USA > Pennsylvania > Progressive Pennsylvania; a record of the remarkable industrial development of the Keystone state, with some account of its early and its later transportation systems, its early settlers, and its prominent men > Part 3
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Upland on August 3 of that year, Upland remaining the capital of the province until it was superseded the next year by Philadelphia. Other commissioners soon followed Markham. In the same year several vessels left England for Pennsylvania, bringing many settlers. The additional commissioners were surveyors.
In the spring of 1682 Markham and the other com- missioners selected the territory now embraced in the cen- tral part of Philadelphia as the site of the future capital and commercial city, and during the spring and summer Markham obtained titles from the Indians to large tracts of territory both within and outside the limits of Philadel- phia, extending into the present counties of Bucks, Ches- ter, and Montgomery. A survey of the city into streets, alleys, lots, and reservations from the Delaware to the Schuylkill and from Vine street to South street was un- dertaken, but this survey was not completed until 1683. In the meantime Penn arrived in the province in October, 1682, as has been stated, his ship, the Welcome, bringing about seventy colonists. Other ships came in the same year, both before and after Penn's arrival, bringing hun- dreds of English and Welsh settlers. In all twenty-three vessels arrived in the province in 1681 and 1682. Many other vessels followed in 1683, adding largely to the popu- lation of the province. Nearly all the immigrants in the first three years were English and Welsh, and the most of them were Friends, or Quakers. A large majority were English. In August, 1683, Penn wrote a letter to the Free Society of Traders in which he said : " The planted part of the province is cast into six counties, Philadelphia, Buckingham, Chester, Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex, con- taining about four thousand souls. Two General Assemblies have been held." In the same letter he said that Philadelphia then contained "about fourscore houses and cottages." In a letter written in the same year to the Duke of Ormonde, probably late in the year, Penn said : " Our town of Philadelphia is situated between two navi- gable rivers, having from 4 to 10 fathoms of water, about 150 houses up in one year, and 400 country settlements." In 1684 the population of the province is estimated to
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THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA.
have amounted to seven thousand men, women, and children, one-third of whom lived in Philadelphia.
On December 4, 1682, the first General Assembly for the province convened at Upland, in accordance with Penn's "frame of government." Penn himself was pres- ent. He had previously changed the name of Upland to Chester, so naming it after Chester in England. The As- sembly passed an act uniting with Pennsylvania the three counties afterwards embraced in the State of Delaware. The three Pennsylvania counties and the three Delaware counties were organized and their boundaries determined at the same session of the Assembly. In March, 1683, the Assembly first met in Philadelphia, which thereafter re- mained the capital of the province. It is interesting to note that the term General Assembly, which is the pres- ent name of the legislative branch of the government of Pennsylvania, appears in Penn's "frame of government" and probably originated with him.
Philadelphia received its name from Penn, who se- lected it before he left England and even before its exact location was determined. In a letter written by him in 1684 he apostrophizes the new city as follows : " And thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, named before thou wast born." Its meaning, brotherly love, was particularly appropriate in view of Penn's religious views. Philadelphia is the name of a city in Asia Minor and is mentioned in the third chapter of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. It may be that Penn, in choosing the name Philadelphia, had also in mind the sentiment ex- pressed in the eighth verse of the chapter referred to : " Behold, I have set before thee an open door." After Penn's arrival he purchased from three Swedish brothers, named Swenson, several hundred acres of land at the junction of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, embracing the settlement known as Wicaco, and he made other pur- chases of land both from the Swedes and the Indians.
In August, 1684, Penn returned to England. He had resided in Pennsylvania for nearly two years. He did not revisit his province until December, 1699, again remaining almost two years, until October, 1701, when he returned
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to England, never again to see the shores of the Dela- ware. After the latter year the immigration of English and Welsh Friends virtually ceased.
Penn obtained his title to the territory now compris- ing the State of Delaware from the Duke of York in 1682 and not from his charter. The consideration which Penn agreed to pay to the Duke of York, afterwards James the Second, was only nominal. The three counties into which this territory was divided were granted a separate legis- lature by Penn in 1703, but they were otherwise subject to the control of the authorities of Pennsylvania until 1776, when they were organized into an independent State. William Penn and the Duke of York were warm friends.
Philadelphia and the surrounding country grew rapidly after Penn had come into personal touch with his province and in the years immediately following his first visit. Law and order were at once established through the "frame of government" which he had prepared. Hundreds of houses were built and hundreds of farms were opened. Roads in the neighborhood of Philadelphia took the place of bridle paths. Wagonmakers, plowmakers, blacksmiths, carpen- ters, and other mechanics were kept busy from year to year. Mills for grinding grain and sawing lumber were built. Other industries followed the primitive industries that the Swedes and other early settlers had established. Ships were built and trade with the mother country and with other colonies and the West Indies was soon in ac- tive operation. Many of the early Philadelphians were ex- perienced merchants. Peace with the Indians was main- tained because Penn always insisted that they be fairly treated and that their lands be paid for. There was a continuous stream of immigration, English and Welsh Friends, or Quakers, largely predominating in the early years, as has been stated, but Episcopalians from England soon came in large numbers, as well as representatives of other sects and nationalities to be mentioned hereafter.
The Swedes continued to form an important element in the population of the colony. In 1700 the Swedish Lu- therans built the celebrated "Old Swedes" church at Wi- caco, in the southern part of Philadelphia, which is still
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THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA.
standing in good repair and in use. Before the coming of Penn many Swedes had settled in the present Mont- gomery county. In 1701 a colony of Swedes from the Delaware settled in Berks county and before 1720 they built a church at Douglassville. There is to-day an "Old Swedes" church at Norristown and there are other "Old Swedes" churches still standing in Delaware.
Referring again to the building of ships in Pennsyl- vania the following extract from Colonel Buell's biography of William Penn claims for him a new honor : "More than a hundred houses were built in Philadelphia during the summer of 1683 and Penn had a small ship built for the account of the Free Society of Traders. She was called the Amity. This was the beginning of shipbuilding in Philadelphia, an art in which the city has excelled from that day to this. It is interesting to note that, though the Amity's hull and spars were new and built of Ameri- can timber, her ironwork, standing rigging, and much of the running rigging were taken from an old brig of the same name which had brought over a load of emigrants the previous fall and was then condemned and broken up at Chester, having nearly foundered on the voyage. No sea-going vessel was built in Massachusetts until four- teen years after the landing of the Pilgrims. But Penn built a ship in Philadelphia within three years from the signing of his charter."
When Penn returned to his province in 1699, after an absence of fifteen years, during which period he passed through many tribulations on its account, he found it in a prosperous condition from almost every point of view. Its population at this time numbered about twenty thou- sand. The "holy experiment," although it was destined to give its author still further trouble of a serious nature which need not be dwelt upon, was now an assured success. The population of Pennsylvania at the time of William Penn's death in 1718 is estimated to have amounted to forty thousand, of whom one-half were Quakers and one- ' fourth of the whole number lived in Philadelphia.
William Penn was born in London on October 14, 1644, and died at Ruscombe on July 30, 1718, aged almost
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74 years. For many years before his death he was greatly distressed in mind and body. We need not devote further space to the connection of this great man with the up- building of a great commonwealth. No people ever had a wiser leader or one whose influence for good has been more widely diffused or more generally recognized.
We presume that there are but few persons who do not believe that Pennsylvania was so named by William Penn, and named, too, after himself. Not only are both of these suppositions incorrect but the origin of the name is involved in some obscurity. Day says : "By the king's order, much against Penn's inclination, the new province was to be called Pennsylvania, in honor of the services of his illustrious father." Hazard quotes from official records to show that, when the privy council of Charles the Sec- ond submitted to him the draft of the charter of the prov- ince, "there being a blank left for the name their lordships agree to leave the nomination of it to the king." Janney gives the full title of the privy council as the "Committee of the Privy Council for the Affairs of Trade and Planta- tions." The day after the charter was granted to Penn he wrote a letter to his friend, Robert Turner, in which he gave the particulars of the naming of his province. The essential parts of that letter we quote verbatim as follows :
" Thine I have and for my business here know that, after many waitings, watchings, solicitings, and disputes in council, this day my country was confirmed to me under the great seal of England, with large powers and privile- ges, by the name of Pennsylvania, a name the king would give it in honour of my father. I chose New Wales, being as this, a pretty hilly country ; but Penn being Welsh for a head, as Penmanmoire, in Wales, and Penrith, in Cum- berland, and Penn, in Buckinghamshire, the highest land in England, called this Pennsylvania, which is the high or head woodlands; for I proposed, when the secretary, a Welshman, refused to have it called New Wales, Sylvania, and they added Penn to it; and though I much opposed it, and went to the king to have it struck out and altered, he said it was past, and would take it upon him; nor could twenty guineas move the under-secretary to vary the
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THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA.
name; for I feared lest it should be looked on as vanity in me, and not as a respect in the king, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often mentions with praise."
At first sight the reader will probably conclude that to the king do we owe the whole of the name of Pennsyl- vania, but a second look will convince him that we are indebted to Penn for the Sylvania portion of it. So much seems to be clear and unquestionable. But it is not so clear from whom came the prefix Penn. Penn, having at first stated with much positiveness that "the king would give" to the province " the name of Pennsylvania," and having subsequently stated that he proposed Sylvania, we naturally hesitate to receive the remainder of his state- ment without a careful analysis of its meaning. Failing to obtain the adoption of the name New Wales, Penn, as we have seen, proposed Sylvania, and immediately afterwards remarks that "they added Penn to it." To whom does the term "they" refer ? There are three con- siderations which point to the secretary and his assistants as the persons meant. First, if Penn had meant the king it is to be presumed that he would have said so; second, the term is plural, not singular; third, Penn offered to pay the under-secretary to omit the prefix, which Penn would hardly have done if the king had ordered it to be in- serted. So far the evidence points from the king. But Penn straightway proceeds to give evidence on the other side as follows : " for I feared lest it should be looked on as a vanity in me, and not as a respect in the king, as it truly was, to my father."
And this is the history of the naming of Pennsylvania. That the king's privy council, in submitting to His Majesty the draft of the charter of the province, left to him the selection of a name therefor Hazard expressly states and proves before giving the Turner letter, but that the king exercised the privilege is not proved from that letter or from anything else that has been written. And yet, that the king was determined that the name of the province should be Pennsylvania is shown conclusively by the exact words of the charter, in which the king says that " wee doe hereby . . . call itt Pensilvania, and soe from
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henceforth wee will have itt called." Penn's fear that the name of Pennsylvania would be attributed to a desire on his part to perpetuate his own name in that of his prov- ince has been realized in the popular opinion of the day.
There was ample precedent for the use by Penn of the name New Wales. The impulse to prefix the word "new" to the names of provinces and towns was a strong one with the founders of empire on this continent. There were New France, New England, New Netherlands, New Am- sterdam, New York, New Jersey, and New Sweden. Why not New Wales !
In the early days of its history Pennsylvania was fre- quently referred to in written and printed documents as Pennsylvania, Pennsilvania, and Pensilvania, even the char- ter to Penn spelling the name in different ways. In 1698 Gabriel Thomas printed in London An Historical and Ge- ographical Account of the Province and Country of Pensil- vania and of West Jersey in America. This spelling is found in Reynier Jansen's Abstract or Abridgment of the Laws, etc., printed in Philadelphia in 1701. As late as 1714 the title page of the laws of Pennsylvania, printed by Andrew Bradford in Philadelphia in that year, reads as follows : The Laws of the Province of Pennsilvania, col- lected into One Volumn, by Order of the Governor, etc.
A few years after he had founded Philadelphia Penn proposed to make " a second settlement" in his province upon a scale somewhat similar to the plan of Philadelphia itself. This scheme Penn made public in England in 1690 in a formal prospectus, a fac simile of which has been pub- lished by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, entitled " Some Proposals for a Second Settlement in the Province of Pennsylvania," from which we quote as follows :
"It is now my purpose to make another settlement, upon the river of Susquehannagh, that runs into the Bay of Chesapeake, and bears about fifty miles west from the River Delaware, as appears by the common maps of the English Dominion in America. There I design to lay out a plat for the building of another city, in the most con- venient place for the communication with the former plan- tations on the East ; which by land is as good as done
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THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA.
already, a way being laid out between the two rivers very exactly and conveniently at least three years ago; and which will not be hard to do by water, by the benefit of the River Scoalkill; for a branch of that river lies near a branch that runs into Susquehannagh river, and is the common course of the Indians with their skins and furs into our parts, and to the Provinces of East and West Jersey and New York, from the west and northwest parts of the continent from whence they bring them.
" To conclude, that which particularly recommends this settlement is the known goodness of the soyle, and scit- uation of the land, which is high and not mountainous ; also the pleasantness and largeness of the river, being clear and not rapid and broader than the Thames at Lon- don-bridge, many miles above the place designed for this settlement ; and runs (as we are told by the Indians) quite through the Province, into which many fair rivers empty themselves. The sorts of timber that grow there are chiefly oake, ash, chesnut, walnut, cedar, and poplar. The native fruits are pawpaws, grapes, mulberys, chesnuts, and several sorts of walnuts. There are likewise great quanti- ties of deer, and especially elks, which are much bigger than our red deer, and use that river in herds. And fish there is of divers sorts and very large and good and in great plenty."
The scheme of founding a second Philadelphia on the Susquehanna appears to have never taken shape. But Penn's prospectus shows that as early as 1690 all fear of trouble with the Indians between the Delaware and the Susquehanna had been dispelled, if it had ever seriously existed, and that some progress had been made at that time toward the extension of white settlements to the Susquehanna. His description of the Susquehanna region, its trees, animals, etc., is also valuable. It is also an in- teresting fact that three years before the prospectus was issued, as early as 1687, a "way" had been "laid out" be- tween the Delaware and the Susquehanna rivers. This " way " was undoubtedly the road up the west bank of the Schuylkill to the mouth of French creek and thence to the Susquehanna at or near the mouth of Conestoga creek.
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CHAPTER III.
THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
THE settlement of Pennsylvania under Penn's charter could not be confined to emigrants from England and Wales, nor did Penn wish that it should be so confined, or that it should be limited to people of his own faith. On the contrary he encouraged all the discontented of Great Britain and of Continental countries to help him to settle his province : all were welcome. Next to his own coun- trymen and to members of the Society of Friends espe- cially he caused the attractions which Pennsylvania pre- sented to be widely known in the Rhine countries, where civil and religious persecution was active, cruel, and re- lentless, and where poverty was most pinching and op- pressive. His name and his liberal views upon all ques- tions of religion and of civil government were well known in these countries before he received his charter. His mother was Margaret Jasper, a native of Holland, the daughter of John Jasper, an English merchant living in Rotterdam. In 1671 and again in 1677 Penn had visited Holland and Germany to preach the Friends' doctrines, which in some respects did not differ widely from the re- ligious views of the Mennonites in those countries and in Switzerland and in other respects fully agreed with them, so much so that the Mennonites after their removal to Pennsylvania were very often called German Quakers. Before either of Penn's visits, however, there were in both Holland and Germany a few adherents of the Friends' doctrines as they were taught by George Fox and others. After the charter for Pennsylvania had been granted it was therefore only natural that many of the impoverished and oppressed people of the Rhine countries, Holland, Ger- many, France, and Switzerland, should turn their thoughts to this province as a refuge from all their troubles. Many of these came in the early years after Penn had received his charter and many thousands came afterwards.
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
The first emigrants from the Continent who accepted Penn's invitation were led by Francis Daniel Pastorius, a well born and highly educated native of Sommerhausen, Germany, who was born in 1651 and became a lawyer of distinction and an enthusiast in promoting the welfare of his countrymen whose religious views he shared. In a general sense he was a Pietist, a term which, broadly in- terpreted, designated all those German Protestants who did not believe in dogmas or formal modes of worship. His parents were Lutherans. As a Pietist he fraternized with the Mennonites. After coming to Pennsylvania he affiliat- ed with the Friends, as did also many Mennonites. The Mennonites were a numerous sect, found in Holland, the Rhine provinces of Germany, and Switzerland, their name being derived from Menno Simons, a Catholic priest, a na- tive of Holland, who had abandoned his church and had become the leader of the reformed Anabaptists. He was born in Friesland, Holland, in 1505 and died in 1561. Pastorius, anxious to emigrate to a land where civil and religious liberty prevailed, was easily induced to become the agent of some enterprising Germans who had purchas- ed from William Penn many thousand acres of land in the vicinity of Philadelphia. He arrived in Philadelphia in August, 1683, while Penn was still here and personally directing the affairs of his province, and was a few weeks afterwards followed by thirteen Mennonite families, em- bracing thirty-three persons, from Crefeld, a German town on the border of Holland, some of whom were Germans while others were Hollanders. On the land acquired from Penn by these Crefelders and others Pastorius founded Germantown on October 24, 1683, and he gave it its name. The original settlers were soon followed by other Mennon- ites, mostly farmers, some of whom were Germans, oth- ers Hollanders, and others Swiss. In 1702 a settlement of Mennonites was made on Skippack creek, in what is now Montgomery county, but in the meantime many Mennon- ites and others had opened farms nearer to Germantown.
The first settlers of Germantown, including the Cre- felders, were mostly weavers, and they at once began the manufacture of woolen and linen fabrics. Gabriel Thomas
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says that Germantown linen was "such as no person of quality need be ashamed to wear." Other mechanical in- dustries were added as the immigrant population increas- ed. Germantown soon became known as a manufacturing town. It was the first distinctively manufacturing town in Pennsylvania. One of its early industries was the knitting of hosiery, an industry which survives to-day.
On March 7, 1684, Pastorius wrote from Philadelphia as follows: "Here and there towns are being built. Be- side our own one by name Franckfurt, about half an hour from here, is beginning to be started, where also a mill and glass factory are built. Not far from there, namely, two hours from here, lies our Germantown, where already forty-two people live in twelve homes, who are for the most part linen weavers and not much given to agriculture."
Among the early industries established at Germantown or in its immediate vicinity was the manufacture of paper. Some time before 1690 Willem Rittinghuysen, a Mennonite minister, built a paper mill on a small tributary of the Wissahickon, which Bishop says was the first paper mill in the colonies. Rittinghuysen was a native of Guelderland, a province of Holland. About 1688 he emigrated to Ger- mantown from Arnheim on the Rhine, the capital of Guel- derland. For generations the family had been engaged in the manufacture of paper. After the industry on the Wis- sahickon had been established by Willem Rittinghuysen it continued to be carried on in the same locality by his descendants for many generations. His great-grandson, David Rittenhouse, the astronomer, and the leading Ameri- can scientist in the colonial and Revolutionary periods, eminent also for his services to the cause of the colonists during the Revolution, was born at Germantown on April 8, 1732, and died in Philadelphia on June 26, 1796. On April 14, 1792, Rittenhouse was appointed by President Washington the first director of the United States Mint. There is a street in Germantown called Rittenhouse street, and one of the aristocratic sections of Philadelphia is called Rittenhouse square.
Pastorius became the schoolmaster, lawyer, and general adviser of the Germantown settlers, and until his death,
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
which occurred in 1719, he exerted great influence among them and among other Pennsylvania pioneers long after Germantown had become the centre of a large immigration of Germans and others. He was a justice of the peace and a member of the General Assembly. He is worthy of remembrance as the leader among the German settlers of Penn's province, and also because of the nobility of his character and his many scholarly and other accomplish- ments. He was master of several languages and wrote much on various subjects. His pen was freely used in commending Pennsylvania to his countrymen and to oth- ers in the Rhine provinces, and many of these, especially Mennonites, came to Pennsylvania through his representa- tions. In the early history of Pennsylvania Pastorius was undoubtedly, next to William Penn, the most influential and the most accomplished of all the emigrants who came from any country. His name is eminently worthy of be- ing associated by all Pennsylvanians with that of William Penn himself. Penn said of him that he was "sober, up- right, wise, and pious-a man everywhere esteemed and of unspotted name." That the two men were close friends is made plain in the following extract from a letter written by Pastorius in March, 1684, in which he gives us a beau- tiful picture of the great Quaker. He says : " My pen (al- though it is from an eagle, which a so-called savage recent- ly brought into my house,) is much too weak to express the lofty merits of this Christian, for such he is indeed. He invited me very often to his table, also to walk and ride in his always elevating society ; and when I was last away from here for eight days, to bring victuals from New Castle, and he had not seen me for that length of time, he came himself to my little house and requested that I should still come two or three times to his home as his guest. He was very fond of the Germans and once said openly in my presence to his councillors and attendants : 'The Germans I am very fond of and wish that you should love them also,' although I never at any other time heard a similar command from him; but these pleased me the more be- cause they entirely conform to the command of God (vid. 1 John 3: 23). I can now say no more than that Will.
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