USA > Pennsylvania > The social and intellectual state of the colony of Pennsylvania prior to the year 1743 > Part 2
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Many original works were published before the era of 1743, of which a considerable number is still preserved in the City Library. There are now on the shelves of that institution above four hun- dred original books and pamphlets, which were issued by the Phi- ladelphia press before the revolution. A multitude of domestic pro- ductions are no doubt lost, and if we add the reprints of foreign books, in which, at all periods, our press was prolific, the number of works printed in the colony may be estimated much beyond what is generally imagined.
The aim of this essay is accomplished, in showing that in the year 1743 the formation of such a society was not forced or premature, but that amid the general culture and scientific predilections of the colony, it was as natural, as it was certainly important, to combine
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and concentrate intellectual exertion. Like the other institutions, which the mental wants of the country demanded, it became itself the nursing mother of our infant science and the great distributor of its scientific wealth.
The names of the first members of the Philosophical Society of 1743, as given by Dr. Franklin in his letter to Cadwalader Colden, dated April 5th, 1744, show the materials of which it was to be com- posed. I believe that most of the first members were either natives of Pennsylvania, or among, if not its original, its early colonists:
THOMAS HOPKINSON, President.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Secretary.
THOMAS GODFREY, Mathematician.
JOHN BARTRAM, Botanist.
SAMUED RHODES, Mechanician.
WILLIAM PARSONS, Geographer.
THOMAS BOND, Physician.
PHINEAS BOND, General Natural Philosopher. WILLIAM COLEMAN, Treasurer.
It is not necessary to do more than enumerate the names of these early pioneers of our science. They require no eulogium. Several of them had been members of the Junto of 1727. But, as some evi- dence of the ardour which animated these venerable labourers in our scientific vineyard, I may point to the fact, that the poor and unfriend- ed Godfrey, while engaged at his trade of a glazier, undertook and mastered the intricacies of the Latin language, without an instructor, to enable him to read Newton's Principia.
The Society of 1743, in conjunction with another Association, con- stitutes the germ of the present American Philosophical Society. Though the first volume of its Transactions was not published
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until after its union with the Junto, in 1769, yet it was in active existence, and fostered the spirit which had been so auspiciously begun. The previous minutes unfortunately were not preserved with much regularity, but a minute-book is extant which goes back to the year 1758,-and it is well known, that in the year 1764, the Society ordered a survey for a canal to connect the waters of the Chesapeake and Delaware.
If Franklin was the father of this Society, Rittenhouse was its child. No one can read the history of these two illustrious men without observing the most striking similarity in their careers. Alike poor, and condemned to occupations which seemed to exclude the benefits of systematic study, they bravely encountered the storms of early mischances, breasted the obstructions, and overcame the impe- diments which opposed their way to greatness and to fame.
Franklin, from the lowliness of a runaway boy, with a roll of bread under each arm; from the indignities of penury, and the associations of the printing office; from the meanness of a twopenny earthen por- ringer, with a pewter spoon to eat his bread and milk ;- became opu- lent, honoured and distinguished; the staff and reliance of his coun- try in a trying hour; the companion of the great, and the guest of a king. Few men have done more lasting service to their country and to mankind than this eminent philosopher. He projected many of the literary, scientific, and benevolent associations of our metropolis as they now exist ; not only this Society, but the Philadelphia Li- brary, the University, and other kindred institutions. A boy, he soon imbibed the spirit of the Province; of an independent character, and ingenuous turn, he at once caught the contagion of the public mind; and gave back to it, with tenfold interest, all the advantages it had yielded. The character of Franklin, plastic and unformed, re- ceived its direction, and was nurtured to maturity, in the genial clime
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of Pennsylvania. On the other hand, this community owes to him an inextinguishable debt; a debt which increases with the fame of those monuments which, if his own hands did not rear, he at least selected the spot and fixed the time of their erection.
When the Society of 1743 was founded, David Rittenhouse was twelve years of age. He was born in the county of Philadelphia, and brought up to the self-denying toil of agricultural labour. It is by no means an unfounded conjecture, that the existence of a society in the Province, which was chiefly devoted to pure mathematics and astro- nomy, should have given an impulse to his genius which determined his character through life. Such was the engrossing nature of his taste, that with the most limited means of education, he became ac- quainted, at an early age, with the elements of geometry, with whose figures, in chalk, he habitually filled the handles of his plough and the fences at each end of the furrows. In the secluded life of the country, at that time thinly settled, and with few opportunities for reading, he struck out by the unaided operations of his mind, the invention of fluxions. It was not until some years after, that he learned from an European publication, to his infinite surprise, that Leibnitz and Newton had, some years before, been engaged in con- testing the honour of that great discovery. The period of his elec- tion to the Society which now fondly claims him as one of its bright- est ornaments, was in the year 1768. He was actively engaged in making observations on the transit of Venus in the year 1769, the results of which he contributed to the first volume of our published Transactions.
The enthusiasm with which he pursued his favourite studies, is exemplified in the Eulogium pronounced upon his character by the late Dr. Benjamin Rush. Rittenhouse had prepared an extensive
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apparatus at Norriton, and provided a powerful telescope for ob- serving the phenomenon of the planet. His preparations had en- gaged his attention for several successive weeks. In contemplating that he was to witness what had been observed but twice since the creation, what no one had .seen since the year 1639, and what no human being alive would ever behold again, his mind became warmed into an unusual intensity. All his powers of thought and imagination were concentrated upon this object. He had pro- bably lost sleep in the feverishness of his impatience, and exhausted his strength in protracted watching, anxiety and study; and when at last the contact occurred with the planet and the sun, the sen- sation of pleasure was too acute for his frame. Under the excite- ment of the moment he was in danger of losing the great con- summation, for he sunk away into a temporary swoon! In speak- ing of his Planetarium, Jefferson extravagantly said, "you have not indeed made a world, but you have approached more nearly to its Maker than any man who has lived from the creation to this day." It is certainly a monument to his genius and mechanical power.
But it is time to bring this dissertation to a close. It may safely be asserted, that while our honoured ancestors laid the foundations of the American Philosophical Society, the ceremony of placing its corner stone was by the hand or under the enlightened superintend- ence of Franklin; and that if it was reared only after long continued and sedulous toil, its erection has repaid the diligence of its archi- tects, in the spirit enkindled by it in this country, and the honour reflected by it in distant lands.
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APPENDIX.
Note to Page 51.
The text is emphatic respecting William Penn's freedom from the relation of slave-holder. I avail myself of the opportunity to correct an error into which Mr. George Bancroft was very naturally led, on this subject, by a fallacious authority, in his great work, "The History of the United States." Mistakes which are unworthy of notice in an inferior production, become important when found in a book which is destined to permanent celebrity like the one named.
Mr. Bancroft has been eloquently just to the founder, in the attri- bution of some of the greatest and best qualities of man, but he com- mits a mistake in saying that Penn "died a slave-holder." (2 Vol. p. 403.)
The authority cited at the foot of the page for this assertion, is the Historical Collections of Massachusetts, S Vol. 2d Series, which con- tains a letter from the late T. Matlack. I have read this letter, which is dated on the 11th January, 1817. It speaks of Penn's leaving a family of slaves, one of whom had been his body-servant, who after- wards became a gardener at Pennsbury.
John F. Watson, of Germantown, refers in his 'Annals' to the same body-servant spoken of by Matlack. He calls him Virgil, and says Matlack told him he remembered talking with Virgil about the year 1745. As our amiable antiquarian derived his information from the writer of the letter, it is not surprising he should endorse the inac-
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curacy by repeating the statement. Watson says, "These were black people whose surname was Warder. They had been servants of William Penn," &c.
It is fortunate for historical truth, that owing to an original docu- ment still in existence, the assertion, as made, can be fully disproved. This document is a bill of sale, under date 26th of 11th Month, 1733-4, from Joseph Warder, the owner of the negro in question, conveying him to "the Honourable Thomas Penn, Esq." for the consideration of fifty pounds, Pennsylvania currency. This valuable manuscript is in the possession of George M. Justice, of Philadelphia, who deemed the subject worthy of a written communication to the Historical So- ciety of Pennsylvania, a few months ago. Having myself seen the original paper in the hands of Mr. Justice, I entertain no doubt that it is genuine, from the internal evidence it carries with it, and from its present respectable custody.
The bill of sale calls the negro Virgil, and states his age, at that time (1733), to have been "about 20 years." William Penn did not visit the Province of Pennsylvania after his second departure in 1701. He died in the year 1718. Virgil, therefore, could have been only five years old at the death of Penn; and as the Founder continued to re- side in England during the last seventeen years of his life, the idea of his leaving a body-servant in the Colony, is rather too absurd for denial.
Virgil was no doubt legally owned from his birth by Joseph War- der, and received the distinctive appellation of Warder, from the well known custom among servants of assuming the family name of their original master, and retaining it through every change of ownership. The cause of Matlack's mistake is to be sought, if not in the infirmity of age, (for he was about ninety when the letter was written) in the antiquity of the event detailed, for he relates a conversation in 1817 which happened in 1745. He has, strangely enough, mistaken well
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known dates and events, and confounded William Penn, the Founder of Pennsylvania, with Thomas Penn, one of his descendants.
In extenuation of this aged letter writer, it may be mentioned, that no less a personage than Dr. Franklin has committed the same spe- cies of blunder in his letters and autobiography, in ascribing to the Founder various misdeeds which were the fruits of a different policy. and a subsequent age. It is owing to the prevalence of a kindred or identical spirit with these, in the Historical Review of Pennsylvania, which induces me to suppose, that though Dr. Franklin has disclaim- ed the authorship of the work, his may have been one of the hands engaged in its manufacture.
J. R. T.
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