen to be reimbursed what the ground had cost him, approved of Hamilton's action in choosing the site and his further proceedings, and, upon submission by Hamilton and others, including Kearsley, of plans and elevations, adopted that submitted by Hamilton. The superintendence of construction was assumed by him. In the Winter of 1733, the Assembly was holding ses- sion on the property. On Feb. 20, 1735-6, an Act of Assembly recited the erection of a State House and other buildings at the charge of the Province, and di- rected the title to the buildings and ground, which yet remained in Allen and Hamilton, to be conveyed to
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certain trustees and the survivor in fee in trust for the representatives of the freemen of the Province and such uses as they in General Assembly should appoint. It is said that the hall for the meetings was not com- pletely finished until the Fall of 1736. Work went on for several years, the room for the Supreme Court not being ready before 1743, nor that for the Governor's Council before 1747.
Pennsylvania before the American Revolution was not a region through which wealthy or aristocratic Europeans travelled except in the course of political or military duty. Preachers and religious leaders came. The Eastern Christian, Sheik Sidi Alhazar, of Bey- rout, probably of the Greek or the Maronite Church, who is described by some as an Emir, included Philadelphia in his tour to collect money to pay his tribute to the Sultan. Smith's History of New Jersey says that the Sheik was reported to have collected 2501. in Philadel- phia. He came in the Fall of 1737, and was entertained at public expense; an instance of a Quaker Assembly's hospitality, just as the aforesaid contribution was an instance of the citizens' benevolence overflowing sec- tarian bounds. The bill sent to the Assembly footed up 371. 2s. 6d.
As a result of Penn's dominions being the refuge or the garden of the poor, the adventurous, and the perse- cuted of whatsoever Protestant denomination, and, on the sly, even of some Roman Catholics, the capital or metropolis became headquarters or at least a station in religious propagandism, of which much has been already narrated, and of which the story for the time of these Chronicles will be concluded in the chapter on Unitas Fratrum and Attempted Church Unity.
Partly through this, and partly independently of theology, Philadelphia became also a seat of learning. It was not such through the old Dutch or Swedish fam- ilies, or through the descendants of Penn's "first pur-
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chasers," or through the Englishmen who arrived before his second visit. The second generation of the predominant race, having been reared with less ac- quaintance with literature than the first, and amid serious thoughts and cares, rather smothered any in- clination for what was not spiritually or financially useful. Moreover, had there been a desire to give a son more learning than furnished at the school in Phila- delphia, or by a local ex-schoolmaster, there were no facilities. Harvard College and William and Mary College were the only schools of upper grade in Amer- ica before 1700, and Yale the only other until the last years of this history. Few Pennsylvanians before the death of Penn could afford to send a son to reside in Europe or even New England for education. Robert Assheton's son went to Gray's Inn, as has been men- tioned, and Collector John Moore's son, Thomas, went to England, and took holy orders, never returning, how- ever. For a while, after the earliest Quaker school- masters or the matriculates of foreign colleges had passed away, Logan, apart from the various clergymen, stood alone in literary knowledge, except for Henry Brooke, the Councillor, who arrived in Penn's domin- ions in 1702, and remained until his death, Feb. 6, 1735-6. He was grandson of a baronet, and had come to take the berth of Collector of Customs at Lewes. Logan, who, in one letter, described him as "a young beau, otherwise well accomplished and deserving a bet- ter society," said in another letter: "I take him to be a young man of the most polite education and best natural parts that I have known at least before his time, thrown away on this corner of the world." He also collected a fair library, and whiled away some leisure hours with poetry. Several of his pieces have been found at Stenton, with whose proprietor he was a fre- quent correspondent : and his "Discourse concerning Jests," written in 1705, is published in one of the vol-
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umes of Hazard's Register. He left to Logan all the Italian books given to Brooke by Governor Burnet of New York, and left the rest of his books, English, Latin, French, and Greek, to Rev. William Becket, missionary at Lewes. For those who read for pleasure, not to fit for a profession, Pennsylvania and Delaware, during the period of this history, had to depend upon persons born elsewhere, and did not gain many from the coterie where we naturally would look for them. Office under the Crown or the Proprietaries did not bring over to the Penn dominions the rivals of Logan and Brooke. Richard Peters, Secretary of the Province, came about the time of Brooke's death, but as an unemployed clergyman. Not even one of the Lieutenant-Governors is known to have been a college graduate.
Pretty much all the learning which had not its im- petus from Logan, or which was not possessed by the vagabond class, came as the armory of the missionary and the controversialist, and was largely theological, embracing also ecclesiastical history. There were a limited number of subjects in that day for books giving information, as distinguished from works of the imagi- nation. Outside of medicine and jurisprudence, there was principally ancient history. This and later history were probably thought useful by the clergy, Anglican or Presbyterian, and those whom they influenced. Therefore, while we owe to the Society of Friends the first school, we owe to Tennent the first divinity school, and we must look among the followers of Whitefield for the originator of the University of Pennsylvania, if indeed that institution can claim existence before 1749. In connection with Whitefield, with whose work the chapter on the Church of England ended, have been given the proceedings to establish a school for instruct- ing in the Christian religion and in useful literature. The originator very likely was Logan's wife's nephew. James Read.
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As to the literature of the ancients and the works of imagination of writers since the fall of the Roman Empire, what may be called a revival of human letters took place in Pennsylvania after the death of William Penn.
The establishment of a weekly newspaper among people reading almanacs, devotional books, and con- troversial pamphlets, was a step in this direction. Philadelphia had such a weekly as early as 1719, the third to appear in the colonies, inasmuch as its first number was issued on Dec. 22 of that year, one day later than the Boston Gazette.
Andrew Bradford, who was a son of the printer of George Keith's time, and had come to Philadelphia to follow that trade, undertook the publication, calling the newspaper the American Weekly Mercury. He kept it up until his death in 1742, after which his widow published the Pennsylvania Mercury for about four years; and his nephew, William Bradford, on Dec. 2, 1742, started the Pennsylvania Journal, which, chang- ing its name in 1797 to the True American, lasted until combination with the United States Gazette in 1818.
The examination of Bradford before the Governor and Council in relation to Rawle's pamphlet was only one of several instances of threatening a printer, or of restraining one from freedom in political use of the press, although, after the days of George Keith's con- troversy, there seem to have been liberty and immunity for theological publications.
Among the quasi-professional young men in Penn- sylvania in the earliest years of the American Weekly Mercury, viz: printers, conveyancer's assistants, and the like, were some who were fond of reading, and am- bitious to try versifying. Aquila Rose, who was chief assistant to Andrew Bradford, wrote poetry of some merit. He died in 1723. Samuel Keimer, who had been a printer in London, and for some years one of
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the Second Adventist fanatics called the French Proph- ets, came to Philadelphia, after revolting from them and publishing an exposure, entitled A Brand plucked from the Burning. He became Bradford's rival as a printer. Among Keimer's undertakings was the print- ing of a translation of Diodorus Siculus's history ; and, having attempted a newspaper in London, Keimer began on December 24, 1728, the second newspaper in Philadelphia, calling it The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. This he sold out to Franklin and Meredith, printing as his last number that of Sep. 25, 1729. Under Franklin, it was well known as the Pennsylvania Gazette, and has been claimed as the early form of the present Saturday Evening Post. Keimer's original undertaking was to issue weekly as the first part of the paper a part of an encyclopædia; an attempt creditable to his learning, but which the purchasers from him discontinued at · once.
A merchant's clerk in Philadelphia for a short time was James Ralph, probably not born there, who went to London with Franklin in 1724, and in England be- came a writer of prose and rhyme, ultimately in the employ of politicians. Charles James Fox, referring to a history of England which Ralph started, called him "the most diligent historian we possess for the time of Charles II."
Benjamin Franklin, to whom Philadelphia owes so many institutions that he might be called its Second Founder, sometimes delved into metaphysics, and was far from ignorant of belles-lettres; while he more par- ticularly fostered knowledge which was of every day practical use, and, by his conclusions and inventions, became the best known American of his time in the scientific world. He had already written a ballad which sold well in Boston, his native place, when, in October, 1723, less than eighteen years old, he came to Phila-
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delphia, running away from apprenticeship under his brother, who was a printer and newspaper publisher. In Philadelphia, he obtained employment under Keimer. Going to London on the delusive promises of Sir William Keith, as has been mentioned, he spent about two years there in a printing office. Returning in the Autumn of 1726, he was clerk to a Quaker merchant, and, upon the latter's death, began again as a printer, being reemployed by Keimer. Forming a partnership with Hugh Meredith, Franklin soon established an inde- pendent printing office in Philadelphia, and, in the course of years in the business, became rich.
In the employ of Keimer at the time of Franklin's returning to him, was George Webb, who had been a student at Balliol College, Oxford, but had drifted into the grade of a bought servant.
In the Autumn of 1727, Franklin started the Junto, a debating society or club for mutual improvement, the other original members, besides Webb and Mere- . dith, being Joseph Breintnall, Thomas Godfrey, Nich- olas Scull, William Parsons, William Maugridge, Stephen Potts, Robert Grace, and William Coleman. Hugh Roberts appears to have joined later, and, from letters which passed between him and Franklin, we learn that the club lasted until 1766 or longer : for some time it had subsidiary clubs called "The Vine," "The. Union," "The Band," &ct.
The largest book published before 1748 was Sewel's History of the Quakers, printed in 1728 partly by Keimer, and partly by Franklin and Meredith, with whom Keimer made a sub-contract.
The first translation of a Greek or Latin classic printed in America was, according to Charles R. Hilde- burn in The Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania 1685- 1784, of the Morals of Epictetus. The second edition was printed by Keimer in 1729.
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