ANNALS OF PHILADELPHIA AND PENNSYLVANIA. GENERAL INTRODUCTORY HISTORY. "My soul, revolving periods past, looks back, The former darings of our venturous race." BEFORE proceeding to the proper object of the present work, ("The Annals of Philadelphia, &c.,") it may be profitable to occupy a few lines in a preliminary and brief survey of the successive efforts made by kings, discoverers, and founders, to settle colonies in our hemisphere. The earliest English claim to sovereignty in America was based upon the discoveries of John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian. These, acting under the commission and for the service of Henry VII., in the year 1497, ran along the line of our coast, from the 38th to the 67th degree of north latitude;-thus making their discoveries only five years later than those by Columbus himself in lower latitudes. But great as were such discoveries, and important as have been their consequences, since developed, they then excited no effectual spirit of adventure and colonization. It was not till upwards of a century, that any nation of Europe made any effective establishments in our country. In 1608 the French, conducted by Samuel Champlain, founded their colony in Canada;-about the same time, the Dutch planted New York, and the British, Virginia. The few earlier attempts at colonization made by England and France, were virtually nothing, as they were abandoned almost as soon as begun. When we contemplate the present wealth and resources of our country, once open to the aggrandizement of any respectable adventurer who had energies sufficient to avail himself of its advantages, it is matter of surprise, that a period of eighty years should have elapsed in England, before any of her subjects should have made any effort to possess themselves of the benefits of their proper discovery! France with less pretension, did more; for Cartiers, in 1534, made some ineffectual attempts at plantation in Canada. This was under the discoveries imputed to Verranza, who, only ten years before, VOL. I.-A 1 (1) while sailing under a patent from Francis I., ranged the coast from North Carolina to the 50th degree of north latitude, and called the country New France. At length the attention of the English nation was called to the subject of colonization, by the genius and enterprise of Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1578, he procured a patent for settlement for the use of his half brother, Sir Humphry Gilbert. The latter, however, made no endeavour to execute it till 1583, when it soon proved abortive in his attempts to a settlement in Newfoundland. It was not, from its very nature, the land to allure and cherish strangers. Another expedition quickly succeeded, under a direct grant in 1584 to Sir Walter Raleigh himself. He committed the enterprise to Sir Richard Greenville, under two divisions of vessels, (the first, as it is said, under Captains Amidas and Barlow,*) both of which made the land at Roanoke, in North Carolina, in the years 1584 and '5. Disaster and dissatisfaction soon broke up this colony; for, losing 108 of their number, in an enterprise wherein their fate was never known, the remainder willingly availed themselves of an unexpected chance to return home with Sir Francis Drake's fleet. They were hardly gone, in 1586, before Sir Walter himself arrived to join his colonists; but finding all had gone, he returned home immediately, much chagrined with his non-success.† Still, however, two other colonies succeeded under Captain White in 1587 and 1590. The first were supposed to have been destroyed; and the latter, being much distressed by a storm on the coast, resolved on a return home. Thus ended the disastrous and nugatory efforts of Sir Walter and his associates! They were indeed enough to repress and break the spirits of any individual projector. The spirit of adventure slumbered for a season, and no further attempts of Englishmen occurred until 1602, when the enterprising Bartholomew Gosnold (a name since much appropriated to New England history) made his discovery of Cape Cod and the neighbouring regions, although he then proposed a voyage to the former ill-fated Roanoke. He was succeeded in the two following years by Captains M. Pring and George Weymouth. In 1607, Captains George Popham and R. Gilbert built Fort George, at the place where now stands the city of Boston. These all contented themselves with making short stays for purposes of trade and traffic. They sought not colonization, nor cared to seek after the abandoned Roanoke.‡ Sir Walter having forfeited his patent by attainder, King James I. was pleased to grant another patent for all our territory from the 34th • Bennet's MS. History does not regard Amidas and Barlow as a part of Greenville's expedition, as other historians do; but that they arrived in 1584, and Greenville's in 1585. He also asserts, as if relating it from data, that the former took home two natives, named Wanchese and Mateo, and also the first specimens of tobacco. It has long been held uncertain, whether Sir Walter ever visited his colony, but Bennet's MS. History asserts that he did. Roanoke is the Indian name for Wampum. to the 45th degree, (that is, from North Carolina to Nova Scotia,) under the general name of Virginia,-a name previously conferred on Sir Walter's patent, as a compliment to the reign of the virgin queen, Elizabeth. The South Virginia division extended from the 34th to the 41st degree, or, from Cape Hatteras to New York city, and the first colonization of any of the new patentees, destined however for Roanoke, was effected in 1607, at Jamestown, Virginia. Thus giving place to the idea, often expressed in modern times, of the "Ancient Dominion," so claimed for Virginia among her sister states, although better historical reasons can be assigned for her distinction.* The North Virginia division, if we except the alleged intrusion of the Dutch on the Hudson river, or of Captain Popham's relinquished attempt to settle at Boston, was not permanently colonized until 1620, when it was made for ever memorable by the landing of the Plymouth colony of Puritans in Massasoit, or Massachusetts. In 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman,† in the service of the Dutch East India company, having fruitlessly sought a north-west passage to India in the high northern latitudes, resolved to repair the losses of his ineffective labours, by extending his voyage more southerly for the purpose of traffic. In returning thence from the bar of Virginia, he discovered our bay of Delaware, and soon after the Hudson river. From this last discovery, certain traders from Holland came out in 1614, under a patent from the States General, and made their first establishment at Fort Orange, (Aurania,) near the present city of Albany. Of this fort they were dispossessed the same year by Captain Argal, acting under Governor Dale of the South Virginia province. But after his return to Virginia, the traders reassembled and formed a new establishment at the mouth of the Hudson, on the island Manahattan, the present New York, where they built a fort, which they called Nieu Amstel, or New Amsterdam. This event is said by some writers to have been in 1615; but Governor Stuyvesant's letter of 1664, of the surrender of the place to the British conquerors, speaks of it as occurring "about 41 or 42 years preceding," thus affixing it to the years 1622-3;-the same period assigned by Professor Kalm. About that time, the States General appear to have enlarged their schemes of profit from the country, by an attempt at colonization; for they grant, in the year 1621, their patent " for the country of the Nieu Nederland, to the privileged West India Company." From this time the Dutch began to progress southwardly over the lands bordering on * It is a fact on record, that Virginia resisted Cromwell's rule, and treated with his naval commander as an "independent dominion." King Charles II. afterwards quartered Virginia with his arms, having the motto, "En dat Virginia quartum." Vide— Encyclopædia Britannica. See also those arms and motto engraved on a Virginia £5 bill in my MS. Annals, p. 276, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Wm. Hudson, an English clergyman from Barbadoes, who was a primitive settler at Philadelphia, and has left several descendants among us, was a near relative of Hudson, the discoverer, perhaps his nephew. He became a Friend, and was employed much in civil offices. both sides of the river Delaware, which they then called the Zuydt or South river, in contradistinction to their Noordt or North river. To protect their settlers, they built, in 1623, their first fort on the Delaware, and probably made their first village, at the place since known as Gloucester point, in New Jersey, at a little distance below the present Philadelphia. This was of course the proper "Ancient Dominion," to us! The fortification was called "Nassau." The place was known to the Indians by the name of Arwanus, and by the ancient Philadelphians, by the less poetical name of Pine point. In 1629, the country of New Netherland became of consequence enough to deserve and receive a governor; and Wouter van Twiller, the first governor that our country, in common with New York, ever possessed, came out to Fort Amsterdam, (called New York, after 1664-5,) where he ruled in the name of their "high mightinesses and the privileged West India Company." In 1631 the Swedes and Fins, allured by the publication of William Usselinx, a Dutch trader, effected a colony under the patronage of their government at Cape Henlopen,† (called afterwards Cape James, by William Penn,) at a place near the present Lewestown, which they called Point Paradise. In 1631, also, the Swedes laid out Stockholm (New Castle) and Christiana, (now Wilmington,) on Minquas creek. They thence spread themselves further along the Delaware. In 1632, Lord Baltimore obtained from Charles I. his patent for the Maryland colony, and forthwith began his colony there. In 1640, the Puritans from New Haven, under the name of English people, desirous of planting churches "after a godly sort," and "to trade and traffic with the Indians" along the Delaware bay, made a purchase of soil for £30 sterling, transported thither about fifty families, and erected trading houses; from all of which they were ejected in 1642, by orders from Keift, the Dutch governor. It is a matter of curiosity and wonder to us of the present day to contemplate the vagueness and contradictions with which our country was at first lavishly parcelled out and patented. First, the Spaniards would have claimed the whole under their general grant from the pope! Then, Henry VII. of England, and Francis I. of France, would each have claimed the whole of our coast: the former under the name of Virginia; the latter under the name of New * Called also Tekaacho. I have assumed the time given by Campanius, both because he was among the earliest historians of our country, and also dwelling among us as a Swede. He speaks thus, "when the Swedes arrived in 1631," &c. Proud, deriving the time from Smith's Nova Cæsaria, has given the year 1627 as the time; but this is a mistake easily accounted for, as being the year, as the state paper shows, in which the king and diet of Sweden gave their sanction to the colonization. There are, however, several reasons assigned for thinking that 1638 was the year of their first arrival and settlement, and the facts are well told in Moulton's History of New York; it should be consulted by the curious in this matter. James Logan's letter of 1726 to the Penns, to be found elsewhere in these pages, says, "there was also a prohibition (from the New York government) to the Swedes, between the years 1630 and '40. France. While the English are actually settling in Virginia proper, the Dutch take possession of New York, and claim it as New Netherlands; the French at the same time, under their claim of Canada, encroach upon New York. The limits of North and South Virginia are confusedly made to include New York in both of them. The charter for Maryland is made to invade that for the New Netherlands; and the charter for Connecticut is made to encroach upon New York and Pennsylvania both, and to extend in effect to the Pacific ocean. These conflicting charters and interests go far to prove the great deficiency of geographical records and information, or the trifling estimation in which lands thus cheaply attained or held were then regarded. 1* |