Journeying up the Delaware from Philadelphia, we pass Petty Island,
where the great Indian chief of the Lenni Lenapes, Tamanend, had his
lodge--the chieftain since immortalized as St. Tammany, who has given
his name to the Tammany Society of politicians who rule New York City.
Petty on the old maps is called Shackamaxon Island, a derivation of
the original Indian name of Cackamensi. St. Tammany is described as a
chief who was so virtuous that "his countrymen could only account for
the perfections they ascribe to him by supposing him to be favored
with the special communications of the Great Spirit." In the
eighteenth century many societies were formed in his honor, and his
festival was kept on the 1st of May, but the New York Society is the
only one that has survived. Farther up, the Tacony Creek flows into
the Delaware, the United States having a spacious arsenal upon its
banks. The name of this creek was condensed before Penn's time, by the
Swedes, from its Indian title of Taokanink. Beyond, the great
manufacturing establishments of the city gradually change to charming
villas as we move along the pleasant sloping banks and through the
level country, and soon we pass the northeastern boundary of
Philadelphia, at Torresdale. This boundary is made by the Poquessing
Creek, being the aboriginal Poetquessink, or "the stream of the
dragons."
Across the river, on the Jersey shore, formerly roamed the Rankokas
Indians, an Algonquin tribe, whose name is preserved in the Rancocas
Creek, which is one of the chief tributaries flowing in from New
Jersey. At Beverly, not far above, is one of the most popular suburban
resorts, the villas clustering around a broad cove, known as
Edgewater, which appears much like a miniature Bay of Naples. Over
opposite is the wide Neshaminy Creek, flowing down from the Buckingham
Mountain in Pennsylvania, its Indian title of Nischam-hanne, meaning
"the two streams flowing together," referring to its branches. The
earliest settlers along this creek were Scotch-Irish, and their pastor
in 1726 was Rev. William Tennent, the famous Presbyterian preacher,
who founded the celebrated "Log College" on the Neshaminy, "built of
logs, chinked and daubed between, and one story high," as it was well
described. From this simple college, which was about twenty feet
square, were sent out many of the famous Presbyterian preachers of the
eighteenth century; and from it grew, in 1746, the great College of
New Jersey at Princeton, and in 1783 Dickinson College, at Carlisle,
Pennsylvania, besides many other schools which were started by its
alumni. William Tennent's son, Gilbert, was his assistant and
successor. The great Whitefield preached to an audience of three
thousand at this College in 1739. He was attracted there by Gilbert
Tennent's fame as a preacher, and of him on one occasion wrote, "I
went to the meeting house to hear Mr. Gilbert Tennent preach, and
never before heard I such a searching sermon; he is a son of thunder,
and does not regard the face of man."
The Delaware River broadens into two channels around Burlington
Island, having on either hand the towns of Bristol and Burlington,
both coeval with the first settlement of Philadelphia, and Bristol at
that early day having had an ambition to become the location of
Penn's great city. The ferry connecting them was established two years
before Penn came to Philadelphia, and in the eighteenth century they
had a larger carrying trade. Bristol began in 1680 under a grant from
Edmund Andros, then the Provincial Governor of New York, for a town
site and the ferry, which is curiously described in the Colonial
records as "the ferry against Burlington," then the chief town in West
Jersey. The settlement was called New Bristol, from Bristol in
England, where lived Penn's wife, Hannah Callowhill. It was the first
county seat of Bucks when Penn divided his Province into the three
counties--Chester, Philadelphia and Buckingham. It was for many years
a great exporter of flour to the West Indies. Its ancient Quaker
Meeting House dates from 1710, and St. James' Episcopal Church from
1712; but the latter, which received its silver communion service from
the good Queen Anne, fell into decay and has been replaced by a modern
structure. Its Bath Mineral Springs made it the most fashionable
watering-place in America in the eighteenth century, but Saratoga
afterwards eclipsed them, and their glory has departed. Prior to the
Revolution, Bristol built more shipping than Philadelphia; and, while
quiet and restful, its comfortable homes and the picturesque villas
along the Delaware River bank above the town tell of its prosperity
now.