The Quaker Colonies
by
Sydney G. Fisher
Part 3 out of 3
The books of the upper classes were good though few, and
consisted chiefly of the classics of English literature and books
of information and travel. The diaries and letters of colonial
native Jerseymen, the pamphlets of the time, and John Woolman's
"Journal," all show a good average of education and an excellent
use of the English language. Samuel Smith's "History of the
Colony of Nova-Casaria, or New Jersey," written and printed at
Burlington and published there in the year 1765, is written in a
good and even attractive style, with as intelligent a grasp of
political events as any modern mind could show; the type, paper,
and presswork, too, are excellent. Smith was born and educated in
this same New Jersey town. He became a member of council and
assembly, at one time was treasurer of the province, and his
manuscript historical collections were largely used by Robert
Proud in his "History of Pennsylvania."
The early houses of New Jersey were of heavy timbers covered with
unpainted clapboards, usually one story and a half high, with
immense fireplaces, which, with candles, supplied the light. The
floors were scrubbed hard and sprinkled with the plentiful white
sand. Carpets, except the famous old rag carpets, were very rare.
The old wooden houses have now almost entirely disappeared; but
many of the brick houses which succeeded them are still
preserved. They are of simple well-proportioned architecture, of
a distinctive type, less luxuriant, massive, and exuberant than
those across the river in Pennsylvania, although both evidently
derived from the Christopher Wren school. The old Jersey homes
seem to reflect with great exactness the simple feeling of the
people and to be one expression of the spirit of Jersey
democracy.
There were no important seats of commerce in this province.
Exports of wheat, provisions, and lumber went to Philadelphia or
New York, which were near and convenient. The Jersey shores near
the mouth of the Hudson and along the Delaware, as at Camden,
presented opportunities for ports, but the proximity to the two
dominating ports prevented the development of additional harbors
in this part of the coast. It was not until after the Revolution
that Camden, opposite Philadelphia, and Jersey City, opposite New
York, grew into anything like their present importance.
There were, however, a number of small ports and shipbuilding
villages in the Jerseys. It is a noticeable fact that in colonial
times and even later there were very few Jersey towns beyond the
head of tidewater. The people, even the farmers, were essentially
maritime. The province showed its natural maritime
characteristics, produced many sailors, and built innumerable
small vessels for the coasting and West India trade--sloops,
schooners, yachts, and sailboats, down to the tiniest gunning
boat and sneak box. Perth Amboy was the principal port and
shipbuilding center for East Jersey as Salem was for West Jersey.
But Burlington, Bordentown, Cape May, and Trenton, and
innumerable little villages up creeks and channels or mere
ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry. They
built craft up to the limit of size that could be floated away in
the water before their very doors. Plentifully supplied with
excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar of
their own forests, very skillful shipwrights grew up in every
little hamlet.
A large part of the capital used in Jersey shipbuilding is said
to have come from Philadelphia and New York. At first this
capital sought its profit in whaling along the coast and
afterwards in the trade with the West Indies, which for a time
absorbed so much of the shipping of all the colonies in America.
The inlets and beaches along the Jersey coast now given over to
summer resorts were first used for whaling camps or bases. Cape
May and Tuckerton were started and maintained by whaling; and as
late as 1830, it is said, there were still signs of the industry
on Long Beach.
Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited--wild
stretches of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a
lighthouse or lifesaving station. In the Revolution, when the
British fleet blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg,
the safest of the inlets, was used for evading the blockade.
Vessels entered there and sailed up the Mullica River to the head
of navigation, whence the goods were distributed by wagons. To
conceal their vessels when anchored just inside an inlet, the
privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and
thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers
prowling along the shore.
Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the
inlets and channels developed a romantic class of gentlemen, as
handy with musket and cutlass as with helm and sheet, fond of
easy, exciting profits, and reaping where they had not sown. They
would start legally enough, for they began as privateersmen under
legal letters of marque in the wars. But the step was a short one
to a traffic still more profitable; and for a hundred years
Jersey customs officers are said to have issued documents which
were ostensibly letters of marque but which really abetted a
piratical cruise. Piracy was, however, in those days a
semi-legitimate offense, winked at by the authorities all through
the colonial period; and respectable people and governors and
officials of New York and North Carolina, it is said, secretly
furnished funds for such expeditions and were interested in the
profits.
Chapter XII. Little Delaware
Delaware was the first colony to be established on the river that
bears this name. It went through half a century of experiences
under the Dutch and Swedes from 1609 to 1664, and then eighteen
years under the English rule of the Duke of York, from whom it
passed into the hands of William Penn, the Quaker. The Dutch got
into it by an accident and were regarded by the English as
interlopers. And the Swedes who followed had no better title.
The whole North Atlantic seaboard was claimed by England by
virtue of the discoveries of the Cabots, father and son; but
nearly a hundred years elapsed before England took advantage of
this claim by starting the Virginia colony near the mouth of the
Chesapeake Bay in 1607. And nearly a quarter of a century more
elapsed before Englishmen settled on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay. Those were the two points most accessible to ships and most
favorable for settlement. The middle ground of the Delaware and
Hudson regions was not so easily entered and remained unoccupied.
The mouth of the Delaware was full of shoals and was always
difficult to navigate. The natural harbor at the mouth of the
Hudson was excellent, but the entrance to it was not at first
apparent.
Into these two regions, however, the Dutch chanced just after the
English had effected the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. The
Dutch had employed an Englishman named Henry Hudson and sent him
in 1609 in a small ship called the Half Moon to find a passage to
China and India by way of the Arctic Ocean. Turned back by the
ice in the Arctic, he sailed down the coast of North America, and
began exploring the middle ground from the Virginia settlement,
which he seems to have known about; and, working cautiously
northward along the coast and feeling his way with the lead line,
he soon entered Delaware Bay. But finding it very difficult of
navigation he departed and, proceeding in the same careful way up
along the coast of New Jersey, he finally entered the harbor of
New York and sailed up the Hudson far enough to satisfy himself
that it was not the desired course to China.
This exploration gave the Dutch their claim to the Delaware and
Hudson regions. But though it was worthless as against the
English right by discovery of the Cabots, the Dutch went ahead
with their settlement, established their headquarters and seat of
government on Manhattan Island, where New York stands today, and
exercised as much jurisdiction and control as they could on the
Delaware.
Their explorations of the Delaware, feeling their way up it with
small light draft vessels among its shoals and swift tides, their
travels on land--shooting wild turkeys on the site of the present
busy town of Chester--and their adventures with the Indians are
full of interest. The immense quantities of wild fowl and animal
and bird life along the shores astonished them; but what most
aroused their cupidity was the enormous supply of furs,
especially beaver and otter, that could be obtained from the
Indians. Furs became their great, in fact, their only interest in
the Delaware. They established forts, one near Cape Henlopen at
the mouth of the river, calling it Fort Oplandt, and another far
up the river on the Jersey side at the mouth of Timber Creek,
nearly opposite the present site of Philadelphia, and this they
called Fort Nassau. Fort Oplandt was destroyed by the Indians and
its people were massacred. Fort Nassau was probably occupied only
at intervals. These two posts were built mainly to assist the fur
trade, and any attempts at real settlement were slight and
unsuccessful.
Meantime about the year 1624 the Swedes heard of the wonderful
opportunities on the Delaware. The Swedish monarch, Gustavus
Adolphus, a man of broad ambitions and energetic mind, heard
about the Delaware from Willem Usselinx, a merchant of Antwerp
who had been actively interested in the formation of the Dutch
West India Company to trade in the Dutch possessions in America.
Having quarreled with the directors, Usselinx had withdrawn from
the Netherlands and now offered his services to Sweden. The
Swedish court, nobles, and people, all became enthusiastic about
the project which he elaborated for a great commercial company to
trade and colonize in Asia, Africa, and America.* But the plan
was dropped because, soon after 1630, Gustavus Adolphus led his
country to intervene on the side of the Protestants in the Thirty
Years' War in Germany, where he was killed three years later at
the battle of Lutzen. But the desire aroused by Usselinx for a
Swedish colonial empire was revived in the reign of his infant
daughter, Christina, by the celebrated Swedish Chancellor,
Oxenstierna.
* See "Willem Usselinx," by J. F. Jameson in the "Papers of the
American Historical Association," vol. II.
An expedition, which actually reached the Delaware in 1638, was
sent out under another Dutch renegade, Peter Minuit, who had been
Governor of New Netherland and after being dismissed from office
was now leading this Swedish enterprise to occupy part of the
territory he had formerly governed for the Dutch. His two ships
sailed up the Delaware and with good judgment landed at the
present site of Wilmington. At that point a creek carrying a
depth of over fourteen feet for ten miles from its mouth flowed
into the Delaware. The Dutch had called this creek Minquas, after
the tribe of Indians; the Swedes named it the Christina after
their infant Queen; and in modern times it has been corrupted
into Christiana.
They sailed about two and a half miles through its delta marshes
to some rocks which formed a natural wharf and which still stand
today at the foot of Sixth Street in Wilmington. This was the
Plymouth Rock of Delaware. Level land, marshes, and meadows lay
along the Christina, the remains of the delta which the stream
had formed in the past. On the edge of the delta or moorland,
rocky hills rose, forming the edge of the Piedmont, and out of
them from the north flowed a fine large stream, the Brandywine,
which fell into the Christina just before it entered the
Delaware. Here in the delta their engineer laid out a town,
called Christinaham, and a fort behind the rocks on which they
had landed. A cove in the Christina made a snug anchorage for
their ships, out of the way of the tide. They then bought from
the Indians all the land from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the
Delaware at Trenton, calling it New Sweden and the Delaware New
Swedeland Stream. The people of Delaware have always regarded New
Sweden as the beginning of their State, and Peter Minuit, the
leader of this Swedish expedition, always stands first on the
published lists of their governors.
On their arrival in the river in the spring of 1638, the Swedes
found no evidences of permanent Dutch colonization. Neither Fort
Oplandt nor Fort Nassau was then occupied. They always maintained
that the Dutch had abandoned the river, and that it was therefore
open to the Swedes for occupation, especially after they had
purchased the Indian title. It was certainly true that the Dutch
efforts to plant colonies in that region had failed; and since
the last attempt by De Vries, six years had elapsed. On the other
hand, the Dutch contended that they had in that time put Fort
Nassau in repair, although they had not occupied it, and that
they kept a few persons living along the Jersey shore of the
river, possibly the remains of the Nassau colony, to watch all
who visited it. These people had immediately notified the Dutch
governor Kieft at New Amsterdam of the arrival of the Swedes, and
he promptly issued a protest against the intrusion. But his
protest was neither very strenuous nor was it followed up by
hostile action, for Sweden and Holland were on friendly terms.
Sweden, the great champion of Protestant Europe, had intervened
in the Thirty Years' War to save the Protestants of Germany. The
Dutch had just finished a similar desperate war of eighty years
for freedom from the papal despotism of Spain. Dutch and Swedes
had, therefore, every reason to be in sympathy with each other.
The Swedes, a plain, strong, industrious people, as William Penn
aptly called them, were soon, however, seriously interfering with
the Dutch fur trade and in the first year, it is said, collected
thirty thousand skins. If this is true, it is an indication of
the immense supply of furbearing animals, especially beaver,
available at that time. For the next twenty-five years Dutch and
Swedes quarreled and sometimes fought over their respective
claims. But it is significant of the difficulty of retaining a
hold on the Delaware region that the Swedish colonists on the
Christina after a year or two regarded themselves as a failure
and were on the point of abandoning their enterprise, when a
vessel, fortunately for them, arrived with cattle, agricultural
tools, and immigrants. It is significant also that the
immigrants, though in a Swedish vessel and under the Swedish
government, were Dutchmen. They formed a sort of separate Dutch
colony under Swedish rule and settled near St. George's and
Appoquinimink. Immigrants apparently were difficult to obtain
among the Swedes, who were not colonizers like the English.
At this very time, in fact, Englishmen, Puritans from
Connecticut, were slipping into the Delaware region under the
leadership of Nathaniel Turner and George Lamberton, and were
buying the land from the Indians. About sixty settled near Salem,
New Jersey, and some on the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania, close to
Fort Nassau--an outrageous piece of audacity, said the Dutch, and
an insult to their "High Mightinesses and the noble Directors of
the West India Company. " So the Schuylkill English were
accordingly driven out, and their houses were burned. The Swedes
afterwards expelled the English from Salem and from the Cohansey,
lower down the Bay. Later the English were allowed to return, but
they seem to have done little except trade for furs and beat off
hostile Indians.
The seat of the Swedish government was moved in 1643 from the
Christina to Tinicum, one of the islands of the Schuylkill delta,
with an excellent harbor in front of it which is now the home of
the yacht clubs of Philadelphia. Here they built a fort of logs,
called Fort Gothenborg, a chapel with a graveyard, and a mansion
house for the governor, and this remained the seat of Swedish
authority as long as they had any on the river. From here
Governor Printz, a portly irascible old soldier, said to have
weighed "upwards of 400 pounds and taken three drinks at every
meal," ruled the river. He built forts on the Schuylkill and
worried the Dutch out of the fur trade. He also built a fort
called Nya Elfsborg, afterward Elsinboro, on the Jersey side
below Salem. By means of this fort he was able to command the
entrance to the river and compelled every Dutch ship to strike
her colors and acknowledge the sovereignty of Sweden. Some he
prevented from going up the river at all; others he allowed to
pass on payment of toll or tribute. He gave orders to destroy
every trading house or fort which the Dutch had built on the
Schuylkill, and to tear down the coat of arms and insignia which
the Dutch had placed on a post on the site of Philadelphia. The
Swedes now also bought from the Indians and claimed the land on
the Jersey side from Cape May up to Raccoon Creek, opposite the
modern Chester.
The best place to trade with the Indians for furs was the
Schuylkill River, which flowed into the Delaware at a point where
Philadelphia was afterwards built. There were at that time Indian
villages where West Philadelphia now stands. The headwaters of
streams flowing into the Schuylkill were only a short distance
from the headwaters of streams flowing into the Susquehanna, so
that the valley of the Schuylkill formed the natural highway into
the interior of Pennsylvania. The route to the Ohio River
followed the Schuylkill for some thirty or forty miles, turned up
one of its tributaries to its source, then crossed the watershed
to the head of a stream flowing into the Susquehanna, thence to
the Juniata, at the head of which the trail led over a short
divide to the head of the Conemaugh, which flowed into the
Allegheny, and the Allegheny into the Ohio. Some of the Swedes
and Dutch appear to have followed this route with the Indians as
early as 1646.
The Ohio and Allegheny region was inhabited by the Black Minquas,
so called from their custom of wearing a black badge on their
breast. The Ohio, indeed, was first called the Black Minquas
River. As the country nearer the Delaware was gradually denuded
of beaver, these Black Minquas became the great source of supply
and carried the furs, over the route described, to the
Schuylkill. The White Minquas lived further east, round
Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and, though spoken of as belonging
by language to the great Iroquois or Six Nation stock, were
themselves conquered and pretty much exterminated by the Six
Nations. The Black Minquas, believed to be the same as the Eries
of the Jesuit Relations, were also practically exterminated by
the Six Nations.*
* Myers, "Narratives of Early Pennsylvania", pp. 103-104.
The furs brought down the Schuylkill were deposited at certain
rocks two or three miles above its mouth at Bartram's Gardens,
now one of the city parks of Philadelphia. On these rocks, then
an island in the Schuylkill, the Swedes built a fort which
completely commanded the river and cut the Dutch off from the fur
trade. They built another fort on the other side of Bartram's
Gardens along the meadow near what is now Gibson's Point; and
Governor Printz had a great mill a couple of miles away on Cobb's
Creek, where the old Blue Bell tavern has long stood. These two
forts protected the mill and the Indian villages in West
Philadelphia.
One would like to revisit the Delaware of those days and see all
its wild life and game, its islands and shoals, its virgin
forests as they had grown up since the glacial age, untouched by
the civilization of the white man. There were then more islands
in the river, the water was clearer, and there were pretty pebble
and sandy beaches now overlaid by mud brought down from vast
regions of the valley no longer protected by forests from the
wash of the rains. On a wooded island below Salem, long since cut
away by the tides, the pirate Blackhead and his crew are said to
have passed a winter. The waters of the river spread out wide at
every high tide over marshes and meadows, turning them twice a
day for a few hours into lakes, grown up in summer with red and
yellow flowers and the graceful wild oats, or reeds, tasseled
like Indian corn.
At Christinaham, in the delta of the Christina and the
Brandywine, the tide flowed far inland to the rocks on which
Minuit's Swedish expedition landed, leaving one dry spot called
Cherry Island, a name still borne by a shoal in the river. Fort
Christina, on the edge of the overflowed meadow, with the rocky
promontory of hills behind it, its church and houses, and a wide
prospect across the delta and river, was a fair spot in the old
days. The Indians came down the Christina in their canoes or
overland, bringing their packs of beaver, otter, and deer skins,
their tobacco, corn, and venison to exchange for the cloth,
blankets, tools, and gaudy trinkets that pleased them. It must
often have been a scene of strange life and coloring, and it is
difficult today to imagine it all occurring close to the spot
where the Pennsylvania railroad station now stands in Wilmington.
When doughty Peter Stuyvesant became Governor of New Netherland,
he determined to assert Dutch authority once more on the South
River, as the Delaware was called in distinction from the Hudson.
As the Swedes now controlled it by their three forts, not a Dutch
ship could reach Fort Nassau without being held up at Fort
Elfsborg or at Fort Christina or at the fort at Tinicum. It was a
humiliating situation for the haughty spirit of the Dutch
governor. To open the river to Dutch commerce again, Stuyvesant
marched overland in 1651 through the wilderness, with one hundred
and twenty men and, abandoning Fort Nassau, built a new fort on a
fine promontory which then extended far out into the river below
Christina. Today the place is known as New Castle; the Dutch
commonly referred to it as Sandhoeck or Sand Point; the English
called it Grape Vine Point. Stuyvesant named it Fort Casimir.
The tables were now turned: the Dutch could retaliate upon
Swedish shipping. But the Swedes were not so easily to be
dispossessed. Three years later a new Swedish governor named
Rising arrived in the river with a number of immigrants and
soldiers. He sailed straight up to Fort Casimir, took it by
surprise, and ejected the Dutch garrison of about a dozen men. As
the successful coup occurred on Trinity Sunday, the Swedes
renamed the place Fort Trinity.
The whole population--Dutch and Swede, but in 1654 mostly
Swede--numbered only 368 persons. Before the arrival of Rising
there had been only seventy. It seems a very small number about
which to be writing history; but small as it was their "High
Mightinesses," as the government of the United Netherlands was
called, were determined to avenge on even so small a number the
insult of the capture of Fort Casimir.
Drums, it is said, were beaten every day in Holland to call for
recruits to go to America. Gunners, carpenters, and powder were
collected. A ship of war was sent from Holland, accompanied by
two other vessels whose names alone, Great Christopher and King
Solomon, should have been sufficient to scare all the Swedes. At
New Amsterdam, Stuyvesant labored night and day to fit out the
expedition. A French privateer which happened to be in the harbor
was hired. Several other vessels, in all seven ships, and six or
seven hundred men, with a chaplain called Megapolensis, composed
this mighty armament gathered together to drive out the handful
of poor hardworking Swedes. A day of fasting and prayer was held
and the Almighty was implored to bless this mighty expedition
which, He was assured, was undertaken for "the glory of His
name." It was the absurdity of such contrasts as this running all
through the annals of the Dutch in America that inspired
Washington Irving to write his infinitely humorous "History of
New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch
Dynasty," by "Diedrich Knickerbocker." It is difficult for an
Anglo-Saxon to take the Dutch in America seriously. What can you
do with a people whose imagination allowed them to give such
names to their ships as Weigh Scales, Spotted Cow, and The Pear
Tree? So Irving described the taking of Fort Casimir in mock
heroic manner. He describes the marshaling of the Dutch hosts of
New York by families, the Van Grolls of Anthony's Nose, the
Brinkerhoffs, the Van Kortlandts, the Van Bunschotens of Nyack
and Kakiat, the fighting men of Wallabout, the Van Pelts, the Say
Dams, the Van Dams, and all the warriors of Hellgate "clad in
their thunder-and-lightning gaberdines," and lastly the standard
bearers and bodyguards of Peter Stuyvesant, bearing the great
beaver of the Manhattan.
"And now commenced the horrid din, the desperate struggle, the
maddening ferocity, the frantic desperation, the confusion and
self-abandonment of war. Dutchman and Swede commingled, tugged,
panted, and blowed. The heavens were darkened with a tempest of
missives. Bang! went the guns; whack! went the broadswords;
thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows,
kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the
horrors of the scene! Thick, thwack, cut and hack,
helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, heads-over-heels,
rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter
and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted
Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the mine! roared stout
Rising--Tantarar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet of Antony Van
Corlear;--until all voice and sound became
unintelligible,--grunts of pain, yells of fury, and shouts of
triumph mingling in one hideous clamor. The earth shook as if
struck with a paralytic stroke; trees shrunk aghast, and withered
at the sight; rocks burrowed in the ground like rabbits; and even
Christina creek turned from its course, and ran up a hill in
breathless terror!"
As a matter of fact, the fort surrendered without a fight on
September 1, 1655. It was thereupon christened New Amstel,
afterwards New Castle, and was for a long time the most important
town on the Delaware. This achievement put the Dutch in complete
authority over the Swedes on both sides of the river. The Swedes,
however, were content, abandoned politics, secluded themselves on
their farms, and left politics to the Dutch. Trade, too, they
left to the Dutch, who, in their effort to monopolize it, almost
killed it. This conquest by their High Mightinesses also ended
the attempts of the New Englanders, particularly the people of
New Haven, to get a foothold in the neighborhood of Salem, New
Jersey, for which they had been struggling for years. They had
dreams of a great lake far to northward full of beaver to which
the Delaware would lead them. Their efforts to establish
themselves survived in one or two names of places near Salem, as,
for example, New England Creek, and New England Channel, which
down almost into our own time was found on charts marking one of
the minor channels of the bay along the Jersey shore. They
continued coming to the river in ships to trade in spite of
restrictions by the Dutch; and some of them in later years, as
has been pointed out, secured a foothold on the Cohansey and in
the Cape May region, where their descendants are still to be
found.
Chapter XIII. The English Conquest
It is a curious fact that the ancestor of the numerous Beekman
family in New York, after whom Beekman Street is named, was for a
time one of the Dutch governors on the Delaware who afterwards
became the sheriff of Esopus, New York. His successor on the
Delaware had some thoughts of removing the capital down to Odessa
on the Appoquinimink, when an event long dreaded happened. In
1664, war broke out between England and Holland, long rivals in
trade and commerce, and all the Dutch possessions in the New
World fell an easy prey to English conquerors. A British fleet
took possession of New Amsterdam, which surrendered without a
struggle. But when two British men of war under Sir Robert Carr
appeared before New Amstel on the Delaware, Governor D'Hinoyossa
unwisely resisted; and his untenable fort was quickly subdued by
a few broadsides and a storming party. This opposition gave the
conquering party, according to the custom of the times, the right
to plunder; and it must be confessed that the English soldiers
made full use of their opportunity. They plundered the town and
confiscated the land of prominent citizens for the benefit of the
officers of the expedition.
After the English conquest on the Delaware, not a few of the
Dutch migrated to Maryland, where their descendants, it is said,
are still to be found. Some in later years returned to the
Delaware, where on the whole, notwithstanding the early
confiscations, English rule seemed to promise well. The very
first documents, the terms of surrender both on the Delaware and
on the Hudson, breathed an air of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Everybody
was at liberty to come and go at will. Hollanders could migrate
to the Delaware or to New York as much as before. The Dutch
soldiers in the country, if they wished to remain, were to have
fifty acres of land apiece. This generous settlement seemed in
striking contrast to the pinching, narrow interference with trade
and individual rights, the seizures and confiscations for private
gain, all under pretense of punishment, bad enough on the
Delaware but worse at New Amsterdam, which had characterized the
rule of the Dutch.
The Duke of York, to whom Delaware was given, introduced trial by
jury, settled private titles, and left undisturbed the religion
and local customs of the people. But the political rule of the
Duke was absolute as became a Stuart. He arbitrarily taxed
exports and imports. Executive, judicial, and legislative powers
were all vested in his deputy governor at New York or in
creatures appointed and controlled by him. It was the sort of
government the Duke hoped to impose upon all Great Britain when
he should come to the throne, and he was trying his 'prentice
hand in the colonies. A political rebellion against this
despotism was started on the Delaware by a man named Konigsmarke,
or the Long Finn, aided by an Englishman, Henry Coleman. They
were captured and tried for treason, their property was
confiscated, and the Long Finn branded with the letter R, and
sold as a slave in the Barbados. They might be called the first
martyrs to foreshadow the English Revolution of 1688 which ended
forever the despotic reign of the Stuarts.
The Swedes continued to form the main body of people on the
Delaware under the regime of the Duke of York, and at the time
when William Penn took possession of the country in 1682 their
settlements extended from New Castle up through Christina, Marcus
Hook, Upland (now Chester), Tinicum, Kingsessing in the modern
West Philadelphia, Passyunk, Wicaco, both in modern Philadelphia,
and as far up the river as Frankford and Pennypack. They had
their churches at Christina, Tinicum, Kingsessing, and Wicaco.
The last, when absorbed by Philadelphia, was a pretty little
hamlet on the river shore, its farms belonging to a Swedish
family called Swanson whose name is now borne by one of the
city's streets. Across the river in New Jersey, opposite Chester,
the Swedes had settlements on Raccoon Creek and round Swedesboro.
These river settlements constituted an interesting and from all
accounts a very attractive Scandinavian community. Their
strongest bond of union seems to have been their interest in
their Lutheran churches on the river. They spread very little
into the interior, made few roads, and lived almost exclusively
on the river or on its navigable tributaries. One reason they
gave for this preference was that it was easier to reach the
different churches by boat.
There were only about a thousand Swedes along the Delaware and
possibly five hundred of Dutch and mixed blood, together with a
few English, all living a life of abundance on a fine river amid
pleasing scenery, with good supplies of fish and game, a fertile
soil, and a wilderness of opportunity to the west of them. All
were well pleased to be relieved from the stagnant despotism of
the Duke of York and to take part in the free popular government
of William Penn in Pennsylvania. They became magistrates and
officials, members of the council and of the legislature. They
soon found that all their avenues of trade and life were
quickened. They passed from mere farmers supplying their own
needs to exporters of the products of their farms.
Descendants of the Swedes and Dutch still form the basis of the
population of Delaware.* There were some Finns at Marcus Hook,
which was called Finland; and it may be noted in passing that
there were not a few French among the Dutch, as among the Germans
in Pennsylvania, Huguenots who had fled from religious
persecution in France. The name Jaquette, well known in Delaware,
marks one of these families, whose immigrant ancestor was one of
the Dutch governors. In the ten or dozen generations since the
English conquest intermarriage has in many instances inextricably
mixed up Swede, Dutch, and French, as well as the English stock,
so that many persons with Dutch names are of Swedish or French
descent and vice versa, and some with English names like Oldham
are of Dutch descent. There has been apparently much more
intermarriage among the different nationalities in the province
and less standing aloof than among the alien divisions of
Pennsylvania.
* Swedish names anglicized are now found everywhere. Gostafsson
has become Justison and Justis. Bond has become Boon; Hoppman,
Hoffman; Kalsberg, Colesberry; Wihler, Wheeler; Joccom, Yocum;
Dahlbo, Dalbow; Konigh, King; Kyn, Keen; and so on. Then there
are also such names as Wallraven, Hendrickson, Stedham, Peterson,
Matson, Talley, Anderson, and the omnipresent Rambo, which have
suffered little, if any, change. Dutch names are also numerous,
such as Lockermans, Vandever, Van Dyke, Vangezel, Vandegrift,
Alricks, Statts, Van Zandt, Hyatt, Cochran (originally Kolchman),
Vance, and Blackstone (originally Blackenstein).
After the English conquest some Irish Presbyterians or
Scotch-Irish entered Delaware. Finally came the Quakers,
comparatively few in colonial times but more numerous after the
Revolution, especially in Wilmington and its neighborhood. True
to their characteristics, they left descendants who have become
the most prominent and useful citizens down into our own time. At
present Wilmington has become almost as distinctive a Quaker town
as Philadelphia. "Thee" and "thou" are frequently heard in the
streets, and a surprisingly large proportion of the people of
prominence and importance are Quakers or of Quaker descent. Many
of the neat and pleasant characteristics of the town are
distinctly of Quaker origin; and these characteristics are found
wherever Quaker influence prevails.
Wilmington was founded about 1731 by Thomas Willing, an
Englishman, who had married into the Swedish family of Justison.
He laid out a few streets on his wife's land on the hill behind
the site of old Fort Christina, in close imitation of the plan of
Philadelphia, and from that small beginning the present city
grew, and was at first called Willingtown.* William Shipley, a
Pennsylvania Quaker born in England, bought land in it in 1735,
and having more capital than Willing, pushed the fortunes of the
town more rapidly. He probably had not a little to do with
bringing Quakers to Wilmington; indeed, their first meetings were
held in a house belonging to him until they could build a meeting
house of their own in 1738.
* Some years later in a borough charter granted by Penn, the name
was changed to Wilmington in honor of the Earl of Wilmington.
Both Shipley and Willing had been impressed with the natural
beauty of the situation, the wide view over the level moorland
and green marsh and across the broad river to the Jersey shore,
as well as by the natural conveniences of the place for trade and
commerce. Wilmington has ever since profited by its excellent
situation, with the level moorland for industry, the river for
traffic, and the first terraces or hills of the Piedmont for
residence; and, for scenery, the Brandywine tumbling through
rocks and bowlders in a long series of rapids.
The custom still surviving in Wilmington of punishing certain
classes of criminals by whipping appears to have originated in
the days of Willing and Shipley, about the year 1740, when a
cage, stocks, and whipping-post were erected. They were placed in
the most conspicuous part of the town, and there the culprit, in
addition to his legal punishment, was also disciplined at the
discretion of passers-by with rotten eggs and other equally
potent encouragements to reform. These gratuitous inflictions,
not mentioned in the statute, as well as the public exhibition of
the prisoner were abolished in later times and in this modified
form the method of correction was extended to the two other
counties. Sometimes a cat-o'nine-tails was used, sometimes a
rawhide whip, and sometimes a switch cut from a tree. Nowadays,
however, all the whipping for the State is done in Wilmington,
where all prisoners sentenced to whipping in the State are sent.
This punishment is found to be so efficacious that its infliction
a second time on the same person is exceedingly rare.
The most striking relic of the old Swedish days in Wilmington is
the brick and stone church of good proportions and no small
beauty, and today one of the very ancient relics of America. It
was built by the Swedes in 1698 to replace their old wooden
church, which was on the lower land, and the Swedish language was
used in the services down to the year 1800, when the building was
turned over to the Church of England. Old Peter Minuit, the first
Swedish governor, may possibly have been buried there. The Swedes
built another pretty chapel--Gloria Dei, as it was called--at the
village of Wicaco, on the shore of the Delaware where
Philadelphia afterwards was established. The original building
was taken down in 1700, and the present one was erected on its
site partly with materials from the church at Tinicum. It
remained Swedish Lutheran until 1831, when, like all the Swedish
chapels, it became the property of the Church of England, between
which and the Swedish Lutheran body there was a close affinity,
if not in doctrine, at least in episcopal organization.* The old
brick church dating from 1740, on the main street of Wilmington,
is an interesting relic of the colonial Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians in Delaware, and is now carefully preserved as the
home of the Historical Society.
* Clay's "Annals of the Swedes", pp. 143, 153-4.
After Delaware had been eighteen years under the Duke of York,
William Penn felt a need of the west side of the river all the
way down to the sea to strengthen his ownership of Pennsylvania.
He also wanted to offset the ambitions of Lord Baltimore to
extend Maryland northward. Penn accordingly persuaded his friend
James, the Duke of York, to give him a grant of Delaware, which
Penn thereupon annexed to Pennsylvania under the name of the
Territories or Three Lower Counties. The three counties, New
Castle, Kent, and Sussex,* are still the counties of Delaware,
each one extending across the State and filling its whole length
from the hills of the Brandywine on the Pennsylvania border to
the sands of Sussex at Cape Henlopen. The term "Territory" has
ever since been used in America to describe an outlying province
not yet given the privileges of a State. Instead of townships,
the three Delaware counties were divided into "hundreds," an old
Anglo-Saxon county method of division going back beyond the times
of Alfred the Great. Delaware is the only State in the Union that
retains this name for county divisions. The Three Lower Counties
were allowed to send representatives to the Pennsylvania
Assembly; and the Quakers of Delaware have always been part of
the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia.
* The original names were New Castle, Jones's, and Hoerekill, as
it was called by the Dutch, or Deal.
In 1703, after having been a part of Pennsylvania for twenty
years, the Three Lower Counties were given home rule and a
legislature of their own; but they remained under the Governor of
Pennsylvania until the Revolution of 1776. They then became an
entirely separate community and one of the thirteen original
States. Delaware was the first State to adopt the National
Constitution, and Rhode Island, its fellow small State, the last.
Having been first to adopt the Constitution, the people of
Delaware claim that on all national occasions or ceremonies they
are entitled to the privilege of precedence. They have every
reason to be proud of the representative men they sent to the
Continental Congress, and to the Senate in later times.
Agriculture has, of course, always been the principal occupation
on the level fertile land of Delaware; and it is agriculture of a
high class, for the soil, especially in certain localities, is
particularly adapted to wheat, corn, and timothy grass, as well
as small fruits. That section of land crossing the State in the
region of Delaware City and Middleton is one of the show regions
in America, for crops of wheat and corn. Farther south, grain
growing is combined with small fruits and vegetables with a
success seldom attained elsewhere. Agriculturally there is no
division of land of similar size quite equal to Delaware in
fertility. Its sand and gravel base with vegetable mold above is
somewhat like the southern Jersey formation, but it is more
productive from having a larger deposit of decayed vegetation.
The people of Delaware have, indeed, very little land that is not
tillable. The problems of poverty, crowding, great cities, and
excessive wealth in few hands are practically unknown among them.
The foreign commerce of Wilmington began in 1740 with the
building of a brig named after the town, and was continued
successfully for a hundred years. At Wilmington there has always
been a strong manufacturing interest, beginning with the famous
colonial flour mills at the falls of the Brandywine, and the
breadstuffs industry at Newport on the Christina. With the
Brandywine so admirably suited to the water-power machinery of
those days and the Christina deep enough for the ships,
Wilmington seemed in colonial times to possess an ideal
combination of advantages for manufacturing and commerce. The
flour mills were followed in 1802 by the Du Pont Powder Works,
which are known all over the world, and which furnished powder
for all American wars since the Revolution, for the Crimean War
in Europe, and for the Allies in the Great War.
"From the hills of Brandywine to the sands of Sussex" is an
expression the people of Delaware use to indicate the whole
length of their little State. The beautiful cluster of hills at
the northern end dropping into park-like pastures along the
shores of the rippling Red Clay and White Clay creeks which form
the deep Christina with its border of green reedy marshes, is in
striking contrast to the wild waste of sands at Cape Henlopen.
Yet in one way the Brandywine Hills are closely connected with
those sands, for from these very hills have been quarried the
hard rocks for the great breakwater at the Cape, behind which the
fleets of merchant vessels take refuge in storms.
The great sand dunes behind the lighthouse at the cape have their
equal nowhere else on the coast. Blown by the ocean winds, the
dunes work inland, overwhelming a pine forest to the tree tops
and filling swamps in their course. The beach is strewn with
every type of wreckage of man's vain attempts to conquer the sea.
The Life Saving Service men have strange tales to tell and show
their collections of coins found along the sand. The old pilots
live snugly in their neat houses in Pilot Row, waiting their
turns to take the great ships up through the shoals and sands
which were so baffling to Henry Hudson and his mate one hot
August
day of the year 1609.
The Indians of the northern part of Delaware are said to have
been mostly Minquas who lived along the Christiana and
Brandywine, and are supposed to have had a fort on Iron Hill. The
rest of the State was inhabited by the Nanticokes, who extended
their habitations far down the peninsula, where a river is named
after them. They were a division or clan of the Delawares or Leni
Lenapes. In the early days they gave some trouble; but shortly
before the Revolution all left the peninsula in strange and
dramatic fashion. Digging up the bones of their dead chiefs in
1748, they bore them away to new abodes in the Wyoming Valley of
Pennsylvania. Some appear to have traveled by land up the
Delaware to the Lehigh, which they followed to its source not far
from the Wyoming Valley. Others went in canoes, starting far down
the peninsula at the Nanticoke River and following along the wild
shore of the Chesapeake to the Susquehanna, up which they went by
its eastern branch straight into the Wyoming Valley. It was a
grand canoe trip--a weird procession of tawny, black-haired
fellows swinging their paddles day after day, with their freight
of ancient bones, leaving the sunny fishing grounds of the
Nanticoke and the Choptank to seek a refuge from the detested
white man in the cold mountains of Pennsylvania.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A large part of the material for the early history of
Pennsylvania is contained of course in the writings and papers of
the founder. The "Life of William Penn" by S. M. Janney (1852) is
perhaps the most trustworthy of the older biographies but it is a
dull book. A biography written with a modern point of view is
"The True William Penn" by Sydney G. Fisher (1900). Mrs.
Colquhoun Grant, a descendant of Penn has published a book with
the title "Quaker and Courtier: the Life and Work of William
Penn" (1907). The manuscript papers of Penn now in the possession
of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, together with much new
material gathered in England, are soon to be published under the
able editorship of Albert Cook Myers.
There is a vast literature on the history of Quakerism. The
"Journal of George Fox" (1694), Penn's "Brief Account of the Rise
and Progress of the People called Quakers" (1695), and Robert
Barclay's "Apology for the True Christian Divinity" (1678) are of
first importance for the study of the rise of the Society of
Friends. Among the older histories are J.J. Gurney's
"Observations on the Religious Peculiarities of the Society of
Friends" (1824), James Bowden's "History of the Society of
Friends in America," 2 vols. (1850-54), and S.M. Janney's
"History of the Religious Society of Friends," 4 vols. (1860-67).
Two recent histories are of great value: W. C. Braithwaite, "The
Beginnings of Quakerism" (1912) and Rufus M. Jones, "The Quakers
in the American Colonies" (1911). Among the older histories of
Penn's province are "The History of Pennsylvania in North
America," 2 vols. (1797-98), written by Robert Proud from the
Quaker point of view and of great value because of the quotations
from original documents and letters, and "History of Pennsylvania
from its Discovery by Europeans to the Declaration of
Independence in 1776" (1829) by T. F. Gordon, largely an epitome
of the debates of the Pennsylvania Assembly which recorded in its
minutes in fascinating old-fashioned English the whole history of
the province from year to year. Franklin's "Historical Review of
the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania from its Origin"
(1759) is a storehouse of information about the history of the
province in the French and Indian wars. Much of the history of
the province is to be found in the letters of Penn, Franklin,
Logan, and Lloyd, and in such collections as Samuel Hazard's
"Register of Pennsylvania," 16 vols. (1828-36), "Colonial
Records," 16 vols. (1851-53), and "Pennsylvania Archives"
(1874-). A vast amount of material is scattered in pamphlets, in
files of colonial newspapers like the "Pennsylvania Gazette," in
the publications of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and
in the "Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography" (1877-).
Recent histories of the province have been written by Isaac
Sharpless, "History of Quaker Government in Pennsylvania," 2
vols. (1898-99), and by Sydney G. Fisher, "The Making of
Pennsylvania" (1896) and "Pennsylvania, Colony and Commonwealth"
(1897). A scholarly "History of Proprietary Government in
Pennsylvania" has been published by William R. Shepherd in the
Columbia University Studies" (1896) and the "Relations of
Pennsylvania with the British Government, 1696-1765" (1912) have
been traced with painstaking care by Winfred T. Root.
Concerning the racial and religious elements in Pennsylvania the
following books contribute much valuable information: A. B.
Faust, "The German Element in the United States," 2 vols. (1909);
A. C. Myers, "Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania,
1682-1750" (1909); S. W. Pennypacker, "Settlement of Germantown,
Pennsylvania, and the Beginning of German Immigration to North
America" (1899); J. F. Sachse, "The German Pietists of Provincial
Pennsylvania, 1694-1708" (1895), and "The German Sectarians of
Pennsylvania, 1708-1800," 2 vols. (1899-1900); L. O. Kuhns, "The
German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania"(1901); H.
J. Ford, "The Scotch-Irish in America" (1915); T. A. Glenn,
"Merion in the Welsh Tract" (1896).
The older histories of New Jersey, like those of Pennsylvania,
contain valuable original material not found elsewhere. Among
these Samuel Smith's "The History of the Colony of Nova Casaria,
or New Jersey" (1765) should have first place. E. B.
O'Callaghan's "History of New Netherland," 2 vols. (1846), and J.
R. Brodhead's "History of the State of New York," 2 vols. (1853,
1871) contain also information about the Jerseys under Dutch
rule. Other important works are: W. A. Whitehead's "East Jersey
under the Proprietary Governments" (New Jersey Historical Society
"Collections," vol.1, 1875), and "The English in East and West
Jersey" in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America,"
vol. III, L. Q. C. Elmer's "The Constitution and Government of
the Province and State of New Jersey" (New Jersey Historical
Society Collections, vols. III and VII, 1849 and 1872. Special
studies have been made by Austin Scott, "Influence of the
Proprietors in the Founding of New Jersey" (1885), and by H. S.
Cooley, "Study of Slavery in New Jersey" (1896), both in the
Johns Hopkins University "Studies;" also by E. P. Tanner, "The
Province of New Jersey" (1908) and by E. J. Fisher, "New Jersey
as a Royal Province, 1738-1776" (1911) in the Columbia University
"Studies." Several county histories yield excellent material
concerning the life and times of the colonists, notably Isaac
Mickle's "Reminiscences of Old Gloucester" (1845) and L. T.
Stevens's "The History of Cape May County" (1897) which are real
histories written in scholarly fashion and not to be confused
with the vulgar county histories gotten up to sell.
The Dutch and Swedish occupation of the lands bordering on the
Delaware may be followed in the following histories: Benjamin
Ferris, "A History of the Original Settlements of the Delaware"
(1846); Francis Vincent, "A History of the State of Delaware"
(1870); J. T. Scharf, "History of Delaware, 1609-1888," 2 vols.
(1888); Karl K. S. Sprinchorn, Kolonien Nya Sveriges Historia
(1878), translated in the "Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography," vols. VII and VIII. In volume IV of Winsor's
"Narrative and Critical History of America" is a chapter
contributed by G. B. Keen on "New Sweden, or The Swedes on the
Delaware." The most recent minute work on the subject is "The
Swedish Settlements on the Delaware," 2 vols. (1911) by Amandus
Johnson.
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