Meets the First Pennsylvania Assembly

From that treaty place, Penn journeyed through New Jersey to New York and Long Island, visiting Friends and preaching with fervor. Then he returned to the Delaware, and on the seventh of November he went to Uplands (now Chester), where he met the first Provincial Assembly of his province. There he made known his benevolent designs toward all men, civilized and savage, and excited the love and reverence of his hearers. The Assembly tendered their grateful acknowledgements to him, and the Swedes authorized one of their number to say to him in their name that they would "live, serve and obey him with all they had," declaring that it "was the best day they ever saw." He informed the Assembly of the union of the "territories" (as Delaware was called) with his province, and received their congratulations. Then was laid the foundations of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

From Chester, Penn went to Maryland to confer with the third Lord Baltimore concerning their boundary lines, but did not make a satisfactory arrangement. On his return, he went up the Delaware in an open boat to Wicaco, to attend the founding of a city, to which allusion had been made in his "Concessions, &c.," in 1681. Before his arrival in this country he had determined to give to the future city the name of Philadelphia-a Greek word signifying brotherly love-as a token of the principles in which he intended to govern his province. Near a block-house which the Swedes had built, and which they had changed into a church, he purchased lands extending from the high banks of the Delaware fringed with pines to those of the Schuylkill. There his surveyors laid out the city of Philadelphia upon a plan which would embrace twelve square miles.

Although the efforts of Raleigh and Coligny to make settlements in the warmer portions of North America had utterly failed, and the country south of the James River was untrodden by the foot of the white man unless by the few survivors of the lost colony of Roanoke Island or around the Spanish fort at St. Augustine, the desire to plant colonies there remained strong, and finally led to the wished-for result. From time to time restless, discontented, adventurous or greedy persons went there to find homes for themselves and their children, or to acquire fortunes, but no permanent settlement was planted until past the middle of the seventeenth century.

So early as 1609, some colonists under the direction of Captain John Smith left Jamestown and seated themselves on the Nansemond River, near the Dismal Swamp. In 1622, the ambitious Porey, Secretary of the Virginia colony, penetrated the country southward to the tide-waters of the Chowan River. He told, in earnest words, of the beauty and richness of the country, but did not induce settlers to go there. Eight years later, as we have observed, Sir Robert Heath, the Attorney General of Charles the First, obtained from his king a charter for a domain south of Virginia, six degrees of latitude in width, and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean. This included the region between Albemarle Sound and the St. John's River in Florida. That patent was declared void in 1663, because neither the proprietor nor his assigns had fulfilled their agreements.

Sufferers from the oppression of the State Church in Virginia looked to the wilderness for freedom, as the Huguenots and the Pilgrims had done. In 1653, a few Presbyterians from Jamestown settled on the Chowan River near the present village of Edenton. Other non-conformists followed, and the settlement flourished. Already the New England colonies had begun to swarm. The Massachusetts hive had become too small; and in 1661, some adventurous New Englanders appeared in a small vessel, in the Cape Fear River, in search of a home in a more genial climate. They purchased lands of the Indians, and were making the experiment of establishing a colony of farmers and herdsmen there, when news came that the whole region had been given by Charles the Second to some of his favorites. The New Englanders had partners in their enterprise, in London. These pleaded, in behalf of the claims of the colonists, their prior purchase of the soil, and also their right to self-government. A compromise was offered by the patentees, yielding to every claim of the settlers excepting the owner-ship, of the soil; and that they offered at a yearly rent of a half-penny an acre. The soil was not inviting enough for those who might choose a dwelling-place from almost an entire continent. Most of the New Englanders returned home and "spread a reproach on the harbor and the soil" at Cape Fear.