Penn (and his successors) were endowed with the powers of a sole proprietary colony, which as far as Charles II expected would include the recreation of the manor, aristocratic, feudal economy, society and lifestyle as had been installed in Berkeley Virginia. The colony was the personal property of the Penn family: “the True and Absolute Proprietary of Pennsylvania”. Penn was to be the royal governor of that colony, and to Penn and those he included in his largesse was the right to whatever wealth and property that colony could create, including taxes (quit-rents). That England itself had evolved early forms of modern democracy, Parliament, election franchises, and most importantly English common law checked aristocratic control by endowing the English citizen with the right to property, trial by jury of peers, and in very short order further developments in Great Britain, the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and the shocking 1689 Declaration of Rights, and the 1690 John Locke’s Treatises on Government were clear indications the tenor of English politics was far from a return to medieval feudalism–no matter what Charles II intended.
Penn did not intend to restore English medieval feudalism, and his conception of the policy system included the new English forms of democracy–as well as permitting a limited number of manors with English aristocratic endowments. Penn was reasonably in step with the times, despite his sole proprietorship.Nevertheless, as Penn devised his framework for Pennsylvania governance, before he had even step foot on the boat that carried him to North America, that framework (which itself underwent ten revisions before it was applied) was quickly rejected and substantially modified within a year after his arrival in the Delaware Valley–not by him, but by the Pennsylvania legislature Penn created. Further modifications occurred over the next decade as well. In this module, therefore, we shall briefly look at Penn’s political and governance wish list, but will move on to outline the reaction to it.
During that period, Penn had his sole proprietorship taken away (1693) by the new Queen and King, but it was restored, in tact in 1695. There were major revisions to the legal code in 1682, 1683, 1693, and 1700. (and after the Charter of Privileges in 1705 and 1718)As might be expected, given the values and predispositions of a Quaker policy system and political culture, the Pennsylvania’s (and Philadelphia) initial policy system would take some time to evolve: not until 1701 did Penn issue and install his Charter of Privileges which outlined the core of the Pennsylvania Policy system that—remarkably– formally remained until it was tossed aside in the first year of the American Revolution. Our hope in this module is to sensitive the reader to this flux, but not dwell on it. We hope to develop Penn’s style of governance, the nature of reaction to it and Penn’s ideas about governance, and to demonstrate how imperfectly each achieved its wishes. In telling this tale it will require us to also deal with Penn’s economic base-building, and his initial Philadelphia city-building, as well as Penn’s inter-colonial aggrandizements which cemented a larger, more robust colony. All these factors and dynamics were intertwined, one infusing another.
Penn’s Plans: Going Astray from the Start
When one starts a colony (province) from the start, one has to simultaneously develop a multi-level structure of governments and economic bases. Not surprisingly, the academic economic and historical literature attacked each level and dealt with it on its own terms. So we see his system for the Province of Pennsylvania (the colonial “state”), the city corporation (Philadelphia), the county (he set up three in 1682: Bucks, Chester, and Philadelphia), and within counties, our self-labeled “Pennsylvania township”–which for point of reference with be much contrasted with the “New England Town” [999]. Setting up an economic base in the American wilderness is another matter entirely; the first step is location and the second step in land assembly and development: when Penn got to Pennsylvania there were two obstacles to location/land assembly: Indians/European Settlers and trees, rivers, hills, and rocks–you know, topography. Penn attempted to deal with land assembly/development and the preliminary development of an economic base before he ever stepped foot in the New World, and buying lands from the Indians became a first order priority–a successful one at that. But from the outset, the previously settled Europeans and topography threw much into disarray. Faithful to our promise that our concern in this module is to sensitize the reader to the issues and realities of the first years of Pennsylvania, but not dwell on them, preferring instead to concentrate on the first “official” policy systems established beginning in 1701. In this section, we will task ourselves with the dealing with the pre-1701 experimental policy systems.
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[999] In this chapter we shall concentrate on the Pennsylvania township. The reader may also be aware that in contemporary Pennsylvania there is a remarkably prevalent form of local government, the borough, which, while established in the colonial era (there were three) are largely a post Revolutionary War development. So please be patient. Secondly, evolution of the township is intimately tied to the county, and that is hugely affected by migration and population growth, degree of urbanization, and the actions of the Pennsylvania legislature as it deals with growth, development and pressures from external competitive hierarchies. Virginia had some of these issues–but a mono-economic base (tobacco plantations), the constant pressure of Native American resistance, and the control over the economic base by county officials empowered by the state legislatures created a radically different dynamic than what we will see in Pennsylvania. That story too will be dealt with shortly, but not in this module. As to the New England Town–in this module we will content ourselves with identifying differences, which will be developed further in our Massachusetts chapter.
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Penn’s original Pennsylvania provincial government is easily presented. He called it the “Frame of Government” and after discussion simply empowered the sole proprietor and his successessors as royal governor. A seventy-two member upper legislative chamber, the Provincial Council, and a huge lower chamber, the General Assembly). The former was the more powerful, and the latter, while elected by a democratic franchise little short of revolutionary in the 1682 context, was of little policy consequence. The interesting, for me at least, aspect was that Penn without ever having experienced the autonomy and the egalitarianism of the American wilderness, incorporated elections and democratic franchise into his governance. Jamestown certainly had not, and the Puritans had relied on their church hierarchy and a state church to buttress their inclusion of what democratic features they embraced.
But Quakerism had little in the way of a church hierarchy, no predestined elites, and an instinctual reversion against authority. To be sure, Quakerism in practice, not expressed rhetoric or in belief, did develop its own set of de facto elites–more activists than deferred to leaders. The rank and file always inclined to be more concerned with their own affairs, and left decision-making whenever possible to those willing to accept the burden. Quaker activists tended to be either religious or economic: religious activists preached, coordinated meetings, demonstrated, while economic were business entrepreneurial. It was the former that protested publically, and presumably were most demonstrative in Quaker meeting houses. With age and endurance they were considered as the church elders, who ran the more practical affairs of the congregation. The Quaker economic elites, which which I am most concerned in this module, gravitated into cities, Bristol being the most likely, formed companies or became artisans.
The Protestant ethic was never lacking in this hard-working, long-suffering husbandman and before their departure from England, Quakers had among their approximately 50,000 English adherents (about 5% of English believers) bifurcated into a husband/yeoman element and an urban working class, artisan and business owner groupings. Quaker business owners often were quite to reasonably successful, and were successful wealth accumulators. The openness of Quakerism also brought in those, like Penn, of aristocratic and wealthy background. Both entrepreneurs and those of high social status and affluence, it is not unreasonable to assume, were both activists by nature and personality, and as far as Quaker rank and file were concerned, if such folk wanted to lead, let them. Several observations follow from this description. Quakers included substantial followers from urban centers, holding and practicing urban occupations and skills. Probably, the traditional core Quaker remained in the countryside, but held or aspired to what we label yeoman small-scale household farming, and rural commercial/manufacturing paths. Those of higher social status, again Penn included, came from manor estate backgrounds, and given their wealth, social upbringing, and connections were looking forward to replicating them in America. Each of these preferences were retained and made manifest in the New World community.
Secondly. the Quaker exodus to the American holy land included those who were already skilled and participating in the pioneering English capitalism. Their occupations, as listed by Hackett-Fischer included virtually anything one would expect to find in the rapidly growing British urban centers. They came with their families and their hope for the future did not involve rural agriculture, but urban commercial, artisan-manufacturing, and professional occupations. What we can see is that Penn, well-aware of this economic diversity within Quakers, and projected a diversified economic base in his new Pennsylvania, and the formation of a large commercial center. This was not to be Berkeley’s bi-modal Royalist plantation elite and accompanying indentured servant migration. Penn’s vision for Pennsylvania was much more robust, balanced, comprehensive, and thoughtful. It was also intended to be, as we shall see, his business plan in which he attracted investment capital to finance the venture.
Hannah Benner Roach accordingly outlines Penn’s 1681 conception of Pennsylvania’s proposed economic base in what she described as “Pennsylvania’s first regional plan“. That plan envisioned “farm land, the ‘greene’ country [hinterland] town exemplified by the liberty land, and a small commercial center of indeterminate nature“. [99] Hannah Benner Roach, “the Planting of Philadelphia: a Seventeenth Century Real Estate Development: Part II,, the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (April, 1968), p. 193. In 1681, the size and nature of the small commercial center (Philadelphia) was more a blank slate; his real focus then was the “greene” town, in reality of network of small hinterland towns constructed on lands acquired from Indians, connected by roads, which would constitute an attractive English village in which the gentry could flourish and manor lord could avail themselves of urban comforts, security and society.
From the initial terms or conditions he proposed in Some Account [the opening words and title to his Pennsylvania plan] , it is apparent Penn hoped to interest more than one economic class of settlers in his venture.Without ‘industrious husbandmen and day-labourers’ no wilderness could be transformed into a settled community. Without a local trade between yeoman farmers and those engaged in ‘labour handicrafts–artisans and mechaniks’–the community could not function, nor could it flourish without adequate funds derived from the wider commerce of ‘merchandise and navigation’. He therefore related his proposals to ‘three sorts of people’, those who would buy land from him, those who would rent from him, and servants[ indentured servants] sent over by masters disinclined themselves to settle, but willing to invest in the province’s future [99] Hannah Benner Roach, “the Planting of Philadelphia: a Seventeenth Century Real Estate Development: Part I,, the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (January, 1968), p. 7
The reader might note that the this “plan” is not religious in nature, but an assessment of buyer motivations and desired products, and how to attract these varied buyers how he would have to offer relevant terms and conditions to attract them to join with him. Say it another way, Penn was approaching the Holy Experiment was a business venture, a real estate development, financed from land sales–not his or anybody else’s philanthropy. He knew that he could sell land directly to one grouping, rent it to another, and the third could be the source of his investment capital. Certainly, Penn knew up-front capital would come from him, but he also expected to be paid back by quit rents (land taxes) as well as land sales. Against this, however, Penn was determined to offer different terms and conditions to each grouping so that a necessary balance could be attained.
Hence, as described by John Pomfret, Penn “thought of patterning the distribution of lands in Pennsylvania on [his past] West Jersey model of selling one hundred shares of 5,000 acres … However, since there was a great demand for small holdings, the Proprietor convinced that land must be available to rich and poor alike, offered tracts in denominations as small as one hundred and twenty-five acres. As further evidence of his sincerity he refused in September 1681 an offer of 6,000 pounds from a Maryland group [of land speculators] for a tract of 30,000 acres and a monopoly of the Indian trade. Penn [in any case] was to have two and a half per cent of the profits of [each] trade … [and] a quit rent of one shilling per 100 acres to beginning in 1684 … he offered to lease land to settlers at one penny per acre. To attract indentured servants … [he allowed] fifty acres per servant as compensation for transporting them; and the servant themselves , when his term had expired, would be granted fifty acres of land” [99] John Pomfret, “the First Purchasers of Pennsylvania: 1681-1700, the Philadelphia Magazine of History and Biography (April, 1956), p. 146 As he had in the West Jersey settlement, Penn formed a joint stock corporation, the First Purchasers of Pennsylvania. To facilitate investment by the “First Purchasers” he formalized in July his written “Conditions and Concessions” which all Purchasers signed and were witnessed by number of Quaker influentials previous to the departures.
The First Purchasers were an urban rather than rural people. An occupation sampling of three hundred reveals that only forty-six were yeoman, and only thirteen were husbandmen [20%) … The professional groups were … eleven doctors, four schoolmasters, four printer-publishers, but understandably, no lawyers. Outstanding were [Quaker founder], George Fox … and George Whitehead. … More than eighty occupations are represented … with shoekeeping and the crafts predominately … shoemakers, carpenters, tailores, serge makers, maltsters … many bakers, brass makers, brick makers, button makers, chairmakers, cheesemongers, coopers, flax makers … grocers, ironmakers … even a bodice maker. About ten per cent of the First Purchasers are listed as merchants … a majority of First Purchasers were of the artisan-shopkeeper class [99] John Pomfret, “the First Purchasers of Pennsylvania: 1681-1700, pp. 153-54
The “conditions and concessions” were afforded in proportion to the land purchase or investment in the venture. He did modify several terms as needed be, and he conceded that he would buy the land from the Indians and deliver a “clean title” to the Purchaser, that he would lay out the “principal city” (Philadelphia) and within that city each Purchaser of a certain scale would receive ten acres for each five hundred purchased. He allowed purchase of 10,000 acres by groups (of Quakers) in which each member would receive 200 acres for a village–and that villages and towns would be connected by highways. Penn further stipulated each man’s land would have access to a navigable stream, and access to a village.As individual investors signed on to the First Purchasers agreement two dynamics appeared. Penn granted himself wiggle room in the implementation of each aspect of the “conditions and concessions” agreement, and (2), distinctions between the “large commercial center”, and the “Greene town” hinterland came at the favor of the large commercial center–and the centrality in the Pennsylvania-wide plan of the Green Towne diminished.
Penn did require, however, the Purchaser must settle the land within three years of its purchase, or the deal would default. In the agreement Penn allocated 10,000 acres for himself for each 100,000 acres sold. He intended the acreage to establish manors for himself, his family and associates, or for his own resale. Penn [in any case] was to have two and a half per cent of the profits of [each] trade … [and] a quit rent of one shilling per 100 acres to beginning in 168; and “I cannot make money without special concessions, he wrote in July 1681. ‘Though I desire to extend religious freedom, yet I want some recompense for my trouble” (99) First quote from John Pomfret, “the First Purchasers of Pennsylvania: 1681-1700, p. 7, and the second quote, Hannah Benner Roach, “the Planting of Philadelphia: a Seventeenth Century Real Estate Development I, p.9.
For all his efforts, legal, organizational, planning, and intensive marketing, Penn was quickly and well-rewarded. By May 1682, 566,000 acres had been sold. The sales to First Purchasers continued until 1700 by which time approximately 800,000 acres were purchased–in addition to another 165,000 acres sold to a half-dozen land speculation companies. There were in all, over 700 individual purchasers of land. “only an infinitesimal number of the First Purchasers were non-Quakers … a few Welshmen and Dutchmen … It is clear that Pennsylvania was regarded as colony earmarked for Quakers. Looking ahead–over the next four years … 392 purchased holdings from 125 to 675 acres accounting for an aggregate of 155,000 acres. At the other end of the sales spectrum, sixty-nine bought 5,000 acres or more, totalling over 380,000. Still, Penn’s goal of encouraging actual settlement not land speculation seems to have been successful. Fifty percent of the First Purchasers did settle in the New World, including a sizeable element of the largest landowners. It was these initial First Purchasers who did settle that went on to become Philadelphia and Pennsylvania First Families, the core of its future elite society, the key leaders of its economic life and generations of its political leaders. If Penn’s intent was to establish a social, economic and political elite–much as Governor William Berkeley had done in Virginia–than Penn enjoyed a remarkable and unheralded success.
By the end of summer 1681, land sales, the willing emigrants, and the venture itself had coalesced to the point ships were laden with “adventurers” and supplies and were heading off. To avoid an inevitable chaos if settlement were to commence before Penn had completed his preparations (and land sales) in England, Penn appointed three commissioners to supervise the settlement and to ensure their closeness to the conditions and concessions agreements.They left in September, 1681; Penn did not arrive in Pennsylvania (actually New Castle, Delaware) until October 1682. As we shall see in the next section, dealing with the realities of Pennsylvania and the “precise ambiguities” of Penn’s original plan and his “conditions and concessions” agreements had to be dealt with by the three commissioners. The gap was wide and the commissioners made many an adjustment and many a deal on their own before Penn arrived.
the Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
Upon arrival Penn immediately discovered that the frame of government along lines of a sole proprietorship and the religious ideals of he Holy Experiment was one thing and selling land had certainly been another, but in Pennsylvania he confronted three rather fundamental discrepancies between his pre-settlement plans and thought, and the actual situation on the ground. His three commissioners had dealt with much, but when he arrived they were up north, upriver, reconciling a new site for his large commercial city with his design plans and conditions and concessions agreement (see below). What was also apparent was that the boundaries of the province were contested by two powerful neighboring proprietorships. Penn also recognized that his First Purchasers, whatever they though in merrie olde England, had many minds and conflicting ideas of how and when to settle down, establish their home and set up their shop/work establishment. Penn would deal with that through a hastily formed Free Society of Traders, a cross between a business exchange association, chamber of commerce, and legislative bloc in the Assembly.
Penn had assumed his proprietorship included the east bank of the Delaware River, from the coast up. He knew the west bank was formally part of the Duke of York’s New Jersey grant, but was hopeful to negotiate terms to ensure its incorporation into Pennsylvania. What he did not realize was both the east bank and the coastal lower Delaware were thinly by established Swedish, Finn, and English settlers from the New Netherlands colony–and that Lord Calvert of Maryland and the Duke of York thought them to be part of his land grant. Caught in the tangle was the location of what Penn hoped would be the state capital and commercial center: Philadelphia. He had to give up on a lower Delaware location and instead moved it to the Delaware east bank around sixty miles upriver (its present location). The implications of these set off two separate reactions that proved of considerable importance to the future of Pennsylvania.
Once his locations had been settled, Penn’s first priority was to acquire the lands from the Native American tribes in possession. This was not simply a legal matter to Penn, but also a religious obligation. He shared Fox’s belief that settlement did could not be through conquest, as it so obviously had been in Virginia and Massachusetts. Quaker pacifism and abhorrence of violence and “things military” was simply immoral to a faithful Quaker. That the Native American concept of land ownership was not European or legal, and their previous experience with the New Netherland and Swedes southern colonies was on the whole reasonable, the local tribe, the Lenape, far from trusting and naive, were willing to talk. In 1683, Penn’s timing for land negotiations was good also. The very disruptive Beaver War had decimated the Lenape, and they had been kicked out of Delaware Valley by the Iroquois–who themselves were exhausted with the struggle. Disease exacted a horrible toll as the Lenape were displaced, depopulated, and understandably reluctant to war. Negotiation among the tribes produced an agreement called the “Covenant Chain” which established a loose alliance between Delaware tribes, the Iroquois, and the newly arrived Shawnee. The confederation was willing to work with the English to maintain peace and trade, and given that the lands Penn wanted to buy were not then populated, and given Penn’s honest and sincere, non-military approach to talks, land sales of the desired locations in the Valley were successful.
But after that, all good things must eventually end and reality set in. Penn tackled a number of more difficult issues, the first of which was Pennsylvania’s southern boundary–set on the 40 parralll. Penn had really no firm idea where that line was located, and he did not have on hand any survey, but to him he was in possession of the three lower counties, the former Netherlands-Swede settlements–the non-Quaker and already long-settled population of which wanted nothing to do with Penn and his Holy Experiment. Penn, on the other hand, was determined to have direct access to the Atlantic for his colony.
Lower Three Counties:
As to the Lower Delaware thee counties it was so troublesome that Penn returned to England in 1684 to attempt to negotiate out of the situation. Penn was determined that Pennsylvania control the access to the mouth of Delaware so it possessed unrestricted access to the Atlantic. That access was critical to his ability to promote the colony and grow it economically. His initial intention was to create three additional counties in the lower Delaware. In 1682, the Duke of York sold his interests to Penn, and Penn formally asserted his right over the territory from that point on–contested by Lord Calvert, and the none–to–happy New Netherlands settlers. Both headed to court in London to resolve the matter. Complicating the court process was the unanticipated event that the Duke of York became King of England, James II–as we know a friend of Penn’s. James split the lower Delaware counties in half and gave to Penn the river access land–thereby moving Maryland’s boundaries northward (1685).
In 1688 James formally redefined the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary. That left the New Netherlands settlers on their own, and in 1701 they formally petitioned the Penn for a separate legislature of their own. Penn agreed stipulating that he was the common governor. The lower abridged three counties then had their own legislature–and a struggle between Pennsylvania and the three lower counties ensued–as struggle that was never resolved. In the beginning days of the American Revolution the matter came to a head, and the lower three counties seceded from Pennsylvania–as the reader now suspects creating the state of Delaware. One of the more important of our Founding Fathers, John Dickinson, was governor of Pennsylvania when the American War of Independence commenced, and then signed the 1789 American Constitution as the President of Delaware. Dickinson will feature prominently in a future module in which he contests approval of the Declaration of Independence with Sam and John Adams–a struggle that resulted in the Pennsylvania’s revolutionary war constitution which in essence fired Dickinson as governor or Pennsylvania. A cute story perhaps, but certainly a useful take away in that Delaware’s colonial history was as the lower three counties of Pennsylvania. It also will be critical in understanding Pennsylvania politics during the Articles of Confederation period. That struggle involved nothing less than the real first national Bank of America. Oh what a tangled web we weave …
Philadelphia Moves Up River: Our History’s First Big City City-Building
Penn had grand ideas about the settlement of Pennsylvania and its economic base. They did not include Philadelphia, the intended port of Pennsylvania being sixty miles up river on one side of the Delaware River–and the other side another state entirely. Penn was an urban planner and he had drawn up a prospective plan for Philadelphia, its economic base, and its relationship to the Pennsylvania hinterland. John Reps summarized this best:
In July 1681 [before setting foot on this ship Welcome] Penn produced his general scheme of colonization … publish(ing) the conditions of settlement, including the statement that ‘a very large town or city’ would be laid out, and that ‘every purchaser and adventurer’ [i.e. investor] would be given land in proportion to his investment in the [Pennsylvania] enterprise. Every person buying [at least] 500 acres in the colony would be assigned a ten-acre parcel in the city. Penn then selected three commissioners to accompany the first group of settlers [before Penn himself came over]. To them he handled a long and detailed memorandum of instructions dealing with {laying out, platting] dated September 30, 1681 … these instructions were specific, practical and comprehensive. They dealt first with selection of a suitable town site and the amount of land that would be required.[99] John W. Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America (Princeton University Press, 1965, 1969), p. 206
The best laid plans of mice, men and Quakers went awry when the three commissioners arrived, realized no city was going to be built in the Lower Delaware in time, headed north, found a new site (the present site), but also found the topography did not fit Penn’s detailed instructions, the east bank was already settled and uncooperative, and they faced the reality that Penn’s major investors and many affluent settlers had signed onto an incentive deal for investment that could no longer be honored as originally agreed to. Even more damaging, Penn had envisioned more waterfront access than the west bank of the Delaware provided–especially if a port was to be included on the waterfront (it wasn’t). For a contemporary economic developer, this mess is normal, with the newspaper and TV howling in the foreground as a added delight of modernity. But when Penn’s boat arrived full of those affluent folk, he had to deal with the old bait-and-switch conundrum. Penn dealt with it as any CEO, government or private would do, he delegated it to his economic development commissioners, writing them …
… you must use your utmost skill to persuade them to part with so much as will be necessary, that so necessary and good a design [for the layout of the city] not be spoiled, urging my regard to them if they will not break this great and good contrivance, and in my name promise them what gratuity or privilege you think fit, as having a new grant at their old rent, half their quit rent [taxes] abated, yea, make them as free purchasers, rather than disappoint my mind in this township .[99] John W. Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America (Princeton University Press, 1965, 1969), p. 207
Penn empowered them to keep the investors on board, plat the new city in a completely unexpected topography, and keep to the original urban design he had devised. That urban design today is celebrated as the magnificent Broad and Market Street central square, with streets laid leading to the square from the waterfront inland [instead of going to another waterfront as the previous location envisioned by Penn was between two rivers], leading to nowhere in particular. That “Plan of Philadelphia” can be found in most any urban planning history, and is celebrated as a monument to the profession.
In truth, the design is partially based on Penn’s experience as lawyer for the New Jersey colony (described in the previous module)the plan for Burlington New Jersey–home of Burlington Coats, and birthplace of James Fenimore Cooper of Last of the Mohicans fame–and John Reps [99]
Burlington’s modest plan, laid out in 1675 by Richard Noble, was based on similar axes as were standard military camp plans for the standard seventeenth century English armies … It is likely that [Penn’s surveyor in Philadelphia, Thomas Holme] was also familiar with the plan Richard Newcourt proposed for the rebuilding of London in 1666 (after the Great Fire). The chief elements in Newcourt’s plan–a grand central square at the intersection of axial streets which he called High and Broad, symmetrically placed subordinate squares, and the grid pattern formed by intersection streets–were all incorporated in Holme’s [design] Portraiture [99] Hannah Benner Roach, “the Planting of Philadelphia: a Seventeenth Century Real Estate Development I, pp. 33-4
and that Rep’s [99] John W. Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America, pp. 212-13 belief that
“Penn and Holmes had a number of models from which to draw [New Haven, Covent Garden in London, and Newcourt’s London rebuilding], but they did more than copy any existing or proposed city plan of the past. Philadelphia was much larger than previous [models] [so. they established] America’s first designated public parks … in its scale, its open squares, and its consistent use of wide streets intersecting at right angles Philadelphia represented something of an innovation in colonial town design”.
Finally, Viewed from 10,000 feet up, however, Philadelphia is mostly grid. And yes, as the conventional planners critique of the grid goes, it was meant to accommodate land sale at a profit– to scale up]made possible, of course, with sweetheart deals and tax abatement. Quaker economic development and Quaker planning also collided, seventy years or so before Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations. The nasty truth about the grid is that it is not a capitalist “plat” (pardon the play on words for “plot”) and it never was. Ancient cities, mostly aggregated jumbles with a grand boulevard and several gates, also used grid. The grid was but a natural extension of Penn’s Philadelphia, embraced as the city grew at its seams in later years especially. Reps offers a fair and understanding summary of Penn’s (and Holme’s) final negotiated, and readjusted plan of 1682 is that “if Philadelphia must share the blame for the ubiquitous gridiron, it should also be credited as the source of an occasional open square occupied by public buildings or used for park purposes … [and that] understanding [Philadelphia’s] place in the American tradition of city planning there was … some degree a realization that municipal control over land development was not incompatible with a democratic society” .John W. Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America, pp. 223
Finally, the issue of Penn’s ten acre “liberty lands” farm land resulted in some unanticipated consequences. The liberty lands were those acres afforded to the First Purchasers who bought sufficient acreage as an incentive in Penn’s “conditions and concessions”. Finding someplace to put the liberty lands forced yet another planning adjustment, which no one could have anticipated realistically. In any case, the liberty lands were placed in several tracts to the immediate north of Penn’s city proper, immediately north of Vine Street Holme platted a string of parcels that developed and assigned ownership of First Purchasers to them. Outside of the city, they were earmarked as townships legally independent of the city. The largest liberty land township, Northern Liberties, located directly on Philadelphia (1682) boundaries, became its first “suburb” during the colonial period. By the 1790 census northern Liberties held nearly 10,000 residents and was the United State’s sixth largest urban center. It was officially annexed by Philadelphia in 1854, one hundred-seventy or so years later. This township, and the reality that it was not included in city election districts during the critical days of 1775-6, played a significant role in the establishment of Pennsylvania’s first “State” policy system.
Don’t Let the Door Hit your Butt
Penn’s design and platting of Philadelphia–and transferring land ownership to the First Purchasers gave reality to that “large commercial city’ detailed in his plan(s). There was a forest and fields when he began–and a city when it was over. is the first of America’s large cities encountered in this history (Not, of course in English America). We have gone into some depth as to issues, compromises and a general messiness about this very critical economic development strategy–to create a city from a wilderness, or more precisely, nothing but trees, fields, streams, river front, rocks, and hills. City-building will saturate this history–it still continues to this very day as a core, but largely unnoticed economic development strategy, composed of a host of auxiliary strategies in combination with principles of planning. There is a lot of city-building in our history–some will call it suburbanization because a suburb is a city too. Anyway, the reader should assume they will encounter an awful lot of it in this history. Philadelphia is on the Atlantic coast and we have to work our way to Honolulu.
City-building (and also state-building which shall be dealt with later) is not limited to the initial design, platting, land sales and the inherent location of functions to separate geographies. City-building more vitally includes institutionalization: the design and the initial operation of key political, social and economic structures without which a urban center would not succeed. Public buildings, of course, but also the legislatures, courts, city councils and chambers of commerce that would occupy them. City-building requires lots of people, but as the reader shall see, it is directed and motivated by a few–often who will be titled as city fathers and mothers. Say it in my language: the dominant urban elite of that city. The playground of the urban elite is our policy system, with its sandboxes, slides, swings, and deep pools. In this playground, one cannot expect its occupants to use doggie bags for their dogs, and their kids are all spoiled. All community developers should be forewarned. We have already seen glimpses of what fate befell our deeply religious and seemingly honest William Penn. It gets worse.
The motivations of this elite–and those of its most powerful members especially–are as they say “complicated”, but this history cannot escape the inevitably that most of what they do falls into the economic development rubric. Lucky us, a lot of fascinating stories to tell of folk only one step out of jail. I, for one, however, am not ashamed to these guys. City-building requires leadership, disrespects democracy and not infrequently discretion and decency. The city-builders may not be personal role models, but most would surprise even the most skeptical as to the real life complexity of their motivations. City-building “is what it is”. One last observation. City-building and institutionalization is not the flicking of a light switch–it literally takes decades. When we talk of founding a city, that city will be building for several decades after, and its policy system will be evolving before it jells sufficiently to be called its first policy system.
What does emerge from Penn’s city-building–and his intermittent and inconsistent participation in it–was a gradual but perceptual dissatisfaction with Penn in the Quaker community. It was perceived that Penn in the abstract was a committed Quaker and genuine in the application of the original plan and vision. What was also evident was that Penn protected his own personal interests, and did not respond well to what he perceived as threats or questioning of his authority. Benner-Roach suggests the colony quickly developed a cash-flow and hard currency liquidity deficiency which impeded payment of debts and salaries–while not Penn’s fault directly hit people in the day-to-day pocketbook. A good deal of Penn’s cash reserves were expended in Indian land purchases. In 1683 Penn was expecting that people homesteaders start paying their taxes/quit rents which were not officially due for another year–for both public need and for his personal cash flow. Penn’s deputies and officials, usually individuals close to him or family, demanded their pay, and that fostered a perception that Penn favored his friends unduly.
The winter of 82-83 was hard, by European standards, cold, and food and wood became issues. It was increasingly clear that by Spring, the city of Brotherly Love was a bit stressed. Individuals took to the courts for remediation of their concerns–and that usually made things worse. The courts were conducted by individuals close to Penn. Dissatisfied individuals and households turned to Penn, usually to little avail. The obvious delay in issuing construction/survey warrants by Penn, and the inevitable disappointment with the specific allocation of parcels–both of which directly attributed to Penn. Here Penn’s promotional materials and his past descriptions of the new world utopia came back to haunt him, as did the gap between his contract and what happened on the ground. Lord Calvert actively resisted Penn’s attempts to manage and to settle residents in the Three Lower Counties–bringing those already unhappy folk to the brink of rebellion.
By March 1684, Penn had it with Calvert, and it was also increasingly uncomfortable in dealing with the never-ending complaints and bad feelings that swept through his own Quaker colony. He convened the first meeting of his Assembly on May 10, and among its other actions was to approve a series of appointments and administrative rules that made evident Penn had decided to return to England–including funds to his travel-associated costs. One of the Penn’s last acts was to assert control over land tied to waterfront usages (potentially lucrative, of course) as part of his personal estate. He would, of course, pay no taxes on these personal lands. Penn commenced construction of his own manor/estate, even though there was still a backlog in allocation of land plots to Quaker landowners. The reaction of the Assembly seemingly triggered a long overdue pushback to Penn, the Holy Experiment, and to the host of decisions and actions that had occurred over the past two years.
Motions were made to repeal Penn;s “fundamental laws” included in his Frame of Government. In particular attempt was made to limit Penn’s powers of appointment, especially over the courts. In Philadelphia, after the Assembly, streets were no longer named for Penn’s officials in favor of “things that Spontaneously grow in the country”. As Penn prepared to leave, he cleared his desk of accumulated paperwork, and requests for action–possibly without reading them–because serious inconsistencies were easily observed. Penn attempted “damage control” to correct the concerns he had created, but too quickly, it seems, he left Philadelphia in favor of personal estate/manor. When he returned a month later all hell broke lose as issues of every topic and concern were raised, liberty lots to the establishment of a number of manors on land owned by Penn. “Humble Remonstratives” or petitions for redress were submitted to him, only to be returned with brief and nasty comments.
In this and other actions and comments it was clear Penn was taking these complaints personally, but also as threats to his legal proprietary authority, i.e. almost revolutionary. In total frustration, and virtually on the dock ready to leave, Penn signed a order setting up a commission, composed of his close associates who were to take over his administration, to create a borough charter for Philadelphia. On the day before his departure he formally appointed the Provincial Council, named Thomas Lloyd its President–and headed off to New Castle to catch his boat. He left in mid-August 1684, one year and ten months after his arrival [99] Hannah Benner-Roach, the Planting of Philadelphia: a Seventeenth Century Real Estate Development II (the Pennsylvania Magazine April 1968). He remained in England for the next fifteen years, returning in 1699
Until the 1920’s, when both planning and economic development split into two sets of professional associations, the two operated much in tandem. In large cities like Philadelphia urban economic developers were housed in planning departments, before they too split asunder during the Urban Renewal era in the 1950’s. We shall continue to tell cute stories about city-building (Chicago awaits, so does Dell Webb, Irving, California and Woodlands, TX whose city-building structure/EDO was quite comparable to Penn’s sole proprietorship). The more detail than the reader wants approach conveys the inherent messiness of city-building in this instance, a effort to delink it from ideologies of convenience and even more to set realistic standards for teaching students and future citizens. Hopefully many will be less judgmental of those who do the dirty work of making sausage.
Non English Quaker First Purchasers
First Purchasers were mainly English, drawn from tight and selected areas of the British midlands and the City of Bristol. But as explained earlier, Quakers were a religion with a missionary impulse. Fox and Penn had engaged in considerable missionary work, especially in Germany (which was not a country, nation, and more a language). As Penn recruited purchasers for his Holy Experiment it was both natural and probably inevitable that a Quaker colony would attract non-English elements. Penn is credited with an intensive marketing campaign that attracted principally Dutch, Germans and Welsh. Accurately he personally traveled, spoke groups and private individuals, tapped into his past “missionary rolodex”, and published a number of “tracts and pamphlets. This is a “people attraction strategy” to be sure–but it is as much a real estate promotion strategy with land sales being its primary objective.
To the extent it was either, it was evident mostly in the period before he left England. Afterward, he was consumed with other priorities–and as we shall see the non-English attracted to Pennsylvania demanded and got special treatment–or in the Welsh instance didn’t get special treatment. The ethnic-language diversity was not a troublesome issue in and of itself for Quakers, who stressed diversity, free expression, religious tolerance and pacifism/nonviolence. What was more complex was how non-English Quakers wanted in their Pennsylvania settlement. Quakers always attracted a number of sympathetic non-Quakers, free thinkers, and some closely-associated sects. One was the Mennonites. Germans in particular will come to Pennsylvania in great numbers, but not until the early 1700’s; in the initial settlement period, the numbers are quite small, relative to the English Quakers, and quite small period. The key takeaway in my opinion, is that Penn’s colony did not follow the “English only” character of both Virginia and Massachusetts. The diversity is testament to Quaker religious toleration, and an openness to a diverse community..
With their own language and culture, these non-English settlers wanted to cluster, live together in a common geography This required a large contiguous purchase which had to be subdivided. Penn’s original Pennsylvania plan contemplated individual land holdings to extend outward from a village center. Individual fields would be contiguous. Germans were steadfast yeoman farmers with their own separate farmsteads, not necessarily tied to a village but scattered in the hinterland–which required even more land, with less dense settlement than Penn had envisioned. The other issue raised with large purchase was the possibility that land speculation and absentee landlords could result–something Penn was not at all comfortable. There was also a third issue: land sales of size was usually done through a land development company, and that conveyed some measure of autonomy from the strictures and structures Penn envisioned as core to the sustainability of the religious aspects of the Holy Experiment. He was wary of a hinterland significantly composed of diverse groupings not tied to the Quaker experiment.
Five different groupings eventually bought into Penn’s First Purchasers: an almost informal collection of Dutch (not German) Quakers/Mennonites from the village of Crefeld in Orange-Nassau who bought 18,000 acres from a sum of money raised by six members. There was no common land company, but when they arrived in Pennsylvania they wanted their settlement to be contiguous and to form a single village. Penn accommodated them with hinterland holdings six miles outside of Philadelphia in a area already previously settled by Germans during the New Netherlands colony. They founded a village which they called Germantown. In a short time they were joined by another grouping, from the Palatine-Rhine area.
Unrelated, another grouping did organize its own land development company, the Frankfurt Company. Pietist Germans, they purchased 15,000 acres from Penn. They sent their land agent Daniel Pastorius to Pennsylvania in 1683 to work out the land to be settled–but no other colonists came with him. This was of some concern to Penn who wanted immediate as possible settlement. Pastorius converted to Quakerism, and without colonists he recruited thirteen Quaker colonists combined forces with the earlier Dutch grouping north of Philadelphia and in 1685 settled in Germantown. Inspired by his leadership, Pastorius set up a local government structure in Germantown, and in 1689 it was successfully incorporated as a town (later borough). Germantown certainly was evidence to future Germans in the post-1710 migration into Pennsylvania, and it certainly provided credible evidence the province was open to non-English. Woodard estimates 5,000 Germans settled in Pennsylvania between 1682 and 1726–most after 1710. During the initial settlement, twenty-three ships reached Pennsylvania, about 2,000 settlers. Somewhere around 100 or so were associated with the Welsh, Dutch or German large large land purchases/townships.
A year earlier, Pastorius and other Quaker residents had crafted a two-page condemnation of slavery and sent it to the Annual Meeting of the Philadelphia/Pennsylvania Quaker Church. This was the first formal effort made by Quakers to abolish slavery within the Society of Friends–and by extension Pennsylvania. The motion was unsuccessful at that time, but many have conferred upon Germantown the honor of being America’s birthplace for the anti-slavery movement. “Many wealthy Quakers, Penn included had come to America with slaves, but within a decade Friends were advising each other that slaveholding violated the Golden Rule. In 1712 the Quaker-run legislature even imposed a prohibitive duty on the import of slaves, but it was overturned by a royal court [99] Colin Woodard, American Nations, p. 97. Pennsylvania did not officially abolish slavery until 1780- many Quakers did own slaves, including Penn himself who had twelve slaves on his personal Pennsylvania manor-plantation. In any event, the Frankfurt Company never did bring over any colonists and its lands were confiscated. Germantown was formally annexed into Philadelphia in 1854.
Two land companies comprised of Welsh Quakers were also formed and bought land from Penn. They were there waiting for him when he arrived in 1682. The first company, the Lloyd Group, bought 10,000 acres. They were settled on the west bank of the Schuylkill River. The founder, Charles Lloyd’s brother, Thomas, became Penn’s most trusted advisor–and would play a major role in the post 1685 Pennsylvania politics and government. The second Welsh company, the Edward Jones and Company purchased 5,000 acres and subdivided it among seventeen landholders. A future Speaker of the Assembly would emerge from this community. Another Welsh company, the Griffith Owen and Company. All three companies settled land in the same area, forming a compact Welsh community as Philadelphia grew. A final land development company, John Gee and Company, based in Dublin, were interested in speculation–joined the Free Society of Traders. Another group of speculators from England contemplated establishing a refuge for French Huguenots, purchased 30,000 acres in Chester County. The company eventually were managed by Dr. Daniel Coxe, and his family would produce one of Philadelphia’s most famous economic and community developers, Trench Coxe.
the Free Society of Traders: Penn Creates an EDO to Install Pennsylvania’s Initial Economic Base
To advance his desire to develop the Pennsylvania economic base along he lines envisioned by his plan–and to (1) attract direct capital investment, and (2) promote a balanced diversification of economic activity, Penn created and entrusted a charter to “the Free Society of Traders” in 1682 when he arrived. Intended to be an organization of affluent merchants, large landowners, and associates close to him personally, who would shape, lead, and even direct key economic sectors in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. He granted the company 20,000 acres, allocated three seats on the upper legislative chamber, the Provincial Council. The Society developed a plan that encompased management of agricultural fields, mining, and manufactories in Philadelphia, the Delaware River or Chesapeake Bay. “The Society obtained a charter from the Proprietor enabling it to buy and sell lands, to establish manufacturers, to conduct trading operations, and to carry on an extensive systems of agriculture. The sum of 12,475 pounds was quickly subscribed to by a group of two hundred twenty members [99] John Pomfret, “the First Purchasers of Pennsylvania: 1681-1700, pp. 153-54
The Free Society of Traders was clearly an economic development organization (EDO), a forerunner of the state-chartered corporation–a quasi-public, public private partnership. “The Society laid out an ambitious plan that would take advantage of resources such as agricultural fields, mining operations, fisheries, a fur trade with regional Indian tribes, and manufactories in Philadelphia on the Delaware River or on the Chesapeake Bay” [99] Lance R. Eisenhower, the Free Society of Traders“.
The Company, whatever blessings it offered Penn, was controversial to non-Free Society members. When Penn convened the Legislature in 1683, one of its first acts was to reject the Free Traders Charter, one of Penn’s first indications that Pennsylvania politics was already “going south”. To compensate the Free Society, Penn granted on his own authority more acreage for the Society’s Philadelphia land allotment. Instead of eight acres, he gave them one hundred contiguous acres in a prominent location central to the city and the waterfront, and partly on a hill. This critically placed land was selected primarily of its natural advantages and also because in Penn’s eye this was the area he wanted best developed so to seed his new economic base.
From this location would come the coordinated decisions for the economy of the entire province as well as Philadelphia. There the Society constructed its exchange and auxiliary buildings. As the land was platted it was transferred to a who’s who of Penn’s close associates and Free Society members. and well-place location. To glimpse ahead a bit, the merchant elite of the Free Society did not prove to be the “best and the brightest, its officials on the whole and over time proved incompetent administrators. The Society wasted no time in creating financial difficulties within a year of its birth. Worse arguably, the Society became a lightning rod for dissatisfaction with Penn and his own indifferent management. A spate of lawsuits followed from non-Society merchants, speculators and businessmen. By 1686, all these woes combined and the Society had to sell of much of the land it owned, as well as its Trading House to pay off its debts.
That land is today better known as Society Hill, and is arguably Philadelphia’s present day most affluent and historical neighborhood.
Indeed, practically all of the two hundred and twenty subscribers to the Society of Free Traders … were members of the Society of Friends, and fully half of them were First Purchasers. I am sure the present day residents of the neighborhood are honored by the heritage and memory of a neighborhood of economic developers, founded by proceeds of a fire sale when the economic developers went bust. There’s a little bit of something here for everyone. [99] John Pomfret, “the First Purchasers of Pennsylvania: 1681-1700,
Ron W. Coan 