William Penn founded the Pennsylvania Colony in 1681, then brought
over Quaker dissidents from England, Wales, the Netherlands, and
France.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE [ edit ]
Examine the religious and social factors that shaped the establishment of the Pennsylvania and
Delaware colony.
KEY POINTS [ edit ]
The land comprising Delaware was first controlled by the Swedish, then the Dutch, and finally the
British inPennsylvania.
William Penn founded the Province of Pennsylvania, also known as Pennsylvania Colony, in
British America in 1681, byroyal charter.
The Lenape and Susquehanna occupied the land prior to colonization.
Quakers were the primary settlers of Pennsylvania.
TERMS [ edit ]
Lower Counties
Delaware Colony in the North American Middle Colonies was a region of the Province of
Pennsylvania although never legally a separate colony. From 1682 until 1776 it was part of the
Penn proprietorship and was known as the Lower Counties.
Quakers
Quakers, or Friends, are members of the Religious Society of Friends, also called the Friends'
Church. The first Quakers lived in mid­17th century England. Quakers were officially persecuted
in England under the Quaker Act 1662 and the Conventicle Act 1664. This was relaxed after the
Declaration of Indulgence (1687–1688) and stopped under the Act of Toleration 1689. Some
Friends emigrated to America. Some experienced persecution there (e.g., the Boston martyrs
were hanged in Massachusetts Bay colony), but they were tolerated in other places, including
West Jersey. In Rhode Island 36 governors in the first 100 years were Quakers. Pennsylvania was
established by affluent Quaker William Penn in 1682 as a state run under Quaker principles.
Quakerism spread across the eastern seaboard.
William Penn
William Penn (October 14, 1644 – July 30, 1718) was an English real estate entrepreneur,
philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony
and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
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The Middle Colonies
William Penn founded the Province of Pennsylvania, also known as Pennsylvania Colony, in
British America in 1681, by royal charter. Penn received the charter for Pennsylvania
from Charles II and brought over Quaker dissidents from England, Wales, the Netherlands,
and France. The colonial government, established in 1682 by Penn's Frame of Government,
consisted of an appointed Governor, the proprietor, a Provincial Council, and a larger
GeneralAssembly. Delaware Colony, in the North American Middle Colonies, was a region of
the Province of Pennsylvania, although never legally a separate colony. From 1682 until 1776,
it was part of the Penn proprietorship and was known as the Lower Counties. In 1701, it
gained a separate Assembly from the three upper counties but had the same Governor as the
rest of Pennsylvania.
The Birth of Pennsylvania 1680
William Penn, holding paper, standing and facing King Charles II, in the King's breakfast chamber
at Whitehall. 1 photomechanical print : halftone, color (postcard made from painting). Postcard
published by The Foundation Press, Inc., 1932. Reproduction of oil painting from series: The
Pageant of a Nation.
The first European exploration of what would become known as the Delaware Valley was
made by the Dutch, who mapped the shoreline of what would become Delaware for inclusion
in the New Netherland colony. The first attempt to settle Europeans in the territories that
would become the State of Delaware was made in 1629, when agents of the Dutch West India
Company secured a treaty granting the Dutch a parcel of land running along the shore. In
March 1638, a Swedish expedition established New Sweden. The Dutch never accepted the
Swedish colony as legitimate and, by 1655, had taken over the entire area. The Duke of York
took over the Dutch possessions in 1664. Between 1669 and 1672, Delaware was an
incorporated county under the Province of Maryland. The Mason­Dixon line is said to have
legally resolved vague outlines between Maryland and Pennsylvania and awarded Delaware
to Pennsylvania, although Delaware would eventually prove too independent, leading to the
ultimate separation from Pennsylvania and unique pioneer status as America's first state,
tied to neither province's destiny.
William Penn had asked for and later received the lands of Delaware from the Duke of York.
Penn had a hard time governing Delaware because the economy and geology were largely the
same as that of the Chesapeake rather than that of his Pennsylvania territory. He attempted
to merge the governments of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Representatives from both areas
clashed and, in 1701, Penn agreed to two separate assemblies. Delawareans would meet in
New Castle and Pennsylvanians would gather in Philadelphia. Delaware continued to be a
melting pot of sorts and was home to Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and French, in addition to the
English, who constituted the dominant culture.
The Charter of Privileges
The Charter of Privileges mandated fair dealings with Native Americans. This led to
significantly better relations with the local Native tribes (mainly the Lenape and
Susquehanna) than most other colonies had. The Quakers had treated Indians with respect,
bought land from them, and had even allowed participation of both Indians and Whites on
juries. The Quakers also refused to provide any assistance to New England's Indian wars.
The Treaty of Penn with the Indians
Benjamin West's painting (in 1771) of William Penn's 1682 treaty with the Lenni Lenape
Lost Trust and Land Disputes
In 1737, the Colony spent a great deal of its political goodwill with the native Lenape in
pursuit of more land. The colonial administrators claimed that they had a deed dating to the
1680s, in which the Lenape­Delaware had promised to sell a portion of land beginning
between the junction of the Delaware River and Lehigh River, near present Wrightstown,
Pennsylvania, "as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half. " This purchase has
become known as the Walking Purchase.
The document was most likely a forgery; nonetheless, the Provincial Secretary set in motion
a plan to grab as much land as possible. He hired the three fastest runners in the colony to
run out the purchase on a trail which had been cleared by other members of the colony
beforehand. The pace was so intense that only one runner actually completed the "walk,"
covering an astonishing 70 miles. This netted the Penns 1,200,000 acres of land in what
is now northeastern Pennsylvania, an area roughly equivalent to the size of the state of
Rhode Island. The Lenape tribe fought for the next 19 years to have the treaty annulled, but
was forced into the Shamokin and Wyoming Valleys, which were already overcrowded with
other displaced tribes.
Religious Freedom
The Charter of Privileges extended religious freedom to all monotheists, and government was
initially open to all Christians. Until the French and Indian War, Pennsylvania had
no militia, few taxes, and no public debt. Among the first settlers were the Mennonites, who
founded Germantown in 1683, and the Amish, who established the Northkill
AmishSettlement in 1740. Despite Quaker opposition to slavery, by 1730 colonists had
brought about 4,000 slaves into Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of
1780 was the first attempt to abolish slavery in the colonies.
A New and Accurate Map of New Jersey, Pensilvania, New York and New England with the
adjacent Countries.
A remarkable 1749 map of the New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and
Connecticut by Emmanuel Bowen. Covering from the Chesapeake Bay to Lake Champlain and from
Lake Ontario to Nova Scotia, this remarkable map is an excellent example of both the success and
failures of 18th century English mapping in the American colonies.It also makes evident the
challenges of the European map publisher in piecing together numerous disparate reports and
mappings into a single cohesive cartographic entity. In this example, the contrast is most strikingly
elucidated in Bowen's relatively accurate mapping of the coast lines in contrast to the extraordinary
vagueness of the interior. A simple overlay with a modern map reveals that while Bowen's
longitudinal cartography along the coastline is slightly off from Cape Cod westward, his latitudinal
reference points are dead on.Heading inland from the Atlantic, this precision quickly evaporates.
Lake Ontario is proportionally massive and situated several hundred miles too far east. Despite
Bowen's considerable errors in proportion and positioning , the Lake Ontario shoreline is
surprisingly accurate in form and detailed down to the Finger Lakes extending south from the main
body.Politically, Bowen offers some interesting detail regarding the early boundary lines of the
colonies. New Jersey in divided into the provinces of East and West Jersey. The Pennsylvania is
defined as the undeveloped lands to the west of the Susquehanna River. The lands to the East of the
Susquehanna River as far as the Delaware River are assigned to the Philadelphia Company. The
inland borders between the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut, and New York are indistinct.
Canada extends south to the Pennsylvania border. Bowen, identifies the important Cod fishing
Shoals off New Hampshire, Cape Cod, and Nantucket. He also adds number of notations regarding
the events that occurred near around 1746, at Albany, New York, during King George's War, third of
the four French and Indian Wars. Published for inclusion as plate no. 62 in Bowen's 1747 edition of A
Complete System of Geography .