History
of Philadelphia
1609-1884
by J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott
CHAPTER
11:
Manners and Customs of the Primitive Settlers
"So
twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing
tree;
And here were forests, ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots
of greenery."
COLERIDGE
The History of Philadelphia's Watersheds and Sewers
Historical Consultant
Philadelphia Water Department
IT WAS THE BOAST of the Emperor Augustus, in regard to Rome, that "Marmoream
se relinquere, quam lateritiam accepisset." When Penn came to Philadelphia
with his colony of first purchasers he found a forest, with, thickets and swamps,
lying between two rivers, the sole population some scanty bands of savages, with
here and there a hut or cabin, with a few acres about it of cleared land, marking
the habitation of some pioneer of the white race. When the Lord Proprietary returned
to Philadelphia on his second visit, in 1699, he found a province of ten thousand
people and a city of seven hundred houses, [1] well laid
off with streets, squares, wharves, market, churches, prison, etc., well governed,
having an established foreign and domestic trade, and some substantial foundations
laid for manufactures. No wonder Penn looked at his work with hearty enjoyment,
as he wrote, in one of his last letters to the colony, "It was no small satisfaction
to me that I have not been disappointed in seeing them prosper and growing up
to a nourishing country, blessed with liberty, ease, and plenty, beyond what many
of themselves could expect, and wanting nothing to make themselves happy but what,
with a right temper of mind and prudent conduct, they might give themselves."
[2]
The political history of this country, prospering and growing up in a nourishing
way, blessed with liberty, ease, and plenty, would not be complete if we did not
pause here, at the beginning of a new century, and when the banks of the Delaware
had been more or less occupied by Europeans for nearly two generations, to give
something like a picture of the social and domestic life of the early settlers,
the pioneers among those hardy pale-faces before whose advance the natives of
the soil melted away and disappeared.
There is no distinct, positive
evidence of permanent Indian villages anywhere upon the ground within the present
limits of Philadelphia since the first white man explored the Delaware. The presence
of the commonly found Indian relics at several places, as, for instance, at or
near the mouth of the Pennepacka Creek, would indicate that villages had stood
there at some period or other, but perhaps not within the time since white settlers
began to come thither. The Minquas and the Delaware Indians, hunters and fishers,
had still their permanent homes, with corn-fields and patches for beans, squashes,
and melons. Their stockades were always hard by more or less of cleared land,
as was the case with the Nanticoke villages in the Delaware peninsula, the Susquehannas
at the mouth of Octorara Creek, and the Senecas and associated tribes dwelling
between the Mohawk and the Allegheny Rivers. But the Delawares who occupied the
site of Philadelphia, and the other tribes who visited them there must have been,
from the necessity of the case, forest Indians, fishers, hunters, and trappers
of the beaver, the otter, and the muskrat. No fact is better established than
that the ground on which Philadelphia now stands was closely occupied when the
white men first saw it, and until Penn's colonists came in, with a continuous
growth of the primeval forests, except where swamp and marsh and the daily flow
of the tide prevented the trees from growing. Capt. Cornelis Hendrickson, of Munnickhuysen,
in his report of August, 1616, to the States General of Holland, says of the country
explored by him along the Delaware, "He hath found the said country full of trees,
to wit, oak, hickories, and pines, which trees were in some places covered with
vines. He hath seen in said country bucks and does, turkeys and partridges," inhabitants
of the great woods. The Swedes and the Dutch both of them found it easier work
to plant on the sandy plains and clear up the scrub pine thickets of the lower
Delaware counties, or to dyke and reclaim the rich alluvial flats (valleys they
called them) on the Brandywine and other kindred streams, than to attempt to cut
down the enormous forest-trees that towered above the firm lands of Coaquannock.
Capt. Markham, when he first reached Pennsylvania and the site of Philadelphia,
reported back to his employer that "it is a very fine country, if it were not
so overgrown with woods." But these woods had one advantage which the settlers
ought to have appreciated. As is the case with the forest parts of Kentucky to-day,
the deep, rich soil encouraged such an enormous girth and altitude of trees that
there was little or no undergrowth, except where the swamps prevailed or the beavers
had constructed their dams and felled a part of the trees. Hence the woods afforded
the best sort of pasturage of good, sweet herbage, on which all sorts of stock
throve wonderfully. Traveling was not difficult in this sort of forest, and Capt.
Markham notes that "We have very good horses and the men ride madly on them. They
think [PAGE 130] nothing of riding eighty miles a day, and when they get to their
journey's end, turn their horses into the field. They never shoe them." Penn,
also, in a letter already quoted from, speaks with alarm of the indiscriminate
destruction of the forests around Philadelphia as tending to choke the country
with undergrowth and thickets, destroy pasturage, and encourage all sorts of vermin
to multiply. And Acrelius [3] says that
"when the Christians first came to the country the grass was up to the flanks
of animals, and was good for pasture and hay-making; but as soon as the country
had been settled the grass has died out from the roots, so that scarcely anything
but black earth is left in the forests. Back in the country, where the people
have not yet settled, the same grass is found, and is called wild-rye."
In these deep but not impenetrable forests, these broad park-like expanses, with
their profound shade from lofty trees and clambering vines, a few, but not many,
Indians had their lodges or huts. The hunting and fishing were good; the deer
came to the borders of all the small streams, and the surface of the waters was
populous with dense flocks of wild-fowl, while their depths teemed with fishes
of every size, from the sturgeon to the smallest pan-fish. The great oak-groves
were favorite resorts of the wild pigeons, and there seems to have been a regular
"pigeon-roost," or breeding-place for the gregarious bird (if we may accept the
ordinary interpretation of such Indian names) at Moyamensing. [4][FN:0130:2]
In the spring and early summer months, just after the Indians of the interior
had planted their corn and beans, the Delaware and Schuylkill were filled with
incalculably large shoals of the migratory fish, pressing towards fresh water
in order to deposit their spawn, and pursued by schools of the predatory sea-fish.
At these seasons the shores of the rivers were thronged with Indians and their
lodges, while their canoes darted gayly over the surface, men, women, and children
spearing or netting fish, and cleaning and drying them. The sturgeon, the porpoise,
now and then the salmon, were all caught, with innumerable shad, herring, alewives
and bream, pike and perch. In the autumn again the Indians were drawn to the river-shore
by the wild fowl which flew low near the waters. This was in the interval after
the corn harvesting and the beginning of the winter hunting. Besides this, the
site of Philadelphia seems to have grown to be a familiar spot for councils and
general conferences of the tribes. The Delawares, whether Heckewelder and the
earlier students of Indian customs and traditions be right or not in conceiving
this tribe to have been conquered and made "women" of by the fierce Iroquois,
were on friendly terms with nearly all the other tribes. They, and perhaps the
land which it was conceded they owned, were in some sort of fashion under a "taboo."
Probably the fact of their controlling the fish and oyster grounds of the Hudson
and the Delaware, and the Susquehanna also in part, had a good deal to do with
this. At any rate, at the time the whites came to the Delaware, and for many years
afterwards, Shackamaxon, Wicaco, and other places within the area of the present
city of Philadelphia were "neutral ground," where representatives of all the tribes
on fresh water and east of the Alleghanies, between the Potomac, the Hudson, and
the lakes,—the Iroquois, the Nanticokes, the Susquehannocks, and the Shawanees,—were
accustomed to kindle their council fires, smoke the pipe of deliberation, exchange
the wampum belts of explanation and treaty, and drive hard bargains with one another
for peltries, provisions, and supplies of various kinds. The trails made by the
savages in going to and from this point of union were deep and broad at the time
of the Dutch and Swedes, and were as far as convenient made available by the Europeans.
But the Indian trails lay in directions best suited for their own convenience
in going from their lodges to the rivers; whereas the white men's roads were between
their own settlements. The Senecas and Oneida Indians used the waterways, descending
the Susquehanna and Delaware in their light birches, and then, excepting a few
portages, traversing the whole distance from their castles to Shackamaxon along
the network of streams which make their way down from the great watershed of Western
New York.
The first white settlers upon the site of Philadelphia, as
has already been shown in the preceding chapters, and the only white settlers
previous to the coming of Penn who made any distinct and durable impress upon
the country, were the Swedes. Their first, second, and third colonies, which arrived
out in 1638 and 1640, and the fifth colony also, which came between those of Printz
and Risingh, contained a good many Dutch, and were indeed partly recruited and
fitted out in the Netherlands, with Dutch capital and under Dutch management.
The first expedition was commanded by Minuet, a Dutchman, and Sparling and Blommaert,
the leading spirits in its management, were Dutchmen. So with the expedition of
Hollandaer. [5]
It is also the fact that the Dutch sent parties frequently to the Zuydt River
to settle and plant, as well as to trade with the Indians, and that Stuyvesant,
after the recapture of Fort Casimir, the overthrow of Risingh's government and
the subjugation of New Sweden, sent many of his people to the south side of Delaware
to settle the country. For all that the Swedes were the first permanent colonists.
The [PAGE 131] Dutch were adventurers, fond of trading and navigation. As a rule
they did not bring their families to the Delaware with them, and they could easily
reach their own countrymen in New York after English rule had been established
by Lovelace, and the trade in furs and peltries was no longer profitable so low
down on the Delaware. The Swedes and Finns, on the other hand, had no such migratory
propensity. They were like trees, and grew in the soil to which they had been
transplanted, as if they had never known any other. As a rule they had not emigrated
from their native country from choice, but were transplanted by force. One reason,
indeed, why the Dutch partners had been invited to co-operate with the Swedish
West India Company was that emigrants and volunteers to the new country were so
hard to procure. When the project of the Swedish colony was first thrown out by
Usselincx, and adroitly fostered by his able and ingenious pen in the various
contributions to the Argonautica Gustaviana, the leading people in Scandinavia
were full of the scheme and subscribed eagerly. The colony was to be a refuge
for liberty and Protestantism; no slavery, no tyranny were to be tolerated there,
and the widows and orphans made desolate by the Thirty Years' war were to find
there new homes and cheap and certain means of livelihood. But this fever died
out long before 1637.
The Swedish and Finnish peasants had very strong
local attachments. They did not wish to abandon their native soil, in spite of
the scanty livelihood it insured them. The "Kalmar Nyckel" and the "Gripen" were
delayed a long time in getting their passengers for the first voyage under Minuet.
It is not certainly known that of this party with Minuet, more than one person—Lieut.
Moens Kling—was a Swede. Anders Svensson Bonde, Peter Gunnarsson Rambo,
Per Andersson, Anders Larsson Daalbo, Sven Larsson, Sven Gunnarsson, his son,
Sven Svenson, Lars Svensson Kackin, Moens Andersson, Iven Thorsson, and Marten
Gottersson were all of them certainly in New Sweden in 1640, [6] but it cannot
be shown whether they came over with Minuet or with his successor, Hollandaer.
As Prof. Odhner shows by the record, "the people entertained a repugnance to the
long sea-voyage to the remote and heathen land. It is affirmed in the letters
of the administration to the Governors of the provinces of Elfsborg and Varmland,
that no one spontaneously offered to accompany Capt. Van Vliet (who was originally
appointed to command the ship that bore Hollandaer's party, but was superseded
before sailing by Capt. Powel Jansen). The government ordered these officers,
therefore, to lay hands on such married soldiers as had either evaded service
or committed some other offense, and transport them, with their wives and children,
to New Sweden, with the promise to bring them home again within two years,—to
do this, however, 'justly and discreetly,' that no riot might ensue." In 1640
again the Governor of the province of Orebro was ordered to prevail upon the unsettled
Finns to betake themselves, with their wives and children, to New Sweden. Lieut.
Moens Kling, who was now back in Sweden, was sent to recruit for emigrants in
the mining regions of Westmanland and Dalarne. He was also particularly instructed
to enlist the "roaming Finns," who were tramps, or squatters living rent free
in the forests. Next year, when Printz had received his commission, he was sent
to hunt up the same class of persons, the Governors of Dal and Varmland receiving
orders to capture and imprison, provided they could not give security or would
not go to America, the "forest-destroying Finns," who, as described in a royal
mandate, "against our edict and proclamation, destroy the forests by setting tracts
of wood on fire, in order to sow in the ashes, and who maliciously fell trees."
A trooper in the Province of Skaraborg, who had broken into the cloister garden
of the royal monastery at Varnhem, in Westergothland, and committed the heinous
crime of cutting down six apple-trees and two cherry-trees, was given the option
of emigrating or being hung. The "Charitas," which sailed in 1641 for New Sweden,
had four criminals in a total of thirty-two passengers, the greater number of
the remainder being indentured servants and low persons. In fact, Lieut.-Col.
Printz was himself a disgraced man, having been court-martialed and dismissed
from the army for the dishonorable and cowardly capitulation of Chemnitz, of which
he was commandant, so that his appointment to the colony of New Sweden was in
some sort a punishment and a banishment.
But this very reluctance of
the Swedes to emigrate made them the best of immigrants. They stayed in the place
to which they had been removed, and became permanent fixtures in the new soil
just as they had wished to be left in the old. They were quiet, orderly, decent,
with no injurious vices, and in that kindly soil and climate the natural fruitfulness
of their families was greatly increased. Acrelius, noticing this prolificness,
says quaintly, "Joseph Cobson, in Chester, twenty years ago, had the blessing
to have his wife have twins, his cow two calves, and his ewe two lambs, all on
one night in the month of March. All continued to live." And he gives several
other instances of the sort. Be this as it may, the Swedes remained on the spot
through all the changes of administration as if adscripti glebae, and they
multiplied so rapidly that when Carl Christopherson Springer wrote his letter
(already quoted from) to Postmaster Thelin at Stockholm, in 1693, only forty-five
years after the first immigration, he was able to furnish "a roll of all the (Swedish)
men, women and children which are found and still live in New Sweden, now called
Pennsylvania, on the Delaware [PAGE 132] River" to the number of one hundred and
eighty-eight families, nine hundred and forty-two persons. This does not include
the Swedes on the other side of the Delaware, many families residing on the east
bank being included in the list of "Tydable" (taxable) persons returned to the
Duke of York's Court at Upland, in November, 1677. [7]
The Swedes on the Delaware have sometimes been reproached as a lazy people because they did not clear the forests at a rapid rate, nor build themselves fine houses. But this is not the character which Penn gives them, nor that to which their performances entitle them. Penn says, "They are a plain, strong, industrious people, yet have made no great progress [PAGE 133] in the culture or propagation of fruit-trees, as if they desired to have enough, not a superfluity." He speaks also of their respect to authority, adding, "As they are a people proper and strong of body, so they have fine children, and almost every house full; rare to find one of them without three or four boys and as many girls; some six, seven, and eight sons. And I must do them that right, I see few men more sober and industrious." In speaking of their lack of diversified husbandry, Penn forgot that their leading crop was tobacco, which, being without slaves almost entirely, they had to cultivate with their own hands. Their intelligence must have been at least equal to their loyalty, for they were more than fully represented, on the basis of comparative population, in all the early assemblies, councils, and magistrates' courts, under Lovelace and Penn, and they were the only interpreters Penn could get in his intercourse with the Indians. They were not devoid, moreover, of what would nowadays be esteemed remarkable industrial enterprise. There can be no doubt that the Swedes —probably those "wandering Finns" from the Swedish iron ore regions—discovered and worked the ore banks of Cecil and Harford Counties, Md., long before George Talbot's manor of Susquehanna was patented or Principio Furnace thought of. The mill afterwards used by Talbot and to which all his tenants were compelled to bring their corn to be ground was originally started by the Swedes to drive a rude bellows blast of their own. The Swedes, as emigrants from an exceedingly well watered country, cut up in every direction by bays, sounds, rivers, lakes, and fiords, naturally followed the water-courses in the new country. They found a homelike something in the network of streams back of Tinnecum Island and thence to the Schuylkill, and in the rivers and meadows about Christiana Creek, and the Brandywine. They clung to these localities tenaciously, and the only thing in Penn's government which roused their resentment and threatened to shake their loyalty was the attempted interference with their titles to these lands and the actual reduction of their holdings by the proprietary and his agents. It is a fact that some of their tenures were very uncertain and precarious in the eyes of plain and definite English law, and probably the Quakers took advantage of this to acquire escheat titles to many very desirable pieces of land which the Swedes fancied to be indisputably their own. The purchasers of New Sweden from the Indians had vested the title to the entire tract bought in the Swedish crown, and this right of property was recognized and exercised by the crown. Two land grants from Queen Christina are on record in Upland Court, one to Lieut. Swen Schute, and Printz several times solicited a grant to himself, which finally he obtained, giving the property to his daughter Armgart, Pappagoya's wife. The other land-holders secured their tracts in accordance with the fifth article of the queen's instructions to "the noble and well-born John Printz." In this article, after describing the bounds of the territory of New Sweden, and the terms of the contract under which it was acquired from "the wild inhabitants of the country, its rightful lords," it is laid down that this tract or district of country extends in length about thirty German miles, but in breadth and into the interior it is, in and by the contract, conditioned that "her Royal Majesty's subjects and the participants in this Company of navigators may hereafter occupy as much land as they may desire." The land thus bought in a single block and attached to the crown was originally managed by the Swedish West India Company. The revenue and public expenses were paid out of an excise on tobacco, and it was the interest of the company to have tobacco planted largely. In part this was accomplished by servants indentured to the company, who were sent over and paid regular wages by the month. [8][PAGE 134] In part the land was regularly conveyed to settlers who sought to better their fortunes; finally, criminals and malefactors were sent out to some extent at first to labor in chain-gangs upon the roads and public works. The land secured by settlers and servants who had worked out their term of years was granted in fee under power which came directly or indirectly from the crown. The difficulties about title which vexed the Swedes grew out of the changes in the tenure under the Swedish, Dutch, English, and later under Penn's grants, all of them having peculiar features of their own. It is important to understand these differences, which have not been clearly explained by writers on the subject, some of whom have hastily concluded that the land tenure system in Pennsylvania originated with Penn's laws. So far as land is concerned, Penn's "great law" and the subsequent enactments were all founded upon the "Duke of York's laws," the titles under which Penn was particular to quiet and secure. [9]
The Swedes, both under Minuet's and later instructions, were allowed to take up as much land as they could cultivate, avoiding land already improved and that reserved for the purposes of the Swedish West India Company. This land, so taken up, was to remain to the possessors and their descendants "as allodial and hereditary property," including all appurtenances and privileges, as "fruit of the surface, minerals, springs, rivers, woods, forests, fish, chase, even of birds, the establishments upon water, windmills, and every advantage which they shall find established or may establish." The only conditions were allegiance to the Swedish crown and a payment of three florins per annum per family. [10]
This form of quit-rent per family gave something of a communal aspect to the Swedish tenures, and it was probably the case that but few tracts were definitely bounded and surveyed in the earlier days of the settlement. Governor Printz received no special instructions in regard to land grants further than to encourage agriculture and to use his discretion in all matters, guided by the laws, customs, and usages of Sweden. We may suppose he followed the colonial system which was already in operation. Governor Risingh's instructions from the Swedish General College of Commerce required him to give the same title and possession to those who purchased land from the savages as to those who bought from the company, with all allodial privileges and franchises, "but no one to enter into possession but by consent of the government, so that no one be deprived improperly of what he already possesses." The Swedish tenure, therefore, was by grant from the crown, through the Governor, the quit-rent being commuted into a capitation tax, payable annually by heads of families, the only limits to tracts granted being that they do not trespass on other holdings and are cultivated. After the conquest of New Sweden by the Dutch the Swedes were ordered to come in, take the oath of allegiance, and have their land titles renewed. The Dutch were very liberal in their grants, especially under D'Hinoyossa, but the tenure of lands was entirely changed, and a quit-rent was now required to be paid of 12 stivers per morgen, equal to 3.6 cents per acre. [11]
This was a high rent, in comparison with that which the Swedes had been paying, and with the rents charged by the English. Besides, the land had to be surveyed, and the cost of survey, record, and deeds for a tract of 200 or 300 acres was 500 or 600 pounds of tobacco. Many Swedes were unwilling, some perhaps unable, to pay these fees and rents; some abandoned their lands entirely, some sold, and [PAGE 135] many paid no heed to the mandate, thus in fact converting themselves into squatters.
After the English took possession new oaths of allegiance and new confirmations of title were required. Andross and Lovelace made patents very freely, doing all they could to promote and extend the settlements, but the Duke of York's laws exacted a quit-rent of one bushel of wheat per one hundred acres. Wheat, as we find by the Upland record, was taken for taxes (and of course for rent likewise) at the rate of "five guilders per scipple,"—five guilders per scheepel or bushel, thirty pence sterling, or sixty cents, or thirty pence Pennsylvania currency, equal to forty-four and one-fifth cents,—a rent, therefore, of three-fifths or two-fifths of a cent per acre. Under Penn the regular quit-rents were a penny per acre, the conveyancing costing fourteen to eighteen shillings per plat, and the surveying and registering as much more, say thirty shillings, or seven dollars and fifty cents, initial payment, and two dollars annual payment per one hundred acres. This was in addition to the local tax for county and court expenses, amounting to thirty-five or forty guilders per tydable,—four dollars and fifty cents per family or per freeman,—and an occasional "war tax" of a penny in the pound on a valuation which, in 1694, reached £182,000 currency. There is no wonder that the Swedes, who had under their own rules paid only a nominal rent, should have shrunk in fright at these heavy charges, and either gave up their land or neglected to take out deeds for it, and thus lost possession of it entirely under Penn's severe law of 1707. As Acrelius says, in his general statement of these changes of tenure, "Under the Swedish government no deeds were given for the land; at least there are no signs of any, excepting those which were given as briefs by Queen Christina. [12] The Hollanders, indeed, made out quite a mass of deeds in 1656, but most of them were upon building lots at Sandhook. Meanwhile, no rents were imposed. The land was uncleared, the inhabitants lazy, so that the income was scarcely more than was necessary for their sustenance. But when the English administration came, all were summoned to take out new deeds for their land in New York. ... A part took the deeds; but others did not trouble themselves about them, but only agreed with the Indians for a piece of land for which they gave a gun, a kettle, a fur coat, or the like, and they sold them again to others for the same, for the land was superabundant, the inhabitants few, and the government not strict. . . . Many who took deeds upon large tracts of land were in great distress about their rents, which, however, were very light if people cultivated the lands, but heavy enough when they made no use of them ; and they therefore transferred the greater part of them to others, which their descendants now lament." [13]
Acrelius is not just to his fellow-countrymen in calling them idle. They were timid, and they lacked enterprise to enable them to grapple with the possibilities of the situation. They were simple peasants of a primitive race and a secluded country, thrown in among people of the two most energetic commercial and mercantile nations the world has ever seen. They were among strangers, who spoke strange tongues and had ways such as the Swedes could not understand. It is no wonder that they should have shrunk back, bewildered, and contented themselves with small farms in retired neighborhoods. But these small farms, after the Swedes settled down upon them, were well and laboriously tilled, and, small though they were, we have the acknowledgment of the Swedes themselves that they yielded a comfortable support, with a goodly surplus each year besides to those large and rapidly increasing families which attracted William Penn's attention and commanded his admiration.
The husbandry of the Swedes was homely, but it was thorough. The soil which they chiefly tilled was light and kindly. In the bottoms, swamps, and marshes along the streams, which the Swedes knew quite as well as the Dutch how to dyke and convert into meadows,—the Brandywine meadows are to this day famous as examples of reclaimed lands,—the soil was deep, rich, and very productive. The earlier Swedes did not sow the cultivated grasses on these meadows, they simply dyked them and mowed the natural grass, planting corn and tobacco, and sowing wheat wherever it was dry enough. Acrelius speaks of the high price which these lands brought in his time—"six hundred dollars copper coin [sixty dollars] per acre"—when thoroughly ditched and reclaimed, though constantly liable to inundations from the tunneling of the muskrat and the crayfish. The Upland soils were excellently adapted to corn, wheat, and tobacco when they had been cleared. The forest growth on these soils comprised the several varieties of American oak familiar in the Middle States, the black-walnut, chestnut, hickory, poplar (tulip-tree), sassafras, cedar, maple, the gums, locust, dogwood, wild cherry, persimmon, button-wood, spice-wood, pine, alder, hazel, etc. The forests gave the Swedes much trouble, and undoubtedly had an influence upon the modes of cultivation employed. The cost of labor made it difficult to clear the thick woods. [14][PAGE 136] Hence the common expedient was resorted to of removing bushes and undergrowth only and girdling the larger trees, which were left to stand leafless and dead till they rotted and fell, when the logs were after a time "niggered up," or cut into lengths, rolled into piles, and burnt. It was difficult to plow between and among so many trunks and stumps, and this led the Swedes, in order further to economize labor, to resort to a system of husbandry which still, in a great measure, regulates the pitching and rotation of crops in the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia peninsula. The ground was cleared in the winter, and then, unless tobacco was grown, the "new ground," as it was called, was planted in corn in the spring. The process, which is known as "listing," was to throw two furrows or four furrows together, by plowing up and down the field instead of around it, leaving a series of ridges with an unplowed space between. The soil of the ridges was pulverized with the harrow and then stepped off into hills about four feet apart, the corn-planter dropping his five grains in each hill, scooping the hill out, dropping and covering with a heavy hoe,—a simple operation which experts dispatched with two motions of the implement. At the last working of the corn, when it had grown stout and waist or breast high, the "middle" of the lists were plowed out and the fresh earth thrown about the roots of the vigorous plant. This "listing" process was found excellently well suited to the low, flat lands of the peninsula, as, besides saving labor, it afforded a sort of easy drainage, the bottom of every furrow being a small ditch, and this enabled the farmers to plant their corn much earlier than they otherwise could have done. When the corn had gone through the "tasseling" and "silking" processes and the ear was fully developed, the "blades" were pulled and the "tops" cut for fodder. In September the ground was lightly plowed with small shovel-plows (as yet the "cultivator" was not) and sowed in wheat, the stalks being broken down after frost with the hoe or by running rollers over them. Wheat thus sowed on ridges was so well protected by the drainage from frost and "winter-killing" that many farmers in the peninsula still throw their wheat-ground into corn-rows even where they use drills to sow it. Where wheat was not sowed on the corn-ground, and oats was not sowed in the spring, the stalk-field was summer-fallowed, being plowed in May, July, and again before seeding. The wheat was cut with sickles, bound in sheaves, and thrown into "dozens," each shock being expected to yield a bushel. Rye, wheat, and oats were thrashed with flails, and the former, sowed in November, was a favorite crop with the Swedes, the straw being sometimes shipped to Europe. Buckwheat was often sowed on the rye, wheat, or oats stubble, the grain being used to feed stock. Flax and oats were sowed in the spring, either on the corn-ground or stubble-fields. Potatoes were planted on the bare ground and covered with the listing-plow. Sweet potatoes, however, were planted in hills after the ground had been deeply furrowed. Turnips were not much sown, except on new ground, and tobacco, in Acrelius' time, was only planted on such tracts or in the gardens.
The implements were few and rude, as were also the apparatus of the farm animals. The plows often had wooden mould-boards, and were not capable of working deeply; the harrows were of the primitive triangular shape, and the oxen or horses working them were attached by means of double links to the apex of the V. The ox-yokes had bows made of bent hickory-wood, the horses' traces were of twisted deer-hide, and the collars of plaited corn-husks. The rest of the harness was home-made, of the same serviceable deer-skins, and the farmers and their lads, all fond of riding on horseback, were content with a bear- or a deer-skin girt about the horse, with a rawhide surcingle in lieu of a saddle, imitating the Indians in dispensing with stirrups. Beans, pumpkins, squashes, and melons were commonly planted in the hills with the corn. Much cabbage was produced, but the variety of other vegetables was limited to onions, peas, beets, parsnips, turnips, radishes, peppers, lettuce, pepper-grass and scurvy-grass, with a few herbs, such as chamomile, sage, thyme, rue, sweet marjoram, lavender, savory, etc., to supply the domestic pharmacy, or afford seasoning for the sausages, liver-puddings, head-cheese, etc., which were made at "hog-killing."
Penn, in his letter to the Free Society of Traders, speaks rather disparagingly of the orchards of the Swedes, as if they declined to profit by the peculiar adaptedness of their soils to fruit culture. Yet they must have been the first to naturalize the apple, the cherry, and the peach on the Delaware, and we must give them the credit of having anticipated the cherry and apple orchards of Eastern Pennsylvania and Cumberland Valley, and the grand peach-tree rows for which the streets of Germantown became famous. It was a Dutchman, settled among the earlier Swedes, [15] who produced the best cooking apple, and one of the best sort for eating—the Vandevere—that is grown in the Middle States, and it was descendants of Delaware Swedes [16] who earliest cultivated the peach by wholesale, and made it an article of commerce. The peach-tree probably came to Delaware from Maryland, having traveled along the coast from the early Spanish settlements in Florida, but it has nowhere become so completely naturalized, so healthy, so productive of large, succulent, delicious fruit as in the country which the Swedes first reclaimed from the wilderness. In the time of Acrelius the peach was supposed to be indigenous, and was cultivated so extensively as to be relied upon as a standard food for swine.
Domestic animals increased very rapidly among the Swedes. They imported their own milch kine and oxen in the first instance, but they found horses and swine running at large and wild, many having escaped into the "backwoods" from the Maryland planters. [17] These horses had a good touch of the true Barb blood in them, as descendants of Virginia thoroughbred sires, and they were probably crossed with pony stock from Sweden. It seems likely that it is to this cross and the wild, half-starved existence they have led for two hundred years, living on salt grass and asparagus and fish, bedding in the sand and defying storm and mosquitoes, that we owe the incomparable breed of "beach" or Chingoteague ponies, fast, wiry, true as steel, untiring, sound, with hoofs as hard as iron and spirits that never flag. Acrelius noticed them acutely. He would not have been a parson if he had not had a keen eye for a horse. He says, "The horses are real ponies, and are seldom found 'over sixteen hands high. He who has a good riding horse never employs him for draught, which is also the less necessary, as journeys are for the most part made on horseback. It must be the result of this, more than of any particular breed in the horse, that the country excels in fast horses, so that horse-races are often made for very high stakes. A good horse will go more than a Swedish mile (six and three-quarter English miles) in an hour, and is not to be bought for less than six hundred dollars copper coinage" (sixty dollars). The cattle, says Acrelius, are middling, yielding, when fresh and when on good pasture, a gallon of milk a day. The upland meadows abounded in red and white clover, says this close observer, but only the first Swedish settlers had stabling for their stocks, except in cases of exceptionally good husbandry. Horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs ran out all the time, being inclosed at night, and sometimes sheltered in severe weather. They were, however, fed with grain, such as oats, corn, and buckwheat, in addition to fodder, in winter, the food of milch cows being bran or other ground mill-stuff. Acrelius says, in his dry, humorous way, "the man-servant takes care of the foddering of the cattle, whilst the housewife and women-folks roast themselves by the kitchen fire, doubting whether any one can do that better than themselves."
The excellent Swedish pastor was a connoisseur in drinks as well as horse-flesh, and he has catalogued the beverages used by the Swedes with the accuracy and minuteness of detail of a manager of a rustic fair. After enumerating the imported wines, of which Madeira was the favorite of course, he describes, like an expert, the composition of sangaree, mulled wine, cherry and currant wine, and how cider, cider royal, cider-wine, and mulled cider are prepared. Our reverend observer makes the following commentary upon the text of rum: "This is made at the sugar-plantations in the West India Islands. It is in quality like French brandy, but has no unpleasant odor. It makes up a large part of the English and French commerce with the West India Islands. The strongest comes from Jamaica, is called Jamaica spirits, and is the favorite article for punch. Next in quality to this is the rum from Barbadoes, then that from Antiguas, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Christopher's, etc. The heaviest consumption is in harvest-time, when the laborers most frequently take a sup, and then immediately a drink of water, from which the body performs its work more easily and perspires better than when rye whiskey or malt liquors are used." Rum, he tells us, was drunk raw, or as egg-nog ("egg-dram"), or in the form of cherry bounce or billberry bounce; "punch," our learned author says, "is made of fresh spring-water, sugar, lemon-juice, and Jamaica spirits. Instead of lemons, a West India fruit called limes, or its juice, which is imported in flasks, is used. Punch is always drunk cold; but sometimes a slice of bread is toasted and placed in it warm to moderate the cold in winter-time, or it is heated with a red-hot iron. Punch is mostly used just before dinner, and is called 'a meridian.'" [18] The other preparations in which rum was an ingredient included Mämm (mum), made of water, sugar, and rum (" is the most common drink in the interior of the country, and has set up many a tavern-keeper"); "Manatham," small beer, rum, and [PAGE 138] sugar; "tiff" or "flipp," same as foregoing, with the addition of a slice of toasted and buttered bread; hot rum punch, rum and water warmed up, with sugar and allspice,—"customary at funerals;" mulled rum, hot, with eggs and allspice; Hätt-Pätt, warmed beer with rum added; "Sampson," warmed cider with rum added; grog; "sling" or "long sup," half-and-half sweetened rum and water; milk punch; mint-water; egg-punch, etc. "Sillibub" is made like the Swedish "Oelost," of milk-warm milk, wine, and water,—a cooling beverage in summer-time; "still-liquor" was the country name for peach or apple brandy; whiskey, our author says, "is used far up in the interior of the country, where rum is very dear on account of the transportation." The people in the town drink beer and small beer; in the country, spruce, persimmon-beer, and mead. Besides this there are numerous liquors. Tea was commonly used, but often brandy was put in it; coffee was coming into use as a breakfast beverage, the berries imported from Martinique, San Domingo, and Surinam, and chocolate also was not neglected.
In spite of all these liquids the early Swedes did not neglect solids. Their meals were four a day,— breakfast, dinner, "four o'clock piece," and supper, the latter sometimes dispensed with. There was no great variety of dishes, but such as were served were substantial; ham, beef tongue, roast beef, fowls, "with cabbage set round about," was one bill of fare; roast mutton or veal, with potatoes or turnips, another; a third might be a pasty of deer, turkey, chickens, partridges, or lamb; a fourth, beef-steak, veal cutlets, mutton-chops, or turkey, goose or fowls, with potatoes set around, "stewed green peas, Turkish beans, or some other beans;" apple, peach, cherry, or cranberry pie "form another course. When cheese and butter are added, one has an ordinary meal." For breakfast, tea or coffee, with chipped beef in summer, milk-toast and buckwheat-cakes in winter, the "four o'clock piece" being like the breakfast. Chocolate was commonly taken with supper. The Swedes used very little soup and very little fish, either fresh or cured. "The arrangement of meals among country people is usually this: for breakfast, in summer, cold milk and bread, rice, milk-pudding, cheese, butter, and cold meat. In winter, mush and milk, milk-porridge, hominy, and milk; supper the same. For noon, in summer, 'säppa' (the French bouillon, meat-broth, with bread-crumbs added, either drunk or eaten with spoons out of common tin cups), fresh meat, dried beef, and bacon, with cabbage, apples, potatoes, Turkish beans, large beans, all kinds of roots, mashed turnips, pumpkins, cashaws, and squashes. One or more of these are distributed around the dish; also boiled or baked pudding, dumplings, bacon and eggs, pies of apples, cherries, peaches, etc." [19]
The land was so settled in the time of Acrelius that each had his separate ground, and mostly fenced in. "So far as possible the people took up their abodes on navigable streams, so that the farms stretched from, the water in small strips up into the land." The Swedes used boats a great deal. They always went to church in boats if the ice permitted, and they had a great quarrel with Chambers, to whom Penn had given the monopoly of the Schuylkill Ferry, because he would not let their boats cross without paying toll. The houses were solid; in Acrelius' time mostly built of brick or stone, but earlier of logs, often squared oak logs, not often more than a story and a half high. The roofs were covered with oak or cedar shingles; the walls plastered and whitewashed once a year. The windows were large, often with hinged frames, but very small panes of glass when any at all was used, and all the chimneys smoked. In some houses straw carpets were to be found, .but the furniture, was always simple and primitive, made of country woods, with now and then a mahogany piece. The clothing was plain, domestic linen being worn in summer, and domestic woolens, kerseys, and linseys in winter, with some calicoes and cottons of imported stocks. The domestic cloth was good in quality, but badly dyed. For finer occasions plush and satin were sometimes worn. Our good parson, by whose observations we have been profiting, notes the progress luxury had been making among the Swedes. He says, "The times within fifty years are as changed as night is from day. . . . Formerly the church people could come some Swedish miles on foot to church; now the young, as well as the old, must be upon horseback. Then many a good and honest man rode upon a piece of bear-skin; now scarcely any saddle is valued unless it has a saddle-cloth with galloon and fringe. Then servants and girls were seen in church barefooted; now young people will be like persons of quality in their dress; servants are seen with perruques du crains and the like, girls with hooped skirts, fine stuff-shoes, and other finery. Then respectable families lived in low log houses, where the chimney was made of sticks covered with clay; now they erect painted houses of stone and brick in the country. Then they used ale and brandy, now wine and punch. Then they lived upon grits and mush, now upon tea, coffee, and chocolate."
Stray hints of the simple manners of these primitive times, and of the honesty, ingenuousness, and quaint religious faith of the people crop out now and then in the accounts which Acrelius gives of the churches and his predecessors in their pulpits. When the "upper settlers" and "lower settlers" quarreled [PAGE 139] about the place for their new church, and Wicaco carried the day, the lower settlers were placated with a flat-boat, maintained at the expense of the congregation, to ferry them over the Schuylkill. The church wardens kept the keys of the boat. This was the beginning of the church "Gloria Dei," so venerable in the eyes of Philadelphians. The pastor's pay was sixty pounds, the sexton's eight pounds. If a man came drunk to church he was fined forty shillings and made to do public penance. The penalty for "making sport of God's word or sacraments" was five pounds fine, and penance. For "untimely singing," five shillings fine. If one refused to submit to this sort of discipline he was excluded from the society and his body could not be buried in the churchyard. The pastor and wardens looked carefully after betrothals and marriages. The whole congregation were catechized and also examined upon the contents of the sermon. There were also "spiritual examinations" made once a year in families. Each church had its glebe, the income from which was the pastor's, who also received a considerable sum from funerals, marriages, etc. The church bell was swung in a tree. Among the fixtures of the parsonage was a negro woman belonging to the congregation and included in the inventory of glebe property. When she grew old, "contrary," and "useless," she was sold for seven shillings. When the Christina Church was restored there was a great feast and a general revival of interest in the ancient Swedish ways. Matins were held at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost; garlanded lights and side lights of pine wood for Christmas service, and bridal pairs came to the services in the church with crowns and garlands, their hair dressed after the old-time Swedish custom. Among the new regulations of Pastor Hesselius was one to prevent people from driving across the churchyard, another forbidding them to sing as if they were calling their cows. People with harsh voices were ordered to stand mute or "sing softly." The Christina Church owned town-lots in Wilmington, and used to hire out its "pall-cloth" for five shillings each funeral. The charge for burying a grown person was twelve shillings, children half-price.
The Swedish pastors were generally learned and accomplished men, who exerted themselves successfully in directing the minds of their congregations to the necessity of education. The original settlers were ignorant people, few of whom could write their names. Even Lasse Cock, agent for Penn and Markham for twenty years, could not at first do better than sign his "mark" to writings. The pastors, however, always made a brave stand for education, and were the means of preventing the Swedish tongue in America from sinking into oblivion. They also maintained as many of the old observances and religious ceremonies as possible, such as baptism soon after birth, an actual instead of formal sponsorship on the part of the god-parents, the old service of the churching of women, a general attendance upon the service and sacrament of the altar, and a return to the ancient forms of betrothal and marriage. "The old speak of the joy," says Acrelius, "with which their bridal parties formerly came to church and sat during the whole service before the altar." Burials were solemn occasions, but had their feasts as well. The corpse was borne to the grave on a bier, the pall-bearers, chosen from those of the same sex and age of the deceased, walking close alongside and holding up the corners of the pall.
A few of the log cabins occupied by the primitive Swedes were standing within a few years. Watson, in his Annals, describes one of the better class in Swanson's house, near Wicaco. John Hill Martin, in his History of Chester, recalls two or three of these ancient houses. They were very rude affairs, with seldom more than a living-room with a loft over it, doors so low that one had to enter stooping, windows small square holes cut in the logs, protected by isinglass or oiled paper, or thin stretched bladders, often with nothing but a sliding board shutter. The chimney was in the corner, of sticks and clay, or sandstone blocks, generally built outside the house. The first Swede settlers imitated the Indians by dressing in skins and wearing moccasins. The women's jackets and petticoats and the bedclothes were of the same materials. The furs were by and by superseded by leather breeches and jerkins, while the women spun, wove, or knit their own woolen wear, as well as the linen for summer. The women, old and married, wore hoods in winter, linen caps in summer, but the unmarried girls went uncovered except in the hot sun, dressing their abundant yellow hair in long, broad plaits.
The proof of the industry of the early Swedes is to be sought in their works. They were a scattered, ignorant race, with no capital, few tools, and no occupations but those of husbandry and hunting. They were only a thousand strong when Penn came over, yet they had extended their settlements over a tract nearly two hundred miles long and seven or eight miles deep, building three churches and five or six block-houses and forts, clearing up forests and draining swamps to convert them into meadow land. They had discovered and worked the iron deposits of Maryland in two or three places. They had built about a hundred houses, fenced in much of their land, and made all their own clothes, importing nothing but the merest trifles, besides arms and ammunition, hymn-books, and catechisms. They had built grist-mills and saw-mills, having at least four of the latter in operation before Penn's arrival. [20] According to Ferris, however, the frame of the house in which Governor Lovelace entertained George Fox in 1672 was made entirely of hewn timbers, none of the stuff being [PAGE 140] sawed, the mortar and cement being made of oyster-shell lime; the house itself was built of brick. Governor Printz found a wind-mill at Christiana in 1643, but he says it never would work. On the other side of the river there were horse-mills. One at South Amboy in 1685, it was estimated, would clear the owner £100 a year, the toll for grinding a "Scotch bell" (six bushels) of Indian corn being two shillings sterling, equal to one bushel in every four and a half. But probably more than half the early settlers had to do as a primitive denizen in Burlington reports himself as doing, pounding Indian corn one day for the next. In 1680, two years before Penn, Thomas Olive had finished his water-mill at Rancocas Creek, and Robert Stacey his at Trenton. Printz's mill on Cobb's Creek was built in 1643, and Campanius reports it as doing admirable work. Joost Andriansen & Co. built a grist-mill at New Castle in 1662. In 1671 there was a proposition made by New Castle to erect a distillery for grain, but the court negatived it, except the grain be "unfit to grind and boult," because the process of distilling consumed such "an immense amount of grain."
Hallam is right in saying that "No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate so well, if duly executed, the progress of social life as that dedicated to domestic architecture." After the sawmill the brick-kiln follows naturally and rapidly. Hazard produces a petition to New Amstel court, in 1656, from Jacobus Crabbe, referring to a plantation "near the corner where bricks and stones are made and baked." The Dutch introduced brick-making on the Delaware, the Swedes being used to wooden houses in their own country. The court-house at Upland, in which Penn's first Assembly was held, was of brick.
The Swedes not only made tea of the sassafras, but they made both beer and brandy from the persimmon, and small beer from Indian corn. Kalm says that the brewing and distilling were conducted by the women. The Dutch had several breweries in the settlement about 1662. Coffee was too high to be much used in the seventeenth century. Penn's books show that it cost eighteen shillings and sixpence per pound in New York, and that would buy nearly a barrel of rum. Tea fetched from, twenty-two to fifty shillings, currency, a pound.
Governor Printz was expressly instructed to encourage all sorts of domestic manufactures and the propagation of sheep. There were eighty of these animals in New Sweden in 1663, and the people made enough woolen and linen cloth to supplement their furs and give them bed and table linen. They also tanned their own leather, and made their own boots and shoes, when they wore any. Hemp was as much spun and wove almost as flax. The Swedes who had the land owned large herds of cattle, forty and sixty head in ah«rd. The Dutch commissaries enjoined to search closely for all sorts of mineral wealth on the South River, and those who discovered valuable metal of any kind were allowed the sole use of it for ten years. The Dutch discovered and worked iron in the Kittatinny Mountains, and, as has already been shown, the Swedes opened iron ore pits in Cecil County, Md. Charles Pickering found the copper with which he debased the Spanish reals and the Massachusetts pine-tree shillings on land of his own in Chester County. When William Penn arrived in the Delaware in 1682, on October 27th, there were probably 3500 white people in the province and territories and on the eastern bank of the Delaware from Trenton to Salem. A few wigwams and not over twenty houses were to be found within the entire limits of what is now Philadelphia County. There were small towns at Horekills, New Castle, Christiana, Upland, Burlington, and Trenton, and a Swedish hamlet or two at Tinicum and near Wicaco. Before the end of his first year in the province eighty houses had been built in the new city of Philadelphia, various industrial pursuits had been inaugurated, and a fair and paying trade was opened with the Indians. When Penn left the province in 1684 his government was fully established, his chief town laid out, his province divided into six counties and twenty-two townships. He had sold 600,000 acres of land for £20,000 cash and annual quit-rents of £500. The population exceeded 7000 souls, of whom 2500 resided in Philadelphia, which had already 300 houses built, and had established a considerable trade with the West Indies, South America, England, and the Mediterranean. When Penn returned again in 1699, the population of the province exceeded 20,000, and Philadelphia and its liberties had nigh 5000 people. It was a very strange population moreover. Not gathered together by the force of material and temporary inducements, not drawn on by community of interests nor the desire of betterments instinctive in the human heart, with no homogenousness of race, religion, custom, and habit, one common principle attracted them to the spot, and that was the desire of religious liberty, the intense longing to escape from under the baneful, withering shadow of politico-religious persecution to which the chief tenet of their faith, non-resistance and submission to the civil authority, prevented them from offering any opposition. They desired to flee because their religious opinions bound them not to fight. They were not of the church militant, like the Puritans and Huguenots and Anabaptists, and so it became them to join the church migratory and seek in uninhabited wilds the freedom of conscience denied them among the communities of men. They were radicals and revolutionists in the highest degree, for they upheld, and died on the scaffold and at the stake sooner than cease to maintain, the right of the people to think for themselves, and think their own thoughts instead of what their self-constituted rulers and teachers commanded them to think. But they did not resist authority: when the statute and their consciences [PAGE 141] were at variance they calmly obeyed the latter and took the consequences. They knew themselves to be abused and shamefully misused, but they believed in the final supremacy of moral and intellectual forces over despotic forces. They believed with Wiclif that "Dominion belongs to grace," and they waited hopefully for the coming of the period of intellectual freedom which should justify their action before men and prove the correctness of their faith in human progress. But all this trust in themselves and the future did not contribute materially to lighten the burden of persecution in the present, and they sought with anxiety for a place which would give them rest from the weariness of man's injustice. They became pilgrims, and gathered their little congregation together wherever a faint lifting in the black cloud of persecution could be discerned. Thus it was that they drifted into Holland and the lower Rhine provinces of Germany, and became wanderers everywhere, seeking an asylum for conscience' sake,—a lodge in some wilderness, where "rumor of oppression and deceit might never reach," and where they might await in comparative peace the better time that was coming. The great King Gustavus Adolphus perhaps meant to offer them such an asylum in America, but his message was sent in the hurry of war and it was not audible in the din of battles. When, however, this offer was renewed and repeated in the plain language of the Quakers by William Penn, it was both heard and understood, and the persecuted peoples made haste to accept the generous asylum and avail themselves of the liberal offer. They did so in a spirit of perfect faith that is creditable both to their own ingenuousness and to the character which Penn had established among his contemporaries for uprightness and fair and square dealing. It is pathetic to read, in the records of the Swiss Mennonites, how, after they had decided to emigrate, "they returned to the Palatinate to seek their wives and children, who are scattered everywhere in Switzerland, in Alsace, and in the Palatinate, and they know not where they are to be found."
Thus the movement into Pennsylvania began, a strange gathering of a strange people, much suffering, capable of much enduring. Of the Germans themselves one of their own preachers [21] wrote: "They were naturally very rugged people, who could endure much hardships; they wore long and unshaven beards, disordered clothing, great shoes, which were heavily hammered with iron and large nails; they had lived in the mountains of Switzerland, far from cities and towns, with little intercourse with other men; their speech is rude and uncouth, and they have difficulty in understanding any one who does not speak just their way; they are very zealous to serve God with prayer and reading and in other ways, and very innocent in all their doings as lambs and doves." The Quakers, too, bore proof in their looks of the double annealing of fanaticism and persecution. They wore strange garbs, had unworldly manners and customs, and many of them had cropped ears and slit noses, and were gaunt and hollow-eyed from long confinement in jails and prison-houses. The influence of George Fox's suit of leather clothes was still felt among them. They were chiefly of the plebeian classes, the true English democracy, yeomen, tinkers, tradesmen, mechanics, retail shopmen of the cities and towns; scarcely one of the gentry and very few of the university people and educated classes. From Wales, however, the Thomases, Rees, and Griffiths came, with red, freckled faces, shaggy beards, and pedigrees dating back to Adam. Persecution had destroyed their hitherto unconquerable devotion to their own mountains, but they took their pedigrees with them in emigrating, and settling on a tract of hills and quaking mosses, where the soil recommended itself much less to them than the face of the country, they sought to feel at home by giving to the new localities names which recalled the places from which they had banished themselves.
Such were the emigrants who sailed—mostly from London and Bristol—to help build up Penn's asylum in the wilderness. The voyage was tedious, and could seldom be made in less than two months. The vessels in which they sailed were ill appointed and crowded. Yet at least fifteen thousand persons, men, women, and children, took this voyage between 1681 and 1700. The average passage-money was, allowing for children, about seventy shillings per head, so the emigrants expended £50,000 in this one way. Their purchases of land cost them £25,000 more; the average purchases were about £6 for each head of family; quit-rents one shilling sixpence. The general cost of emigration is set forth in a pamphlet of 1682, re-published by the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and attributed to Penn, and he must have directed the publication, though it is anonymous. In this pamphlet it is suggested that a man with £100 in pieces-of-eight may pay his own way and his family's by judicious speculation. The "advance in money"— i.e., the difference between specie value in London and on the Delaware—is thirty per cent., on goods the advance is fifty per cent., and this pamphlet supposes that these advances will pay the cost of emigration. The figures are too liberal; however, they give us an idea of what the expenses were which a family had to incur. They are as follows:
| £ | s. | d. | |
| For five persons'--man and wife, two servants, and a child of ten--passage-money | 22 | 10 | 0 |
| For a ton of goods--freight (each taking out a chest without charge for freight) | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Ship's surgeon, 2s. 6d. per head | 12 | 6 | |
| Four gallons of brandy, 24 Ibs. sugar 100 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Clothes for servants (6 shirts, 2 waistcoats, a summer and winter suit, hat, 2 pair shoes, underclothing, etc.) | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Cost of building a house | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Stock for farm | 24 | 10 | 0 |
| Year's provisions for family | 16 | 17 | 6 |
| Total | £96 | 0 | 0 |
[PAGE 142] This, it will be observed, on a favorable, one-sided showing,
is £20 per capita for man, woman, child, and servant, outside of the cost of land.
If we allow £10 additional for cost of land, transportation, and other extras,
leaving out clothes for the family, we shall have £30 a head as the cost of immigration
and one year's keep until the land begins to produce crops. It thus appears that
the early immigrants into Pennsylvania must have expended at least £450,000 in
getting there in the cheapest way. The actual cost was probably more than double
that amount. In a letter written by Edward Jones, "Chirurgeon," from "Skoolkill
River," Aug. 26,1682, to John ap Thomas, founder of the first Welsh settlement,
we have some particulars of a voyage across the ocean at that time. Thomas and
sixteen others had bought a five-thousand-acre tract of Penn. The rest sailed
from Liverpool, but Thomas was ill, and not able to come. Hence the letter, which
is published in a memoir of "John ap Thomas and his friends," in the Pennsylvania
Magazine, vol. iv. The voyage took eleven weeks. "And in all this time we
wanted neither meat, drink, or water, though several hogsheads of water ran out.
Our ordinary allowance of beer was three pints a day for each whole head and a
quart of water, 3 biskedd (biscuits) a day & sometimes more. We laid in about
half hundred of biskedd, one barrell of beere, one hogshed of water, the quantity
for each whole head, & 3 barrells of beefe for the whole number—40—and
we had one to come ashore. A great many could eat little or no beefe, though it
was good. Butter and cheese eats well upon ye sea. Ye remainder of our cheese
& butter is little or no worster; butter & cheese is at 6d. per pound
here, if not more. We have oat-meale to spare, but it is well yt we have it, for
here is little or no corn till they begin to sow their corn, they have plenty
of it. ... Ye name of town lots is called now Wicoco; here is a Crowd of people
striving for ye Country land, for ye town lot is not divided, & therefore
we are forced to take up ye Country lots. We had much adoe to get a grant of it,
but it Cost us 4 or 5 days attendance, besides some score of miles we travelled
before we brought it to pass. I hope it will please thee and the rest yt are concerned,
for it hath most rare timber. I have not seen the like in all these parts." Mr.
Jones also states that the rate for surveying one hundred acres was twenty shillings—
half as much as the price of the land. At this rate, Jones, Thomas and company
had to pay £50 for surveying their tract of five thousand acres.
It will
be noticed that the face of the country pleased Dr. Jones, and he is satisfied
with the land selected by him. All the early immigrants and colonists were pleased
with the new land, and enthusiastic in regard to its beauty and its promise of
productiveness. Penn is not more so than the least prosperous of his followers.
Indeed it is a lovely country to-day, and in its wild, virgin beauty must have
had a rare' charm and attraction for the ocean-weary first settlers. They all
write about it in the same warm strain. Thus, for instance, let us quote from
the letter written in 1680 to his brother by Mahlon Stacey, who built the first
mill on the site of the city of Trenton. Stacey was a man of good education and
family. He had traveled much in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where he made a great
fortune and became a leading citizen, his children intermarrying with the best
people in the two colonies. The letter, which we quote from Gen. Davis' "History
of Bucks County," says that "it is a country that produces all things for the
sustenance of man in a plentiful- manner. ... I have traveled through most of
the settled places, and some that are not, and find the country very apt to answer
the expectations of the diligent. I have seen orchards laden with fruit to admiration,
planted by the Swedes, their very limbs torn to pieces with the weight, and most
delicious to the taste and lovely to behold. I have seen an apple-tree from a
pippin kernel yield a barrel of curious cider, and peaches in such plenty that
some people took their carts a peach gathering. I could not but smile at the sight
of it. They are a very delicate fruit, and hang almost like our onions that are
tied on ropes. I have seen and known this summer forty bushels of bolted wheat
harvested from one sown. We have from the time called May to Michaelmas great
stores of very good wild fruits, as strawberries, cranberries, and huckleberries,
which are much like bilberries in England, but far sweeter; the cranberries much
like cherries for color and bigness, which may be kept till fruit comes in again.
An excellent sauce is made of them for venison, turkey, and great fowl; they are
better to make tarts than either cherries or gooseberries; the Indians bring them
to our houses in great plenty. My brother Robert had as many cherries this year
as would have loaded several carts. From what I have observed it is my judgment
that fruit-trees in this country destroy themselves by the very weight of their
fruit. As for venison and fowls, we have great plenty; we have brought home to
our houses by the Indians seven or eight fat bucks of a day, and sometimes put
by as many, having no occasion for them. My cousin Revels and I, with some of
my men, went last Third month into the river to catch herrings, for at that time
they came in great shoals into the shallows. We had no net, but, after the Indian
fashion, made a round pinfold about two yards over and a foot high, but left a
gap for the fish to go in at, and made a bush to lay in the gap to keep the fish
in. When that was done we took two long birches and tied their tops together,
and went about a stone's cast above our said pinfold; then hauling these birch
boughs down the stream, we drove thousands before us, and. as many got into our
trap as it would hold. Then we began to throw them on shore as fast as three or
four of us could bag two or three at a time. After this manner in half an hour
we could have filled a [PAGE 143] three-bushel sack with as fine herring as ever
I saw. ... As to beef and pork, there is a great plenty of it and cheap; also
good sheep. The common grass of the country feeds beef very fat. . . . We have
great plenty of most sorts of fishes that ever I saw in England, besides several
sorts that are not known there, as rock, catfish, shad, sheepshead, and sturgeon;
and fowls are as plenty—ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, partridges', and
many other sorts. Indeed the country, take it as a wilderness, is a brave country,
though no place will please all. There is some barren land, and more wood than
some would have upon their land; neither will the country produce corn without
labor, nor is cattle got without something to buy them, nor bread with idleness,
else it would be a brave country indeed. I question not but all would then give
it a good word. For my part I like it so well I never had the least thought of
returning to England except on account of trade." "I wonder at our Yorkshire people,"
says Stacey, in another letter of the same date, "that they had rather live in
servitude, work hard all the year, and not be threepence better at the year's
end, than to stir out of the chimney-corner and transport themselves to a place
where, with the like pains, in two or three years they might know better things.
I live as well to my content and in as great plenty as ever I did, and in a far
more likely way to get an estate."
Judge John Holme, in his so-called
poem on "the flourishing State of Pennsylvania," written in 1696, seems to have
tried to set the views of Stacey to music. True there is not much tune nor rhythm
in the verse, but the Pennsylvania writer of Georgics has a shrewd eye for a catalogue,
and he would have shone as an auctioneer. He sings the goodness of the soil, the
cheapness of the land, the trees so abundant in variety that scarcely any man
can name them all, the fruits and nuts, mulberries, hazelnuts, strawberries, and
"plumbs," "which pleaseth those well who to eat them comes," the orchards, cherries
so plentiful that the planters bring them to town in boats (these are the Swedes,
of course), peaches so plenty the people cannot eat half of them, apples, pears,
and quinces.
"And fruit-trees do grow so fast in this ground
That we begin with cider to abound."
These stately fabrics to their praise?
Since we well know and understand
When they were in their native land
They were in prison trodden down,
And can they now build such a town?"
And Carolina's with Associators,
Both e'en too good for madmen and for traitors.
Truth is, the land with saints is so run o'er.
And every age produces such a store,
That now there's need of two New Englands more."
We that did leave our country thought it strange
That ever we should make so good a change."
Which is at least in length one Mile and More,
Where lives High German People and Low Dutch,
Whose trade in weaving Linnen cloth is much,
There grows the Flax, as also you may know,
That from the same they do divide the Tow," etc.
The Englishman of that day was still untamed. He had a passion, inherited from his Anglo-Saxon forbears, for the woods and streams, for outdoor life and the adventures which attend it. He had not forgotten that he was only a generation or two younger than Robin Hood and Will Scarlet, and he could not be persuaded that the poacher was a criminal. All the emigration advertisements, circulars, and prospectuses sought to profit by this passion in presenting the natural charms of America in the most seductive style. While the Spanish enlisting officers worked by the spell of the magic word "gold!" and the canny Amsterdam merchants talked "beaver" and " barter" and " cent, per cent.," the English solicitors for colonists and laborers never ceased to dwell upon the normal attractions of the bright new land, the adventures it offered, and the easy freedom to be enjoyed there. Thus in advocating his West Jersey settlements John Fen wick wrote in this way: " If there be any terrestrial happiness to be had by any People, especially of any inferior rank, it must certainly be here. Here any one may furnish himself with Land, and live Rent free, yea, with such a quantity of Land, that he may weary himself with walking over his Fields of Corn, and all sorts of Grain, and let his Stock amount to some hundreds; he needs not fear their want of Pasture in the Summer or [PAGE 144] Fodder in the Winter, the Woods affording sufficient supply, where you have Grass as high as a Man's Knees, nay, as his Waste, interlaced with Pea-Vines and other Weeds that Cattell much delight in, as much as a Man can pass through; and these Woods also every Mile and half mile are furnished with fresh Ponds, Brooks, or Rivers, where all sorts of cat-tell, during the heat of the Day, do quench their thirst and Cool themselves. These Brooks and Rivers being invironed of each side with several sorts of Trees and Grape-Vines, Arbor-like interchanging places, and crossing these Rivers, do shade and shelter them from the scorching beams of the Sun. Such as by their utmost labors can scarcely get a Living may here procure Inheritance of Lands and Possessions, stock themselves with all sorts of Cattle, enjoy the benefit of them while they live and leave them to their Children when they die. Here you need not trouble the Shambles for Meat, nor Bakers and Brewers for Beer and Bread, nor run to a Linen-Draper for a supply, every one making their own Linen and a great part of their Woollen Cloth for their ordinary wearing. And how prodigal (if I may say) hath Nature been to furnish this Country with all sorts of Wild Beast and Fowl, which every one hath an interest in and may Hunt at his pleasure, where, besides the pleasure in Hunting, he may furnish, his House with excellent fat Venison, Turkies, Geese, Heath-hens, Cranes, Swans, Ducks, Pigeons, and the like; and, wearied with that, he may go a Fishing, where the Rivers are so furnished that he may supply himself with Fish before he can leave off the Recreation. Here one may Travel by Land upon the same Continent hundreds of Miles, and pass through Towns and Villages, and never hear the least complaint for want nor hear any ask him for a farthing. Here one may lodge in the Fields and Woods, travel from one end of the Country to another, with as much security as if he were lock'd within his own Chamber; and if one chance to meet with an .Indian Town, they shall give him the best Entertainment they have, and upon his desire direct him on his Way. But that which adds happiness to all the rest is the healthfulness of the Place, where many People in twenty years' time never know what Sickness is; where they look upon it as a great Mortality if two or three die out of a Town in a year's time. Besides the sweetness of the Air, the Country itself sends forth such a fragrant smell that it may be perceived at Sea before they can make the Land; No evil Fog or Vapor doth any sooner appear but a North-West or Westerly Wind immediately dissolves it and drives it away. Moreover, you shall scarce see a House but the South side is begirt with Hives of Bees, which increase after an incredible manner; so that if there be any terrestrial Canaan, 'tis surely here, where the land floweth with Milk and Honey."
This is the tenor of all the Maryland invitations to immigration likewise, and Penn follows the model closely. His letter to the Society of Free Traders in 1683 has already been mentioned, and also his proposals for colonists. In December, 1685, he issued a "Further Account of Pennsylvania," a supplement to the letter of 1683. He says that ninety vessels had sailed with passengers, not one of them meeting with any miscarriage. They had taken out seven thousand two hundred persons. He describes the growth of the city, the laying out of townships, etc. There are at least fifty of these, and he had visited many, finding improvements much advanced. "Houses over their heads and Garden-plots, coverts for their cattle, an increase of stock, and several inclosures in Corn, especially the first comers, and I may say of some poor men was the beginning of an Estate, the difference of laboring for themselves and for others, of an Inheritance and a Rack Lease being never better understood." The soil had produced beyond expectation, yielding corn from thirty to sixty fold; three pecks of wheat sowed an acre; all English root crops thrive; low lands were excellent for rope, hemp, and flax; cattle find abundant food in the woods; English grass seed takes well and yields fatting hay; all sorts of English fruits have taken "mighty well;" good wine may be made from native grapes; the coast and bay abound in whales, the rivers in delicate fish; and provisions were abundant and cheap, in proof of which he gives a price current. Penn concludes by quoting an encouraging letter he had received from Robert Turner.
In 1687, Penn published another pamphlet, containing a letter from Dr. More, with passages out of several letters from Persons of Good Credit, relating to the State and Improvement of the Province of Pennsilvania." In 1691 again he printed a third pamphlet, containing "Some Letters and an Abstract of Letters from Pennsylvania." Dr. More takes pains to show the plenty and prosperity which surround the people of the province. "Our lands have been grateful to us," he says, "and have begun to reward our Labors by abounding Crops of Corn." There was plenty of good fresh pork in market at two and a half pence per pound, currency; beef, the same; butter, sixpence; wheat, three shillings per bushel; rye at eight groats; corn, two shillings in country money, and some for export. Dr. More had got a fine crop of wheat on his corn ground by simply harrowing it in; his hop garden was very promising. Arnoldus de la Grange had raised one thousand bushels of English grain this year, and Dr. More says, "Every one here is now persuaded of the fertility of the ground and goodness of climate, here being nothing wanting, with industry, that grows in England, and many delicious things not attainable there; and we have this common advantage above England, that all things grow better and with less labour." Penn's steward and gardener are represented as writing to him that the peach-trees are broken down with fruit; all the plants sent out from England are growing; barn, porch, and shed full of [PAGE 145] corn; seeds sprout in half the time they require in England; bulbs and flowers grow apace. David Lloyd writes that "Wheat (as good, I think, as any in England) is sold at three shillings and sixpence per Bushel, Country money, and for three shillings ready money (which makes two shillings five pence English sterling), and if God continues his blessing to us, this province will certainly be the granary of America." [22] James Claypoole writes that he has never seen brighter and better corn than in these parts. The whale fishery was considerable; one company would take several hundred barrels of oil, useful, with tobacco, skins, and furs, for commerce and to bring in small money (of which there is a scarcity) for exchange. John Goodson writes to Penn of the country that "it is in a prosperous condition beyond what many of our Friends can imagine;" if Penn and his family were there "surely your Hearts would be greatly comforted to behold this Wilderness Land how it is becoming a fruitful Field and pleasant Garden." Robert James writes to Nathaniel Wilmer: "God prospers his People and their honest Endeavors in the Wilderness, and many have cause to Bless and Praise his holy Arm, who in his Love hath spread a Table large unto us, even beyond the expectation or belief of many, yea, to the admiration of our Neighboring Colonies. . . . God is amongst his People and the wilderness is his, and he waters and refreshes it with his moistening Dew, whereby the Barren are become pleasant Fields and Gardens of his delight; blessed be his Name, saith my Soul, and Peace and Happiness to all God's People everywhere."
In 1685 a pamphlet called "Good Order Established," and giving an account of Pennsylvania, was published by Thomas Budd, a Quaker, who had held office in West Jersey. Budd was a visionary, mixed up with Keith's heresy, and wanted to get a bank established in Philadelphia. He built largely in that city, and was a close observer. He pays particular attention to the natural advantages of the country in its soil, climate, products, and geographical relations. The days in winter are two hours longer, and in summer two hours shorter than in England, he says, and hence grain and fruits mature more swiftly. He enumerates the wild fowl and fish, the fruits and garden stuff, and thinks that the Delaware marshes, once drained, would be equal to the meadows of the Thames for wheat, peas, barley, hemp, flax, rape, and hops. The French settlers were already growing grapes for wine, and Budd thought that attempts should be made to produce rice, anise seed, licorice, madder, and woad. He has much to say about the development of manufactures, and he proposes to have a granary built on the Delaware in a fashion which is a curious anticipation of the modern elevator, and he projects a very sensible scheme for co-operative farm-work, on the community plan, the land to be eventually divided after it has been fully cleared and improved, and the families of the commune have grown up.
In 1698 was published Gabriel Thomas' "Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pennsylvania and West New Jersey, in America." This well-known brochure descants in florid and loose terms upon "The richness of the Soil, the sweetness of the Situation, the Wholesomeness of the Air, the Navigable Rivers and others, the prodigious increase of Corn, the flourishing condition of the City of Philadelphia, etc. The strange creatures, as Birds, Beasts, Fishes, and Fowls, with the Several Sorts of Minerals, Purging Waters, and Stones lately discovered. The Natives, Aborigines, and their Language, Religion, Laws, and Customs. The first Planters, Dutch, Swedes, and English, with the number of its Inhabitants ; as also a Touch upon George Keith's New Religion, in his second change since he left the Quakers ; with a Map of both Counties." The title-page leaves the book but little to say. Gabriel is enthusiastic about pretty much everything. He makes some shrewd remarks, however, as when he says that he has reason to believe Pennsylvania contains coal, "for I have observed the runs of water have the same color as that which proceeds from the coal mines in Wales." He shows the abundance of game by telling how he had bought of the Indians a whole buck (both skin and carcass) for two gills of gunpowder. Land had advanced in twelve years from fifteen or eighteen shillings to eighty pounds per one hundred acres, over a thousand per cent, (in the city), and was fetching round prices in the adjacent country.
Thomas represents Philadelphia as containing two thousand houses in 1697. Mr. Westcott declares this to be a great exaggeration. "In 1700 there were only seven hundred houses, and in 1749 but two thousand and seventy-six." [23] Mr. Westcott's figures are, of course, the right ones, yet it must be observed that Richard Norris, a sea captain, just come from Philadelphia, writing to Penn under date of Dec. 12, 1690, a letter which Penn himself published in pamphlet form in London, [24] states that "The Bank and River-Street is so filled with Houses that it makes an inclosed Street with the Front in many places, which before lay open to the River Delaware. There is within the bounds of the City at least fourteen Hundred Houses, a considerable part of which are very large and fair buildings of Brick; we have likewise wharfs Built out into the River, that a Ship of a Hundred Tun may lay her side to." All the writers quoted above have much to say of the rapid growth and development [PAGE 146] of Philadelphia, which seems to strike every one as if it were a sort of miracle. Mr. Thomas, in the letter just mentioned, says that they have a plentiful market two days in the week, with all manner of provisions and fruit in great plenty. "Many Houses were Built the last Summer, and I heard many more are agreed for to be built." The city had a good trade with the West Indies in biscuit, flour, beef, and pork. Capt. Morris said he noticed the city's rapid growth each time he returned to it. His cargo to England consisted of "Skins, Beavers, Otters, Minks, Dear, Bear, Fox, and Oats, with other sorts, with Oyle and. Whalebone." A great flock of sheep was kept in the town liberties, and a woolen-factory at work, employing several carders and spinners, and turning out "very good Stuff and Serges." "Philadelphia is mightily improved," writes William Rodney the same year, "(for its famous Buildings, Stone, Brick and Timber Houses of very great Value, and good Wharfs for our Shipping) the most of any new settlement in the World for its time." R. Hill (same year) writes to Penn of the pleasure he has received in beholding the improvements in "that Famous City (in our parts) and situation of Philadelphia, from which we in Maryland have lately received great benefit and supply for our Fleet, by being furnished with Bread, Beer, Flower, and other provisions, to great quantities at reasonable Rates and short warning." Pickering writes: "Philadelphia will flourish ; here are more good Houses Built this Summer (1690) than ever was in one Year yet; things, that is Provision and Corn, are very plentiful; ... an oil-mill is erecting to make Coal (colza) and Rape-seed oyle," etc. William Bradford tells the Governor that Samuel Carpenter and he are building a paper-mill about a mile from Penn's mills at Schuylkill, and hope to have paper within four months; "the Woollen' Manufactories have made a beginning here, and we have got a Publick Flock of Sheep in this Town, and a Sheepheard or two to attend them." Alexander Beardsley writes that the city has received an access of population from New York, among them Jacob Telner (the original patentee of Germantown):
"Mine friends and others are already come, so that if we do not prevent it ourselves by misliving, this is likely to be a good place. Me-thinks it seems to me as if the Lord had a blessing in store for this place; here is a good government, and the magistrates are careful to keep good order, to suppress Vice and encourage Virtuous Living; and a watch is kept every Night by the Housekeepers, to see that no Looseness nor Drunkenness take place. The People go on with Building very much , since thou went from here many good Houses are Built on the Front at the least twenty this Year; the Bank (by the River) is taken up, all from the Blue Anchor beyond the penny Pot-House. . . . People seem eager in Building, and House Rent towards the River is high." "Philadelphia thrives to admiration," says another writer quoted in this abstract of letters, "both in way of Trade and also in Building, and is much altered since thou wert here." In John Goodson's letter we are told that "We now begin to have a Trade abroad as well as at home; here be several merchants that Transport several Ship-loads of Bread, Flower, Beef and Pork to Barbadoes and Jamaica; a fine Trade here in the Town, consisting of many Trades-Men, which are eight Merchants, Responsible Men, House-Keepers, twenty-nine Shop-Keepers, great and small; three Brewers that send off many a Ton of good Malt-Beer, three Maltsters in this Town also, besides many that are in the Country, seven Master Bakers, some of them bake and send away many Thousand Bushels in a Year of Bread and Flour, this is Truth; four Master Butchers, nine Master Carpenters, seven Master Bricklayers, four Brick-Makers with Brick-Kills[sic], nine Master Shoemakers, nine Master Taylors, two Pewterers, one Brasier, one Saddler, one Clock and Watch-Maker, one Potter, three Tallow-Chandlers, two Sope-Makers, three Woolen-Weavers that are entering upon the Woolen Manufactory in the Town, besides several in the country; and five miles off is a Town of Dutch and German People that have set up the Linnen Manufactory, which weave and make many Hundred Yards of pure fine Linnen Cloath in a Year, that in a short time I doubt not but the country will live happily; five Smiths, one Comb-Maker, one Tobacco-Pipe Maker, three Dyers, one Joyner, one Cabinet-Maker, one Rope-Maker that makes Hopes for Shipping, three Master Ship-Carpenters, three Barbers, two Chirurgeons, three Plasterers, several Victualing Houses or Ordinaries. All the fore-mentioned Trades are sufficient House-Keepers, and live gallantly; four Master Coopers that make abundance of cask for the sea, besides many families of labouring People and Sawyers that live happily, six Carters that have Teams daily employed to carry and fetch Timber and Bricks, Stones and Lime for Building, which goeth on to Admiration. They Build all with Brick and Stone now, except the very meanest sort of people, which Build framed Houses with Timber and Fetheredg[e]-Boards without side, and lath'd and plaster'd within, two stories high, very pretty houses; they are like the Buildings at the Park in Southwark. We have Rocks of Lime-Stones, where many Hundreds, yea Thousands of Bushels of Lime is made in a year for this Town." "My Friends," concludes this pious John Goodson, "have all about twenty-one Meeting-Places established in Pennsylvania, and six meetings fixed around the city, all within six miles."
These contemporary letters seem to disarm the published accounts of Philadelphia's progress of any suspicion of exaggeration. They make it plain that the city was growing very rapidly under the stimulus of an accelerated immigration and a commerce and internal trade which was very profitable and increased every day. The shipping was comparatively large, and the frequent arrivals and departures gave the place a busy, bustling aspect, which even extended itself to Chester, New Castle, Christina, Hore-kills, Salem, Burlington, and other parts on the river. The number of sailors of every nationality, of foreign merchants and traders come to buy and sell, had already led to the introduction of no little of the sorts of vice and debauchery which naturally attach to active seaport towns, greatly scandalizing the quiet Quakers. The letters of Penn and the orders and remonstrances and explanations of Council on this subject bear ample testimony to this debauchery. [25]It was not difficult for merchants who were largely engaged in trade with the New England colonies, the West Indies, and with Europe, and making a profit of nigh upon one hundred per cent, on each venture and its return (English goods, that is to say, exchanged either directly for furs, etc., or indirectly for Pennsylvania flour and bread sent to the West Indies and there bartered for tropical products for the English market) to rebuild their original frame cabins with [PAGE 147] stately piles of brick. Fortunes were swiftly made, and, invested in improvements in and around the city, went a great way. Labor was comparatively high, but materials were cheap. Budd estimates that the six hundred thousand bricks for his proposed granary could be bought for eight shillings per thousand. "Madam Farmer," who was the first person to burn stone lime in Philadelphia (Budd, in 1685, says no stone lime had then been discovered) offered, in 1686-87, to sell ten thousand bushels of Schuylkill lime at sixpence per bushel at the kiln. The. frames of houses, all of hewn timber, cost little beyond the charges for hewing and handling, and sawed lumber was cheap and plentiful. Hence there must have been as much building going on as was required by the increase of population, in addition to the new and larger structures which took the place of more primitive ones as wealth increased. Penn, in his "Further Account of Pennsylvania" (1685), mentions nine streets running from river to river and twenty-one streets crossing them at right angles. Of these he names sixteen streets, "the names," he says, "being mostly taken from the things that grew spontaneously in the county." [26] Gabriel Thomas, describing the city as he saw it in 1697, says, "There are many lanes and alleys, as, first, Button's Lane, Morris Lane, Jones' Lane, wherein are very good buildings; Shuter's Alley, Yower's Lane, Walter's Alley, Turner's Lane, Sikes' Alley, and Flowers' Alley. All these alleys and lanes extend from the Front Street to the Second Street. There is another alley in the Second Street called Carter's Alley. There are also, besides these alleys and lanes, several fine squares and courts within this magnificent city. As for the particular names of the several streets contained therein, the principal are as follows, viz.: Walnut Street, Vine Street, Chestnut Street, Sassafras Street, taking their names from the abundance of those trees that formerly grew there; [27] High Street, Broad Street, Delaware Street, Front Street, with several of less note, too tedious to insert here." [28]
ADD ILLUSTRATION:
THE OLD SLATE-ROOF HOUSE.
[PAGE 148] There were three fairs a year and two markets every week in Philadelphia in Thomas' time. "They kill above twenty fat bullocks every week in the hottest time of summer, besides many sheep, calves, and hogs. . . . Here is lately built a noble town-house, or guildhall, also a handsome market-house and a convenient prison." [29]The large and commodious wharves are also mentioned, and timber-yards, and Robert Turner's ship-yard. The stairs to the water's edge at Carpenter's and Tresse's wharves, Carpenter's derrick, granaries, and store-houses, Wilcox's rope-walk, and the large breweries and bake-houses are all spoken of; also the schools, the cook-shops, the paper-mill, the wool-weavers, and the prosperous tradesmen. To cap the climax, Thomas declares that men in Philadelphia are not jealous and old maids do not exist, "for all do commonly marry before they are twenty years of age." Some mansions and warehouses of that day must have been really handsome buildings, judging from the attention they attracted. Of such were the seats of Joseph Growden, in the suburbs, who had a thousand apple-trees about his place, and Edward Shippen, on Second Street, with its handsome grounds, gardens, and orchards.
The streets have been spoken of already. They were not paved until quite a late period. In 1700, August 15th, during Penn's second visit, it was ordered in Council "yt the King's Highway or publick Road & the bridges yrin from ye town of Philadelphia to the falls of Delaware yt now are, be wt all expedion sufficientlie cut & cleared from all timber, trees & stumps of trees, Loggs, & from all other nusances whatsoever yt Ly cross ye sd way, & yt ye same, with all passages in & outt of all creeks & Branches, may be made passable, Comodious, safe, and easie for man, horse, cart, waggon, or team, be ye rescive (respective) overseers of the highways and Bridges wthin the rescive precincts, townships, and Counties of Philadelphia & Bucks, according to Law. And yt ye respective Courts of Justice & Justices of ye peace in ye sd Counties, Cause ye same be dulie pformed, & the Laws in those Cases made & provided to be strictlie put in execuon undr ye rexive penalties yrin contained, & yt ye Secrie take care to send a Copie of this ordr to ye Counties of philadelphia & Bucks respectivelie." This means that the streets were all roads, and poor ones at that. It took Isaac Norris' team all day to carry a load from Fair Hill to Philadelphia and back, yet the Germantown road was one of the earliest laid out. The Swedes had no roads. They followed bridle-paths on foot or on horseback, and carried their freight by water. It was in 1686 that the people of Philadelphia began to move for better highways. The Schuylkill ferry monopoly was then exciting public attention, and the Council took the whole matter of thoroughfares into consideration. There was a petition calling attention to the badness of the way from Moyamensing to Philadelphia. It was referred to "ye County Court, who it's presumed has power to appoynt Roads to Landing Places, to Court and to Markett." In 1686, 19th of Ninth month, the Council appointed R. Turner, J. Barnes, A. Cook, and T. Janney, with the Surveyors of Bucks and Philadelphia Counties, to meet and lay out a more commodious road from Broad Street to the falls of Delaware. This was the Bristol road. The Germantown road was at first an Indian trail to the Swedes' ford on the Schuylkill and to the Susquehanna River at Octorara. On 5th of Second month, 1687, the inhabitants of Plymouth township petitioned for a cart-road to their town. The road from Radnor to the ferry of Schuylkill was adjusted by Council in 1687; a part of it had been closed by fences, showing that it was not previously a public highway. The same had been the case with the road to Bristol, the farmers fencing across it and changing the bed, so that complaint was made to Council that the people in Bucks County were taking their grain to sell or be ground to Burlington instead of Philadelphia. In 1689 we find Robert Turner, Benjamin Chambers, and other petitioners [PAGE 149] for a road from Philadelphia to Bucks County. This was the beginning of the Oxford or Middle road. The York road, from Cheltenham to Philadelphia, was ordered in August, 1693. [30]
The Old York road and the County-line road, running to Moreland, were laid out in 1697, from surveys made by Nicholas Scull, Susquehanna Street being laid out at the same time. The Germans at Germantown might be trusted to have good roads and proper fences. The supervision of these seems to have been the chief business of the courts there from the day of its organization in 1691. [31]
Besides the main road to Philadelphia the colonists at Germantown built for themselves a church road, a school-house road, a lime-kiln road, a paper-mill road, and several smaller lanes connecting with places in the vicinity. Richard Townshend, one of the "Welcome's" passengers, built a grist-mill on the church road as early as 1683. This supplied Germantown and a large circle of farmers with the best of flour. In 1700 Germantown had a mile of main street, lined on each side with peach-trees in full bearing, and each house had a fine garden. Towns such as this are what have contributed so much to earn for Philadelphia the reputation of having more beautiful suburbs than any other large city in America.
Precisely what sort of houses were built by the first settlers in Philadelphia may be known with satisfactory exactness from the contemporary records. In Penn's tract of "Information and Direction to such Persons as are inclined to America" we have a description of such houses, and we may assume that the "Welcome's" passengers erected exactly such structures during their probationary period of cave life or hut life in the wilderness. The dimensions given are almost those of the house of Pastorius: "To build them an House of thirty foot long and eighteen foot broad with a partition near the middle, and another to divide one end of the House into two small Booms, there must be eight Trees of about sixteen inches square, and cut off to Posts of about fifteen foot long, which the House must stand upon, and four pieces, two of thirty foot long and two of eighteen foot long, for Plates, which must lie upon the top of these Posts, the whole length and breadth of the House, for the Gists (joists) to rest upon. There must be ten Gists of twenty foot long to bear the Loft, and two false Plates of thirty foot long to lie upon the ends of the Gists for the Rafters to be fixed upon,, twelve pare of Rafters of about twenty foot to bear the Roof of the House, with several other small pieces, as Wind-beams, Braces, Studs, &c., which are made out of the Waste Timber. For covering the House, Ends and Sides, and for the Loft we use Clabboard, which is Rived feather-edged, of five foot and a half long, [32] that, well Drawn, lyes close and smooth: The Lodging Room may be lined with the same, and filled up between, which is very Warm. These houses usually endure ten years without repair." The cost of such a house is given as follows: Carpenter's work (the owner and his servants assisting), £7; a barn of the same dimensions, £5; nails and other things to finish both, £3 10s.; total for house and barn, £15 10s. These houses had dirt floors, clapboard floors for garret. Oldmixon copies these directions verbatim in his description of the houses of the first settlers. The directions, however, are very incomplete; no provisions are made for doors, windows, or chimneys. Of the latter these houses had but one, built outside the gable of the sitting-room, sometimes of stone, sometimes of clay and sticks, sometimes of wood only. The doors could be made of riven stuff, of course, with deer-skin hinges and wooden latch and bar, and the windows could be closed with clapboard shutters. A large fireplace was needed, with a stone hearth; the table could be made of hewn stuff, resting on puncheons driven into the ground, and blocks, stools, and benches would answer for seats. Rude wooden bedsteads or berths could be contrived along the walls, and a few bear-skins, with the bedclothes brought over [PAGE 150] by every emigrant, would make them warm. The other furniture would comprise chiefly kitchen utensils; pork fat, whale or sturgeon oil, and pine knots or "light wood" would give all the artificial light needed.
Iron articles were most costly and hardest to get. Edward Jones, at Merion, writes in August, 1682, for nails, sixpennies and eightpennies; for mill-iron, an iron kettle for his wife, and shoes, all of which he says are dear; "iron is about two and thirty or forty shillings a hundred; steel about 1s. 5d. per pound." In Penn's "Directions" he recommends colonists to bring out with them, in the way of utensils and goods, "English Woollen and German Linen, or ordinary Broad-Clothes, Kereseys, Searges, Norwich-Stuffs, some Duffels, Cottons and Stroud-waters for the Natives, and White arid Blew Ozenburgs [Osnaburgs], Shoes and Stockings, Buttons, Silk, Thread, Iron Ware, especially Felling Axes, Hows, Indian Hows, Saws, Frows [frowers, for splitting shingles], Drawing Knives, Nails, but of 6d. and 8d. a treble quantity, because they use them in shingling or covering of Houses." For the first year's stock for a farm he advises "three milch cows, with young calves by their sides, £10; yoke of oxen, £8; Brood mare, £5; two young Sows and a Boar, £1 10s.,—in all