 Chapter 11 of the Quaker Colonies by Sidney Fisher This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The United Jerseys The Quaker colonists grouped round Burlington and Salem on the Delaware and the Scotch Covenanters and New England colonists grouped around Perth Amboy and Newark. Near the mouth of the Hudson made up the two jerseys. Neither colony had a numerous population and the stretch of country line between them was during most of the colonial period a wilderness. It is now crossed by the railway from Trenton to New York. It has always been a line of travel from the Delaware to the Hudson. At first there was only an Indian trail across it, but after 1695 there was a road and after 1738 a stage route. In 1702 while still separated by this wilderness the two jerseys were united politically by the proprietors voluntarily surrendering all their political rights to the crown. The political distinction between East Jersey and West Jersey was thus abolished. Their excellent free constitutions were rendered of doubtful authority and from that time to the revolution they constituted one colony under the control of a royal governor appointed by the crown. The change was due to the uncertainty and annoyance caused for their separate governments when their right to govern was in doubt owing to interference on the part of New York and the desire of the king to make them a crown colony. The original grant of the Duke of York to the proprietors Barkley and Catteritt had given title to the sore but had been silent as to the right to govern. The first proprietors and their successors had always assumed that the right to govern necessarily accompanied this gift of the land. Such a privilege however the crown was inclined to doubt. William Penn was careful to avoid this uncertainty when he received his charter for Pennsylvania. Profiting by the sad example of the jerseys he made sure that he was given both the title to the sore and the right to govern. The proprietors however now surrendered only their right to govern the jerseys and retained their ownership of the land and the people always maintained that they on their part retained all the political rights and privileges which had been granted them by the proprietors and these rights were important for the concessions or constitutions granted by the proprietors under the advanced Quaker influence of the time were decidedly liberal. The assemblies as the legislatures were called had the right to meet and adjourn as they pleased instead of having their meetings the end adjournments dictated by the governor. This was an important right and one which the crown and royal governors were always trying to restrict or destroy because it made an assembly very independent. This contest for colonial rights was exactly similar to the struggle of the English Parliament for liberty against the supposed right of the Stuart Kings to call and adjourn parliament as they chose. If the governor could adjourn the assembly when he pleased he could force it to pass any laws he wanted or prevent its passing any laws at all. The two Jersey assemblies under their Quaker constitutions also had the privilege of making their own rules of procedure and they had jurisdiction over taxes, roads, towns, militia and all details of government. These rights of a legislature are familiar enough now to all very few people realize however what a struggle and what sacrifices were required to attain them. The rest of New Jersey colonial history is made up chiefly of struggles over these two questions the rights of the proprietors and their quit rents as against the people and the rights of the new assembly as against the crown. There were thus three parties the governor and his adherents the proprietors and their friends and the assembly and the people. The proprietors had the best of the change for they lost only their troublesome political power and retain their property. They never however received such financial returns from the property as the sons of William Penn enjoyed from Pennsylvania. But the Union of the Jersey seriously curtailed the rights enjoyed by the people under the old government and all possibility of a Quaker government in West Jersey was ended. It was this experience in the jerseys no doubt that caused William Penn to require so many safeguards in selling his political rights in Pennsylvania to the crown that the sale was fortunately for the colony never completed. The assembly under the Union met alternately at Perth Amboy and at Burlington. Lord Cornberry the first governor was also governor of New York a humiliating arrangement that led to no end of trouble. The executive government the press and the judiciary were in the complete control of the crown and the governor who was instructed to take care that God Almighty be duly served according to the rights of the people. To the rights of the Church of England and the traffic in merchantable Negroes encouraged. Cornberry contemptuously ignored the assembly's right to adjourn and kept adjourning it till one was elected which would pass the laws he wanted. Afterwards the assemblies were less compliant and under the lead of two able men Louis Morris of East Jersey and Samuel Jennings a Quaker of West Jersey. They stood up for their rights and complained to the mother country that cornberry went on fighting them granted monopolies established arbitrary fees prohibit to the proprietors from selling their lands. Prevented three members of the assembly duly elected from being sworn and was absent in New York so much of the time that the laws were unexecuted and convicted murders wandered about at large. In short he went through pretty much the whole list of offenses about corrupt and good for nothing royal governor of colonial times. The union of the two colonies consequently seemed to involve no improvement over former conditions. At last the protests and appeals of proprietors and people prevailed and cornberry was recalled. Quieter times followed and in 1738 New Jersey had the satisfaction of obtaining a governor all her own. The New York governor had always neglected Jersey affairs was difficult of access made appointments and administers justice in the interests of New York and forced Jersey vessels to pay registration fees to New York. In mid great rejoicing over the change the crown appointed the popular leader Lewis Morris as governor. The by a strange turn of fate when once secure in power he became a most obstinate upholder of royal prerogative worried the assembly with adjournments and after cornberry was the most obnoxious of all the royal governors. The governor's now usually made Burlington their capital and it became on that account a place of much show and interest. The last colonial governor was William Franklin an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin and he would probably have made a success of the office if the revolution had not stopped him. He had plenty of ability affable manners and was full of humor and anecdote like his father whom he is said to have somewhat resembled. He had combined in youth a fondness for books with a fondness for adventure was comptroller of the colonial post office and clerk of the Pennsylvania assembly served a couple of campaigns in the French and Indian Wars. Went to England with his father in 1757 was admitted to the English bar, attained some intimacy with the Earl of boot and Lord Fairfax and through the latter obtained the governorship of New Jersey in 1762. The people were at first much displeased of his appointment and never entirely got over his illegitimate birth and is turning from wig to Tory as soon as his appointment was secured. But he advanced the interests of the colony with the home government and favored beneficial legislation. He had an attractive wife and they entertained it is said with vice regal elegance and started a fine model farm or country place on the north shore of the Rancocas, not far from the capital at Burlington. Franklin was drawing the province together and building it up as a community, but his extreme loyalist principles in the revolution destroyed his chance for popularity and have obscured his reputation. Though the population of New Jersey was a mixed one, judged by the very distinct religious differences of colonial times, yet racially it was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and a good stock to build upon. At the time of the revolution in 1776, the people numbered only about 120,000 indicating a slow growth, but when the first census of the United States was taken in 1790, they numbered 184,139. The natural division of the state into North and South Jersey is marked by a line from Trenton to Jersey City. The people of these two divisions were quite as distinct in early times as striking differences in environment and religion could make them. Even in the inevitable merging of modern life, the two regions are still distinct socially, economically and intellectually. Along the dividing line, the two types of the population, of course, merged and here was produced and is still to be found the Jersey man of the composite type. Trenton, the capital of the state, is very properly in the dividing belt. It was named after William Trent, a Philadelphia merchant who had been Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly and who became Chief Justice of New Jersey. Long ages before white men came, Trenton seems to have been a meeting place and residence of the Indians or preceding races of stone age men. Antiquarians have estimated that 50,000 stone implements have been found in it as it was at the head of Tidewater at the so-called Falls of the Delaware. It was apparently a center of travel and traffic from other regions. From the top of the bluff below the modern city of Trenton, there was easy access to forests of chestnut oak and pine with their supplies of game while the river and its tributary creeks were full of fish. It was a pleasant and convenient place where the people of prehistoric times apparently met and lingered during many centuries without necessarily having a large resident population at any one time. Trenton was so obviously convenient and central in colonial times that it was seriously proposed as a site for the national capital. Princeton University, though originating as we have seen among the Presbyterians of North Jersey, seems as a higher educational institution for the whole state to belong naturally in the dividing belt, the meeting place of the two divisions of the colony. The college began its existence at Elizabeth was then moved to Newark, both in the strongly Presbyterian region and finally in 1757 was established at Princeton, a more suitable place it was thought because far removed from the dissipation and temptation of towns and because it was in the center of the colony on the post road between Philadelphia and New York. Though chartered as the College of New Jersey it was often called Nassau Hall at Princeton or simply Princeton. In 1896 it became known officially as Princeton University. It was a hard struggle to found the college with lotteries and petty subscriptions here and there, but Presbyterians in New York and other provinces gave aid. Substantial assistance was also obtained from the Presbyterians of England and Scotland. In the old pamphlets of the time which have been preserved, the founders of the college argued that higher education was needed not only for ministers of religion, but for the bench, the bar, and the legislature. The two New England colleges Harvard and Yale on the north and the Virginia College of Women Mary on the south were too far away there must be a college close at hand. At first most of the graduates entered the Presbyterian ministry, but soon in the short time before the revolution there were produced statesmen such as Richard Stockton of New Jersey who signed the Declaration of Independence. Physicians such as Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, soldiers such as Light Horse Harry Lee of Virginia, as well as founders of other colleges, governors of states, lawyers, attorney generals, judges, congressmen, and indeed a very powerful assemblage of intellectual lights. Nor should the names of James Madison, Aaron Burr and Jonathan Edwards be omitted. East Jersey with her New England influence attempted something like free public schools in West Jersey the Quaker said schools in both jerseys after 1700 some private neighborhood schools were started independent of religious denominations. The West Jersey Quakers self-cultured and with a very effective system of mental discipline and education in their families as well as in their schools were not particularly interested in higher education. But in East Jersey as another evidence of intellectual awakening in colonial times Queens College afterwards known as Rutgers College was established by the Dutch reform church in 1766 and was naturally placed near the old source of Dutch influence at New Brunswick in the northern end of the dividing belt. New Jersey was fortunate in having no Indian wars in colonial times, no frontier, no point of hostile contact with the French of Canada or with the powerful western tribes of Redmond like Rhode Island in this respect she was completely shut in by the other colonies. Once or twice only did bands of savages cross the Delaware and commit depredations on Jersey soil. This colony however did her part in sending troops and assistance to the others in the long French and Indian wars, but she had none of the pressing danger and experience of other colonies. Her people were never drawn together by a common danger until the Revolution. In Jersey colonial homes. There was not a single modern convenience of light, heat or cooking and none of the modern amusements, but there was plenty of good living and simple diversion husking bees and shooting in the autumn skating and slaying in the winter. Meetings and discussions in coffee houses and ends supplied in those days the place of our modern books, newspapers and magazines. Jersey ends were famous meeting places everybody passed through their doors, judges, lawyers, legislators, politicians, post writers, stage drivers, each bringing his contribution of information and humor and the slaves and rivals stood round to pick up news and see the fun. The court days in each county were holidays celebrated with games of courts, running, jumping, feasting and discussions, political and social. At the Capitol there was even style and extravagance. Governor Belcher for example who lived at Burlington professed to believe that the Quaker influences of that town were not strict enough in keeping the Sabbath. So he drove every Sunday in his coach and for to Philadelphia to worship in the Presbyterian church there and saw no inconsistency in his own behavior. Almanacs furnished much of the reading for the masses. The few newspapers offered little except the bearers chronicle of events. The books of the upper classes were good, though few and consisted chiefly of the classics of English literature and books of information and travel. The diaries and letters of colonial native Jersey men the pamphlets of the time and John woman's journal all show a good average of education and an excellent use of the English language. Samuel Smith's history of the colony of Nova Cassaria or New Jersey written and printed at Burlington and published there in the year 1765 is written in a good and even attractive style with as intelligent a grasp of political events as any modern mind could show. The type paper and press were to our excellent Smith was born and educated in the same New Jersey town. He became a member of council and assembly at one time was treasure of the province and his manuscript historical collections were largely used by Robert Proud in his history of Pennsylvania. The early houses of New Jersey were of heavy timbers covered with unpainted clabbards, usually one story and a half high with immense far places, which with candles supplied the light. The floors were scrub hard and sprinkled with the plentiful white sand carpets except the famous old rag carpets were very rare. The old wooden houses have now almost entirely disappeared. The many of the brick houses which succeeded them are still preserved. They are of simple well proportioned architecture of a distinctive type less luxuriant massive and exuberant than those across the river in Pennsylvania, although both evidently derived from the Christopher Wren school. The old Jersey home seemed to reflect with great exactness the simple feeling of the people and to be one expression of the spirit of Jersey democracy. There were no important seats of commerce in this province. Exports of wheat provisions and lumber went to Philadelphia or New York, which were near and convenient. The Jersey shores near the mouth of the Hudson and along the Delaware as that Camden presented opportunities for ports, but the proximity to the two dominating ports prevented the development of additional harbors in this part of the coast. It was not until after the revolution that Camden opposite Philadelphia and Jersey City opposite New York grew into anything like their present importance. There were, however, a number of small ports and shipbuilding villages in the jerseys. It is a noticeable fact that in colonial times and even later, there were very few Jersey towns beyond the head of a tidewater. The people, even the farmers, were essentially maritime. The province showed its natural maritime characteristics, produced many sailors and built innumerable small vessels for the coasting and West India trade, sloops, schooners, yachts and sailboats down to the tiniest gunning boat and sneak box. Perth Amboy was the principal port and shipbuilding center for East Jersey as Salem was for West Jersey. But Burlington, Borden Town, Cape May and Trenton and innumerable little villages up creeks and channels or mere ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry. They built craft up to the limit of size that could be floated away in the water before their very doors. Plantifully supplied with excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar of their own forests, very skillful shipwrights grew up in every little hamlet. A large part of the capital used in Jersey shipbuilding is said to have come from Philadelphia and New York. At first, this capital sought its profit in whaling along the coast and afterwards in the trade with the West Indies, which for a time absorbed so much of the shipping of all the colonies in America. The inlets and beaches along the Jersey coast now given over to summer resorts were first used for whaling camps or bases. Cape May and Tuckerton were started and maintained by whaling, and as late as 1830 it is said there were still signs of the industry on Long Beach. Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited while stretches of sand swarming with birds and wildfowl without a lighthouse or a life-saving station. In the Revolution, when the British fleet blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg, the safest of the inlets was used for evading the blockade. Vessels entered there and sailed up the Malaca River to the head of navigation, whence the goods were distributed by wagons. To conceal their vessels when anchored just inside an inlet, their private tearsmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers prowling along the shore. Along with the whaling industry, the risks and seclusion of the inlets and channels developed a romantic class of gentlemen, as handy with musket and cutlass, as with helm and sheet, found of easy exciting profits and reaping where they had not sown. They would start legally enough for they began as private tearsmen under legal letters of mark in the wars, but the step was a short one to a traffic still more profitable and for a hundred years Jersey customs officers are said to have issued documents which were ostensibly letters of mark but which really abetted a piratical cruise. Piracy was however in those days a semi legitimate offense winked at by the authorities all through the colonial period and respectable people and governors and officials of New York and North Carolina. It is said secretly furnished funds for such expeditions and we're interested in the profits. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of the Quaker Colonies by Sidney Fisher This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Little Delaware Delaware was the first colony to be established on the river that bears this name. It went through half a century of experiences under the Dutch and Swedes from 1609 to 1664 and then 18 years under the English rule of the Duke of York from whom it passed into the hands of William Penn the Quaker. The Dutch got into it by an accident and were regarded by the English as interlopers and the Swedes who followed had no better title. The whole North Atlantic seaboard was claimed by England by virtue of the discoveries of the Cabots father and son but nearly a hundred years elapsed before England took advantage of this claim by starting the Virginia colony near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in 1607. And nearly a quarter of a century more elapsed before Englishmen settled on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Those were the two points most accessible to ships and most favorable for settlement. The middle ground of the Delaware and Hudson regions was not so easily entered and remained unoccupied. The mouth of the Delaware was full of shoals and was always difficult to navigate. The natural harbor at the mouth of the Hudson was excellent but the entrance to it was not at first apparent. Into these two regions however the Dutch chance just after the English had affected the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. The Dutch had employed an Englishman named Henry Hudson and sent him in 1609 in a small ship called the Half Moon to find a passage to China and India by way of the Arctic Ocean. Turned back by the ice in the Arctic he sailed down the coast of North America and began exploring the middle ground from the Virginia settlement which he seems to have known about. And working cautiously northward along the coast and feeling his way with the lead line he soon entered Delaware Bay. But finding it very difficult of navigation he departed and proceeding in the same careful way up along the coast of New Jersey he finally entered the harbor of New York and sailed up the Hudson far enough to satisfy himself that it was not the desired course to China. This exploration gave the Dutch their claim to the Delaware and Hudson regions but though it was worthless as against the English right by discovery of the cabbage the Dutch went ahead with their settlement established their headquarters and seat of government on Manhattan Island where New York stands today and exercised as much jurisdiction and control as they could on the Delaware. Their explorations of the Delaware feeling their way up it with small light draft vessels among its shoals and swift tides their travels on land shooting wild turkeys on the side of the present busy town of Chester and their adventures with the Indians are full of interest. The immense quantities of wildfowl and animal and bird life along the shores astonished them for what most aroused their cupidity was the enormous supply of furs especially beaver and otter that could be obtained from the Indians. Furs became their great in fact their only interest in the Delaware they established forts one near Cape Henlopen at the mouth of the river calling it Fort Applant and another far up the river on the Jersey side at the mouth of Timber Creek nearly opposite the present side of Philadelphia and this they called Fort Nassau. Fort Applant was destroyed by the Indians and its people were mass occurred Fort Nassau was probably occupied only at intervals these two posts were built mainly to assist the fur trade and any attempts at real settlement were slight and unsuccessful. Meantime about the year 1624 the Swedes heard of the wonderful opportunities on the Delaware the Swedish monarch Gustavus Adolphus a man of broad ambitions and energetic mind heard about the Delaware from Willem E. Selink merchant of Antwerp who had been actively interested in the formation of the Dutch West India Company to trade in the Dutch possessions in America. Having called with the directors Uselinx had withdrawn from the Netherlands and now offered his services to Sweden. The Swedish court nobles and people all became enthusiastic about the project which he elaborated for a great commercial company to trade and colonize in Asia, Africa and America. But the plan was dropped because soon after 1630 Gustavus Adolphus led his country to intervene on the side of the Protestants in the 30 years war in Germany where he was killed three years later at the battle of Lutsen. But the desire aroused by Uselinx for a Swedish colonial empire was revived in the reign of his infant daughter Christina by the celebrated Swedish Chancellor Oxen Steerna. An expedition which actually reached the Delaware in 1638 was sent out under another Dutch renegade Peter Minuit who had been governor of New Netherlands and after being dismissed from office was now leading the Swedish enterprise to occupy part of the territory he had formally governed for the Dutch. His two ships sailed up the Delaware and with good judgment landed at the present site of Wilmington. At that point a creek carrying a depth of over 14 feet for 10 miles from its mouth flowed into the Delaware. The Dutch had called this creek Minquis after the tribe of Indians. The Swedes named it the Christina after their infant queen and in modern times it has been corrupted into Christiana. They sailed about two and a half miles through its delta marshes to some rocks which formed a natural wharf and which still stand today at the foot of 6th Street in Wilmington. This was the Plymouth Rock of Delaware. Level land, marshes and meadows lay along the Christina, the remains of the delta which the stream had formed in the past. On the edge of the delta or moorland rocky hills rose forming the edge of the Piedmont and out of them from the north flowed a fine large stream, the brandy wine which fell into the Christina just before it entered the Delaware. Here in the delta their engineer laid out a town called Christina Ham and a fort behind the rocks on which they had landed. A cove in the Christina made a snug anchorage for their ships out of the way of the tide. They then bought from the Indians all the land from Cape Hanlopen to the falls of the Delaware at Trenton, calling it New Sweden and the Delaware New Sweden Land Stream. The people of Delaware have always regarded New Sweden as the beginning of their estate and Peter Minuit, the leader of this Swedish expedition, always stands first on the published lists of their governors. On their arrival in the river in the spring of 1638, the Swedes found no evidences of permanent Dutch colonization. Neither Fort Opland nor Fort Nassau was then occupied. They always maintained that the Dutch had abandoned the river and that it was therefore open to the Swedes for occupation, especially after they had purchased the Indian title. It was certainly true that the Dutch efforts to plant colonies in that region had failed, and since the last attempt by De Rijs, six years had elapsed. On the other hand the Dutch contended that they had in that time put Fort Nassau in repair, although they had not occupied it and that they kept a few persons living along the Jersey shore of the river. Possibly the remains of the Nassau colony to watch all who visited it. These people had immediately notified the Dutch governor Kieft at New Amsterdam of the arrival of the Swedes, and he promptly issued a protest against the intrusion. But his protest was neither very strenuous nor was it followed up by hostile action for Sweden and Holland were unfriendly terms. Sweden, the great champion of Protestant Europe, had intervened in the Thirty Years' War to save the Protestants of Germany. The Dutch had just finished a similar desperate war of 80 years for freedom from the papal despotism of Spain. Dutch and Swedes had therefore every reason to be in sympathy with each other. The Swedes, a plain strong industrious people, as William Penn aptly called them, were soon, however, seriously interfering with the Dutch fur trade, and in the first year it has said collected 30,000 skins. If this is true, it is an indication of the immense supply of fur-bearing animals, especially beaver, available at that time. For the next 25 years Dutch and Swedes quarreled and sometimes fought over their respective claims. But it is significant of the difficulty of retaining a hold on the Delaware region that the Swedish colonists on the Christina after a year or two regarded themselves as a failure, and were on the point of abandoning their enterprise when a vessel, fortunately for them, arrived with cattle, agricultural tools, and immigrants. It is significant also that the immigrants, though in a Swedish vessel and under the Swedish government, were Dutchmen. They formed a sort of separate Dutch colony under Swedish rule and settled near St. George's, and Appel-Quennemink. Immigrants apparently were difficult to obtain among the Swedes who were not colonizers like the English. At this very time, in fact, Englishmen, Puritans from Connecticut were slipping into the Delaware region under the leadership of Nathaniel Turner and George Lamberton, and were buying the land from the Indians. About 60 settled near Salem, New Jersey, and some on the Skookill in Pennsylvania close to Fort Nassau. An outrageous piece of audacity said the Dutch and an insult to their high mightinesses and the noble directors of the West India Company. So the Skookill English were accordingly driven out and their houses were burned. The Swedes afterwards expelled the English from Salem and from the Kohansi lower down the bay. Later the English were allowed to return, but they seemed to have done little except trade for furs and beat off hostile Indians. The seat of the Swedish government was moved in 1643 from the Christina to Tinnacombe, one of the islands of the Skookill Delta with an excellent harbor in front of it, which is now the home of the yacht clubs of Philadelphia. Here they built a fort of logs called Fort Gothenborg, a chapel with a graveyard and a mansion house for the governor, and this remained the seat of Swedish authority as long as they had any on the river. From here Governor Prince, a portly irascible old soldier said to have weighed upwards of 400 pounds and taken three drinks at every meal, ruled the river. He built forts on the Skookill and worried the Dutch out of the fur trade. He also built a fort called Naja Elstborg, afterward Elsenboro on the Jersey side below Salem. By means of this fort he was able to command the entrance to the river and compelled every Dutch ship to strike her colors and acknowledge the sovereignty of Sweden. Some he prevented from going up the river at all, others he allowed to pass on payment of toll or tribute. He gave orders to destroy every trading house or fort which the Dutch had built on the Skookill and to tear down the coat of arms and insignia which the Dutch had placed on a post on the site of Philadelphia. The Swedes now also bought from the Indians and claimed the land on the Jersey side from Cape May up to Raccoon Creek opposite the modern Chester. The best place to trade with the Indians for first was the Skookill river which flowed into the Delaware at a point where Philadelphia was afterwards built. There were at that time Indian villages where rest Philadelphia now stands. The headwaters of streams flowing into the Skookill were only a short distance from the headwaters of streams flowing into the Susquehanna so that the valley of the Skookill formed the natural highway into the interior of Pennsylvania. The route to the Ohio river followed the Skookill for some 30 or 40 miles turned up one of its tributaries to its source then crossed the watershed to the head of a stream flowing into the Susquehanna then to the Juniata at the head of which the trail led over a short divide to the head of the Konamog which flowed into the Allegheny and the Allegheny into the Ohio. Some of the Swedes and Dutch appeared to have followed this route with the Indians as early as 1646. The Ohio and Allegheny region was inhabited by the Black Ming Quas so called from their custom of wearing a black badge on their breast. The Ohio indeed was first called the Black Ming Quas river as the country near the Delaware was gradually denuded of beaver. These Black Ming Quas became the great source of supply and carried the furs over the route described to the Skookill. The White Ming Quas lived for the east round Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and those spoken of as belonging by language to the great Iroquo or Six Nations stock were themselves conquered and pretty much exterminated by the Six Nations. The Black Ming Quas believed to be the same as the Eres of the Jesuit relations were also practically exterminated by the Six Nations. The furs brought down the Skookill were deposited at certain rocks two or three miles above its mouth at Bartram's gardens now one of the city parks of Philadelphia. On these rocks then an island in the Skookill the Swedes built a fort which completely commanded the river and cut the Dutch off from the fur trade. They built another fort on the other side of Bartram's gardens along the meadow near what is now Gibson's Point and Governor Prince had a great mill a couple of miles away on Cobb's Creek where the old blue bell tavern has long stood. These two forts protected the mill and the Indian villages in West Philadelphia. One would like to revisit the Delaware of those days and see all its wildlife and game its islands and shoals its virgin forests as they had grown up since the glacial age untouched by the civilization of the white man. There were then more islands in the river the water was clear and there were pretty pebble and sandy beaches now overlaid by mud brought down from vast regions of the valley no longer protected by forests from the wash of the rains. On a wooded island below Salem long since cut away by the tides the pirate blackbeard and his crew are said to have passed the winter the waters of the river spread out wide at every high tide over marshes and meadows turning them twice a day for a few hours into lakes grown up in summer with red and yellow flowers on the graceful wild oats or reeds tassled like Indian corn. At Christina Ham in the Delta of the Christina and the brandy wine the tide flowed far inland to the rocks on which Minowitz Swedish expedition landed leaving one dry spot called Cherry Island a name still borne by a shoal in the river. Fort Christina on the edge of the overflowed meadow with the rocky promontory of hills behind it its church and houses and a wide prospect across the Delta River was a fair spot in the old days. The Indians came down the Christina in their canoes or overland bringing their packs of beaver, otter and deer skins their tobacco corn and venison to exchange for the cloth blankets tools and gaudy trinkets that pleased them. It must often have been a scene of strange life and coloring and it is difficult today to imagine it all occurring close to the spot where the Pennsylvania railroad station now stands in Wilmington. Mindaudi Peter Stuyvesant became governor of New Netherland he determined to assert Dutch authority once more on the South River as the Delaware was called in distinction from the Hudson. As the Swedes now controlled it by their three forts not a Dutch ship could reach Fort Nassau without being held up at Fort Ellsborg or at Fort Christina or at the Fort at Tinnacom. It was a humiliating situation for the hearty spirit of the Dutch governor to open the river to Dutch commerce again Stuyvesant marched over land in 1651 through the wilderness with 120 men and abandoning Fort Nassau built a new fort on a fine promontory which then extended far out into the river below Christina. Today the place is known as New Castle the Dutch commonly referred to it as Sand Hook or Sand Point. The English called it Grapevine Point Stuyvesant named it Fort Casimir. The tables were now turned the Dutch could retaliate upon Swedish shipping but the Swedes were not so easily to be dispossessed. Three years later a new Swedish governor named Reising arrived in the river with a number of immigrants and soldiers. He sailed straight up to Fort Casimir took it by surprise and ejected the Dutch garrison of about a dozen men. As the successful coup occurred on Trinity Sunday the Swedes renamed the place Fort Trinity. The whole population Dutch and Swedish but in 1654 mostly Swedish numbered only 368 persons. Before the arrival of Reising there had been only 70. It seems a very small number about which to be writing history but small as it was their high mightinesses as the government of the United Netherlands was called were determined to avenge on even so small a number the insult of the capture of Fort Casimir. Drums it is said were beaten every day in Holland to call for recruits to go to America. Gunners, carpenters and powder were collected a ship of war was sent from Holland accompanied by two other vessels whose names alone Great Christopher and King Solomon should have been sufficient to scare all the Swedes. At New Amsterdam Stuyvesant Labor Night and Day to fit out the expedition a French privateer which happened to be in the harbor was hired several other vessels in all seven ships and six or seven hundred men with a chaplain called Megapolensis composed this mighty armament gathered together to drive out the handful of poor hard-working Swedes. A day of fasting and prayer was held and the Almighty was implored to bless this mighty expedition which he was assured to have taken for the glory of his name. It was the absurdity of such contrasts as this running all through the annals of the Dutch in America that inspired Washington Irving to write his infinitely humorous history of New York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty by D. Dreek Nickerbocker. It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to take the Dutch in America seriously. What can you do with a people who have such a reputation allowed them to give such names to their ships as Wayscales, Spotted Cow and the Pair Tree. So Irving described the taking of Fort Casimir in mock heroic manner. He describes the marshaling of the Dutch hosts of New York by families the Van Groels of Anthony's Nose the Brinker Hofs the Van Cortlands the Van Bunschotens of Nijak and Kajet the Fighting Men of Wallabout the Van Pelts the Seydams the Van Dams and all the Warriors of Helgate clad in their thunder and lightning gabardines and lastly the standard bears and bodyguards of Peter Stuyvesant bearing the great beaver of the Manhattan and now commenced the horrid dim the desperate struggle the maddening ferocity the frantic desperation the confusion and self-abandonment of war Dutchman and sweet commingle tug panted and blowed the heavens were darkened with the tempest of missives bang went the guns whack went the broads swords thump went the cudgels crash went the musket stocks blows kicks cuffs scratches black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the seam thick whack cut and hack Helter Skelter Higgedlity Higgedlity Hurley Burley heads over heels rough and tumble Dunder and Blixen swore the Dutchman splitter and sputter cried the sweets stormed the works shouted Hard Capig Peter fire the mine word stout rising Tantara ra ra twang the trumpet of Antony van Corleer until all voice and sound became unintelligible grunts of pain yells of fury and shouts of triumph mingling in one hideous clamor the earth shirk as if struck with a paralytic stroke trees shrunk aghast and withered at the site rocks burred in the ground like rabbits and even Christina Creek turned from its course and ran up a hill in breathless terror as a matter of fact the fort surrendered without a fight on September 1st 1655 it was there upon christened new Amstel afterwards new castle and was for a long time the most important town on the Delaware this achievement put the Dutch in complete authority over the Swedes on both sides of the river the Swedes however were content and politics included themselves on their farms and left politics to the Dutch trade to they left to the Dutch shoe in their effort to monopolize it almost killed it this conquest by their high mightinesses also ended the attempts of the new Englanders particularly the people of New Haven to get a foothold in the neighborhood of Salem New Jersey for which they had been struggling for years they had dreams of a great lake far to northward full of beaver to which the Delaware would lead them their efforts to establish themselves survived in one or two names of places near Salem as for example New England Creek and New England Channel which down almost into our own time was found on charts marking one of the minor channels of the bay along the Jersey shore they continued coming to the river and ships to trade in spite of restrictions by the Dutch and some of them in later years as has been pointed out secured a foothold on the Kohansi and in the Cape May region where their descendants are still to be found End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of the Quaker colonies by Sydney Fisher this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the English conquest it is a curious fact that the ancestor of the numerous Beekman family in New York after whom Beekman Street is named was for a time one of the Dutch governors on the Delaware who afterwards became the sheriff of Esoppos, New York his successor on the Delaware had some thoughts of removing the capital down to Odessa on the Apokwine mink when an event long dreaded happened in 1664 war broke out between England and Holland long rivals in trade and commerce and all the Dutch possessions in the New World fell an easy prey to English conquerors a British fleet took possession of New Amsterdam which surrendered without a struggle but when two British men of war under Sir Robert Carr appeared before New Amstel on the Delaware Governor D. Hinojosa unwisely resisted and his untenable fort was quickly subdued by a few broad sides and a storming party this opposition gave the conquering party according to the custom of the times the right to plunder and it must be confessed that the English soldiers made full use of their opportunity they plundered the town and confiscated the land of prominent citizens for the benefit of the officers of the expedition after the English conquest on the Delaware not a few of the Dutch migrated to Maryland where their descendants it is said are still to be found some in later years returned to the Delaware where on the whole notwithstanding the early confiscations English rule seemed to promise well the very first documents the terms of surrender both on the Delaware and on the Hudson breathed an air of Anglo-Saxon freedom everybody was at liberty to come and go at will Hollander's could migrate to the Delaware or to New York as much as before the Dutch soldiers in the country if they wished to remain were to have 50 acres of land apiece this generous settlement seemed in striking contrast to the pinching narrow interference with trade and individual rights the seizures and confiscations for private gain all under pretence of punishment bad enough on the Delaware but worse at New Amsterdam which had characterized the rule of the Dutch the Duke of York to whom Delaware was given introduced trial by jury settled private titles and left undisturbed the religion and local customs of the people but the political rule of the Duke was absolute as became a steward he arbitrarily taxed exports and imports executive judicial and legislative powers were all vested in his deputy governor at New York or in creatures appointed and controlled by him it was the sort of government the Duke hope to impose upon all great Britain when he should come to the throne and he was trying his apprentice hand in the colonies a political rebellion against this despotism was started on the Delaware by a man named Konig's mark or the long fin aided by an Englishman Henry Coleman they were captured and tried for treason their property was confiscated and the long fin branded with the letter R and sold as a slave in the Barbados they might be called the first martyrs to foreshadow the English Revolution of 1688 which ended forever the despotic reign of the stewards the Swedes continued to form the main body of people on the Delaware under the regime of the Duke of York and at the time when William Penn took possession of the country in 1682 their settlements extended from Newcastle up through Christina Marcus Hook upland now Jester Tinnacum King sessing in the modern West Philadelphia past the unc with K code both in modern Philadelphia and as far up the river as Frankfurt and Penny pack they had their churches at Christina Tinnacum King sessing and Wakako the last one absorbed by Philadelphia was a pretty little Hamlet on the river shore its farms belonging to a Swedish family called Swanson whose name is now born by one of the city's streets across the river in New Jersey opposite Chester the Swedes had settlements on Raccoon Creek and around Swedesboro these river settlements constituted and interesting and from all accounts a very attractive Scandinavian community their strongest bound of union seems to have been their interest in their Lutheran churches on the river they spread very little into the interior made few roads and lived almost exclusively on the river or on its navigable tributaries one reason they gave for this preference was that it was easier to reach the different churches by boat there were only about a thousand Swedes along the Delaware and possibly 500 of Dutch and mixed blood together with a few English all living a life of abundance on a fine river amid pleasing scenery with good supplies of fishing game a fertile soil and a wilderness of opportunity to the west of them all were well pleased to be relieved from the stagnant despotism of the Duke of York and to take part in the free popular government of William in Pennsylvania they became magistrates and officials members of the council and of the legislature they soon found that all their avenues of trade and life were quickened they pass from mere farmers supplying their own needs to exporters of the products of their farms descendants of the Swedes and Dutch still form the basis of the population of Delaware there were some things that Marcus hook which was called Finland and it may be noted in passing that there were not a few French among the Dutch as among the Germans in Pennsylvania Huguenots who had fled from religious persecution in France the name jacket well known in Delaware marks one of these families whose immigrant ancestor was one of the Dutch governors in the 10 or dozen generations since the English conquest intermarriage has in many instances inextricably mixed up sweet Dutch and French as well as the English stock so that many persons with Dutch names are Swedish or French descent and vice versa and some with English names like Oldham are of Dutch descent there has been apparently much more intermarriage among the different nationalities in France and less standing aloof than among the alien divisions of Pennsylvania after the English conquest some Irish Presbyterians or Scotch Irish entered Delaware finally came the Quakers comparatively few in colonial times but more numerous after the Revolution especially in Wilmington and its neighborhood true to their characteristics they left descendants who have become the most prominent local citizens down into our own time that present Wilmington has become almost as distinctive a Quaker town as Philadelphia the and that are frequently heard in the streets and a surprisingly large proportion of the people of prominence and importance are Quakers or of Quaker descent many of the neat and pleasant characteristics of the town are distinctly of Quaker origin and these characteristics are found wherever Quaker influence prevails Wilmington was founded about 1731 by Thomas Willing an Englishman who had married into the Swedish family of justice and he laid out a few streets on his wife's land on the hill behind the site of Old Fort Christina in close imitation of the plan of Philadelphia and from that small beginning the present city grew and was at first called Willing town we in Shipley a Pennsylvania Quaker born in England bought land in it in 1735 and having more capital than willing pushed the fortunes of the town more rapidly he probably had not a little to do with bringing Quakers to Wilmington indeed their first meetings were held in a house belonging to him until they could build a meeting house of their own in 1738 both Shipley and Willing had been impressed with the natural beauty of the situation the wide view over the level more land and green marsh and across the broad river to the jerseys shore as well as by the natural conveniences of the place for trade and commerce Wilmington has ever since profited by its excellent situation with the level more land for industry the river for traffic and the first terraces or hills of the Piedmont for residents and for a scenery the brandy wine tumbling through rocks and boulders in a long series of rapids the customs still surviving in Wilmington of punishing certain classes of criminals by whipping appears to have originated in the days of willing and Shipley about the year 1740 when a cage stocks and whipping post were erected they were placed in the most conspicuous part of the town and there the corporate in addition to his legal punishment was also disciplined at the discretion of pastors by with rotten eggs and other equally potent encouragements to reform these gratuitous infictions not mentioned in the statute as well as the public exhibition of the prisoner were abolished in later times and in this modified form the method of correction was extended to the two other counties sometimes the nine tails was used sometimes a raw-hide whip and sometimes a switch cut from a tree nowadays however all the whipping for the state is done in Wilmington where all prisoners sentenced to whipping in the state are sent this punishment is found to be so efficacious that its inflection a second time on the same person is exceedingly rare the most striking relic of the old Swedish days in Wilmington is the brick and church of good proportions and no small beauty and today one of the very ancient relics of America it was built by the Swedes in 1698 to replace their old wooden church which was on the lower land and the Swedish language was used in the services down to the year 1800 when the building was turned over to the church of England old Peter Minuit the first Swedish governor may possibly have been buried there and the Swedes built another pretty chapel Gloria de E as it was called at the village of Wacka on the shore of the Delaware where Philadelphia afterwards was established the original building was taken down in 1700 and the present one was erected on its site partly with materials from the church at Tinnocombe it remained Swedish Lutheran until 1831 when like all the Swedish chapels it became the property of England between which and the Swedish Lutheran body there was a close affinity if not in doctrine at least in Episcopal organization the old brick church dating from 1740 on the main street of Wilmington is an interesting relic of the colonial Scotch Irish Presbyterians in Delaware and is now carefully preserved as the home of the historical society after Delaware had been 18 years under the Duke of York Penn felt the need of the west side of the river all the way down to the sea to strengthen his ownership of Pennsylvania he also wanted to offset the ambitions of Lord Baltimore to extend Maryland northward Penn accordingly persuaded his friend James the Duke of York to give him a grant of Delaware which penned there upon annex to Pennsylvania under the name of the territories or three lower counties the three counties Newcastle Kent and Sussex are still the counties of Delaware each one extending across the state and filling its whole length from the hills of the brandy wine on the Pennsylvania border to the sands of Sussex at Cape and Lopin the term territory has ever since been used in America to describe an outlying province not yet given the privileges of a state instead of townships the three lower counties were divided into hundreds an old Anglo-Saxon County method of division going back beyond the times of Alfred the Great Delaware is the only state in the union that retains this name for county divisions the three lower counties were allowed to send representatives to the Pennsylvania assembly and the Quakers of Delaware have always been part of the yearly meeting in Philadelphia in 1703 after having been a part of Pennsylvania for 20 years the three lower counties were given home rule and a legislature of their own but they remained under the governor of Pennsylvania until the revolution of 1776 they then became an entirely separate community and one of the 13 original states Delaware was the first state to adopt the national constitution and Rhode Island its fellow small state the last having been first to adopt the constitution the people of Delaware claim that on all national occasions or ceremonies they are entitled to the privilege of precedence they have every reason to be proud of their representative men they sent to the Continental Congress and to the Senate in later times agriculture has of course always been the principal occupation on the level fertile land of Delaware and it is agriculture of a high class soil especially in certain localities is particularly adapted to wheat corn and Timothy grass as well as small fruits that section of land crossing the state in the region of Delaware city and Middleton is one of the show regions in America for crops of weeding corn farther south grain growing is combined with small fruits and vegetables with a success seldom attained elsewhere agriculturally there is no division of similar size quite equal to Delaware in fertility its sand and gravel base with vegetable mold above is somewhat like the southern Jersey formation but it is more productive from having a larger deposit of decayed vegetation the people of Delaware have indeed very little land that is not tillable the problems of poverty, crowding great cities and excessive wealth in few hands are practically unknown among them the foreign commerce of Wilmington began in 1740 with the building of a brig named after the town and was continued successfully for a hundred years at Wilmington there has always been a strong manufacturing interest beginning with the famous colonial flour mills at the falls of the Brandywine and the bread stuffs industry at Newport on the Christina with the Brandywine so admirably suited to the machinery of those days and the Christina deep enough for the ships Wilmington seemed in colonial times to possess an ideal combination of advantages for manufacturing and commerce the flour mills were followed in 1802 by the Dupont Powder Works which are known all over the world and which furnished powder for all American wars since the revolution for the Crimean War in Europe and for the allies in the Great War from the hills of Brandywine to the sands of Sussex is an expression the people of Delaware used to indicate the whole length of their little state the beautiful cluster of hills at the northern end dropping into park like pastures along the shores of the rippling red clay and white clay creeks which form the deep Christina with its border of green reedy marshes is in striking contrast to the wild waste of sands at Cape Henlopen yet in one way the Brandywine hills are closely connected with those sands for from these very hills have been quarried the hard rocks for the great breakwater at the Cape behind which the fleets of merchant vessels take refuge in storms the great sand dunes behind the lighthouse at the Cape have their equal nowhere else on the coast blown by the ocean winds the dunes work inland overwhelming a pine forest to the treetops and filling swamps in their cores the beaches stream with every type of wreckage of man's vain attempts to conquer the sea the life-saving servicemen have strange tales to tell and show their collections of coins found along the sand the old pilots live snugly in their neat houses and pilot row waiting their turns to take the great ships up through their shoals and sands which were so baffling to Henry Hudson and his mate one hot August day of the year 1609 the Indians of the northern part of Delaware are said to have been mostly mean quas who lived along the Christiana and Brandywine and are supposed to have had a fort on Ironhill the rest of the state was inhabited by the nanticokes who extended their habitations far down the peninsula where a river is named after them they were a division or clan of the warriors or Lenny Nalapas in the early days they gave some trouble but shortly before the revolution all left the peninsula in strange and dramatic fashion digging up the bones of their dead chiefs in 1748 they bore them away to new abodes in the Wyoming valley of Pennsylvania some appeared to have traveled by land up the Delaware to the Lehigh which they followed to its source not far from the Wyoming valley others went in canoes starting far down the peninsula at the Nanticoke river and following along the wild shore of the Chesapeake to the Susquehanna up which they went by its eastern branch straight into the Wyoming valley it was a grand canoe trip a weird procession of tawny black haired fellows swinging their paddles day after day with their freight of ancient bones leaving the sunny fishing grounds of the Nanticoke and the Useca refuge from the detested white man in the cold mountains of Pennsylvania end of chapter 13 end of the Quakers colonies by Sydney Fisher