USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 22
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tance. The justices closed the meeting and wrote hastily to the Governor, urging him to find "an expedient for preventing" the acquisition by Penn of a Susquehanna Indian title. A little later, September 18, Dongan advised them that he had conferred with his Council and that it was thought "very convenient and neces- sary to putt a stopp to all proceedings in Mr. Penn's affairs with the Indians until his bounds and limits be adjusted." They were therefore instructed "to suffer no manner of proceedings in that business," until they should be further advised.
The business was thus halted for the time. The Indian chiefs were persuaded to say to Haige that they had no right to sell the lands, having promised them to "Corlaer"-their generic name for the New York governors-on some previous occasion, and to refuse therefore to go on with the negotiations. Then Dongan, to fix the business securely in his own hands, procured from some of the chiefs a grant of the lands to himself. Precisely what value he attached to this, and exactly how he considered his actions would look to the Duke of York and to Penn, may be a question, but he wrote to the latter (October 10) avowing his purchase, and again (October 22) saying it had further been confirmed by the Indians and that he and Penn would not "fall out" over it.
And here the account may as well be completed, though we shall go somewhat further in the order of time than our present narrative demands. In 1696, Dongan, who described himself as then "of London." executed a "lease and release" to William Penn of "all that tract of land lying upon, on both sides, the river com- monly called or known by the name of the Susquehanna river, and the lands adjacent, beginning at the mountains or head of the said river, and running as far as and unto the Bay of Chesapeak," it being the same "which the said Thomas Dongan lately purchased of or had given him by the Sinneca Susquehanah Indians." This conveyance cost Penn, on the face of the release, a hundred pounds, but the expense may have been greater. It gave him, at any rate, whatever Indian title to the Susquehanna Dongan had
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procured in 1683. In a treaty made in 1700, at Pennsbury, with two chiefs of the Susquehanna region-whose names, Widaagh and Andaggy-Junkquah, signify nothing to us-they granted to Penn all the rights they possessed on the river, and "ratified and confirmed" the deed of Dongan.
These proceedings between 1683 and 1700, in reference to the Susquehanna, caused other perturbations at New York than those we have recited. A petition forwarded from that city in 1691 by the Provincial Council to King William III. earnestly repre- sented the importance of dispossessing Penn altogether. The petition was signed by Richard Ingoldsby, Frederick Phillips, Stephen Courtland, Nicholas Bayard, and others. The Susque- hanna, they said, "is situate in the middle of the Sinnekes coun- try," and was given to the crown "many years before Mr. Penn had his patent." He, however, was now endeavoring to buy it of the Indians, in order to draw away the trade to his province, and the Council assured the King that this would do him great damage. "All the nations with whom Albany hath a trade live at the head of Susquehanna river," they said, and declared that "the inhabitants at Albany" had "only seated themselves there, and addicted their minds to the Indian language and the mysteries of the said trade, with purpose to manage it." They strongly urged that if Penn should have his title to Pennsylvania confirmed, it should extend no further on the Susquehanna "than the falls thereof," but they much preferred that Connecticut, East and West Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the "Three Lower Counties" on the Delaware should be re-annexed to New York, which they were of opinion "would then be a government of sufficient ex- tent"-for what or whom they did not explain.
Even this representation, however, did not avail-at least not permanently. Its date, August 6, 1691, coincides with the time when efforts began to be vigorously made to dispossess Penn, these finally resulting in the Fletcher episode, 1693 to 1695, when for the first time and last time a "royal" governor had authority
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in Pennsylvania. The envy and hostility, growing into malevo- lence, of the official influences in other colonies, at many times, toward this province and its rulers, were as discreditable as they were unjustifiable. Penn himself was a shining mark for those who disliked his religious views, dreaded his democratic system, or despised his humane policy, or hated all of these.
We return, now, to the summer of 1683, and to such events as have not been related. The letters of Penn to his correspond- ents in England give details of the progress of the colony. He wrote in July to Colonel Henry Sydney, afterwards Earl of Rom- ney, and brother of Algernon Sydney. He had been here, he said, about five months, and had had his health ; he found the coun- try wholesome, and the land, air, and water all good. "We have laid out a town a mile long and two miles deep. On each side of the town runs a navigable river, the least as broad as the Thames at Woolwich, the other about a mile over. I think we have near about eighty houses built, and about three hundred farms settled round the town. I fancy it already better than the Weald of Kent, our soil being clearer, and the country not much closer; a coach might be driven twenty miles end-ways. We have had fifty sail of ships and small vessels since the last summer, in our river, which shows a good beginning." Writing to the Lord Chief Justice, North, the same date, he says, "a fair we have had, and weekly market to which the ancient lowly inhabitants"-the Swedes and Dutch, doubtless-"come to sell their produce, to their profit, and our accommodation." Later, July 28, he writes the Earl of Sunderland, describing the Indians, alluding especially to the injury done them by drink. Though, he says, "many of the old men and some of ye young people will not touch it," yet "be- cause in those fits they mischief both themselves and others, I have forbid to sell them any."
The minutes of the Provincial Council record the developing life of the colony. Meetings of the Council were held frequently. During the sittings of the Assembly it met daily, and after the ad-
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journment of the spring Assembly ( April 3). nearly forty meet- ings were held during the year 1683. At all of these Governor Penn was present and presiding. Of the eighteen members of the Council as many as twelve attended a few times, but usually not more than half that number. The business dealt with was, as already has been said, both executive and judicial, and, in con- junction with the Assembly, legislative also. There were ap-
peals from the county courts. In one instance the justices of Philadelphia county had presumed to pass upon a case belonging in Bucks, and the Council imposed a fine upon them of forty pounds. The passengers on a vessel arrived in the river preferred charges against the master for abuse, and taking their private sup- ply of water and beer.
"The Governor gave the master a repri- mand. and advised him to go with the passengers, and make up the business, which he did." Three men were tried for making silver coins, "Spanish bitts and Boston money." The coins looked well. and were gladly accepted as currency, but the makers ad-
mitted that they contained too much alloy of copper. The grand jury that passed upon the indictment in this case was the first in Pennsylvania, and so was the trial jury which heard the testimony. In the lists of the two are names of some of the most prominent early settlers-Thomas Lloyd, afterward lieutenant-governor ; Enoch Flower, teacher of the first school in Philadelphia ; Nicholas Waln. John Blunston, Thomas Fitzwater. John Claypoole, Robert Turner. Andrew Bengston. Dennis Rochford, and others. A11 the accused were convicted, and Pickering, the principal, was sen- tenced by the Governor to replace his over-alloyed coins with good money. to pay a fine of forty pounds "toward ye building of a new court-house in this Towne," and to give security for his future "good abearance." The other two were less severely dealt with ; one was fined ten pounds for the court-house fund, and the other sentenced to "sitt an hour in the stocks to-morrow morning."
A ship called the Mary of Southampton, which had come into port with passengers from England. was seized, November 21, by
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Member of the Council, 1732; and after the Fort Stanwix treaty, 1768; feudal lord of more than 25,000,000 acres and the inhabitants there- on. Photographed especially for this work by J. F. Sachse from canvas in Historical Society of Pennsylvania
The Beginnings of Penn's Colony
the Council, it being found that she was sailing under a false name, being in reality a "Scottish bottom," the Alexander, of Inverness, "noe ways made free to trade with any of his Majesty's planta- tions in America," according to the provisions of the Act of Par- liament. The ship was publicly condemned, and perhaps sold; the canny but too ventursome Scotch master had to learn that the trade of the American colonies was intended for the benefit of English merchants by the carefully devised system of the Naviga- tion laws.
A certain Anthony Weston was sharply dealt with, also. He seems to have circulated some kind of a "paper" or "proposal," which was regarded as seditious or offensive, and the minutes record, January 16, 1683-4: "The Governor and Provincial Council have thought fit that for the great presumption and Con- tempt of this Government and authority, that Anto. Weston be whypt at ye market place on market daye three times, each time to have ten lashes at 12 of the clock at noone, this being ye first day." Several "freemen" who "subscribed to Anto. Weston's proposals" were to give bonds in fifty pounds each for their good behavior.
A case of difficulty came up in reference to the estate left be- hind him by Benjamin Acrod. A coroner's inquest had been held upon his body, and the jury found that he "killed himself with drinke." Probably the jury meant only to emphasize his intem- perance, but the verdict on its face implied suicide. A special ad- ministrator of his estate was appointed, and the Governor express- ly relinquished any claim he might have to the goods of one dying by his own hand.
In the records, December 26, we have the first indication of a teacher and school in Philadelphia. The minute says : "The Govr and Provll Council having taken into their Serious Consider- ation the great Necessity there is of a School Master for ye In- struction & Sober Education of Youth in the towne of Philadel- phia, Sent for Enoch Flower, an Inhabitant of the said Towne,
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who for twenty year past hath been exercised in that care and Im- ploymt in England, to whom haveing Comunicated their Minds. he Embraced it upon these following Termes : to Learn to read English 4s by the Quarter, to Learn to read and write 6s by ye Quarter, to learn to read, Write and Cast accot 8s by Quarter ; for Boarding a Scholler, that is to say, dyet, Washing, Lodging, & Schooling, Tenn pounds for one whole year."
From time to time appointments made by the Governor were announced to the Council. May 2, "the Governor informed the Councill that he hath made choyce of Nich : Moore to be Secretary of ye Provincial Councill." The flurry over his "unreasonable and imprudent discourse" in March had subsided. December 27 : "This day, Thomas Lloyd was sent for before the board, and ye Governor was pleased to put him in Master of ye Rolls, who doth solemnly promise to officiate therein with care and diligence."
To this time belongs the first and only trial for witchcraft known to Pennsylvania history. We may remember that a little later, 1692, the terrible experiences of Massachusetts, the "Salem craze," began. On the Delaware, no doubt, the witchcraft super- stition existed among the pioneer settlers, but, as this trial showed, it was easily possible to prevent its running to serious lengths.
In February, 1683-4, the minutes of the Provincial Council record the case. On the 7th, Margaret Matson and Yeshoo Hen- drickson, two Swedish women, "were examined and about to be proved witches ;" whereupon the Council ordered that Neels Mat- son should give bail in fifty pounds for his wife's further appear- ance on the 27th of the month, and Hendrick Jacobson1 did the same for his wife. On the 27th, the Council being again met, a grand jury was present and Governor Penn "gave them their charge." The Attorney-General handed them a presentment upon which they made the return of true bill. A trial jury was then empanelled : it included our old acquaintance, Robert Wade, of
'The curious twists of the Swedish naming
will be noted here. The husband's and wife's family names are different.
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Chester ; and the trial of Margaret Matson proceeded. She plead not guilty. The record is of such interest that we may take it as it stands in the minutes, with slight abridgment :
"Henry Drystreet attested, Saith he was tould 20 years agoe, that the pris- oner at the Barr was a Witch, & that Severall Cows were bewitcht by her; also, that James Saunderling's mother tould him that she bewitched her cow, but afterwards said it was a mistake, and that her Cow should doe well againe, for it was not her Cow but an Other Person's that should Dye.
"Charles Ashcom attested, saith that Anthony's Wife being asked why she sould her Cattle; was because her mother had Bewitcht them, having taken the Witchcraft of Hendrick's Cattle, and put it on their Oxen ; She myght Keep but noe Other Cattle, and also that one night the Daughter of ye Prisoner called him up hastely, and when he came she sayd there was a great Light but Tust before, and an Old woman with a Knife in her hand at ye Bedd's feet, and therefore shee cryed out and desired Jno. Symcock to take away his Calves, or Else she would send them to Hell.
"Annakey Coolin attested, saith her husband tooke the Heart of a Calfe that Dyed, as they thought, by Witchcraft, and Boyled it, whereupon the Pris- oner at ye Barr came in and asked them what they were doing; they said boyl- ing of fleash; she said they had better they had Boyled the Bones, with sev- eral other unseemly Expressions.
"Margaret Mattson saith that She Vallues not Drystreet's Evidence; but if Sanderlin's mother had come, she would have answered her; also denyeth Charles Ashcom's Attestation at her Soul, and Saith where is my Daughter ; let her come and say so.
"Annakey Cooling's attestation concerning the Gees, she denyeth, saying she was never out of her Canoe, and also that she never said any such things concerning the Calve's heart.
"Jno. Cock attested, sayeth he Knows nothing of the matter.
"Theo. Balding's attestation was read, and Tho Bracy attested, saith it is a True copy.
"The Prisoner denyeth all things, and saith that the Witnesses speak only by hearsay.
"After wch ye Govr gave the jury their Charge concerning ye Prisoner at ye Barr.
"The jury went forth, and upon their Returne Brought her in Guilty of haveing the Comon fame of a witch, but not guilty in manner and forme as Shee stands Indicted.
"Neels Mattson and Antho. Neelson Enters into a Recognizance of fifty pounds apiece, for the good behavior of Getro Hendrickson for six months."
The tide of immigration from countries other than England, which was to swell to such a height in years to come, now made its first appearance. The persecutions of the Huguenots in France, under Louis the Fourteenth-now drawing near the close of his long and evil reign-brought a group of these energetic peo-
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ple into Pennsylvania. September 10 (1683), the Council min- utes record that "these persons following did solemnly promise be- fore this honorable board faith and allegiance to the king, and fidelity and lawful obedience to William Penn, Proprietor and Governor : Capt. Gabrielle Rappe, Andrew Learrin, Andrew In- bert, Peter Meinardeau, Uslee, Lees Cosard, Nich. Riboleau, Jacob Raquier, Louis Boumat." Rappe is identified in the Huguenot chronicles as coming from the Isle of Rhé (La Rochelle) on the west coast of France, and Riboleau was probably from the same place. In a letter the following year ( 1684) to the Marquis of Halifax, Penn speaks of Captain Rappe as having begun to make wine from the native grapes-an industry on which the Governor bestowed much concern, but which never showed any very valuable result. His letters refer frequently to the subject. He speaks of one of the native grapes-"the great red grape, called by ignor- ance the fox grape," which "by art, doubtless, may be cultivated to an excellent wine." "There is a white kind of muskatel, and a little black grape"-the "chicken grape" no doubt-"like the cluster grape of England." Again, he says : "There grow wild an incredible number of vines, that tho' savage, and so not so ex- cellent, beside that much wood and shade sour them, they yield a pleasant grape, and I have drank a good clarett, though small and greenish, of Capt. Rappe's vintage of the savage grape."
More important, however, than the little party of Frenchmen, were the colonists that came this year, 1683, from Wales and from Germany. A few Welsh had arrived even before Penn, as we have seen, including the company in the Lion, in August, 1682, and some had come in the Welcome with him. This year others arrived, and the "Welsh Tract" west of Philadelphia, including the townships of Merion, Haverford, Radnor, and others, began to be compactly occupied by industrious settlers.
Persecution on account of their religious opinions had moved many of the newcomers, but they felt, besides, the hope of better- ing their condition in a new land, under liberal and just laws. The
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Dein Allter fen wie Deine Jugend nulla dies Gne linea .
Nicholas Louis Zinzendorf
Count; bishop; missionary; gave name of Beth- lehem to Moravian tract on the Lehigh river; traveled extensively in Pennsylvania doing mis- sionary work, 1742
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Welsh who now came were mostly Friends, upon whom the Eng- lish laws of "conformity" still bore heavily. In Germany the patient and non-resistant followers of Menno Simon, the Mennon- ites, who now for two centuries have been an important element in Pennsylvania's population, had suffered untold miseries for a cent- ury and a half before the American door of release- opened to them. So, too, up the Rhine, in the Palatinate, the desolations of the Thirty Years' War had hardly begun to be repaired when Turenne was sent by Louis XIV. to ravage the country in 1674-a prelude only to the still more cruel and effectual destruction wrought by the armies of Louis in 1689-and the distressed peo- ple there were ready to look for a new home, even across the ocean.
There arrived at Philadelphia in August of this year the first of the German settlers in Pennsylvania, and indeed the pioneer of the German movement to America. This was Francis Daniel
Pastorius. He was now thirty-two years old. He had been born in Sommerhausen, September 26. 1651, had studied at some of the chief universities of Germany, and returning to Frankfort- on-the-Main in 1682 from an extended tour, learned there that in response to the invitations of Penn, and in recollection of the visit which he and his companions had paid that region in 1677, the or- ganization of a company had been begun, the "Frankfort Com- pany," to purchase a large tract of land in America. Pastorius was immediately attracted by the enterprise. "After I had suffi- ciently seen the European provinces and countries, and the threat- ening movements of war, and had taken to heart the dire changes and disturbances of the Fatherland," he says, "I was impelled through a special guidance from the Almighty, to go to Pennsyl- vania." He begged his father's consent to his emigration, and this being secured, he became the agent of the Frankfort Com- pany, and prepared to depart.
Besides the group of Frankfort people who thus were inter- ested in the new colony-none of whom, however, except Pastor- ius, actually came over-two other German groups were drawn
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into the movement. These were a small company of Friends at Kriegsheim (called by William Penn Krisheim, and remembered as Cresheim in our Germantown of Philadelphia), six miles from Worms, whom Penn visited in 1677, and who now came to Penn- sylvania : and a larger group of original Mennonites, most of whom then or later became Friends, who lived at Crefeld, on the lower Rhine, within a few miles of the line of Holland. All these had heard of Penn and his colony through the advertisements and pamphlets, translated from English into German, which Benjamin Furly, the Rotterdam merchant, agent for Penn, had spread about. The Crefeld company had bought their land in two transactions. Jacob Telmer, of Crefeld, engaged in business as a merchant in Amsterdam, Jan Streypers, a merchant of Kaldkirchen ; and Dirck Sipman, of Crefeld, had purchased from Penn, March 10, 1682. 15.000 acres. This was the first German purchase. June II, 1683. three other Crefelders, Govert Remke, Lenart Arets, and Jacob Isaacs Van Bibber, brought 3,000 acres.
Pastorius left Frankfort in the spring of 1683, and passed down the Rhine. At Crefeld he conferred with some of the in- tending emigrants, at Rotterdam he saw Telmer, and doubt- less Benjamin Furly, and at London, in May or June, he bought from Penn's agents 15,000 acres. The ship in which he sailed was the America, Joseph Wasey master, which left London June 10, and reached Philadelphia August 20. Thomas Lloyd, who came from Dolobran, Wales, was a fellow passenger ; he was an older man than Pastorious and brought with him his wife and nine children, while the young German was still a bachelor.
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CHAPTER VIII.
THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT
T HE descendants of those who emigrated from various parts of Europe or America to the western banks of the Delaware in the two last decades of the Seventeenth Century, in a gen- eration or so were blended, and absorbed the Swedes and Dutch. The great majority of those emigrants were natives of England. and made Pennsylvania an English community, and substituted for every other mother tongue the English language in its purity. From the West Indies came Samuel Carpenter, Jonathan Dick- inson, Isaac Norris, and others; from New England, Edward Shippen and Francis Richardson; from South Carolina, John Moore-all, so far as we know, natives of England. Robert Turner, Nicholas Newlin, and others had lived in Ireland, but were English by birth or parentage. The Irish Quakers were not the real Irish ; the Bearni Feni was to them impossible jargon, if even they heard it from the peasants. These English-Irish are to be distinguished also from the Scotch-Irish, who began to come in the second decade of the Eighteenth Century, and possessed themselves of an immense region, which was a wilderness until after the death of the first Proprietary. Quite a number of Scotchmen had settled in the Jerseys, and in what is now the State of Delaware, and some of these came across or up the river. They were Lowlanders, not Celts. In fact, about the only rep- resentatives here of the ancient population of the British Isles were the Welsh. The preaching of Fox and other Children of
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the Light, as the Quakers first called themselves, was better re- ceived by the gentry of Wales than by the gentry of England, and those who settled the Welsh Tract near Philadelphia, bring- ing over genealogical trees giving each generation back to Adam, were of higher social position at home than the Anglo-Saxons whom Penn's agents induced to come. Some had been to college, or studied law or medicine, and were well read in Quaker divin- ity ; probably all were familiar with the English language. The Germans who settled Germantown and its vicinity must be dis- tinguished from those who arrived many years later, and were known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, and who so thoroughly ad- hered to their dialect, and transmitted it to their descendants that even in the middle of the Nineteenth Century the people of the townships settled by them, it is said, could not converse with the people of the adjoining townships settled by Scotch-Irish, and very recently a German edition of the laws and public docu- ments was always printed by the State. The Germans who came before 1700, or very soon after, were Protestants of the various sects which may be embraced in the name of Pietists, neither Lutherans nor Moravians. Having among them scholars from the universities or well known schools, as a body they were in learn- ing the equals, if not the superiors, of the Welsh, and far ahead of the English colonists; but in that day even the lower classes of England were not without some education, and there were a good number of persons in Pennsylvania of neither German nor Welsh, nor yet of Swedish extraction, who had been taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The gift of preaching had made some who had not been educated for the priesthood, authors of controversial or pious writings. The Swedes belonged to the Church of Sweden, which was Lutheran in its theology, Episcopal in its organization, although no bishop ever lived here, and Erastian in its theory of mission. The clergy of Weccacoe (Swanson street near Wash- ington avenue, Philadelphia), Kingsessing ( Woodland avenue, Philadelphia), and Upper Merion (Bridgeport, Montgomery
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