PENNSYLVANIA UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS
William Penn's son by his first wife, named for himself, the one who had
been sent to Pennsylvania in the hope that he would give over his wild
way of living, inherited the property in England and Ireland, most of
which had belonged to his mother. Letitia, who had married William
Aubrey, had already received a dower, and later received ten thousand
acres of land in Pennsylvania, as did each of the younger William's
children, Gulielma, Maria, Springett, and William. The remainder of
Penn's estate went to his second wife, Hannah Penn, and her five
children, John, Thomas, Margaret, Richard, and Dennis. Hannah Penn had
practically all the powers over the province that her husband had
wielded, and she used them capably, proving a most excellent business
woman. She arranged that her eldest son, John, should become the
principal Proprietary of the province, as he was called, and his
brothers Thomas and Richard his associates. The youngest son, Dennis,
died very young.
From 1712 to 1727 Hannah Penn managed the affairs of Pennsylvania, and
far more successfully than her husband had done. He had left his
province in such a debt-ridden condition that it had seemed as if it
would have to be sold to the Crown to straighten it out, but Hannah Penn
left it to her three sons in such excellent shape that it was generally
considered to be one of the finest domains in the world owned by private
individuals.
Sir William Keith, the governor who had been appointed by Hannah Penn,
managed affairs with success for some time, but finally came
disagreements with Mrs. Penn. He believed that her son John would not
make a good manager of the province, and secretly advised the popular
leaders in the colony to try to abolish the Proprietary system of
government. This caused Hannah Penn to appoint Patrick Gordon to succeed
Governor Keith in 1726.
In 1732 Thomas Penn made a visit to Pennsylvania, and he was followed by
his older brother John in 1734. Neither of these sons of William Penn
made a good impression in Philadelphia, and it is said that the people
there even preferred young William Penn, with all his bad manners and
wildness, to these two half-brothers of his. Neither John nor Thomas
seem to have had the broadmindedness and kindly disposition of their
father, but to have been unscrupulous, overbearing, and too eager to
make all the money they could out of the colony. John was somewhat
better liked than Thomas, who seemed to have little sense about anything
but money-getting. Benjamin Franklin, who was editor of the
_Pennsylvania Gazette_ during the visit of the two sons of Penn to
Philadelphia, but who had never met the roystering young William, is
reported to have said to a friend that "according to all accounts there
was more of the gentleman in Billy Penn drunk than in both of these
Penns sober."
John Penn returned to England in 1736, and Thomas in 1741, and neither
ever returned to Pennsylvania, having about as much affection for their
father's province as the province had for them.
Governor Gordon, who had been appointed by Hannah Penn, had a successful
administration and held the office until his death in 1736. The Penn
brothers then chose George Thomas to the place, and he proved a most
loyal adherent of England until he resigned in 1747. James Hamilton, the
first governor of Pennsylvania who was born and bred in America,
succeeded him, and proved the most popular governor since William Penn
had made his second visit to his province. Governor Hamilton felt that
Pennsylvania would be better off as an English colony than under the
proprietorship of the Penn family, and most of the people agreed with
him, but no definite steps in that direction were taken. John Penn had
died, and the two brothers who survived him, Thomas and Richard, knew
that Hamilton was too popular with the Pennsylvanians to be removed from
office. After a while, however, disagreements developed to such a degree
that Hamilton resigned, and the governors who followed had to face new
difficulties arising from the fact that the French were influencing the
Indians against the English colonists, in Pennsylvania no less than in
New England and New York. William Penn's policy of fair dealing with the
Indians had been abandoned by his sons, and the frontiersmen were made
to feel the result in constant attacks on their outlying settlements.
The Quakers did not believe in warfare, but the men on the Pennsylvania
frontiers, Scotch-Irish, Swiss, and Germans, had to arm and form
companies for self-protection after General Braddock's defeat by the
French and Indians. They felt that they ought to have some help,
financial if no other, from the wealthy people in the eastern part of
the province; and at length they succeeded in getting the Assembly to
vote for supplies. When it came to raising this money, the property of
the Penns had to be taxed, and this gave the greatest offense to Thomas
and Richard Penn in England. They removed the governor, and tried to
fight the tax, but the colonists replied by voting the tax again and
even increasing the amount the Penns had to pay. The governor who had
been removed told Franklin that he was glad to be rid of the job, adding
that three years of the governorship as he had held it would turn any
man against the Proprietary system. To which Franklin answered,
"Particularly with Tom and Dick Penn for Proprietors!"
In 1763 John Penn, the son of Richard, and grandson of William Penn,
became governor, and his term of office was the stormiest and least
creditable of all the governorships that the province had known. During
his first year in office a revolt took place in the mountains which
became known as the "revolution of the Paxton boys." A crowd of
mountaineers defied a battalion of British regulars in the town of
Lancaster, and announced that if the regulars dared to fire "so much as
one shot, their scalps would ornament every cabin from the Susquehanna
to the Ohio."
[Illustration: _From "The Family of William Penn" by Howard M. Jenkins._
FOUR OF WILLIAM PENN'S GRANDCHILDREN.
Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The picture shows the children of Thomas Penn--Juliana, Louisa Hannah,
John, and Granville.]
The soldiers did not fire, and the Paxton boys thereupon helped
themselves to all the horses they wanted, took the ammunition wagons
belonging to the regulars, and set out for Philadelphia. There were
almost a thousand of them when they arrived on the high ground of
Germantown, and there demanded that certain Indians who were being kept
under guard in the Northern Liberties[2] should be given to them on pain
of their sacking the city otherwise.
The citizens found that the regular troops could not be relied on, and
sent some deputies to treat with the rebels. By agreeing to all the
latter demanded, except the massacre of the Indians, the deputies were
finally able to induce the mountaineers to return to their homes.
Very soon afterward the Assembly petitioned the English Parliament to
abolish the Proprietary government. Before Parliament did this,
however, another misadventure had occurred in the province. About 1762
fifty families from Connecticut had moved to the Wyoming Valley of
Pennsylvania, and believing the country there to be very productive,
they had made some clearings, built log cabins, and grown some fields of
corn. John Penn, the governor, heard of this, and in 1764 he sent
constables to this settlement to order the pioneers off, claiming that
they were on land that had been granted to his grandfather.
The Wyoming settlement now numbered about three thousand persons, and
naturally they were unwilling to give up their lands. Then a company was
formed in Philadelphia to buy that section of the country from John
Penn, and, making use of the improvements of the Connecticut settlers,
market it as the company saw fit. They would only buy it, however, on
condition that John Penn should first drive out the settlers.
So John Penn, in 1770, hired a crowd of rascals to go into the Wyoming
Valley and drive the pioneers away from their cabins and fields. The
settlers answered Penn's demands by building a fort which they
christened Forty Fort, in honor of the first settlers, who were forty in
number. They were always referred to as the First Forty, and were held
in high esteem. They had been sent by the Susquehanna Company of
Connecticut into the Wyoming Valley.
After some fighting the settlers managed to hold their ground. This
became known as the Pennamite War; and, although the governor was backed
by some of the leading men of Philadelphia, his attempts to oust the
settlers made his rule more distasteful than ever to a people who were
growing more and more fond of liberty.
The American Revolution was now at hand, and the Pennsylvania Committee
of Safety decided that it was time to annul the charter that had been
granted to William Penn, and abolish the Proprietary government.
Therefore, two months after the Declaration of Independence was signed,
in 1776, the Committee of Safety, now calling itself the "Supreme
Executive Council," deposed John Penn from his office, and decreed that
what had been the province of Pennsylvania should become a state in the
new American Union.
The boundaries of Pennsylvania were by that time definitely settled, and
incidentally those boundaries included the rich Wyoming Valley, where
now stands the prosperous city of Wilkes-Barre. The title that had
belonged to the Penn family was now vested in the state, and the state
appropriated £130,000 to be paid to the heirs of William Penn. In
addition to this amount the heirs of William Penn, having sided with the
Tories during the Revolution, claimed a large sum from the English
government after the Revolution, basing their claim on the Act of
Parliament that agreed "to indemnify loyal subjects of his Britannic
Majesty for losses suffered in the American War." The English government
settled this claim by paying William Penn's heirs £500,000. As a result
these heirs secured from Pennsylvania and from England more than three
million dollars, besides retaining the private estates in Pennsylvania
that they had always owned.
Eventually, therefore, Penn's province proved of very great value to his
children and grandchildren, although the people who had opened up and
settled that new country had gained little from those descendants; they
had to look back to the great founder, William Penn, the noble and
steadfast Quaker, for the liberty-loving ideas and wise principles of
government that helped to make Pennsylvania one of the greatest of the
new union of states. It is well that his name should forever be
associated with that state, for it is the name of a man of noble
character and a fearless champion of liberty.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] It is interesting to recall that this term, "Liberties," had been
applied to certain tracts of land lying north and west of the original
limits of Philadelphia. The soil contained in these tracts was called
"liberty land" or "free lots" because William Penn had made a gift of
land in these sections to the first purchasers of lots in the city
proper, the amount of "free" land given being in proportion to the
amount of "town" land that was bought. The term, "City and Liberties of
Philadelphia," was commonly used in the early days of the province, the
city containing about 1820 acres, and the Liberties about 16,236 acres.
Later, the Northern Liberties became a part of the city of Philadelphia.
Printed in the United States of America.
The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books on
kindred subjects
True Stories of Great Americans
_Each volume illustrated, cloth, 12mo, 50 cents_
It is the purpose of this new series to tell simply and attractively the
life stories of Americans who have achieved greatness in different
fields of endeavor. The author has been chosen in each instance either
because he is particularly interested in the subject of the biography or
is connected with him by blood-ties and possessed, therefore, of
valuable facts. Only those, however, who have shown that they have an
appreciation of what makes really good juvenile literature have been
intrusted with a volume. The result is that the books are graphic, vivid
reviews of the principal events in the careers of these makers of the
nation.
ROBERT E. LEE. BY BRADLEY GILMAN.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. BY ROSSITER JOHNSON.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. BY E. LAWRENCE DUDLEY.
ROBERT FULTON. BY ALICE C. SUTCLIFFE.
WILLIAM PENN. BY RUPERT S. HOLLAND.
DAVY CROCKETT. BY W. C. SPRAGUE.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. BY MILDRED STAPLEY.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
NEW BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
The Kingdom of the Winding Road
BY CORNELIA MEIGS
With illustrations in color and in black and white by FRANCES WHITE
_Cloth, 12mo_
A fanciful story relating the experiences of a beggar as he travels the
country over in his tattered red cloak and playing his penny flute--in
reality a wonderful magical pipe. He always knows the best thing to be
done and he comes to the aid of the hero when he is in the worst
distress. In his own fashion he helps the bad and the good alike. The
book is part fairy tale, part romance, part allegory, but always
literature. In a very human way the beggar stands for the soundness and
sweetness of life and there are lessons that may be drawn from his
adventures. But whether one bothers with the moral and the metaphors or
not, there is an inescapable charm to the narrative and an interest and
appeal that increases the further one goes on the beggar's highway.
A Maid of '76
BY ALDEN A. KNIPE AND EMILIE B. KNIPE
With illustrations by MRS. KNIPE
_Decorated cloth, 12mo_
The little heroine of this book is a girl of Revolutionary times, a
patriot through and through, but whose family is loyal to the king. Out
of the difficulties with which she finds herself confronted and which
she brings ultimately to a satisfactory conclusion the authors have made
a most entertaining story.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
MACMILLAN'S JUVENILE LIBRARY
_Each volume, cloth, 12mo, $.50_
NEW VOLUMES
The Fairy Queen and Her Knights
BY ALFRED J. CHURCH
Peggy Stewart at School
BY GABRIELLE E. JACKSON
The Little King
BY CHARLES MAJOR
The Voyage of the Hoppergrass
BY EDMUND LESTER PEARSON
Hero Tales of the Far North
BY JACOB RIIS
Gray Lady and the Birds
BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
Tommy-Anne and the Three Hearts
BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
Southern Soldier Stories
BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
The addition of these eight titles to the Juvenile Library increases the
usefulness and broadens the scope of that popular series of books for
younger readers. Each of these stories will be found good reading,
reading of the kind which specialists in the study of child literature
can heartily recommend.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
The Everychild's Series
EDITED BY DR. JAMES H. VAN SICKLE
_Each volume, cloth, 12mo, illustrated, 40 cents_
+The Everychild's Series+ is a library of fiction and dramatics, science
and information, literature and art for children. Its contents include a
wide range of subject matter, which will broaden the child's interest in
plays and games, fairy-tales and fables, nature study and geography,
useful arts and industries, biography and history, government and public
service, myths and folk-lore, fine arts and literature.
This series seeks not only to instruct the child with simplicity, charm,
and wholesomeness, but to heighten his finer appreciation of the
beautiful, and to give him, along with keen enjoyment, the things of
life that are interesting and valuable.
The authors of the books of this series have been chosen for their
special fitness to write books for children. To each author has been
given the choice of topic and method of treatment. The result is that
the books in the series are not only charming and enjoyable but
intellectually satisfying to the child.
The volumes are interesting and attractive in appearance. They are
neatly and strongly bound in cloth with design in two colors. The type
page is set leaded in large type with a wide margin. The illustrations
are numerous and attractive and designed especially to represent the
characters that appear in the story.
The series is a splendid source of supplementary reading material. It
consists of over a score of volumes.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York