Person

William Penn

First State National Historical Park, Independence National Historical Park

Most people know of William Penn and his connection to Philadelphia, but did you know that Penn also has a connection to Delaware, particularly the Brandywine Valley and New Castle, as well?

William Penn was born at Tower Hill, London, England in 1644 to English naval officer Admiral Sir William Penn and Margaret Jasper, a Dutchwoman. A bout with smallpox at the age of four caused him to lose his hair and he wore wigs for much of his life. Penn was raised in the Anglican faith and most of the schools he attended were affiliated with the Anglican Church. Penn attended Oxford University in 1660, where he thought of becoming a doctor. Instead, he became particularly interested in new ways of thinking. Having butted heads with his father over conflicting ideas, he was sent to Paris and studied abroad for two years.

Upon returning to England in 1666, his father was stricken with gout and so Penn was sent to Ireland to work in his place. After hearing a talk from Thomas Loe, a Quaker itinerant, he decided to join the Quaker (Society of Friends) Religion at the age of 22. Penn was sent to prison for his belief four times denouncing the Protestant faith, “No Cross, No Crown” in 1669. With all his writings about Quakerism, including the written doctrine, Penn helped establish the religion’s public standing and became its first public defender. Due to his father’s high-profile job and close relationship to the monarchy, Penn was forced to leave home and spent years living with other Quaker families. In April 1672, he married his first wife, Gulielma Springett and they would go on to have eight children together.

After his father passed in 1670, Penn was granted a land charter by King Charles II, a debt repaid. With this acquisition, Penn became the largest non-royal landowner, owning some 45,000 square miles total. He named the area “Penn’s Woods” after his father. This area included land in what is known as Pennsylvania and Delaware today, but only after some very heated border disputes. Delaware’s southern border with Maryland caused a rift with Lord Baltimore and the Calvert Family. When the Duke of York granted land to Penn, Penn wanted access to the Chesapeake Bay, but the Calvert Family wanted the Pennsylvania border to be above the 40th parallel. When taken to court, they ruled that since the Dutch had already settled in the area, the Calverts and Maryland could not lay claim to anything other than uncultivated land. The families decided to get the land surveyed to finalize a compromise from 1732. They chose Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were able to place monument stones with a P on one side and an M on the other to map the border between the two states. This became the famous Mason-Dixon line that now theoretically, divides the North and the South.

To entice Quakers and other faiths to move to this new land, Penn would promise religious freedom in his “Framework of Government” and marketed it throughout Europe. Within six months, he had already distributed about 300,000 acres to over 250 families. The new government that Penn would put into place was a stark difference from English Law under The Crown. It would be comprised of two houses to help keep things in check, and only two crimes, treason and murder, would result in the death penalty. All cases would be tried before a jury and many of the laws were based on Puritan beliefs. When he arrived in America, he landed first in New Castle on October 27, 1682, and would make his way to his newly designed city of Philadelphia. The “City of Brotherly Love” was laid out in a grid-like system and the streets were named with numbers and names of trees.

In 1689, Penn signed a warrant for the building of a new courthouse in the Lower Three Counties’ capital of New Castle. The first one was constructed in 1704. In 1701, residents petitioned for the right to form a separate government. It was granted with the stipulation that Penn and his successors would still govern. Penn would revise a constitution called “A Charter of Privileges” that allowed Delaware (Lower Three Counties) to form its own government and even presided over the first Assembly. He maintained a good relationship with the Lenape around the Brandywine Valley, until he would grant their land to English colonists who had started to settle in the area. By 1774, tensions arose between the colonies and Great Britain. During the Second Continental Congress meetings in Philadelphia, there would be talk of independence. So, on June 15, 1776, the Assembly of the Three Lower Counties met in the Assembly Room of the New Castle Court House and approved a Separation Resolution. The new name for the colony would become the Counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Upon Delaware. This separation from both the British Crown and Pennsylvania is now celebrated every year on the second Saturday of June every year.

After living in and around Philadelphia for several years with his second wife Hannah Callowhill and some of their nine children, Penn left the colonies in 1701, never to return to America. He spent the last years of his life with financial woes, due to bad management, and racked up a lot of land debt. He tried to sell Pennsylvania back to The Crown twice but was denied. He spent some time in debtors’ jail but was released after some Quakers raised the funds needed to help him pay off his debts. In 1712, he suffered a stroke which caused him to lose his speech and the ability to take care of himself. His wife Hannah served as the overseer of the Province of Pennsylvania from this time until her death eight years after her husband. Sadly, William Penn died on August 10, 1718, in Ruscombe, Berkshire and is buried in the cemetery of Jordans Quaker Meeting House in Buckinghamshire.