A Beginner's History. William H. Mace

A Beginner's History - William H. Mace


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Europe, especially the country along the Rhine, and told the persecuted and oppressed about the new colony where every sort of Christian was to find a hearty welcome, and where no one was to be punished for religion's sake.

      Hundreds of settlers hastened to the new colony. When Penn reached Newcastle on the Delaware in the fall of 1682 he met a hearty welcome from scores of happy people who were already enjoying their long-wished-for religious freedom.

      

      One of Penn's first acts was to call a meeting of the colonists to talk over their government. This pleased the people greatly, for although the land was Penn's he not only gave them land for their houses and farms, but he also gave them the right to choose their own rulers and to make their own laws.

      WILLIAM PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS

       After the painting by Benjamin West, which hangs in Independence Hall, Philadelphia

       The founding of Philadelphia

      Penn next turned his attention to founding the great Quaker city to which he gave the name Philadelphia, signifying brotherly love—a name truly expressing Penn's feeling toward other men. He marked off the streets right in the midst of a great forest, and called them Walnut, Mulberry, Chestnut, and so on, after the trees that grew there. Some of the streets in Philadelphia are still so named.

       Some settlers lived in caves

       Penn visits the Indians

      William Penn won the love and the respect of the Indians of Pennsylvania. He visited them in their own towns and ate with them. He even took part in their athletic games and outran them all. Like Roger Williams, he believed that the Indians should be paid for their lands. Accordingly, he made them rich gifts and entered into solemn treaties with the chiefs.

       Kind treatment produced kind treatment

      At a treaty under a great elm tree on the banks of the Delaware, Penn said to the Indians: "We are the same as if one man's body were divided into two parts: We are all one flesh and one blood." In return the Indians said: "We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the moon and the sun shall endure." If the Indians admired a white man they said: "He is like William Penn."

       The coming of the "Pennsylvania Dutch"

      The news of the establishment of free government and free religious worship brought crowds of settlers from Germany. Hundreds of German families in the valleys of the Rhine and the Neckar escaped to "Penn's Woods," and there their children's children are to be found to-day under the name of the "Pennsylvania Dutch." Without boasting, William Penn could say that no other one man, at his own expense, had planted so great a colony in the wilds of America as he had. Few nobler men ever lived than William Penn. He died July 30, 1718.

       Table of Contents

       Believed in simple things

      57. How Quakers Differed from other Colonists. The people who formed Penn's colony were unlike those of any of the other settlements. They did not wear gorgeous clothes and jewelry like the Virginia cavaliers. The men carried no swords or pistols. They were not stern like the Puritans. Games and social pleasures were not to be seen among them as in Dutch New Netherland.

       Quakers called themselves the Society of Friends

      These people wore clothes of the plainest cut, made from dull gray or brown cloth. They were gentle and soft-spoken, and did not fight or quarrel among themselves. People who did not understand or like them called them Quakers, because some of them were so carried away at religious meetings that they fell to quaking. They themselves took the name of the Society of Friends. And Friends is a much better name, for they were friends to every man.

       All religions welcomed by the Friends

      The customs of the Quakers grew out of their religious views. Above all, they believed that every one should be free to do as his own conscience taught him. Their religious meetings were as simple as their own lives. They did not think it necessary to have ministers or priests. The men sat in one part of the church, the women in another. All was silence until some Friend felt called to speak. Some days no one spoke, and then they all sat in silence until the meeting was over. As a rule, not even a hymn was sung.

       Opposed war and slavery

       The colony prospered

      While the Quakers were strongly religious, they also took good heed of the things of this world. At first they cleared and planted farms in the fertile Schuylkill and Delaware valleys. Soon groups of them took up townships of five thousand acres each and built villages at their centers. The swift streams which tumbled down the mountain slopes they used to turn mills. In these they ground flour, sawed lumber, made paper, and wove woolen cloth.

      The rich land and good climate of Pennsylvania and its liberal government attracted many people from outside. After a short time the Quakers were outnumbered by the other settlers, and to-day the Quakers are but a handful in that great state.

       Table of Contents

       Oglethorpe a soldier

      58. A Friend of the Unfortunate. James Oglethorpe was an Englishman. At an early age he went to Oxford to study, but he was drawn away from college by the clash of arms. Oglethorpe was a soldier for many years. Later he became a member of Parliament.

       English jails and jailers

      A friend of Oglethorpe's died in a debtor's prison, which aroused his sympathies for the poor. He examined English jails, and found them so dirty and dark and damp that strong-bodied men, to say nothing of women and children, soon sickened and died in them. Besides, he found that the jailers were often bad men, who whipped the prisoners on their bare backs and stole their food.

      JAMES EDWARD OGLETHORPE

       From an original portrait painted by Simon Francois Ravenet, from a mezzotint by Burford in the print room at the British Museum

      The prison was a poor place for a man in debt, anyway. How could a man pay his debts while he was shut up in prison?

       King George II grants a charter

      Oglethorpe, like many other noble men before him, thought of America as a place of refuge for the unfortunate. King George II gave him a charter for the land between the Savannah and the Altamaha, and made his heart glad by declaring that


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