USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 18
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1The successions in "the peerage," with changes of titular dignitaries, are confusing to the republican mind. This Lord Balti- more in whose house Markham lay, was Charles, the third baron-son of Cecilius, son of George. The following list may make the case plain:
I. George, Ist Baron Baltimore, d. April 15, 1631-2. (The grant of Maryland had been assured him, but he died before re- ceiving it.)
2. Cecilius, 2d Baron, Ist Proprietary. Hle received the grant, under date June 20, 1632. He died 1675. He never visited Maryland.
3. Charles, 3d Baron, 2d Proprietary. He came to Maryland in 1661, as Governor for his father, was absent between May, 1669, and November, 1670, succeeded to the title 1675, returned to England, June, 1676, came again to Maryland, 1679, and acted as Governor to 1684, when he repaired to.
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tions, Colonel Morris's "being ye only fitt instrument yt could be heard of." But Markham had a tedious passage up the Chesa- peake, and wrote on the 25th of September from the "head of the Bay," asking for more time to send to Colonel Morris for the sextile. After he got home he had a return of his fever and ague, and was, he says, "very ill," so that he was obliged to write Lord Baltimore, proposing to postpone the meeting till spring. It happened that his lordship had also written, October 8, saying he "could not come up that year for fear of ye ffrost," and the two letters crossed each other on the way. The business, therefore went over to next year.
Descriptions of Pennsylvania, as Markham saw it, remain to us in letters sent home by him in December (1681). They are dated at Upland on the 7th of that month. "It is a fine coun- try," he says, "if it were not so overgrown with woods, and very healthy. Here people live to be over 100 years of age." Pro-
visions are "indifferent plentiful, venison especially." He had seen four bucks bought for less than five shillings, the Indians killing them only for their skins, and if the whites would not buy the carcass, letting it "hang and rot on a Tree." Wild fowl were plenty in winter; partridges he was "cloyed with." "In the fall of the leaf, or after harvest, here are abundance of wild turkeys, which are mighty easie to be shot; ducks, mallard, geese, and swans in abundance wild; fish are in great plenty." He found
London to press his boundary claims against Penn, and did not again visit Maryland. He d. Feb. 20, 1714-15.
4. Benedict Leonard, 4th Baron, 3d Proprietary. He was nominally Governor, 1684, upon the departure of his father, though W. Hand Browne ("History of Maryland," p. 127), says he was never in Maryland. He survived his father only a few weeks, dying April 5, 1715.
5. Charles, 5th Baron, 4th Proprietary. He was a minor at his father's death. It was he who made, in 1732, the agreement with the sons of William Penn for the
running of the boundary line. He came to Maryland in 1736. He died April, 1751. 6. Frederick, 6th Baron, 5th Proprietary. It was he whom Lord Chancellor Hard- wick's decision compelled to keep the boundary agreement of 1732. He is called by that ardent Maryland partisan, Prof. Browne ("History of Maryland," p. 217), "a selfish and grasping voluptuary, who cared only for his province, which he never visited, as a source of revenue for his pleasures." His death, in 1771, closed the list of the Maryland Lords Baltimore.
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"abundance of good fruits ; all sorts of apples, cherries, pears, good plumbs," with "peaches as good as any in the world, some they feed their hoggs with, and some they distill, and make of it a
Hace Mosses
Member of Governor's Council, 1708; speaker of the Assembly, 1712; mayor of Philadelphia, 1724; owner of Norristown
sort of brandy." Mulberries were abundant; the hogs fed on chestnuts and acorns ; grapes grew wild in the woods ; "mellons, both mus and water, as good as can be." In fishing sturgeon were so plenty in the river as to break the nets put out for smaller fish
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-"they leap into the boats very often." "We have," he adds, "very good horses, and the men ride madly on them; they make nothing of riding eighty miles, and when they get to their jour- ney's end turn their horses into a field; they never shoe them."
The ships that are said to have come this autumn to the Dela- ware have already been named. Whether there were more than two, the John and Sarah and the Bristol Factor, is doubtful. The latter, it is said by Proud, came to Upland on the IIth of Decem- ber, "where the passengers, seeing some houses, went on shore, at Robert Wade's landing, near the lower side of Chester creek, and the river having froze up that night, the passengers remained all winter."
In the spring the new life of the young colony awoke with vigor. This year, 1682, stands out in the story of Pennsylvania as the time of her heroic and hopeful beginnings. As the river cleared of ice, the three commissioners, Haige, Allen, and Bezar, began their surveys and soundings to determine the location of the "capital city." Holme had not yet arrived, but Markham employed Thomas Fairman, whose house at Shackamaxon, the best probably above Upland, was used as a boarding-place and rendezvous. An account against Penn, rendered him years afterward, and not finally settled until 1713, gives us interesting clues as to this. Its first item, in 1682, is "for taking the courses and the sounding of the channel of the Delaware, seven weeks with Captain Markham, f10," and other items are: "To victuals and drink put on board the shallop at sundry times, £3. To my attendance at first commission with William Hague, Nat. Allen, and John Beazor, no charge. To my taking the courses of Schuylkill, etc., for sounding and placing Philadelphia upon Schuylkill river, etc., £6. To lodging Capt. Markham and Wil- liam Hague in my house, with diet and liquors for treats, £7."
That the site of the city was chosen without long delay, after the river had cleared of ice, and soundings could be taken-in Fairman's "shallop" probably-seems certain, for word of the
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place decided on must have reached London by July 14. On that date James Claypoole, not yet ready himself to depart, wrote from that city : "I have 100 acres where our Capitoll City is to be, upon ye River near Schoolkill and Peter Cock's. There I in- tend to plant and build my house." etc. It does not seem prob- able that extended consideration would be given to any other place than the one where Philadelphia now stands. Upland had been suggested in Penn's instructions, and it is said Pennsbury was proposed, but the junction of the Schuylkill, the front on two rivers, the bold shore of Coaquanock and the deep channel that flowed before it, must have appealed convincingly to Markham and the commissioners.
Late in June, Thomas Holme arrived in the Amity. He promptly joined the other commissioners and surveyors, assum- ing the leadership in the work, as Surveyor-General.
Following the selection of the city's site, two other matters of importance engaged Markham's attention before Penn's ar- rival-treaties with the Indians, and further conferences with Lord Baltimore. The former, in our histories, is usually dealt
with briefly. There is in the State archives the record of an In- dian purchase made by Markham, on the 15th of July of this year. The native grantors were Idquahon and thirteen other chiefs or "sachemakers," whose names, phonetically spelled, it it would be useless to give here, and the land conveyed included all of four townships and parts of three others in the lower end of Bucks county. The line began on the Delaware "at a certain white oak in the land now in the tenure of John Wood, and by him called the Gray Stones, over against the Falls of the Dela- ware river," upward "to a corner-marked spruce tree, with the letter P, at the foot of a mountain," then "along by the ledge of the mountains to a corner white-oak, marked with the letter P, standing by an Indian path that leads to an Indian town called Playwickey, and near the head of a creek called Towsissink, and from thence went to the creek called Neshamony's creek," down
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that stream to the Delaware, and then up its bank to John Wood's white oak. The upper corner on the river was near Morrisville, where John Wood was a land-owner; the corner spruce at the foot of the mountain stood on Knowles creek, in Upper Make- field township; the stream Towsissink is a branch of Lahaska creek.
Markham paid the Indians for this three hundred guilders in money, and a long list of the articles they prized-three hundred and fifty fathoms of wampum, twenty white blankets, twenty fathoms of "stroudwaters," sixty fathoms of "duffields," and scores of kettles, guns, coats, shirts, hoes, axes, saws, drawing knives, barrels of powder, bars of lead, knives, glasses, pairs of shoes, copper boxes, tobacco-tongs, pipes, scissors, combs, awls, fish-hooks, needles, ankers of tobacco, rum, cider, and beer-a formidable list indeed, and such as would have made Printz's heart glad if he had had half as much for the fur trade at Tinicum or Christina, thirty-five years before.
Though we have no earlier record of a purchase by Mark- ham from the Indians, and none before this figures in Pennsyl- vania history under the Penn rule, it is not clear that there was not a previous purchase. In his account, later, of his contro- versy with Lord Baltimore, in that year, Markham says that on the 22d of May he received a letter from Baltimore dated May 14, proposing a meeting "ye beginning of ye next month." This, Markham says, conflicted with his business engagements, "ye which at that time was very urgent ; for haveing engaged to pay ye Indians for the land I had bought of them, before ye mid- dle of June, in expectation of which they deferr'd their hunting till it was almost too late for that year," etc., etc. This is cir-
cumstantial. It plainly seems not to refer to a purchase made so late as July 15, but to one already concluded before the 22d of May-when he received the letter from Lord Baltimore-and for which he was to pay the Indians before June 15.
If there was such an earlier purchase, we may readily presume it to have covered the shore of the river south of the purchase
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made in July-in fact, the site of Philadelphia. Markham notes in his account that the purchase and the payment to be made for it were highly important, since Penn's plan was to place no settler on unbought land. Had he not, then, made an agree-
Logan Arms
ment for Philadelphia before he met the chiefs to buy the Bucks land?
Some time after Markham's visit to Maryland, and his illness there, but whether in the autumn of that year ( 1681) or the fol- lowing spring is not certain, William Haige, the commissioner- as Lord Baltimore relates-made observations "att the head of the Bay." and subsequently visited Baltimore at his house on the Patuxent river. There his lordship questioned him closely, ask-
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ing him "whether he had not taken Some observations at Elk river for his private satisfaction," which Haige, thus pressed, at last "own'd," but said that the instrument he used "was so small there could be no Certainty"-admitting thus that the observa- tions had not pleased him, and indicating that he found the head of the Chesapeake south of the fortieth parallel of latitude.
Stenton The Logan homestead near Germantown; built 1727. Photographed especially for this work from canvas in Historical Society of Pennsyl- vania
May 14 (1682) Lord Baltimore wrote Captain Markham "to signifie that he appointed the 10th of June to meet him with per- sons to settle the bounds." This letter, mentioned above, reached Markham May 22. He was then absorbed in the Indian pur- chases. The sextile had not come from New York. He wrote, therefore, on the 26th of May, asking a later day for the appoint- ment, and sent it by an express, going himself to New York for the instrument, as it would not be lent unless he personally be- came security for its safe return. But the Maryland Commis- sioners would not-at least did not-wait. Riding northward,
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they halted June ro at Augustine Herman's, at Bohemia Manor, and took some observations there. Then they came on to New . Castle, where they found a sloop from New York lying at the river bank, with Colonel Morris's sextile on board. Markham had sent it around by water, while he rode overland. He had not yet arrived. The commissioners demanded the sextile of Cregier, the Dutch "skipper" of the sloop. He, let us hope, de- murred. The audacity of the demand surely cannot be denied.
And now, while Markham is riding over through the New Jersey woods, and the Maryland men are arguing with Cregier, let us consider more precisely what the Boundary Dispute was. The subject will vex our narrative at intervals for eighty years.
There were two definite causes of difference between William Penn and Lord Baltimore. The first of these related to the pro- prietorship of the Delaware Colony, called later the "Three Lower Counties," now the State of Delaware. The second re- lated to the location of the northern boundary of Maryland -- which would be also the southern line of Pennsylvania. Both of the differences grew primarily out of the obscure wording of Lord Baltimore's grant, and its obscurity arose from the imper- fect geographical knowledge of America, in England, in 1632, when the grant was made.
As to the Delaware colony, the first question was whether it was excluded from Lord Baltimore's grant by the clause "hac- tenus inculta?" Was it an uncultivated region, inhabited only by "savages," when the Maryland charter was drawn? The answer to this is difficult. De Vries had planted a colony there before 1632, but it had been broken up. When Lord Baltimore received his parchment it is unlikely that any white man was liv- ing on the west bank of the Delaware. The question, there- fore, can be argued either way.
If Lord Baltimore's grant extended to the fortieth parallel of north latitude, wherever that might be, and if the Delaware Colony was not excluded from his grant by the clause "hactenus
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inculta," then his case was won at both points. But in each par- ticular he fell short. His patent did not say that his grant ex- tended to the fortieth parallel. It said: "and between that boundary on the south unto that part of the bay of Delaware on the north which lieth under the fortieth degree of latitude, where New England is terminated. and passing from the said Delaware bay in a right line with the degree aforesaid."
This description, it will be seen, is a limited one. It does not extend Maryland to the fortieth parallel unqualifiedly, but to a "part" of Delaware bay lying "under the fortieth degree." This was exasperatingly vague. It happens that no part of Delaware bay is touched by the fortieth parallel. Does the expression "under the fortieth degree" mean the space north of the thirty- ninth parallel ? This suggestion was made at one time, in the course of the long dispute. Is the location of the line limited by the necessity of its crossing Delaware bay? That also was insisted upon.
The fact was that when Lord Baltimore received his grant it was supposed that the fortieth parallel crossed Delaware bay near its head, probably about New Castle. The maps of Captain John Smith, the best and perhaps the only ones available in Eng- land when that charter was drawn, suggest this, if they do not definitely show it. And when the grant to Penn was drawn up, and it was provided that part of his southern boundary should be "a circle drawn at twelve miles distance from New Castle northward and westward unto the beginning of the fortieth de- gree of northern latitude," the same impression prevailed. It would have been absurd to employ this description had it then been known or supposed that the fortieth degree lay far more than twelve miles north of New Castle.
As to the condition of the west bank of the Delaware in the year 1632, argument could be made either way, as has already been said. But it was undeniable that from the day of De Vries and Swanendael on down, there had been an almost continuous
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occupancy by white men, a possession adverse to Lord Baltimore. A government had been definitely established and regularly ad- ministered, and except in the demand of Colonel Utie, in 1659. and the lawless raid of his men at the Horekill later, Baltimore had suffered this to exist and grow without serious challenge. To hand the Delaware colony over to him, in 1682, would have been to ignore and reverse the course of half a century.
. MERCY.
N . PR
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Lesser Seal of Province
It may be asked here, What did Lord Baltimore mean when he proposed to the Committee of Trade and Plantations, in 1680, that Penn's southern line be drawn at "the Susquehanna Fort?" and what did Penn mean by acceding to that suggestion ? It is impossible to say, because we do not know what place either of them had in mind. The palisaded town of the Susquehannocks, we have seen, was probably north of the present line of Pennsyl- vania, but several witnesses afterward-about 1735-testified in the suit in chancery over the boundary, that there was formerly an Indian fort on the Susquehanna, at the junction of the Cone- wago-the lower stream of that name-in what is now Cecil county, Maryland. Perhaps that "fort" was the one Penn had in mind. A line drawn east and west through it would pass just north of New Castle.
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In the long run there was nothing practicable in a case of such complication but to have a tribunal of competent jurisdiction de- cree a solution, or for the parties themselves to agree on one. Both of these things finally happened. As to the Delaware Col- ony the royal privy council decided in 1685, and again in 1709, that Lord Baltimore had not a good claim to it, and as to the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania it was settled by agreement of the Penn heirs, and the Lord Baltimore of the time, in 1732, and the Lord Chancellor of England, in 1750, de- creed a "specific performance" of the contract thus made-all of which, in due time, this narrative will record. In each instance Penn and his heirs won their whole case. The Lower Counties were awarded him. The southern line of Pennsylvania was run where he would have been satisfied to have it from the very outset of the dispute.
Lord Baltimore gained nothing by the long con- troversy. And indeed, we may remark one thing here: that Pennsylvania was assailed on three sides, south, west, and north, about her boundary ; Maryland, Virginia, and Connecticut all be- set her ; and in every case she won all she claimed. Her neigh- bors' covetous encroachments came utterly to naught in the end.
Knowing all this, as we now do, after two hundred years, we can regard with composure what Markham then could not, the surrender of the sextile in his absence to the Maryland men, at New Castle. "With some difficulty and many entreaties," they prevailed on the captain, they took the instrument off the sloop, they set it up, and "in a very Cleer day, being on the 27th of June, 1682, they found the Latitude of the place of observation, which was in the Towne of New Castle, to be thirty-nine degrees, forty- nine minutes."
Upon this the Commissioners waited no longer for Markham, but rode away homeward. Next day he reached New Castle. To say that he was chagrined and indignant is to describe his state of mind feebly. He says the Commissioners "did by ye means of the Dutch inhabitants of ye Towne procure the Master
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(he being a Dutch man) to bring it [the sextile] on shoare, and there they used it . a Confidence I never mett the like- to dare to touch an Instrument that was to be used by the Con- trarie parties, and so privately that no ffriend of ours was by."
In September the subject was resumed. Lord Baltimore now came himself to Upland with an imposing retinue. Those attending him included Colonel Coursey, Major Seawell, Major Sawyer, four Commissioners, "and forty men Armed with Car- bines, pistolls and Swords!" They rode by way of New Castle, and lodged at Upland the night of the 23d, Lord Baltimore at the hospitable house of Robert Wade, where Markham usually made his home when in the town. The next day, the 24th, was the Sabbath, and Markham was expecting to observe it, consider- ing it not "a day of business," but the Marylanders insisted upon going on with the observations. An instrument which had been sent over by Penn was at hand, but Markham said that it was not in order for use. The one borrowed from Colonel Morris was therefore procured ; it was "brought forth," Baltimore's narrative says, "by one Richard Noble, a Quaker, who sett the same up and it being a very clear day observation was taken therewith by the said Noble, as likewise by those Artists the Lord Baltimore had with him, and they all agreed that ye Latitude of Upland was by the Sextile of Coll. Morris in 39 degrees, 47 minutes. and five seconds." Thereupon Lord Baltimore formally declared that he claimed Upland to be within his grant, and desired "to goe further up the river" to fix the fortieth parallel, "wherever it was to be found." To this demand Markham refused assent. He produced Penn's grant, "under the great seale of England," and showed that it gave him "from twelve miles distance north- ward of New Castle Towne." But, said Lord Baltimore, the king could not give this away; his father had already granted it to my father. To which Markham replied that it was not for him to presume the king had made a mistake ; he was there by the royal authority, and it was his duty to maintain what had been
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placed in his charge. The discussion degenerated into some- thing of a wrangle. One of the Maryland Commissioners de- manded how a twelve-mile circle from New Castle could be drawn to touch the fortieth parallel, and when Markham essayed an explanation, some of them jeeringly remarked, "His Majesty must have long compasses !" To which Markham rejoined that "he hoped they would not limmet his Majesty's Compasses !"
The upshot of the meeting was a flat defiance on both sides. Baltimore pressed his demand to go further north, to establish the parallel, and Markham again refused. Then, said Balti- more, give me your refusal in writing, to which Markham agreed. The letter, written later, says : "My Lord, this is my reason, that as I received all yt part of the river Delaware begin- ning 12 miles above New Castle Towne and so uppwards ffrom the Government of New York, which is according to the Express words of his Majesty's Letters Patent to our Proprietary, Wil- liam Penn Esquire, I most humbly conceive that I am not to be accomptable to any other person than his Majesty or Royall Highness for any part of this Province lying upon Delaware river and soe bounded." He added, verbally, that he "would keep it untill his Master Penn's arrival, which he did not doubt would be very shortly, and desired his lordship would refer all to his Coming."
Lord Baltimore, however, would refer nothing. He set off with his party southward. Taking boat at Upland, he "went to Markiss Hook at Chichester, and there went ffrom house to house, prohibiting the inhabitants to pay any more quitt rents to Mr. Penn, as the land was his, and that he would suddenly re- turne and take possession of it." Thence he proceeded in his boat to New Castle, and from there rode back to Maryland. He waited, he says, two days at New Castle for Markham to confer further, and Markham, in his "Account," says he would have gone down to see Lord Baltimore, but the members of his Coun- cil dissuaded him, urging that nothing useful was likely to result
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from further conference. Their advice was no doubt good : William Penn was now half way across the Atlantic, and no one was so competent as himself to direct his side of the controversy.
Original Log College Building
In 1721, Rev. William Tennent established a small school at Bensalem; later he moved to Neshaminy and in 1727 had built for college work the log cabin shown. From this begin- ning has developed Princeton University. The illustration is from the Presbytery of the Log College, by Thomas Murphy, D. D.
The ship in which the Proprietary and Governor was now approaching the Delaware capes is that one which especially rep- resents for Pennsylvania the romance of its colonial beginnings. She was the Welcome, a vessel of about three hundred tons. Her master was Robert Greenaway. She had embarked her passen- gers, about one hundred in number, at London, late in August, and falling down the Thames, had cleared from the mouth of the
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