What kind of people settled in pennsylvania

After decades of war in the s, the powerful Five Nations of the Iroquois, composed of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, successfully pursued a policy of neutrality with both the English and, to the north, the French in Canada during the first half of the s. This policy meant that the Iroquois continued to live in their own villages under their own government while enjoying the benefits of trade with both the French and the English.

The Dutch West India Company had introduced slavery in Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. Admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, their children could be baptized.

Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell, the company freed all its slaves, establishing early on a nucleus of free blacks.

European colonization of New Jersey started soon after the exploration of its coast and bays by Henry Hudson. The original inhabitants of the area included the Hackensack, Tappan, and Acquackanonk tribes in the northeast, and the Raritan and Navesink tribes in the center of the state. In return for land, settlers paid annual fees known as quitrents. Land grants made in connection to the importation of slaves were another enticement for settlers. After one of the proprietors sold part of the area to the Quakers, New Jersey was divided into East Jersey and West Jersey—two distinct provinces of the proprietary colony.

The political division existed from to The border between the two sections reached the Atlantic Ocean to the north of Atlantic City. Much of the territory was quickly divided after , leading to the distribution of land into large tracts that later led to real estate speculation and subdivision. In , the two provinces were reunited under a royal, rather than a proprietary, governor. The governors of New York then ruled New Jersey, which infuriated the settlers of New Jersey, who accused the governor of showing favoritism to New York.

While the majority of residents lived in towns with individual landholdings of acres, a few rich proprietors owned vast estates. English Quakers and Anglicans owned large landholdings. Unlike Plymouth, Jamestown, and other colonies, New Jersey was populated by a secondary wave of immigrants who came from other colonies instead of those who migrated directly from Europe.

New Jersey remained agrarian and rural throughout the colonial era, and commercial farming developed only sporadically. Some townships emerged as important ports for shipping to New York and Philadelphia. Examine the religious and social factors that shaped the establishment of the Pennsylvania and Delaware colony.

Between and , Delaware was an incorporated county under the Province of Maryland. The Mason-Dixon line is said to have legally resolved vague outlines between Maryland and Pennsylvania and awarded Delaware to Pennsylvania. Delaware Colony became a region of the Province of Pennsylvania, although never legally a separate colony.

From until , it was part of the Penn proprietorship and was known as the Lower Counties. In , it gained a separate assembly from the three upper counties but continued to have the same governor as the rest of Pennsylvania. William Penn had asked for and later received the lands of Delaware from the Duke of York. Penn had a hard time governing Delaware because the economy and geology were largely the same as that of the Chesapeake, rather than that of his Pennsylvania territory.

He attempted to merge the governments of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Representatives from both areas clashed and, in , Penn agreed to two separate assemblies.

Delawareans would meet in New Castle and Pennsylvanians would gather in Philadelphia. Delaware continued to be a melting pot of sorts and was home to Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and French, in addition to the English, who constituted the dominant culture. The Charter of Privileges mandated fair dealings with American Indians. In the Pennsylvania Assembly, which had Delaware representatives, approved an Act of Union that made the Pennsylvania Charter applicable to the three counties, but Delaware leaders resented domination by Pennsylvanians.

Pennsylvania's Charter of Privileges of allowed the union to be dissolved if assemblymen of both colonies agreed to do it. But Delaware leaders refused to acknowledge the Charter of Privileges unless they received as many Assembly seats as the Pennsylvania counties. When the Pennsylvanians would not accept this, Governor Gookin in , convened a separate Assembly for the Delaware counties, which continued to exist until Delaware and Pennsylvania had separate Assemblies but shared the same governor until , although many Delawareans insisted that the Penn family had no proprietary rights in their counties and that Pennsylvania's governors had authority in Delaware only because they were royal appointees.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, the connection of the governorship function was dissolved when both colonies became states. From its beginning, Pennsylvania ranked as a leading agricultural area and produced surpluses for export, adding to its wealth. By the s an exceptionally prosperous farming area had developed in southeastern Pennsylvania. Wheat and corn were the leading crops, though rye, hemp, and flax were also important. The abundant natural resources of the colony made for early development of industries.

Arts and crafts, as well as home manufactures, grew rapidly. Sawmills and gristmills were usually the first to appear, using the power of the numerous streams. Textile products were spun and woven mainly in the home, though factory production was not unknown.

Shipbuilding became important on the Delaware. The province gained importance in iron manufacturing, producing pig iron as well as finished products. Printing, publishing, and the related industry of papermaking, as well as tanning, were significant industries.

The Pennsylvania long rifle was an adaptation of a German hunting rifle developed in Lancaster County. Its superiority was so well recognized that by gunsmiths were duplicating it in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and Maryland. The Conestoga wagon was also developed in Lancaster County. Capable of carrying as much as four tons, it was the prototype for the principal vehicle for American westward migration, the prairie schooner.

The rivers were important as early arteries of commerce and were soon supplemented by roads in the southeastern section. By , stagecoach lines reached from Philadelphia into the southcentral region. Trade with the Indians for furs was important in the colonial period. Later, the transport and sale of farm products to Philadelphia and Baltimore, by water and road, formed an important business.

Philadelphia became one of the most important centers in the colonies for the conduct of foreign trade and the commercial metropolis of an expanding hinterland. Philadelphia was known in colonial times as the "Athens of America" because of its rich cultural life.

Because of the liberality of Penn's principles and the freedom of expression that prevailed, the province developed a conspicuous variety and strength in its intellectual and educational institutions and interests. An academy that held its first classes in became the College of Philadelphia in , and ultimately grew into the University of Pennsylvania.

It was the only nondenominational college of the colonial period. The arts and sciences flourished, and the public buildings of Philadelphia were the marvel of the colonies. Many fine old buildings in the Philadelphia area still bear witness to the richness of Pennsylvania's civilization in the eighteenth century. Newspapers and magazines flourished, as did law and medicine. Pennsylvania can claim America's first hospital, first library, and first insurance company.

Quakers held their first religious meeting at Upland now Chester in , and they came to Pennsylvania in great numbers after William Penn received his Charter. Most numerous in the southeastern counties, the Quakers gradually declined in number but retained considerable influence. Although the Lutheran Church was established by the Swedes on Tinicum Island in , it only began its growth to become the largest of the Protestant denominations in Pennsylvania upon the arrival of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg in The Reformed Church owed its expansion to Michael Schlatter, who arrived in The Moravians did notable missionary work among the Native Americans.

Penn had envisioned a colony of townships, where farms would produce the crops and livestock needed to fuel local centers of government, religion, industry, and trade. However, as this map indicates, scattered farmsteads became the pattern of settlement. Within England, most of the First Purchasers resided in the areas around London and Bristol, where the Society of Friends had met with considerable missionary success and Penn was well known. Quakers of various economic backgrounds took advantage of the opportunity that he created to worship free of the persecution persistent in England.

The Germantown Protest challenged the Society of Friends to treat African-descended people as brethren and not bondsmen. William Penn rented the home during his second stay in Pennsylvania from to Along with Rhode Island and several other colonies, Pennsylvania was a pioneer of the separation of religion and government in the American colonies. By the nineteenth century, the home had fallen into disrepair and in it was demolished.

Join the discussion at a Greater Philadelphia Roundtable or add your nomination online. Although both English colonial policy and the organization of the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, were works in progress between the years and , in many ways the pattern of scattered farms and religious tolerance that Pennsylvania developed in those early years became a model for an American way of life.

Under the proprietary system, the grantee obtained a charter from the king and established the colony at his own risk.

The Crown looked on it as a feudal estate, a grant equivalent to independent sovereignty limited only by loyalty to the king. Proprietors could grant titles, had sole authority to initiate laws, levy taxes, coin money, regulate commerce, appoint provincial officials, administer justice, grant pardons, make war, erect manors, and control the land and waterways.

He still had complete control of granting land: in the common parlance of the time period under acres constituted a farm, between and 1, acres a plantation, and over 1, acres a manor. Those holding larger parcels could, in turn, sell or rent them as smaller holdings. Penn followed up the concessions document in May with the first Frame of Government , which laid out the form and shape of governance in the new colony.

The government itself was to consist of the governor, a Provincial Council, and a General Assembly chosen by the freemen who were defined as those who were resident in the province, were free of servitude, owned and cultivated part of their land, and paid a tax to the government.

Twenty-three ships bearing settlers arrived in the new colony between December and December The Welcome , William Penn aboard, landed on October 28, Within two years, fifty ships had arrived in Pennsylvania carrying investors and 4, settlers. The inhabitants were diverse, including the Lenapes from whom Penn purchased land on the west bank of the river.

The European inhabitants included the Dutch, who had established a trading post in the area in , and the Swedes and Finns who created the first permanent settlement of New Sweden in Most of these settlers lived in the area from what was later Philadelphia to New Castle, Delaware. In , Penn divided the land along the Delaware River into the counties of Chester, Philadelphia, and Bucks, appointing colonists to serve on each county court and administer local government.

The charter for Pennsylvania and the lease for the three lower counties remained separate entities, however, requiring agreement to laws by a single assembly that met alternately at Philadelphia and New Castle. By , the inconvenience of this arrangement led to a mutual agreement to set up distinct assemblies and pass laws separately, although they continued to share a governor. The border between Pennsylvania and Delaware was not actually established until the mid-eighteenth century, with the drawing of the Mason-Dixon line , which also settled the boundary with Maryland.

Landed gentleman investors did not, in general, emigrate, and their investments went badly. Pennsylvania supported the Union during the Civil War. One of the most important battles took place at Gettysburg , Pennsylvania, in The Union won the battle, marking a turning point toward eventual victory in the war. The land can be divided into six regions. The Atlantic Coastal Plain Province in the extreme southeast is a flat, low region with narrow valleys that were cut by streams.

It contains Tinicum Marsh, the first urban wildlife refuge in the United States. West of the Atlantic Coastal Plain is the Piedmont Province, with rolling hills, ridges, tower-shaped rocks, caves, and sinkholes. The New England Province is northeast of the Piedmont Province, and contains steeply sloped hills and ridges. About half of the region is forested. The Appalachian Plateaus Province sweeps across the central and western part of the state.