Penn’s Initial Approach to Economic Base-Building
The Protestant ethic was never lacking in Quaker hard-working, long-suffering husbandman and entrepreneurs. Quakers had among their approximately 50,000 English adherents (about 5% of English believers in 1670’s). Composed of a husbandman/yeoman element, an urban working class, artisan and business owner groupings, and a sprinkling of wealth/landed aristocrats like Penn, Quaker immigrants were sufficiently diverse to jump-start a new colony in the wilderness. As far as Quaker rank and file were concerned, Quakers included substantial followers from urban centers, practicing a variety of urban occupations and skills. The traditional core Quaker remained in the countryside, but 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. As for the working class, Penn assumed a large indentured grouping, and made provisions in his laws to make available incentives after satisfaction of contract to settle into to their chosen occupation–i.e. in Pennsylvania there was an exit strategy after indenture.
Each of these preferences were retained and made manifest in the New World community. Importantly, families went over to America, as did a number of urban artisans, and young business entrepreneurs with some access to venture capital. Immigrants they well might be, but in terms of class and occupational structure they differed from the later working class and unskilled character of the post-Civil War immigrants that came through Ellis Island. This, of course, would change, especially after 1720, and certainly after 1748. Penn, well-aware of Quaker class and occupational diversity anticipated developing a diversified economic base in his new Pennsylvania; his plans built in the formation of a large urban commercial export-oriented capitol city. Pennsylvania 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.
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
Even in England, Penn stressed not a pure people attraction strategy, but rather a settlement strategy. The income he badly needed to pay his estimated 12,000 pound startup two-year budget was raised by land sales. He raised 12000 pounds before he ever left town. Half of his land sales were small-scale homesteads, but the other half sold land in parcels greater than 5000 acres. One tenth of those who bought bought land lots between 5000-10000 acres. But especially for large lot landowners he discouraged land speculation by requiring actual settlement (“plant a family on every 1000 acres”) and land sale within three years or the title reverted back to him.
In later days this settlement feature would hurt him, but not at the beginning as the cost of land was affordable to his customer base. He also retained ten percent of each land parcel sold (a “proprietary reserve”) for his (Penn’s) own use or sale–and his surveyor would identify that parcel. In return he would designate as an incorporated township any acreage sold over 5000 acres. Each land sale required an annual quitrent (land tax) payable to him, forfeiture if not paid and escheat (upon death without successors land reverted to Penn). Quitrents were the shaving blade that resulted from sale of the shaver–that’s where he expected a sustained income flow, which aside from profit to him would be used for infrastructure and costs of development/settlement. He conceded that he would buy the land from the Indians and deliver a “clean title” to the Purchaser, in accordance with a hard-held Quaker preference not to steal, or seize, land from the natives.
Penn also recognized the need for an export urban center to house occupations/skills, and the functional equivalent of an export-finance cluster. He had three specific ideas in regard to this urban center: (1) who-what would direct its economic base and perhaps future governance, and (2) an street plan with residential neighborhoods to accommodate upscale housing for affluent rural-manor land buyers or a commercial class, and (3) a well-placed waterfront zone that minimized its externalities. In his Frame legislative “package”
Penn included a charter to a joint stock corporation, the Society of Free Traders, membership of which was composed primarily of wealthy land owners and merchants (plus some friends and family). As we shall see, this was a sort of New World replacement for the guild so essential to urban governance in England. While Penn would micro-manage land sales in the City of Philadelphia (and do a fairly terrible job of it), he ensured the installation of the center street grid, but then more or less outsourced the rest of the urban matter to the Society for Free Traders.
In 1681, the size and nature of the small commercial center (Philadelphia) was more a blank slate; his real focus then was the “greene” hinterland town, in reality of network of small hinterland towns developed 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. Penn’s settlement vision focused more on hinterland settlements and small urban centers in which his “proprietary reserve” could be used for high-priced land sales or for commercial-manufacturing-professional businesses.
He saw opportunities in county seats for public buildings and concentrated usage. He also offloaded hinterland infrastructure to county and incorporated towns. Hannah Benner Roach outlined 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.
The reader might note that the this “plan” is not religious in nature, but rather a package of desired products to suit sustainable and balanced settlement. He employed cross-marketing/sales elements, and as we shall see he personally paid attention to people attraction (Quaker missionary tours) and garnered his own set of “leads”, negotiated deal incentive packages, and using his surveyors developed a “shovel ready” parcel available for quick sale. Present-day Germantown is one very successful example of Penn’s settlement “machine”. Say it another way, Penn was approaching the Holy Experiment as a business venture, a real estate development, financed initially from land sales–not his, or anybody else’s philanthropy. He knew that he could sell land directly to one prospect, rent 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. To reach his financial goal, Penn offered different terms and conditions to each prospect so that a necessary balance could be attained. 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 influential previous to the departures. There was an intended overlap between the First Purchasers and the Society for Free Traders–and for a diversified economic base for Philadelphia, his proposed urban center. As we shall see his Philadelphia land grant to the Society/First Purchasers included choice residential parcels (today’s Society Hill), use monopolies, a structure for civic governance, and even a sort of chamber-club for the entity.
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 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 1681; 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 an idea how varied and pervasive was his “deal-structuring and people-attraction efforts were, see Joseph P. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History, p. 20.
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 location and development of Penn’s future urban export center was the most immediately affected. That will be detailed in the next module. The Society for Free Traders will also be dealt with in a subsequent module which will continue our discussion on early Pennsylvania economic base-building.
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, totaling 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. If Penn hoped to establish a model of governance for his Holy Experiment, then what he created with his Frames was a near-disaster that imploded day-by-day over the next fifteen years. One other unexpected issue emerged in the first two years, the issue of non-Quaker immigration. It came in the form of large acre land sales to non-Quaker land development companies–which meant also non-English, i.e. Welsh, German, speculative land developers. Penn, anxious both for increased population through land sales and immigration-settlement, made room to deal with these companies.
Penn’s First Purchasers were mainly English, drawn from 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 yet a country or 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. He personally traveled, spoke to 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.
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. Ethnic or language diversity was not a troublesome issue in and of itself for Quakers, who stressed diversity, free expression, religious tolerance and pacifism/nonviolence. 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. What was more complex was what non-English Quakers wanted in their Pennsylvania settlement.
With their own language and culture, 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, however, 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 with which 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 to the first group, another group had organized 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 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, and combined forces with the earlier Dutch grouping north of Philadelphia. In 1685 Pastorius also settled in Germantown. Prodded by Pastorius, its freemen set up a local government structure in Germantown, and, in 1689 ,it successfully was incorporated as a town (later borough). Germantown was formally annexed into Philadelphia in 1854. The Germantown “venture” was well-known to Germans in the post-1710 migration into Pennsylvania; it provided credible evidence the province was open to non-English–and as potent a marketing advantage s any economic developer could want. Woodard estimates 5,000 Germans settled in Pennsylvania between 1682 and 1726–most after 1710.
Of considerable note. In 1688, Pastorius and other Germantown Quaker residents 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.
Finally, 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–as Penn’s arguably most bitter opponent. 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, was the Griffith Owen and Company. All three companies settled land in the same area, forming a compact Welsh community. A final land development company, John Gee and Company, based in Dublin, and 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 was managed by Dr. Daniel Coxe, and his family would produce one of Philadelphia’s most famous economic and community developers, Trench Coxe.
The non-Quaker and non-English migrant was not something Penn seems to have expected–but it surely appeared very quickly. These migrants would exercise a disproportionate, relative to the small raw numbers, impact on the development of the economic base, diversity in its political and demographic future, and in no small measure fuel the early growth of Philadelphia. They set the tone for what will be a logical consequence of its arrival: the dilution of the Quaker majority and the injection of small political cultures into its political fabric.
Ron W. Coan 