The Province of Pennsylvania, also known as the Pennsylvania Colony, was a British colony situated on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard of North America. The colony was founded for religious thinker William Penn, who received the land through a 1681 grant from Charles II of England. The name Pensiylvania (later standardized to Pennsylvania) is derived from Latin, meaning "Penn's Woods," a reference to William's father, Admiral Sir William Penn, rewarded for his wartime service in Jamaica and the Dutch Republic.
Pennsylvania received its charter in 1681 for the stated purpose of "enlarging our English Empire" and "reducing the savage Natives by gentle and just manners to the Love of Civil Societie and Christian Religion". It bestowed Penn a great deal of freedom regarding its administration; It encouraged lawful immigration and furnished settlers liberal property rights, free trade with the indigenous population and "good and happy government"–at the judgement of the crown which was to review the colony's laws on a 5 year basis.
The Penns were notorious members of the landed gentry and frequent creditors to the English royal family. William's father alone was owed £16,000 by the English king for wartime bonds. The younger Penn condition that he pay "free and comon Socage, by fealty only for all Services" in the form of annual payments of two beaver skins and a 1/5th return of all gold and silver ore found there. He intended for it to be a "Holy experiment" with the guidance of the Christian Society of Friends (Quakers). Pennsylvania's colonial history begun with several small settlements along the Delaware river, and by the American revolution in 1776, its borders extended across the Appalachian mountains.
Before European colonization, the Delaware and Susquehanna valleys were inhabited by several peoples, including the Lenape and Susquehannock. Competition among European powers and economic incentives, such as the new lucrative fur trade, attracted migrants. Upland, on the lower reaches of the Delaware, was founded by Swedish colonists in 1644 as a tobacco plantation within New Sweden before its eventual fall to Dutch forces and annexation to New Netherland. On the English conquest of New Netherland that followed, in 1682, it was incorporated as Chester, the first town in the fledging Pennsylvania colony. Shortly upstream, Philadelphia, the colony's capital, was founded. That same year, the slave ship Isabella brought the first 150 black people to Philadelphia, and by 1760, the city had grown to become the largest in British North America, with over 20,000 inhabitants. Throughout the next century, Pennsylvania's population boomed–growing from 680 to 11,450 in its first decade. Colonists settled up the Delaware valley and inland. In the same decade, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was concluded and Fort Pitt, the first English speaking trans-Appalachian settlement was founded, later becoming the city of Pittsburgh.
Culminating in Fort Stanwix, the colonial government negotiated a series of purchases from indigenous leaders, expanding the colony westward to accommodate the new migrants. William Penn's so-called "Treaty of Friendship" established amicable relations between the colonists and the Lenape. While William was reputedly fair with the natives in his dealings, his heirs were not. His son's Walking Purchase, which annexed the colony 1,200,932 acres, is largely accepted to be fraudulent. This would enrage the Lenape, leading to Penn's Creek massacre.
The royal charter's geographical errors led to prolonged conflict with other colonies. When the Province of New York was chartered in 1691, both colonies disputed ownership of the 43rd parallel north. The border was later fixed to the 42nd parallel north, where it stands today. Simultaneously, a long feud between the Calvert proprietors of the Province of Maryland and the Penn family over competing land claims was brewing. A 1767 survey largely resolved this and demarcated the Mason–Dixon line. Further strife in the Delmarva peninsula led to Delaware becoming de facto independent of Pennsylvania–though still de jure under the authority of the royal governor.
Besides the royal charter, constitutional documents include the 1701 Charter of Privileges and the Frame of Government of Pennsylvania. Penn's Frame of Government in particular granted a series of rights to the settlers of his colony, most notably, the freedom of worship, totally unique in that era. Pennsylvania's religious pluralism attracted many diverse and often ostracized religious groups, namely the Jews, Amish, Welsh Quakers and the predominantly Mennonite Pennsylvania Germans. The culture of both colonial and modern Pennsylvania is shaped by these groups.
History
It remains a question of history as to which European first explored what is now Pennsylvania. Dutch trappers may have come in the early seventeenth century. Henry Hudson, an Englishman in service of the Dutch Republic, noted the existence of what is now Delaware bay in a 1606 voyage, which established competing English and Dutch claims to the region decades down the line.
The Dutch named what is now the Delaware River (known locally as Lenapewihittuck) the Zuydt (South) river, incorporated it into the colony of New Netherlands as a counterpart to the Nord (now Hudson) River. The English in 1610 laid their claim, naming the river and eponymous bay for Lord De la Warr. As the valley displayed no apparent wealth, Europeans lost interest and made no move to settle it. That changed when the Beversreede, or Beaver trade route, connecting the Susquehanna River, near Conestoga, to the Schuylkill River was discovered in the 1620s.Paul A. W. Wallace, Indian Paths of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania and Museum Commission, 1971) In 1623, the Dutch moved up as far as the Schuylkill (Hidden) River and established small trading posts and a fort adjacent to the river. They negotiated with the Nanticoke people for rights to the Delaware Bay to some success. Their complexes were soon critically understaffed and abandoned, however. The first attempt at colonization of the Delaware basin was the short-lived Zwaanendael Colony in modern day Delaware state.
New Sweden and New Netherlands
Samuel Blommaert, a Dutch Speculator, encouraged the incorporation of a Swedish trading company as a bulwark against Roman Catholic influence in the Americas, a key to wealth, and a base for the propagation of Lutheranism to the "wild nations". He had no doubt heard recent tales of Spanish adventurers returning to Europe from the Americas with ships full of gold. The Swedish South Company was unveiled in 1626, quickly amassing confidence and large sums from investors, enough that the company could afford to land its first party at what is now Swedes' Landing. Founded a year later was the Swedish Africa Company. Sweden's new great power status allowed it to finance colonial expeditions abroad. The colonists were dismayed to find no gold, but nonetheless collected beaver pelts, tobacco and silkworms. Other industries also included winemaking and timbery. Agriculture was also established, with wheat and rye being the chief crop planted on cleared forestland purchased from the natives.
In contrast to New England, New Sweden was an enterprise primarily intended to satisfy its shareholders rather than establish a permanent self-sufficient colony in North America. The scarcity of women and capricious nature of the continent made family life and permanent settlement a practical impossibility. Year by year several colonists returned to Sweden or fled to New England. Convicts were regularly sent by the Swedish crown to fill the gaps created by remigration. The population of New Sweden rarely exceeded 200–400, peaking at 500-600 at its fall, with around half of the population being of Finnish heritage.
Dutch governor Peter Minuit wielded diplomatic skill to negotiate a treaty with 5 Lenape chiefs on April 8, 1638. According to the colonists, they had won rights to 67 miles of land along the Delaware river adjacent to Fort Christina and setting west as "far as the setting sun". They settled both banks of the river and the eponymous bay, creating a network of forts, churches and commercial centers. The hallmark of Swedish colonization was the wooden logcabin.
The first recorded epidemic in the Delaware Valley is spoken of in 1642 when a "great sickness" spread among the colonists. 15 of the 135 inhabitants of New Sweden are recorded to have died the following year; the native death toll is unknown but is thought to be exceedingly high. Typhus spread via body lice and scurvy from ships docking at the ports. Both reaped the colony's population for several decades. The Lenape intended to dispatch folk healers to cast the "spirit" away, but the Swedes refused their efforts for religious reasons. Most telling of the extent of the sickness among the natives is that European textbooks frequently noted, and could differentiate with ease, the Lenape phrases n'mechquin, ("I have a cough") n'daptessi, ("I sweat") and n'matamalsi ("I am sick") as essential terms.
Relations between the two nations were largely warm, Governor Johan Printz was on order from Stockholm to treat the Lenape cordially. Deliberation and restraint was a practical necessity for New Sweden, possessing fewer then 110 men-at-arms, and only a handful being fit for service. New Sweden eventually grew to pose a threat to Dutch trade dominance in North America, and its weakness became apparent to Dutch. When war broke out between them in 1654, the Swedes surrendered largely without a fight. The capture of two key positions, Fort Trinity (later Casmir) and Fort Christina solidified the fate of New Sweden. It is reported that Hendrick Von Elswick, the Swedish director at Fort Trinity told Dutch officer Peter Stuyvesant "Hodie mihi, cras tibi" (Today me, tomorrow you).Gehring, Charles T. (1995). "Hodi Mihi, Cras Tibi: Swedish-Dutch Relations in the Delaware Valley". In Hoffecker, Carol E.; et al. (eds.). New Sweden in America. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press. pp. 69–85.
Dutch rule was warm to the established Swedish population, allowing them to retain their customs, officers and legal system. Immigration continued at a steadfast flow under Dutch and later English rule. New Sweden left a salient mark on the culture of the Delaware Valley, even so long after its fall, with Swedish and Finnish being recorded as the dominant tongue and Lutheranism the common faith. Log houses and churches built during Swedish rule were preserved by the Dutch and some, such as the Lower Swedish Cabin in modern Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, stand to this day.
In Europe, commercial rivalry had led to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Although the Dutch Republic had won the war, the Treaty of Breda (1667), forced them to cede their colonies in mainland North America in exchange for the lucrative plantation colony of Suriname in the South American Guyanas.
English Pennsylvania