It is a curious fact that the ancestor of the numerous Beekman family in
New York, after whom Beekman Street is named, was for a time one of the
Dutch governors on the Delaware who afterwards became the sheriff of
Esopus, New York. His successor on the Delaware had some thoughts of
removing the capital down to Odessa on the Appoquinimink, when an
event long dreaded happened. In 1664, war broke out between England
and Holland, long rivals in trade and commerce, and all the Dutch
possessions in the New World fell an easy prey to English conquerors.
A British fleet took possession of New Amsterdam, which surrendered
without a struggle. But when two British men of war under Sir Robert
Carr appeared before New Amstel on the Delaware, Governor D'Hinoyossa
unwisely resisted; and his untenable fort was quickly subdued by a few
broadsides and a storming party. This opposition gave the conquering
party, according to the custom of the times, the right to plunder; and
it must be confessed that the English soldiers made full use of their
opportunity. They plundered the town and confiscated the land of
prominent citizens for the benefit of the officers of the expedition.
After the English conquest on the Delaware, not a few of the Dutch
migrated to Maryland, where their descendants, it is said, are still
to be found. Some in later years returned to the Delaware, where on the
whole, notwithstanding the early confiscations, English rule seemed to
promise well. The very first documents, the terms of surrender both on
the Delaware and on the Hudson, breathed an air of Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Everybody was at liberty to come and go at will. Hollanders could
migrate to the Delaware or to New York as much as before. The Dutch
soldiers in the country, if they wished to remain, were to have fifty
acres of land apiece. This generous settlement seemed in striking
contrast to the pinching, narrow interference with trade and individual
rights, the seizures and confiscations for private gain, all under
pretense of punishment, bad enough on the Delaware but worse at New
Amsterdam, which had characterized the rule of the Dutch.
The Duke of York, to whom Delaware was given, introduced trial by jury,
settled private titles, and left undisturbed the religion and local
customs of the people. But the political rule of the Duke was absolute
as became a Stuart. He arbitrarily taxed exports and imports. Executive,
judicial, and legislative powers were all vested in his deputy governor
at New York or in creatures appointed and controlled by him. It was the
sort of government the Duke hoped to impose upon all Great Britain when
he should come to the throne, and he was trying his 'prentice hand in
the colonies. A political rebellion against this despotism was started
on the Delaware by a man named Konigsmarke, or the Long Finn, aided by
an Englishman, Henry Coleman. They were captured and tried for treason,
their property was confiscated, and the Long Finn branded with the
letter R, and sold as a slave in the Barbados. They might be called the
first martyrs to foreshadow the English Revolution of 1688 which ended
forever the despotic reign of the Stuarts.
The Swedes continued to form the main body of people on the Delaware
under the regime of the Duke of York, and at the time when William Penn
took possession of the country in 1682 their settlements extended from
New Castle up through Christina, Marcus Hook, Upland (now Chester),
Tinicum, Kingsessing in the modern West Philadelphia, Passyunk, Wicaco,
both in modern Philadelphia, and as far up the river as Frankford and
Pennypack. They had their churches at Christina, Tinicum, Kingsessing,
and Wicaco. The last, when absorbed by Philadelphia, was a pretty little
hamlet on the river shore, its farms belonging to a Swedish family
called Swanson whose name is now borne by one of the city's streets.
Across the river in New Jersey, opposite Chester, the Swedes had
settlements on Raccoon Creek and round Swedesboro. These river
settlements constituted an interesting and from all accounts a very
attractive Scandinavian community. Their strongest bond of union seems
to have been their interest in their Lutheran churches on the river.
They spread very little into the interior, made few roads, and lived
almost exclusively on the river or on its navigable tributaries. One
reason they gave for this preference was that it was easier to reach the
different churches by boat.
There were only about a thousand Swedes along the Delaware and possibly
five hundred of Dutch and mixed blood, together with a few English, all
living a life of abundance on a fine river amid pleasing scenery, with
good supplies of fish and game, a fertile soil, and a wilderness of
opportunity to the west of them. All were well pleased to be relieved
from the stagnant despotism of the Duke of York and to take part in the
free popular government of William Penn in Pennsylvania. They
became magistrates and officials, members of the council and of the
legislature. They soon found that all their avenues of trade and life
were quickened. They passed from mere farmers supplying their own needs
to exporters of the products of their farms.
Descendants of the Swedes and Dutch still form the basis of the
population of Delaware. * There were some Finns at Marcus Hook, which
was called Finland; and it may be noted in passing that there were not
a few French among the Dutch, as among the Germans in Pennsylvania,
Huguenots who had fled from religious persecution in France. The name
Jaquette, well known in Delaware, marks one of these families, whose
immigrant ancestor was one of the Dutch governors. In the ten or
dozen generations since the English conquest intermarriage has in many
instances inextricably mixed up Swede, Dutch, and French, as well as the
English stock, so that many persons with Dutch names are of Swedish or
French descent and vice versa, and some with English names like Oldham
are of Dutch descent. There has been apparently much more intermarriage
among the different nationalities in the province and less standing
aloof than among the alien divisions of Pennsylvania.
* Swedish names anglicized are now found everywhere. Gostafsson
has become Justison and Justis. Bond has become Boon; Hoppman, Hoffman;
Kalsberg, Colesberry; Wihler, Wheeler; Joccom, Yocum; Dahlbo, Dalbow;
Konigh, King; Kyn, Keen; and so on. Then there are also such names as
Wallraven, Hendrickson, Stedham, Peterson, Matson, Talley, Anderson, and
the omnipresent Rambo, which have suffered little, if any, change.
Dutch names are also numerous, such as Lockermans, Vandever, Van
Dyke, Vangezel, Vandegrift, Alricks, Statts, Van Zandt, Hyatt, Cochran
(originally Kolchman), Vance, and Blackstone (originally Blackenstein).
After the English conquest some Irish Presbyterians or Scotch-Irish
entered Delaware. Finally came the Quakers, comparatively few in
colonial times but more numerous after the Revolution, especially in
Wilmington and its neighborhood. True to their characteristics, they
left descendants who have become the most prominent and useful citizens
down into our own time. At present Wilmington has become almost as
distinctive a Quaker town as Philadelphia. "Thee" and "thou" are
frequently heard in the streets, and a surprisingly large proportion
of the people of prominence and importance are Quakers or of Quaker
descent. Many of the neat and pleasant characteristics of the town
are distinctly of Quaker origin; and these characteristics are found
wherever Quaker influence prevails.
Wilmington was founded about 1731 by Thomas Willing, an Englishman,
who had married into the Swedish family of Justison. He laid out a
few streets on his wife's land on the hill behind the site of old Fort
Christina, in close imitation of the plan of Philadelphia, and from
that small beginning the present city grew, and was at first called
Willingtown. * William Shipley, a Pennsylvania Quaker born in England,
bought land in it in 1735, and having more capital than Willing, pushed
the fortunes of the town more rapidly. He probably had not a little to
do with bringing Quakers to Wilmington; indeed, their first meetings
were held in a house belonging to him until they could build a meeting
house of their own in 1738.
* Some years later in a borough charter granted by Penn, the name
was changed to Wilmington in honor of the Earl of Wilmington.
Both Shipley and Willing had been impressed with the natural beauty of
the situation, the wide view over the level moorland and green marsh and
across the broad river to the Jersey shore, as well as by the natural
conveniences of the place for trade and commerce. Wilmington has ever
since profited by its excellent situation, with the level moorland for
industry, the river for traffic, and the first terraces or hills of
the Piedmont for residence; and, for scenery, the Brandywine tumbling
through rocks and bowlders in a long series of rapids.
The custom still surviving in Wilmington of punishing certain classes of
criminals by whipping appears to have originated in the days of Willing
and Shipley, about the year 1740, when a cage, stocks, and whipping-post
were erected. They were placed in the most conspicuous part of the town,
and there the culprit, in addition to his legal punishment, was also
disciplined at the discretion of passers-by with rotten eggs and other
equally potent encouragements to reform. These gratuitous inflictions,
not mentioned in the statute, as well as the public exhibition of the
prisoner were abolished in later times and in this modified form the
method of correction was extended to the two other counties. Sometimes
a cat-o'nine-tails was used, sometimes a rawhide whip, and sometimes
a switch cut from a tree. Nowadays, however, all the whipping for the
State is done in Wilmington, where all prisoners sentenced to whipping
in the State are sent. This punishment is found to be so efficacious
that its infliction a second time on the same person is exceedingly
rare.
The most striking relic of the old Swedish days in Wilmington is the
brick and stone church of good proportions and no small beauty, and
today one of the very ancient relics of America. It was built by the
Swedes in 1698 to replace their old wooden church, which was on the
lower land, and the Swedish language was used in the services down
to the year 1800, when the building was turned over to the Church of
England. Old Peter Minuit, the first Swedish governor, may possibly have
been buried there. The Swedes built another pretty chapel--Gloria Dei,
as it was called--at the village of Wicaco, on the shore of the Delaware
where Philadelphia afterwards was established. The original building was
taken down in 1700, and the present one was erected on its site partly
with materials from the church at Tinicum. It remained Swedish Lutheran
until 1831, when, like all the Swedish chapels, it became the property
of the Church of England, between which and the Swedish Lutheran body
there was a close affinity, if not in doctrine, at least in episcopal
organization. * The old brick church dating from 1740, on the
main street of Wilmington, is an interesting relic of the colonial
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in Delaware, and is now carefully preserved
as the home of the Historical Society.
* Clay's "Annals of the Swedes", pp. 143, 153-4.
After Delaware had been eighteen years under the Duke of York, William
Penn felt a need of the west side of the river all the way down to
the sea to strengthen his ownership of Pennsylvania. He also wanted to
offset the ambitions of Lord Baltimore to extend Maryland northward.
Penn accordingly persuaded his friend James, the Duke of York, to give
him a grant of Delaware, which Penn thereupon annexed to Pennsylvania
under the name of the Territories or Three Lower Counties. The three
counties, New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, * are still the counties of
Delaware, each one extending across the State and filling its whole
length from the hills of the Brandywine on the Pennsylvania border to
the sands of Sussex at Cape Henlopen. The term "Territory" has ever
since been used in America to describe an outlying province not yet
given the privileges of a State. Instead of townships, the three
Delaware counties were divided into "hundreds," an old Anglo-Saxon
county method of division going back beyond the times of Alfred the
Great. Delaware is the only State in the Union that retains this name
for county divisions. The Three Lower Counties were allowed to send
representatives to the Pennsylvania Assembly; and the Quakers of
Delaware have always been part of the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia.
* The original names were New Castle, Jones's, and Hoerekill, as
it was called by the Dutch, or Deal.
In 1703, after having been a part of Pennsylvania for twenty years, the
Three Lower Counties were given home rule and a legislature of their
own; but they remained under the Governor of Pennsylvania until the
Revolution of 1776. They then became an entirely separate community and
one of the thirteen original States. Delaware was the first State to
adopt the National Constitution, and Rhode Island, its fellow small
State, the last. Having been first to adopt the Constitution, the people
of Delaware claim that on all national occasions or ceremonies they are
entitled to the privilege of precedence. They have every reason to be
proud of the representative men they sent to the Continental Congress,
and to the Senate in later times. Agriculture has, of course, always
been the principal occupation on the level fertile land of Delaware; and
it is agriculture of a high class, for the soil, especially in certain
localities, is particularly adapted to wheat, corn, and timothy grass,
as well as small fruits. That section of land crossing the State in
the region of Delaware City and Middleton is one of the show regions in
America, for crops of wheat and corn. Farther south, grain growing is
combined with small fruits and vegetables with a success seldom attained
elsewhere. Agriculturally there is no division of land of similar size
quite equal to Delaware in fertility. Its sand and gravel base with
vegetable mold above is somewhat like the southern Jersey formation,
but it is more productive from having a larger deposit of decayed
vegetation.
The people of Delaware have, indeed, very little land that is not
tillable. The problems of poverty, crowding, great cities, and excessive
wealth in few hands are practically unknown among them. The foreign
commerce of Wilmington began in 1740 with the building of a brig named
after the town, and was continued successfully for a hundred years.
At Wilmington there has always been a strong manufacturing interest,
beginning with the famous colonial flour mills at the falls of the
Brandywine, and the breadstuffs industry at Newport on the Christina.
With the Brandywine so admirably suited to the water-power machinery
of those days and the Christina deep enough for the ships, Wilmington
seemed in colonial times to possess an ideal combination of advantages
for manufacturing and commerce. The flour mills were followed in 1802 by
the Du Pont Powder Works, which are known all over the world, and which
furnished powder for all American wars since the Revolution, for the
Crimean War in Europe, and for the Allies in the Great War.
"From the hills of Brandywine to the sands of Sussex" is an expression
the people of Delaware use to indicate the whole length of their little
State. The beautiful cluster of hills at the northern end dropping into
park-like pastures along the shores of the rippling Red Clay and White
Clay creeks which form the deep Christina with its border of green reedy
marshes, is in striking contrast to the wild waste of sands at Cape
Henlopen. Yet in one way the Brandywine Hills are closely connected with
those sands, for from these very hills have been quarried the hard
rocks for the great breakwater at the Cape, behind which the fleets of
merchant vessels take refuge in storms.
The great sand dunes behind the lighthouse at the cape have their equal
nowhere else on the coast. Blown by the ocean winds, the dunes work
inland, overwhelming a pine forest to the tree tops and filling swamps
in their course. The beach is strewn with every type of wreckage of
man's vain attempts to conquer the sea. The Life Saving Service men have
strange tales to tell and show their collections of coins found along
the sand. The old pilots live snugly in their neat houses in Pilot Row,
waiting their turns to take the great ships up through the shoals and
sands which were so baffling to Henry Hudson and his mate one hot August
day of the year 1609.
The Indians of the northern part of Delaware are said to have been
mostly Minquas who lived along the Christiana and Brandywine, and are
supposed to have had a fort on Iron Hill. The rest of the State was
inhabited by the Nanticokes, who extended their habitations far down the
peninsula, where a river is named after them. They were a division or
clan of the Delawares or Leni Lenapes. In the early days they gave some
trouble; but shortly before the Revolution all left the peninsula in
strange and dramatic fashion. Digging up the bones of their dead chiefs
in 1748, they bore them away to new abodes in the Wyoming Valley of
Pennsylvania. Some appear to have traveled by land up the Delaware to
the Lehigh, which they followed to its source not far from the Wyoming
Valley. Others went in canoes, starting far down the peninsula at the
Nanticoke River and following along the wild shore of the Chesapeake to
the Susquehanna, up which they went by its eastern branch straight into
the Wyoming Valley. It was a grand canoe trip--a weird procession of
tawny, black-haired fellows swinging their paddles day after day, with
their freight of ancient bones, leaving the sunny fishing grounds of the
Nanticoke and the Choptank to seek a refuge from the detested white man
in the cold mountains of Pennsylvania.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A large part of the material for the early history of Pennsylvania is
contained of course in the writings and papers of the founder. The "Life
of William Penn" by S. M. Janney (1852) is perhaps the most trustworthy
of the older biographies but it is a dull book. A biography written with
a modern point of view is "The True William Penn" by Sydney G. Fisher
(1900). Mrs. Colquhoun Grant, a descendant of Penn has published a book
with the title "Quaker and Courtier: the Life and Work of William Penn"
(1907). The manuscript papers of Penn now in the possession of the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, together with much new material
gathered in England, are soon to be published under the able editorship
of Albert Cook Myers.
There is a vast literature on the history of Quakerism. The "Journal of
George Fox" (1694), Penn's "Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of
the People called Quakers" (1695), and Robert Barclay's "Apology for the
True Christian Divinity" (1678) are of first importance for the study of
the rise of the Society of Friends. Among the older histories are J.J.
Gurney's "Observations on the Religious Peculiarities of the Society of
Friends" (1824), James Bowden's "History of the Society of Friends in
America," 2 vols. (1850-54), and S.M. Janney's "History of the Religious
Society of Friends," 4 vols. (1860-67). Two recent histories are of
great value: W. C. Braithwaite, "The Beginnings of Quakerism" (1912) and
Rufus M. Jones, "The Quakers in the American Colonies" (1911). Among the
older histories of Penn's province are "The History of Pennsylvania
in North America," 2 vols. (1797-98), written by Robert Proud from the
Quaker point of view and of great value because of the quotations from
original documents and letters, and "History of Pennsylvania from its
Discovery by Europeans to the Declaration of Independence in 1776"
(1829) by T. F. Gordon, largely an epitome of the debates of the
Pennsylvania Assembly which recorded in its minutes in fascinating
old-fashioned English the whole history of the province from year to
year. Franklin's "Historical Review of the Constitution and Government
of Pennsylvania from its Origin" (1759) is a storehouse of information
about the history of the province in the French and Indian wars. Much
of the history of the province is to be found in the letters of Penn,
Franklin, Logan, and Lloyd, and in such collections as Samuel Hazard's
"Register of Pennsylvania," 16 vols. (1828-36), "Colonial Records," 16
vols. (1851-53), and "Pennsylvania Archives" (1874-). A vast amount of
material is scattered in pamphlets, in files of colonial newspapers
like the "Pennsylvania Gazette," in the publications of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, and in the "Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography" (1877-). Recent histories of the province have
been written by Isaac Sharpless, "History of Quaker Government in
Pennsylvania," 2 vols. (1898-99), and by Sydney G. Fisher, "The Making
of Pennsylvania" (1896) and "Pennsylvania, Colony and Commonwealth"
(1897). A scholarly "History of Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania"
has been published by William R. Shepherd in the "Columbia University
Studies" (1896) and the "Relations of Pennsylvania with the British
Government, 1696-1765" (1912) have been traced with painstaking care by
Winfred T. Root.
Concerning the racial and religious elements in Pennsylvania the
following books contribute much valuable information: A. B. Faust,
"The German Element in the United States," 2 vols. (1909); A. C. Myers,
"Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750" (1909);
S. W. Pennypacker, "Settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the
Beginning of German Immigration to North America" (1899); J. F. Sachse,
"The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania, 1694-1708" (1895), and
"The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, 1708-1800," 2 vols.
(1899-1900); L. O. Kuhns, "The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial
Pennsylvania" (1901); H. J. Ford, "The Scotch-Irish in America" (1915);
T. A. Glenn, "Merion in the Welsh Tract" (1896).
The older histories of New Jersey, like those of Pennsylvania, contain
valuable original material not found elsewhere. Among these Samuel
Smith's "The History of the Colony of Nova Casaria, or New Jersey"
(1765) should have first place. E. B. O'Callaghan's "History of New
Netherland," 2 vols. (1846), and J. R. Brodhead's "History of the State
of New York," 2 vols. (1853, 1871) contain also information about the
Jerseys under Dutch rule. Other important works are: W. A. Whitehead's
"East Jersey under the Proprietary Governments" (New Jersey Historical
Society "Collections," vol.1, 1875), and "The English in East and West
Jersey" in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America," vol.
III, L. Q. C. Elmer's "The Constitution and Government of the Province
and State of New Jersey" (New Jersey Historical Society Collections,
vols. III and VII, 1849 and 1872.) Special studies have been made by
Austin Scott, "Influence of the Proprietors in the Founding of New
Jersey" (1885), and by H. S. Cooley, "Study of Slavery in New Jersey"
(1896), both in the Johns Hopkins University "Studies;" also by E. P.
Tanner, "The Province of New Jersey" (1908) and by E. J. Fisher, "New
Jersey as a Royal Province, 1738-1776" (1911) in the Columbia University
"Studies." Several county histories yield excellent material
concerning the life and times of the colonists, notably Isaac Mickle's
"Reminiscences of Old Gloucester" (1845) and L. T. Stevens's "The
History of Cape May County" (1897) which are real histories written
in scholarly fashion and not to be confused with the vulgar county
histories gotten up to sell.
The Dutch and Swedish occupation of the lands bordering on the Delaware
may be followed in the following histories: Benjamin Ferris, "A History
of the Original Settlements of the Delaware" (1846); Francis Vincent,
"A History of the State of Delaware" (1870); J. T. Scharf, "History of
Delaware, 1609-1888," 2 vols. (1888); Karl K. S. Sprinchorn, Kolonien
Nya Sveriges Historia (1878), translated in the "Pennsylvania Magazine
of History and Biography," vols. VII and VIII. In volume IV of Winsor's
"Narrative and Critical History of America" is a chapter contributed
by G. B. Keen on "New Sweden, or The Swedes on the Delaware." The most
recent minute work on the subject is "The Swedish Settlements on the
Delaware," 2 vols. (1911) by Amandus Johnson.