History of Philadelphia

Foundation and early settlement

William Penn acquired the province of Pennsylvania in 1681 from King Charles II of England as a place where his fellow Quakers could enjoy freedom of worship and a chance to govern themselves and develop their own way of life. The king made the grant, signed on March 4, 1681, and proclaimed it a few weeks later, on April 2, partly to settle a debt owed to Penn’s father, Adm. Sir William Penn, upon his death and also to complete the settlement of the Middle Atlantic region with Englishmen. Penn sent his cousin William Markham to take charge of affairs of government and also to lay out the city Penn named Philadelphia, city of “brotherly love,” the name symbolizing his idealistic concepts. From England, Penn wrote in 1681 asking that “the Rivers and Creeks be sounded on my side of the Delaware River…in order to settle a great Towne, and be sure to make your choice where it is most navigable, high, dry, and healthy.” He wanted every house to be placed in the middle of its own plot to provide ground about it “that it may be a greene Country Towne, which will never be burnt, and always be wholesome.”

Penn arrived in 1682 but had little chance to enjoy his city. He was forced to travel to England in 1684 and was unable to return until 1699. By then, Philadelphia was a flourishing town with many shops and trading houses, as well as several hundred dwellings and about 10,000 people clustered close to the riverfront. Penn’s governor declared the city already was the equal of New York “in trade and riches.” Penn’s policies throughout the colony of religious toleration and the right of the people to take part in the government, in addition to growing prosperity, soon began to attract thousands of English, German, and Scotch-Irish settlers, and most came by way of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia by the 1770s had grown to at least 30,000 persons in the central city, and it was the third most important business centre in the British Empire, overshadowed only by Liverpool and London. This position was due in large measure to the city’s site at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, which provided the city access to inland farm regions and to the coal and ore resources that supplied the early iron industry.

A visitor in 1756 wrote that “Everybody in Philadelphia deals more or less in trade,” a tribute not merely to Philadelphia’s location but also to the shrewd business talents of the Quaker merchants. A large and profitable system of triangular trade involved foodstuffs and wood products, such as lumber and barrel staves, that went from Philadelphia to the West Indies and there were exchanged for sugar, rum, and other West Indian products. These were carried to English ports, where they in turn were exchanged for English manufactures to be brought back to Philadelphia. The prosperous farm country of interior Pennsylvania supplied the Philadelphia merchant with goods for the West Indies, and a profitable coastal trade existed with other colonies and directly with England. By the 1750s Philadelphians had invested heavily in the flourishing charcoal-iron industry. Anthracite coal became an important mineral resource of Pennsylvania 100 years later, and the Philadelphia capital played a leading part in this industry as well as in the mining of bituminous coal farther to the west. Philadelphia continued its leadership in foreign commerce until about 1810, when New York City, with an even more advantageous location, took over this position. Philadelphia surrendered its position as financial capital of the nation in the 1850s.

Shipyards had flourished along the Delaware since colonial days. Most of what came to the city was raw material for manufacture, and Philadelphia became a major centre of the early Industrial Revolution in the United States. In 1785 Oliver Evans invented the first gristmill operated entirely by mechanical power. The city was a pioneer in textile manufacturing and took the raw iron from inland furnaces and made it into tools and implements, such as saws, huge iron castings for cotton-mill machinery, and the first American-built steam locomotives. By 1860 the value of Philadelphia’s manufactures ran into several hundred million dollars, about 30 percent of the national total. Textiles, ships, iron products, leather, refined sugar, and boots and shoes were leaders, giving important aid to the Union in the Civil War.

The growth of the city

Cultural dominion

Prosperity was translated into personal and community wealth, and with these social and economic advantages Philadelphia assumed early leadership in the arts, in science, and in culture. Benjamin Franklin, who as a young man had migrated from Boston to Philadelphia, became an American leader in scientific and intellectual affairs. Philadelphia had the nation’s first free library, its first hospital, and its first learned society, the American Philosophical Society—all founded by Franklin. Along with Franklin, there were men such as Benjamin Rush, the great physician, and David Rittenhouse, an astronomer, mathematician, inventor, and early Philadelphia aristocrat, and many others. The city excelled in printing and publishing: by 1776 there were 23 printers and newspapers with circulations of from 500 to 3,000 copies. Fine private and public buildings were erected. One of them was Andrew Hamilton’s Independence Hall, originally—and still—better known by Philadelphians as “the statehouse.” Led by Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart, oil painting flourished in the colonial and Federal periods.

The city’s strategic location near the midpoint of colonial settlement and its important status as a vital political, economic, and cultural centre—as well as concern that Pennsylvania might not favour the Revolution—brought to Philadelphia the delegates who formed the First Continental Congress in 1774 and a year later the Second Continental Congress, which proclaimed the Declaration of Independence and governed throughout the Revolution. The city and its region were the focus of several important events during the war for independence, including battles of Germantown and Brandywine and the bitter winter encampment at Valley Forge. Philadelphia itself was occupied for a time by the British Army, and the Continental Congress was forced to flee the city for nearby York. The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 and framed the federal Constitution, and the city served as the capital of the United States from 1790 to 1800.