USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 19
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river on the last day of the month, and spread her sails for the western world. Penn was of course the chief figure on board, the leader to whom all turned. But we know little of the details of the voyage. Storms they escaped, but not the ravages of dis- ease. The small-pox, scourge of that day and of a century thereafter, until Jenner's great discovery, broke out on board. Men, women and children died, and their bodies were sadly com- mitted to the deep. Four men, John Barber, Thomas Heriott, Isaac Ingram, and William Wade, made their wills on board, and these were proved when the ship arrived from Philadelphia, so that we count them from this evidence as among the dead. Thomas Fitzwater, a member of the Provincial Assembly the next year, lost his wife Mary and two children, Josiah and Mary. Altogether, according to the account of Richard Townsend, of London, one of the company, "about thirty" died. There were births also; two young infants were carried on shore when the ship landed; to Evan Oliver and his wife Jean was added Sea- born, a daughter, born at sea, October 24, "almost within sight of the Capes of the Delaware," and to Richard Townsend and his wife Anne, a son, James, born after the ship had come into Delaware bay. Penn himself escaped the infection of the small- pox, and labored assiduously to comfort and encourage his afflict- ed companions in the crowded little ship. "His singular care," says Richard Townsend, "was manifested in contributing to the necessities of many who were sick of the small-pox. then on board, out of which company about thirty died." His "good conversation," he adds, "was very advantageous to all the com- pany."
The voyage was of about the average length for a ship of that day. Practically two months passed from the departure from the Thames to the arrival at New Castle, but nearly a fortnight of this had been spent in passing around the southern coast of England. In a letter written by Penn after his arrival, he said, "that day six weeks they lost sight of land in England they saw
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it again in America : and being about twelve leagues off from the coast the air smelled as sweet as a garden new blown."
On what day the Welcome came inside the capes is not pre- cisely known, but the 24th of October is the date commonly as- signed. Penn's letter just cited says-according to Philip Ford's summary : "As they sailed up the river they received visits and invitations from the inhabitants, the people being joy- ful to see him : both Dutch, Swedes and English coming up to New Castle, they received and entertained him with great ex- pressions of joy after their sort." The records of New Castle County (Delaware) show that October 27 the Welcome came be- fore New Castle town. Penn did not immediately land, but sent a messenger ashore to notify the two commissioners, John Moll and Ephraim Herman, whom the Duke of York, in the deeds of release and feoffment to Penn, had authorized to make delivery of his rights. Herman was absent, but Moll came on board the ship. inspected the deeds, and was satisfied of their significance.
Next day, the 28th, Penn landed. The settlers had been summoned, and had gathered in to look upon this new ruler, the Quaker who claimed authority as against Lord Baltimore. Swedes were there who had seen Printz, if not Minuit, and many, Swedish and Dutch, who remembered Stuyvesant's campaign against Risingh in 1655, and Carr's swoop upon D'Hinoyossa in 1664. By formal ceremony, Moll and Herman now delivered the town and the twelve miles surrounding it to Penn. Going to the little "fort," they handed him the key, "to lock upon him- self alone the door, which being opened by him again they did deliver also unto him one turf, with a twig upon it, a porringer with river water and soil." Then the settlers gathered at "the court-house," and Penn "made a speech to the old Magistrates and the people," explaining his plans and assuring all "of their spiritual and temporal rights, liberty of conscience and civil free- doms." All he "prayed, expected, or required" of them, he said, was "sobriety and loving neighborhood."
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The delivery of the remainder of the Delaware colony, under the other of the two deeds from the Duke, was made to Markham as Penn's representative, by Moll and Herman, on the 7th of the next month, "at the house of Captain Edward Cantwell, at the south side of Appoquinimy Creek."
Leaving New Castle, the Welcome came on up the river. On the following day, the 29th, she lay before Upland. Penn went ashore, and for the first time set foot in his Province. His boat brought him to the beach in front of Robert Wade's house- already well known to us-and the hospitable doors of the man- sion swung wide to welcome him.1 At Upland he remained a day or two. Letters and documents signed by him are dated there on October 29 and on November I. On the 2d of No- vember he was at New Castle, attending the sitting of the jus- tices.
That Penn changed the name of Upland to Chester soon after his arrival there, and at the suggestion of a passenger on the Wel- come named Pearson, has long been an accepted and accredited story. It is, however, very dubious, and probably not true. No such person as Pearson can be identified as a friend or companion of Penn, or as a passenger on the Welcome. It is true that the name of the town was changed, and unquestionably it was done by Penn's order. The time is pretty definitely shown. Penn's letter home, November 1, 1682, refers to the place as Upland, but that of December 16 following contains the phrase, "Chester alias Upland." Confining the change within still narrower bounds, Penn's writ to the sheriffs of the lower counties, convok- ing the first Assembly, dated November 8, summons the dele- gates to meet "at Upland," but the certification of the laws, over the signature of Penn, as Governor, December 7, is "Given at
1Wade's house stood at what is now the northwest corner of Penn and Front streets, in the city of Chester. "It stood, though in ruins, until about 1800." (Martin, "History of Chester.") The exact spot of
Penn's landing was marked, in the middle of the 19th century, by a pine-tree, planted under the auspices of John M. Broomall (afterwards Member of Congress), and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
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The Bartram House
Home of John Bartram; physician; author ; founder in 1728 of the first botanical garden in the United States; house built 1731. Photo by J. F. Sachse
Chester, alias Upland." The old Swedish name of the town thus ended, and the English one was assumed.
Precisely when Penn proceeded to Philadelphia is uncertain. We have seen that on the 29th of October and the Ist of Novem- ber he was writing letters at Chester, and on the 2d of Novem- ber was at the Court at New Castle. Thus he may have visited Philadelphia on October 29 or 30, or on November 3. or a later dlay. He would have been eager, certainly, to see the "capital city."
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The traditions have always described him as going up from Chester in an open boat, or barge, and as landing at Philadelphia at the place where Dock creek emptied into the river. This was the "public landing place" of a somewhat later time. On the bank near by was a little tavern, the "Blue Anchor," kept then by William Dare, a "master mariner," and subsequently by George Bartholomew-perhaps also by Alice Guest, and ever since a familiar place in the early history of Philadelphia.
At the beginning of November, 1682, when he stepped upon the bank-side at Philadelphia, William Penn was a little more than thirty-eight years old. He had passed his birthday on the ocean a fortnight before. His feelings, as he reached the site of his city, we may imagine. Its name, if unknown to others, he had himself determined, for in a letter which he addressed two years later to the colonists he uses the expression, "And thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, named before thou wast born.1 "
He led the way up the river bank to the little tavern with emotions that may well have moved his large and generous heart. The plans he had evolved, the hopes he had indulged, for this "holy experiment" of Pennsylvania, appeared now to give prom- ise of fruition.
We have seen that the city had been laid out by the Commis- sioners during the summer, before Penn's arrival. His instruc- tions to them, given nearly a year before, had been in the main followed. But he had conceived his plan of the city on quite too generous a scale. They had found it impossible to lay out the ten thousand acres he had proposed, and had contented them- selves with about twelve hundred and eighty. The plotting had been directed by Thomas Holme, and drawings of it, pub- lished in London in 1683, and since then many times reproduced,
1That Philadelphia's name came from the city of Asia Minor, mentioned in the Apoc- alypse, is most probable. But the meaning of the Greek words forming the name-
brotherly love-was very likely to com- mend it to Penn .- See Note in "Memorial History of Philadelphia," H. M. Jenkins, Vol. I., p. 36.
I-17
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show the city extending from the Delaware to the Schuylkill, and from Vine street to South. This was the "old city" or "city proper" of Philadelphia from 1682 to the "consolidation" of 1854, when the municipal limits were extended to cover the whole county. Philadelphia was thus made slightly over two miles long, from east to west, and rather more than one mile from north to south. Half way between the rivers was the Broad street, one hundred feet wide, and where the High street (now Market) crossed this a public square of ten acres was reserved, "at each angle to build houses for public affairs"_"the state-house, the market-house, school-house and chief meeting-house of the Quakers," as Oldmixon, writing twenty-five years later, ex- plained. Four other public squares, "in each quarter of the city," known to us as Washington, Franklin, Logan and Ritten- house squares, were reserved as well, "to be for the like uses as Moorfields, in London."
Few of the houses of the new city could have been actually built -when Penn arrived. Some had been begun. To clear the title to the whole of the city plot arrangements were made with those of the Swedes who had secured grants within it to give those up and take other land. The situation about Phila- delphia, as the immigrants who came at the close of the summer ยท ( 1682) saw it may be learned from the letter of Edward Jones, a Welsh physician1-a "chirurgeon," in the phrase of his day- who arrived in the ship Lyon, John Compton master. This ship had cleared from Liverpool and reached Upland about the middle of August ( 1682), after a voyage of eleven weeks from land to land, and one more coming up the Delaware. "It was not for want of art, but contrary winds" that the voyage was so
1Dr. Edward Jones was an interesting figure of the settlement period. He was the son-in-law of Dr. Thomas Wynne, who came in the Welcome with Penn, and who was the Speaker of the Assembly, 1683-4, and later. Edward Jones's daughter Martha
married John Cadwalader, and was thus the ancestress of the family of that name; his (Edward's) son, Jonathan Jones, was the father of Owen Jones, who was Pro- vincial Treasurer of Pennsylvania from 1769 to 1776.
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long. The supplies of food held out, however. "We wanted," Edward Jones says, "neither meate, drink, or water. Our ordinary allowance of beer was 3 pints a day for each whole head, and a quart of water, 3 biskedd a day and sometimes more. We have oatmeal to spare, but it is well yt we have it, for here is little or no corn [wheat] till they begin to sow." None-died on the voyage, he says, "save one child" and it "of a surfeit."
"We are short of our expectation" he goes on to say, "by rea- son that the town is not to be builded at Upland, neither would ye master bring us any further, though it is navigable for ships of greater burthen than ours. Ye name of [the] town lots is called Wicaco; here is a crowd of people striving for ye country land, for ye town lot is not divided, and therefore we are forced to take up the country lots. We had much ado to get a grant of it; it costs us 4 or 5 days attendance, besides some score of miles we traveled before we brought it to pass. I hope it will please thee and the rest yt are concerned, for it hath most rare timber, I have not seen the like in all these parts.1 There is water enough besides; the end of each lot will be on a river as large or larger than the Dye [Dee] at Bala [Wales]. It is to be called Skool Kill. .. The people generally are Swede. . . We are amongst the English, which sent us both venison and new milk, and the Indians brought venison to our door for six pence ye quarter. There are stones enough to be had at the falls of the Skool Kill, that is where we are to settle, and water enough for mills, but thou must bring Millstones and ye irons yt belong to it, for Smiths are dear. Iron is about two and thirty, or forty shillings per hundred, steel about Is. 6d. per pound . . . grin- dle stones yield good profit here. Ordinary workmen hath IS. 6d. a day, carpenters 3 or 4 shillings a day. Here are sheep, but dear, about 20 shillings apiece. I cannot understand how they
1He is describing the tract in the present township of Lower Marion, in Montgomery county; it appears on Thomas Holme's map
as that of "Edward Jones and Company, 17 Families."
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can be carried from England. Taylors hath 5s. and 6s. a day. . . I would have thee bring salt for ye present use ; here is coarse salt, sometimes two measures of it for one of wheat, and sometimes very dear. . .. Horse shoes are in no use. . Good large shoes are dear: lead in small bars is
Kelso Ferry House opposite Harrisburg
Built 1732; oldest house west of the Susque- hanna river now standing. From photo in pos- session of Historical Society of Dauphin Coun- ty, Pennsylvania
vendible, but guns are cheap enough. . They use both hooks and sickles to reap with."
Of the seventy or more passengers, men, women and children, who landed from the Welcome at Upland or at Philadelphia, a few may have found shelter in their own homes. Some months earlier Penn had sent out a pamphlet describing minutely the con- struction of log houses; one of these, he said, thirty feet by eighteen, might be cut from the woods and made ready for occu- pancy, in six weeks. Some such huts were probably to be seen
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in Philadelphia, as winter set in. But most of the newly arrived people must have been taken in by the older settlers, while some, it is probable, found shelter in caves dug in the bank of the Dela- ware. These caves were a feature of Philadelphia for years afterward. The letter of Penn from Upland, November I (as summarized by Philip Ford), says, "The city of Philadelphia is laid out, and many pretty houses are up of late, upon the river and backwards that do very well. An house for W. Penn is a-building." But this description must not be taken too liter-
ally. It does appear that Penn lived in a house of his own be- fore the summer of 16831 and it is probable that the other "pretty houses," actually in occupancy in the autumn of 1682, were few.
The cordiality of the old settlers has already been mentioned. We have every reason to suppose that all hopefully and cheer- fully welcomed the change of rule. There were now nearly a thousand of the Swedish blood. Penn, in his letter of descrip- tion a year after his arrival, says: "The Dutch applied them- selves to traffic, the Swedes and Friends to Husbandry. . . . The Swedes inhabit the freshes of the River Delaware. There is no need of giving any description of them, who are better known in England than here; but they are a plain, strong, indus- trious people, yet have made no great progress in the culture or propagation of fruit trees, as if they desired to have enough, rather than plenty for traffic. As they are a people proper and strong of body, so have they fine children, and almost every house full; rare to find one of them without three or four boys, and as many girls; some six, seven, and eight sons. And I must do them the justice to say that I find few young men more sober and industrious."
1The house that was "a-building" was the little brick dwelling, called the "Letitia House" (from Letitia Penn's subsequent ownership), which stood for two hundred years nearly in the center of the block
bounded by Market, Chestnut, Front and Second streets, and was at last (1884) re- moved to Fairmount Park, where it now stands. It is said to have been the first house in the city that had a cellar.
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Giving his time and energy now, first of alt, to the affairs of his Colony, the recorded activities of the Governor and Proprie- tary for the next year and a half are nearly identical with the his- tory of Pennsylvania itself. With little delay, after coming to Philadelphia. inspecting the plans of the city, and ordering some changes-expediting some business whose delays troubled Ed- ward Jones-Penn went to New York to visit Captain Brockholls, the deputy governor there, as an act of respect to the Duke of York and of neighborly civility. He took with him the deeds of the Duke for the Delaware territory, and they were placed on record there, and the acts of Moll and Herman as the Duke's at- torneys formally sanctioned by Brockholls and his Council in a proclamation dated November 21.
Returning to Philadelphia the next important work was the holding of the Assembly. Steps for its convening had been taken by Penn before the visit to New York. "We could not safely stay till the spring for a government," he says. Apparently the demand for a code more liberal in some particulars, more strict in others, than "the Duke's Laws," which Col. Nicolls had enacted at Hempstead fifteen years before, and which had been in force until now. was strong among the newly arrived settlers. On November 8 Penn had issued writs to the sheriffs of the three lower counties, directing them "to summon all freeholders" to meet on the 20th'of that month, then to elect from among them- selves seven persons from each county, "of most note for wis- dom, sobriety and integrity," to serve as their deputies in "a General Assembly to be held at Upland, Pennsylvania, Decem- ber 6 next." and then and there to consult with him "for the com- mon good of the inhabitants of that province, and adjacent coun- ties of New Castle, St. Jones, and Whorekill, alias Deal. under his charge and jurisdiction.'
These writs show that Delaware had now formally been di- vided into three counties. New Castle county remains, but St. Jones was later renamed Kent, and Whorekill or New Deal be-
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came Sussex. That the three "original" counties of Pennsyl- vania, Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester, were formed at or about the same time it is fair to presume. We have in the minutes of the first Assembly (December 4) a record of the attendance of Thomas Usher, "sheriff of Chester county." The seals desig- nated for the Pennsylvania counties were: for Philadelphia an anchor, for Chester a plow, for Bucks a tree and vine. . The first sheriffs of the three counties were John Test for Philadelphia, Richard Noble for Bucks, and Thomas Usher for Chester.
We have seen that the writs for Delaware prescribed the elec- tion of seven deputies from each county. How those for Penn- sylvania ran we do not know. By the "Frame of Government" adopted in England the previous year, "all the freeman" of the Province who saw fit to do so were entitled to attend the first As- sembly, and the preface to the "Votes and Proceedings" of that body as printed by Benjamin Franklin seventy years later (1752) refers to this fact. It says: "These Votes . . . . begin with the meeting of so many of the Freemen as thought fit to appear, as they had a right to do, by the sixteenth Article of the original Frame of the Government, or Charter, to the end that there might be an universal satisfaction in laying the Fundamentals and es- tablishing the Government and Laws of the Province." It seems unreasonable, however, that the Assembly could have been com- posed of chosen members, twenty-one in number, from three of the counties, and an unlimited delegation, attending voluntarily, from the other three. For the second Assembly, which met at Philadelphia in March following, one of the Pennsylvania writs has been preserved-that directed by Governor Penn to Sheriff Noble of Bucks-and it is highly probable that the form adopted for the first Assembly was similar. This writ for the March Assembly directs the sheriff "to summon all the freeholders" in his bailiwick to meet on the 20th day of February, "at the Falls upon Delaware River," there to "elect and choose" twelve per- sons of most note for wisdom and integrity "to serve as their
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Birthplace of Benjamin West, Swarthmore
Photo by Louise D. Woodbridge delegates in the provincial council to be held at Philadelphia the Ioth day of the First month next" (March, 1682-3, O. S.), and "that thou there declare to the said freemen that they may all personally appear at an Assembly at the place aforesaid, accord- ing to the contents of my charter of liberties."
The probable formation of the first Assembly was that those acting were the delegates duly chosen; if others "attended" they took no formal part in the proceedings.
The Assembly convened at Chester on the 4th of December (1682). In what building it sat is a question in dispute. It was long said that it met in the meeting-house of the Friends, but inquiry showed that this was not built until 1693, eleven years later. The little "House of Defence," which had been built un- der the order of the Upland Court, in 1677, and which was the
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court-house of Chester county until 1724, is designated by Dr. Smith, in his history of what is now Delaware county. Deborah Logan, in her notes upon the correspondence between William Penn and James Logan, asserts that the meeting-place of the As- sembly was the large dwelling-house of James Sandiland, a much-admired mansion in its day, long known as the "double house."
We have no complete list of those who were members of this historic first Assembly. If seven deputies were chosen in each of the Pennsylvania counties, as was done in Delaware, making the body number forty-two, altogether, the names of more than half remain unknown. The names we have are these :
The sheriff of Whorekill county, John Vines, in his return, gives the names of the deputies chosen from that county-Ed- ward Southrin, William Clark, Alexander Draper, John Roades, Luke Watson, Nathaniel Walker, and Cornelius Verhoof. Dr. Nicholas More, of Philadelphia, was elected Chairman. Several committees are recorded in the minutes-one on election privi- leges, one on grievances, one "on foresight for the preparation of provisional bills," and one on an address to the Governor. The names of those serving on these committees are given, and they add to our list the following: Philadelphia, Griffith Jones, Thomas Holme, Thomas Wynne; Bucks, William Yardley, Christopher Taylor; Chester, John Simcock, Thomas Brassey, Ralph Withers; New Castle, John Moll (in place of Abraham Mann, who was unseated for irregularity of election), and Wil- liam Sample; Kent, Francis Whitwell and John Biggs.
We have thus the names of twenty members, and those of the other twenty-two remain unknown.
The first Assembly sat but four days. It adopted a series of rules for its own procedure, passed an act uniting the three Dela- ware counties with Pennsylvania, and conferring naturalization on the people, and enacted with some enlargement of scope and language the code of laws which had been "agreed upon in Eng-
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land." On the 17th of December the Assembly adjourned, upon a resolution to meet again in twenty-one days-which. however, it did not do.
Without pausing to remark upon the somewhat quaint though quite pointed and plain rules of procedure, we may par- ticularly speak of the Act of Union and the "Great Law." The incorporation of the "lower counties" with Pennsylvania, under one legislative and executive authority, was an end naturally de- sired by Penn, and the Delaware deputies, by John Moll and Francis Whitwell, presented a petition asking that it be done. The Assembly passed the act unanimously, and for twenty years, as we shall see, the union subsisted.
As for the "Great Law," or the "Body of Laws," it is a code which, if enforced, would work large and in the main salutary changes in the condition of modern society. It contemplated no compromise with evil doing, and it held as evil many things which after two centuries have come to be regarded as compara- tively if not altogether innocent. First and foremost, however, the Great Law provided for those things in which the people were
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