PREFACE.

T

HIS is not a history of deep research. My physical condition

has been such that during its composition I have been con

fined to my room, indeed much of the time to my bed, and

consequently have been unable to visit the libraries and other institutions, to delve in and dig up original matter, and to read and study original letters, manuscripts and documents.

My work has not been burdened with schedules and statistics, for my purpose has been to give to the reader a history of principal events, and to take him as it were, into the very atmosphere of the times described, drawing pen portraits of prominent men and pictures of past incidents, showing the vocations of the people, their amusements, their habits, customs, attire, every day street scenes and manner of living, and at the same time showing the gradual growth and development of the city and state and how they have been affected by national conditions.

In accomplishing this task I have used a mass of material which I have collected from time to time in years gone by; I have also drawn extensively from notes, private letters and memoranda and have consulted such works as: Thomas Proud's History of Pennsylvania; Watson's Annals; Thompson Westcott's History of Philadelphia; John Russell Young's Philadelphia; The Making of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Colony and Commonwealth by Sydney George Fisher; Dr. Ellis P. Oberholtzer's History of Philadelphia; Penn's Letters in the

Evening Bulletin; and the many sketches on the history of our city and state from the pens of Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker and Hon. Hampton L. Carson.

The reader will not find a profound work, but I trust that it will be of interest. The disadvantages under which the book has been written must serve as a partial excuse for my failure to more faithfully cover the subject.

CHAS. F. WARWICK,
Philadelphia, Pa.

CHAPTER I.

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS OF EUROPE IN

EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

THE SEVENTEENTH AND

P

ENNSYLVANIA, one of the original thirteen states, is the Keystone of the Federal Arch. Her position and power give to her this distinguishing designation. With New York and New England lying on one hand, and the Southern states on the other, she separates them, but at the same time serves as a bond to unite them in a fraternal union. She was founded by an enlightened statesman, and peopled by liberal settlers, who, escaping from religious tyranny, brought with them to the new land a spirit of freedom and toleration. Keeping her treaties faithfully with the Indians, her people were never compelled to carry firearms on their way to church or to the meeting house, as were the Pilgrims of New England, to repel the attacks of savages. Her inhabitants were imbued with the spirit of liberty and political equality which made them more liberal in disposition than the Puritans. They too were without those aristocratic features that characterized the cavaliers of the South.

It was fortunate for America, for her future growth and development, that the settlements were made at a time when the political and religious tyranny and the oppression of the old world sent out emigrants who sought liberty and an opportunity to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Although they brought with them in many instances a spirit of bigotry and intolerance it is remarkable in view of what they had suffered how liberal they were under all the circumstances. It was fortunate too that the political and religious conditions of Europe forced them to emigrate, for they came not with the purpose of adventurers who were simply to explore and exploit a new land, but, with the intention of settlers who were determined to establish permanent homes.

To cite, for example, the case of the Pilgrims. They landed on Plymouth rock in 1620, in December of that year. The weather was unusually severe, and they suffered great hardships, so that when Spring arrived half of the colony were in their graves. When the "Mayflower," however, returned to England in May of 1621, not one of the Pilgrims sailed with her. They had come to stay. They were willing to suffer the discomforts and privations of a new land rather than subject themselves again to the tyranny and persecution from which they had escaped.

The settlers that came to North America were brave and resolute men, with the courage of their convictions. They adhered to their faith in spite of persecution; in fact, persecution only intensified their loyalty and devotion. They were imbued with the spirit of martyrs and they were willing to face the terrors of an unknown deep and the perils of a savage and an unexplored country in order that they might secure liberty of conscience.

The Puritans in New England, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Catholics

in Maryland, the Cavaliers in Virginia, and the Huguenots in the Carolinas were mighty architects of a mighty empire.

The first English settlement planted in North America, was that of Virginia, at Jamestown, in 1607. The Dutch settled in New York in 1614, then came the settlement of Massachusetts by the Puritans at Plymouth in 1620. New Hampshire and Maine were settled in 1623, New Jersey in 1624, Delaware in 1627, Connecticut in 1633, Maryland in 1634, Rhode Island in 1636, North Carolina about 1640, and South Carolina about 1670. Pennsylvania was permanently settled by the Quakers in 1682 and Ogelthorpe planted his English colony in Georgia in 1733.

These settlements were made mainly by the English together with an admixture of Germans and Scotch Irish. New Jersey was settled by the Dutch, Swedes and English, and Delaware by the Swedes alone.

In order to understand the causes that induced the emigration of these people it is necessary to consider the political and religious condition of Europe in those days. The seventeenth century was one in which the absolutism of kings obtained full sway and which was characterized by religious intolerance, bigotry and superstition. The glory and the power of the English commonwealth had ended with the death of Cromwell and the Restoration under Charles II. had returned the Stuarts to the throne, who revived in its full strength the doctrine of the divine right of kings. The puritanism and austerity of Cromwell's rule were immediately succeeded by a licentiousness that leaped over all bounds and men under the influence of the reaction threw off not only the profession but every semblance of virtue and piety. Morality was reviled and ridiculed as cant and hypocrisy. Revelry and drunkenness spread throughout the kingdom and men held continued orgies while drinking the health of the king. The "Merry Monarch" himself set the example for the free and riotous living that prevailed among the people.

Charles II. was succeeded by James II., who after a vain effort to establish the Roman Catholic Church in England was compelled to abdicate and in turn was succeeded by William and Mary who effected what is known in history as the "Glorious Revolution of 1688."

France, under the reign of Louis XIV., was the leading and most influential state on the continent of Europe. In the king centered all the power and dignity of the state. There were no constitutional barriers between him and the people. His declaration that he was the State, was not a mere idle boast, but an absolute truth. "The government of Louis is a great fact," says Guizot, "a powerful and brilliant fact, but it was built upon sand." He was despotic, bigoted and intolerant, ignored the rights of man and by his extravagance and the prosecution of useless wars hurried the nation into bankruptcy. His reign was signalized by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a liberal act passed under Henry IV. that had given to the Huguenots relief from persecution.

Spain, under the rule of Philip II. had grown to vast dimensions but her power suddenly dwindled and the sceptre passed from her grasp. It was her proud boast in the days of her glory that the sun never set upon her possessions. Macauley, in commenting upon the importance and extent of Spain, says: "That the empire of Philip II. was undoubtedly one of the most powerful and splendid

that ever existed in the world. In Europe he ruled Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands on both sides of the Rhine, Franche Comté, Rouissillon, the Milanese and the two Sicilies; Tuscany, Parma and the other smaller states of Italy were as completely dependent upon him as the Nizam and the Rajah of Berar now are on the East India Company. In Asia the King of Spain was Master of the Philippines, and all of those rich settlements which the Portuguese had made on the coast of Malabar and Coramandel, in the Peninsula of Malacca, in the Spice islands of the Eastern Archipelago. In America his dominion extended on each side of the equator into the temperate zone. It is no exaggeration to say that during several years his power over Europe was greater than even that of Napoleon." But this vast and mighty empire soon crumbled and fell into decay and in the seventeenth century her influence in European politics in a great measure had departed. The Spaniards made no settlements in the new world to escape persecution. When they came they were actuated by other motives.

The Spanish soldiers and adventurers of that period were undoubtedly brave and daring explorers but cruel and inhuman masters. To be sure they carried the cross in one hand but they wielded the sword in the other and ignored the influence of the former by the cruel and desperate use of the latter. The greed of the Spaniards in America for gold, deadened every sentiment of humanity. There was no desert too broad to cross, no mountain too high to climb, no river too swift to ford, no wilderness too deep to penetrate in their desperate hunt for wealth. They were lost to every impulse of human sympathy in their treatment of the poor natives. They scourged and drove them under the lash and sword to dig and delve in the mines in search of the precious metals. The only purpose of the Spanish adventurer at that period was to discover a fountain of perennial youth or a mine of perpetual wealth.

Bartollomeo Las Casas, an earnest and a most devout Spanish priest who undertook to carry the Christian faith into these benighted regions, soon began to protest against the savage treatment of the natives at the hands of his fellow. countrymen. In his account of the Spaniards in the Island of Cuba he relates. that a certain Cacique named Hatbuey had unfortunately fallen into their hands and was burned alive. While in the midst of flames, fastened to a stake, he was promised eternal life if he would believe. "Hatbuey reflecting on the matter as much as the place and condition in which he was would permit, asked the friar that instructed him, whether the gate of heaven was open to the Spaniards, and being answered that such of them as were good men might hope for entrance there, the Cacique without any further deliberation told him he had no mind to go to heaven for fear of meeting so cruel and wicked a company as they were, but would rather go to hell where he might be delivered from the troublesome sight of such kind of people." This is the testimony of a devout and an earnest priest who, making every sacrifice, carried to these simple people in the new land the Gospel and the cross of Christ. It was fortunate that Spain did not obtain a dominating or permanent influence in the settlement of the North American provinces. To be sure she early founded the town of St. Augustine, but Florida became in time but a nest of pirates, robbers, desperadoes, outlaws, wandering Indians and runaway negroes. Uniting their forces they made con-stant forays and massacred the planters of Georgia, burned their buildings and