A Philadelphia Story. Lori Litchman

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      Rittenhouse Square was one of Philadelphia’s original town squares.

      (Photo: © M. Edlow/Visit Philadelphia)

      During his lifetime, Penn would have two wives and numerous children. His first wife, Gulielma Springett, died before she could make the journey overseas to visit her husband’s colony. She and Penn had eight children, three of whom survived childhood: Laetitia, Springett, and William Jr. Two years after Gulielma’s death in 1694, Penn married Hannah Callowhill, who was 25 years his junior. Together they had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood: John, Thomas, Margaret, Richard, and Dennis. Only one of those children, John, was born in the New World: Born in 1700, he was nicknamed “The American.”

      After securing his property interests in the dispute with Lord Baltimore, Penn returned to Philadelphia in December 1699 with his new wife. When he returned to the colony, he brought with him his secretary, James Logan, who would become an integral part of the growth of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. During this visit, Penn chose to stay in his country home, Pennsbury Manor. Regardless of his views on freedom, Penn had slaves and allowed slavery in his colony and at his home. (Slavery came to Pennsylvania in the 1640s, thus it had already been established by the time that Penn arrived.) There isn’t much documented about Penn’s slaves, but several of them were named in the historical accounts of Pennsbury Manor, where they lived and served. The known names of Penn’s slaves were Sam, Sue, Yaff, Jack, and Peter.

      In 1701, Penn got word that the English Parliament was planning on reclaiming Pennsylvania, so he again boarded a ship and headed back to England to protect his land. He was able to keep Pennsylvania, but he had many financial troubles during the last years of his life. A friend he had entrusted to manage his money ended up stealing from him. Litigation followed and lasted for years before the matter was settled. Penn suffered from a stroke in 1712 and died on July 30, 1718. He was 73 years old and never had the opportunity to return to his beloved Pennsylvania. Even though Penn died a pauper, he left his colony in the care of his sons, John, Thomas, Richard, and Dennis, who hung on to the land until the American Revolution.

      During the Revolutionary War, John Penn sided with the American cause. However, the Penn family lost its proprietorship over all of their land and were prohibited from participating in the new government established after the separation from England. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania paid John, his brother Richard, and a cousin 130,000 pounds. The Penn family was able to hold onto several thousand acres of land across Pennsylvania that were passed down for several generations.

      James Logan, Penn’s right-hand man

      (Unknown artist; via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

      Leading Ladies: Hannah Callowhill Penn

      HANNAH CALLOWHILL PENN was William Penn’s second wife. The two tied the knot in 1696, two years after the death of Penn’s first wife, Gulielma Maria Springett. Hannah was 26 when she arrived in Philadelphia with her husband in December 1699. She was pregnant with the couple’s first child, named John and always referred to as “The American.” She and Penn had eight children together, three of whom died as infants.

      Hannah Penn, second wife of William Penn and first woman governor of Pennsylvania

      (Unknown artist; via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

      It was Hannah Penn’s ability to manage affairs that became her legacy. In 1712, William Penn became incapacitated by a stroke, making his wife the acting proprietor of Pennsylvania. Hannah managed Pennsylvania from across the Atlantic until her death in 1726. She worked closely with James Logan, Penn’s right-hand man, to help her.

      After William Penn died in 1718, Hannah successfully dealt with her husband’s debt, managed his estate, and settled a land dispute with Maryland. Hannah also battled with Penn’s surviving children from his first wife and ensured that her three sons, John, Thomas, and Richard, would inherit Pennsylvania.

      In 2014, then-Governor Tom Corbett said it was time to correct history and acknowledge Hannah as Pennsylvania’s first female governor. A portrait of Hannah was commissioned to accompany the portraits of Pennsylvania’s other governors.

      When Penn received his charter from the king in 1681, there were only a few hundred people living in the area now known as Philadelphia. By the time of his death, that number had exploded into the thousands. Penn’s “Holy Experiment” would also greatly influence the development of the government of the United States, and Philadelphia would serve as the home base and capital city for years to come.

      PHILLY FACT In 1984, during the Reagan administration, an Act of Congress declared William Penn and his second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn, honorary American citizens.

       CHAPTER 2

      TO YOUR HEALTH

      AS PHILADELPHIA’S POPULATION CONTINUED TO GROW, two separate classes were beginning to form: the elite class and the artisan class. A rhyme was even devised to help people remember all the members of the elite class: “Morris, Norris, Rush and Chew / Drinker, Dallas, Coxe and Pugh / Wharton, Pepper, Pennypacker / Willing, Shippen and Markoe.” By 1730, the population of Penn’s city was around 11,500. Out of that artisan class came Benjamin Franklin, a humble printer who moved to Philadelphia from Boston and would ultimately become better known than Penn and become involved in nearly every facet of colonial society. Arguably, without Ben Franklin and his ability to make friends and influence people, Philadelphia would be without numerous firsts, including a number of health Initiatives that would shape the culture of medicine and health care in early America and for generations to come.

      Mr. Philadelphia

      FRANKLIN WAS BORN IN 1706 IN BOSTON, came to Philadelphia as a teenager in 1723, and loved the city so much that he stayed. Throughout his life, he would become not only an iconic Philadelphian but also a founding father of the country and poster boy for the self-made man living the American dream. Franklin is best known as one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence and led a notable life as a politician and a statesman. He was a printer and publisher by trade; he owned the Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper and garnered recognition for his publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack. He later became immersed in the sciences. One of his first inventions was the Franklin stove, a wood stove that was more efficient than the open fireplaces of the time period. Then later СКАЧАТЬ