United States History Student Edition

major port or city like New York. New Jersey’s proprietors made few profits. Both eventually sold their shares in the colony. By 1702, New Jersey had become a royal colony. However, the colonists continued to make local laws. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Contrasting Why did a major city develop in the New Delaware GUIDING QUESTION How did Pennsylvania differ from the other English colonies? The Quakers, a Protestant group that had been persecuted in England, founded the colony of Pennsylvania. In 1680, William Penn, a wealthy English Quaker, received the land in payment for a debt King Charles owed Penn’s father. Pennsylvania, or “Penn’s Woods,” stretched inland from the Delaware River. The new colony was nearly as large as England. William Penn saw Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment,” a chance to put his Quaker ideals into practice. The Quakers, or Society of Friends, believed that everyone was equal. People could follow their own “inner light” rather than the teachings of a religious leader. Quakers were also pacifists (PA•suh•fihsts), or people who refuse to use force or fight in wars. Penn was an active proprietor. In 1682, he sailed to America to supervise the building of Philadelphia, a name that means “city of brotherly love.” Penn won praise for his creation: “ The Governor, William Penn, laid out the city of Philadelphia, between the two rivers Dellavarra [Delaware] and Scolkill [Schuylkill], naming it with the pious wish and desire, that its inhabitants might dwell together in brotherly love and unity. . . . [Another] new town, which we called Germantown . . . [was also settled] in a very fine and fertile district, with plenty of springs of fresh water, being well supplied with oak, walnut and chestnut trees, and having besides excellent and abundant pasturage for the cattle. At the commencement, there were but twelve York colony but not in New Jersey? Pennsylvania and

families of forty-one individuals, consisting mostly of German mechanics and weavers. ” — from Pastorius’s Description of Pennsylvania, 1898 Penn also wrote Pennsylvania’s first constitution. Penn believed that the land belonged to the Native Americans and that settlers should pay for it. He negotiated several treaties with local Native Americans. Penn described Native Americans in his advertisement of his colony, which he circulated throughout Europe: “ XVII. If a European comes to see them, or calls for lodging at their house or wigwam, they give him the best place and first cut. If they come to visit us, they salute us with an Itah, which is as much as to say “Good be to you,” and set them down, which is mostly on the ground, close to their heels, their legs upright. [It] may be they speak not a word more, but observe all passages.

This woodcut from the 1800s shows William Penn and other settlers disembarking at Philadelphia in 1682.

pacifist someone who opposes the use of war or violence to settle disputes

The English Colonies Are Settled and Grow PHOTO: North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock Photo; TEXT: (bl)Pastorius, Francis Daniel. Pastorius’s Description of Pennsylvania, in The Old World in the New: The Old South Leaflets, 16th series. Boston: Old South Meeting-House, 1898. (tr)Penn, William; WIilliam Evans and Thomas Evans, eds. 1841. The Friends’ Library: Comprising Journals, Doctrinal Treatises, and Other Writings of Members of the Religious Society of Friends, Volume 5. Printed by Joseph Rakestraw, Philadelphia. Pg. 180-181.

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