William Penn
I believe this is a story worth telling because it can easily be lost to the shifting tides of the ages.
Below is a presentation given by George Normen Highly at the Chester County Historical Society on December 20, 1932:
This year we have commemorated the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the first arrival in America of the man who sought throughout his life to obtain for himself and the world religious and political freedom; the man who founded this great Commonwealth, the very existence of which is a living memorial to him, William Penn.
William Penn was born in London on the fourteenth of October, then the Eighth Month, 1644. His great-grandfather was William Penn, "of Minety in the County of Gloucester, Yeoman," who died in 1591. The Great Quaker's grandfather, Giles Penn, son of William, was a sea captain and for many years a consul for English trade in the Mediterranean. Giles Penn married Jean Gilbert, and they were the parents of Admiral Sir William Penn, father of the Founder of Pennsylvania. Admiral Sir Penn, who was born in 1621, married Margaret, daughter of John Jasper of Rotterdam, a Dutchman.
In 1660, Penn, at the age of 16, entered Christ Church, Oxford. Being sympathetic with the Puritan belief and form of worship, he seriously objected to the strict ecclesiastical formulas of this period following the Restoration; this resulted in his expulsion from college in 1662.
In the autumn of 1665, Admiral Penn sent his son to Ireland, where the episode of his military career occurred. It was during this time that the "portrait in armor" was painted.
While in Cork, in 1667, he heard Thomas Loe, the gifted Quaker minister, speak, and was converted to the views of this new Quaker sect. In 1668, Penn appeared as a minister among them.
Contrary to general opinion, he did not adopt the plain attire of Friends and continued to wear, strapped to his belt, the traditional sword. Changing one day to meet George Fox, the story is told, he asked about the propriety of carrying the weapon. George Fox replied, "Wear it as long as thou canst." The next time the two met, Fox, noticing the absence of the sword, inquired about it. Penn replied, "I have taken thy advice; I wore it as long as I could."
Parliament renewed the Conventicle Act in April, 1670, which declared it to be unlawful for more than five persons, exclusive of the family, to meet together for religious worship according to any other than the national ritual. William Penn and William Meade went to a meeting house in London and, finding the doors locked and guarded, proceeded with others to hold a meeting outside. They were arrested and put in jail. The trial which followed is one of the most important in history. The case determined for all time the right of juries to bring in a verdict without coercion from the judge. It brought out the right of juries as a power to check the encroachments of an unjust government. It established the right of a prisoner to defend himself, regardless of the type of offense. Thus we may clearly see that Penn's plea is "an instance, not simply of a Quaker pleading for the rights of his conscience, but it is that of an Englishman contending for the ancient and imprescriptible rights of his race."
This trial made such an impression on the mind of young Penn that, when fifteen years later he framed a government for his new province, the young Founder made it part of his framework that prisoners should have the right to be heard either in person or by counsel, a right which was not fully granted in England until after the year 1836.
On 4 mo. 2nd, 1672, Guilelma Maria Springett, daughter of the late Sir William Springett, was married to William Penn according to the rites of the Society of Friends. Two years after her death, Penn was married a second time, March 5, 1695, to Hannah Callowhill, who survived him.
When Charles II attached his royal signature, March 4, 1681, to the patent for the consideration of a debt the crown had owed Admiral Penn, the son became the owner of a vast territory named by the king in honor of Admiral Penn.
After having appointed, early the next month, his cousin Captain William Markham to serve as Deputy Governor, Penn started the preparation of a series of pamphlets to apprise the prospective settlers of the benefits of the new land. This led to the granting of unlocated land in amounts varying from 250 to 10,000 acres. The grantees, called First Purchasers, were largely well-to-do Quakers of southern England.
As a result of Penn's grant in 1681 of 10,000 acres—by survey of 1733 only 2,850 acres—to his sister Margaret Lowther and her family, a tract called "The Manor of Bilton" was laid out on the west side of the Schuylkill, being separated from the Manor of Mount Joy by the Valley Creek in what is now Charlestown Township.
In setting up his frame of government, he declared the great aim of all government to be "to support power in reverence with the people and to secure the people from the abuse of power; for liberty without obedience is confusion and obedience without liberty is slavery."
His "Holy Experiment," the term given to his proprietary government, was to include as one of its most important features the entire rejection of military force, and a resort only to pacific means. He substituted for arms, their threat and their use, such methods as friendship, conciliation, arbitration, and even international courts. In his "An Essay Toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe," he forecast the plan and purpose of the League of Nations; he established a registry for births, marriages, burials, wills, and letters of administration distinct from all other registers. He also laid the foundation for the public schools. Every American today may "affirm" instead of swear, which right is the result of the work of the Founder of this Commonwealth.
The principles of Penn's "Holy Experiment" influenced the framers of the Constitution of the United States, and the world is only now beginning to awaken to an appreciation of some of his foresighted ideas.
In company with about one hundred passengers, mostly Friends from Sussex, William Penn embarked from the port of Deal, County Kent, on the 30th day of August 1682, on the ship "Welcome," Robert Greenaway, master, for his new dominions, where he was to lay the foundation upon which now rests the government of this commonwealth.
Arriving at New Castle, it was not long until he was at Upland, now Chester, from whence it is believed he went by horseback along the west bank of the Delaware to a place which he laid out as a city, giving it the name of Philadelphia, signifying "brotherly love." In this vicinity, he negotiated the now-famous treaty with the Indians, which Voltaire characterizes as the one treaty "never sworn to and never broken."
The Proprietor caused three counties to be laid out which he called Chester, Philadelphia, and Bucks. The first relinquishment of the rights of the Indians to any lands within this county of Chester was dated, according to Futhy and Cope, June 25, 1683, when an Indian chief, Wingebone, sold all his lands along the west side of the Schuylkill from the first falls as far west "as my right goeth." In the same year, on October 18th, the chief of the Minshewakan Indian Town and his people sold to William Penn the lands between the Delaware River and the Chesapeake Bay to the falls of the Susquehanna River. This Indian Town, located on the site of the London Tract Baptist Church—London Britain Township, Chester County—was marked in 1924 by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission and the Chester County Historical Society.
On September 17, 1718, shortly after the death of the Governor, the Indians ceded their rights to the last of the lands within this county.
The Founder had long had difficulties with Lord Baltimore as to the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. This problem and the anxiety of Penn concerning his persecuted Quaker brethren made it necessary for Penn to return to England. On 6 mo. (August) 12th, 1684, the Governor embarked, leaving behind a colony of seven hundred people, most of whom were Friends. After a voyage of forty-seven days, he landed at Wonder in Sussex, within seven miles of his house at Worminghurst.
In 1687, Penn, being in favor with the new King, James II, was able to have released more than twelve hundred Quakers confined in prison for conscience' sake.
After preaching a farewell sermon, 6 mo. (August) 13th, 1699, at the Friends Meeting House, Westminster, Penn, accompanied by his family and James Logan, whom he had selected as his secretary, set sail 7 mo. (September) 9th, 1699, on the ship "Canterbury" for Chester, where he landed 10 mo. (December) 1st, 1699.
Although Penn granted as early as September 4th and 8th, 1682, fifty thousand acres in trust for his wife Guilelma and his children, the land remained unascertained until 2 mo. 20th, 1700, when Henry Gollingsworth surveyed thirty thousand acres, which included all the present township of New Garden and the greater part of Kennett, with several thousand acres in New Castle County. On October 23, 1701, William Penn patented fifteen thousand five hundred acres for "fatherly love and natural affection" and "a Bever skinn” yearly to his daughter Letitia Penn. This land, according to the patent as set forth by Penn, was to be erected into a manor called "The Manor of Steyning." This Manor adjoined a tract of fourteen thousand five hundred acres which the Proprietor patented to his son, William, on May 24, 1706. The western line of the Manor of Steyning is marked by a bronze tablet erected in 1926 by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission and the Chester County Historical Society.
In 1701, William Penn moved the Unami group of the Lenni Lenape Indians from the Lower Ridley and Crum Creeks to a five hundred-acre square tract to the northwest. This Okehocking Indian town was located on the present Delchester Farms; a bronze tablet erected in 1924 by this Society and the Pennsylvania Historical Society marks this only Indian Reservation the Proprietor ever established. The Indians departed prior to 1738 from this reservation to the Swatara Creek in what is now Dauphin and in some part Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.
Early in the year 1700, William Penn and his family first occupied the beautiful estate, "Pennsbury Manor," situated on the Delaware River in Bucks County, four miles above Bristol. Here the Founder spent some of the happiest days of his life.
When the Governor learned that "strenuous endeavors were used by several united interests to procure an act of Parliament for annexing to the Crown the several proprietary governments," he reluctantly consented to leave his adopted country. After being visited by the Indians who had come "to take leave of him" and express their love and affection for Father Penn, the Governor, in the fall of 1701, set sail from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Penn never returned again to the colony in which he had such a profound interest.
The misconduct of Penn's son, the abuses by those in charge of the government's affairs, and the squandering of Philip Ford, his dishonest steward, whom Penn entrusted with the management of his estate, made this a very hard time for the Founder, who was thrown into prison by Ford for a debt as a result of the latter's own mismanagement. Throughout this troublesome period, Penn evidenced the patience of a true Christian. The remark of Isaac Norris might well be repeated here: "God darkens the world to us that our eyes may behold the greater brightness of his kingdom."
By the election of a new assembly, harmony was restored in government, and in 1712, the influence of Friends in the Assembly was so great that "an act to prevent the importation of negroes and Indians into the province" was passed. Although it was nullified by the crown, Pennsylvania is entitled to the distinction of having led the way in an attempt to prohibit slavery.
On 4 mo. (June) 8th, 1712, William Penn suffered an attack of paralysis while he was writing his last letter to his faithful secretary, James Logan. He lingered as an invalid until, on the 30th day of 5 mo. (July) 1718, in the 74th year of his age, death called the Founder of this great Commonwealth. He was buried in Jordans Friends Graveyard in Buckinghamshire.
One of the greatest tributes that anyone could have when the world was filled with skepticism and rivalry is the love and confidence which the American Indian held for William Penn. The Indian knew he had lost a friend when the Proprietor of Pennsylvania died.
Since his death, the world has been shaken by successive revolutions, yet the great principles upon which he founded his free and happy Commonwealth are still living forces, unchanged in efficiency and usefulness, while only the mode of administration has been changed to meet the needs of a growing people.
Penn ranks among the great men of the ages who, by their wisdom and liberality, are entitled to the admiration and gratitude of the world. -end
NOTE: The notation where the months are written as "6 mo.," "7 mo.," and "10 mo.," refers to the Quaker dating system, which was used in the 16th and 17th centuries by members of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers), and particularly by William Penn and his contemporaries.
In the Quaker system, months were numbered rather than named. Instead of referring to the calendar months by their familiar names (e.g., January, February, etc.), they used a system where the months of the year were numbered from the time of the "first month" (March), which was the beginning of the year in the Quaker calendar. This system was based on a combination of religious and practical reasons, and it was especially common in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Here’s how it works:
1 mo. = March
2 mo. = April
3 mo. = May
4 mo. = June
5 mo. = July
6 mo. = August
7 mo. = September
8 mo. = October
9 mo. = November
10 mo. = December
11 mo. = January
12 mo. = February
So, when the article says, "6 mo. (August) 13th, 1699," it means August 13th, 1699, and similarly for the other dates.
The use of this system persisted for many years, especially within Quaker communities, and was part of their distinctive way of life. By the 18th century, the standard Gregorian calendar, with its named months, became more widely adopted for general use, but this Quaker numbering system continued for some time in their records. - Bruce Baar MS, ND
Humphry Marshall
Humphry Marshall was an American botanist and a notable figure in the early American scientific community. He was born in 1722 in Pennsylvania and is often remembered for his work in the field of botany, particularly in the study of North American plants. Marshall is best known for his book, "Arbustrum Americanum: The American Grove", published in 1785 when he was 63 years young. It was one of the first comprehensive works on the cultivation and alphabetical cataloging of trees in North America. He is known as the father of Dendrology, the science and study of woody plants (trees, shrubs, and lianas). His contributions to horticulture and botany were significant during his time, and he helped lay the groundwork for future studies in these areas. Marshall also had a keen interest in the native flora of Pennsylvania, and his work contributed to the understanding and appreciation of American plants. Marshall's first book was A Few Observations Concerning Christ, Or the Eternal Word in 1755. He died on November 5, 1801, in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Humphry Marshall's house, known as the "Marshall House," is located in Marshallton, Pennsylvania, in Chester County. Humphry Marshall was a stone mason by trade and built his own house in 1773. It is a significant historical site. The house is an 18th-century Pennsylvania country house and is constructed from local stone, reflecting the building practices of the time.
The house served as both a residence and a place where Marshall conducted his botanical studies. Over the years, the property has been preserved and recognized for its historical importance, reflecting Marshall's contributions to botany and his role in the early American scientific community. Today, the house is often associated with local history and heritage, attracting visitors interested in both architecture and natural history.
John Beal Bordley
Born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1727, John Beale Bordley became a successful Lawyer & Baltimore Judge, but is most well known for his research and publications on American farming practices. Convinced that American farming could be significantly improved, Bordley studied the works of leading British experts and experimented with different agricultural methods. Most notably, Bordley encouraged local farmers to frequently rotate their crops and to employ the use of manure as a valuable soil fertilizer.
In 1791, Judge Bordley and his wife Sarah moved to Pennsylvania, where they kept a house in Philadelphia and a large farm in Chester County. On his farm, Bordley conducted many agricultural experiments and published his written works. In the Bordley family memoirs one historian quotes, "When this independent farmer's foreign beers, wines, porters and ales began to diminish in his cellars, he started a brewery of his own, and planted a vineyard. When his beer was fermented, he put it away in casks made by his own carpenters, from timber cut down out of his own woods, and he even manufactured his own salt from the Chesapeake Bay."
John Beale Bordley's house is now a bar and grill on a golf course down the road from Beacon Hill Farm.
Buffalo Bill Cody
(coming soon)
Charles Lindbergh lands in West Bradford, Chester County, PA
Charles Lindbergh had an emergency landing on March 13, 1928, a short distance west from Beacon Hill Farm. He hit fog and "dropped from the clouds and landed on the farm of Emmory Way" as noted by a Daily Local reporter.
Here is an excerpt from page 364 of the book "Between the Brandywines"
by Catherine Quillman:
"LUCKY LINDY" SLEEPS IN WEST BRADFORD: CHARLES LINDBERGH'S LASTING IMPRESSION
If one considers the newspaper headlines "Lindbergh Leaves Fine Impression" and "Lindbergh down on the farm" the emergency landing of "Lucky Lindy," or "The Colonel," then the world's leading celebrity, was an event that few West Bradford residents would forget. Certainly, it was a big scoop for the Daily Local reporter who vied for more than four hours with newspapermen from area papers to be granted an interview. When it was granted, "it was only for about three minutes," the reporter noted.* Lindbergh, who was forced to land when his plane hit fog in the late afternoon of March 13,1928, initially did not reveal his identity when he "dropped from the clouds and landed on the farm of Emmor Way," as one reporter described it. The Daily Local News account is unspecific about the time, only that Lindbergh and his passenger (described in some papers as his attorney from New York), Henry Breckenridge, were unsure of their location. "When the plane landed, the flyer walked to the house of Mr. Way, being guided there by Frank Elvin, a boy who works on the Way’s place. The companion of the flier asked how far it was to Coatesville." He decided to stay at the nearby Stock Grange farm after he was told the city was six miles away. Charles Elkington, a Philadelphia stockbroker, then owned the farm located near Romansville. Frank Elvin was later asked to take his turn, standing guard over Lindbergh's plane, "The Lone Eagle," a duplicate of the famous "Spirit of St. Louis." It was described as a "powerful piece of machinery with great white wings”, but strangely without the usual aircraft identification. Much of its lettering had been painted over, the reporter suspected, to "hide the identity of the flyers."
The Daily Local News reporter stressed the futility of obtaining a lengthy interview: "Asked the direction he was flying; the Colonel maintained the same secrecy that has characterized his every stop through the length and breadth of this and other countries. Nor would he tell of what time this morning he would depart." A freelance writer who sold the story to
The New York Times had a more specific approach, reporting that the landing took place at 4 p.m. and that " Mrs. Way stood speechless with surprise" after answering her door. After making a phone call there, the men "walked about a mile across muddy fields to the farmhouse of Charles Elkington," or Stock Grange. It was agreed that the men would stay there since the Way's home was "too small," as Mrs. Way reported. "They said it did not make a difference to them, and after making inquires about how far it was, left the house and went over there." "I did not know, and neither did Mr. and Mrs. Elkington, who the visitor was surety," Mrs. Way recalled, explaining that "the Colonel" only conceded that "he was often taken for him."
Although they requested no visitors, the New York Times reporter paints a humorous picture of "hundreds" of people trampling shrubs and trying to peer behind drawn hinds for a glimpse "at the Colonel and his counsel at the [dining room] table." So many local residents were determined to see Lindbergh who had made his famous transatlantic flight less than a year earlier, on May 20,1927, that they traveled from the Ways' farm to Stock Grange, "walking the entire four miles through mud and drizzling rain," as the freelancer reported. An unpublished account of Stock Grange, written at the time when Claude Rains owned the property, provides the final drop of news, obtained by interviewing Elkington's "ward-housekeeper," Edith Marks.
"Immediately after dinner the two guests retired to their rooms carrying oil lamps and spent the evening writing. Next morning, when the plane was ready to leave, the field was swarming with, [people with] cameras and local admirers." -end
*Daily Local News, March 14th , 1948.
Indian Hanna
Indian Hanna became the last of the Lenni Lenape Indians in Chester County when she died in 1802. She lived in West Bradford, Chester County Pennsylvania where she traveled throughout the Brandywine region selling baskets and herbs. (more coming soon...)
Bill Johnson 1909-1986
Longwood Gardens
Beacon Hill Farm
Star Gazers Stone and Mason Dixon Line
During the lunar eclipse of Jan 19th,1768 Charles Mason and Jeremaih Dixon, who worked for the Royal Society of London, were in West Bradford Pennsylvania doing calculations for the starting point of the famous Mason Dixon Line. They started their endeavor using a large telescope carried to the site from Philadelphia on protective “featherbeds” traveling in its own separate carriage. They stayed 4 months here doing their star gazing, calculations, land clearing, and work with a group of chain bearers, rod men, axe men, commissaries, cooks, and baggage carriers. They cleared woods to create a “visto” to assist in locating a starter point to the south to begin the state borders
This all started because there was a dispute between the sons of William Penn and the family of Lord Baltimore over the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland.