William Penn: An Interesting Guy to Know
Alexander Calder statue of Penn atop Philadelphia's City Hall.
United Nations Day is celebrated on William Penn’s birthday (October 24.) His “Essay Toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe” proposed an association of countries much like the UN of today.
Philadelphia's "Penn’s Landing" is not where Penn came ashore. The name was sold to the city of Philadelphia for its waterfront development. Penn disembarked at the Chester waterfront in Delaware County.
Penn was expelled from Oxford for holding worship services in his room, rather than in the Chapel. His father's first response was to beat him and drive him from home. Penn eventually became a Quaker when he was 23.
Penn signed the 1701 Charter of Privileges, a progressive statement of citizens' rights which anticipated the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. In 1751 the Liberty Bell was cast as a 50th anniversary commemoration of this Charter.
Penn thought the Native Americans were some of the lost tribes of Israel. His treatment of the Indians was unusually fair for the times, and his laws provided them with rights. The treaty of Shackamaxon included:
The white man and red man are to be as brothers. All paths are to be open to both.
The doors of the settler will be open to the Indian, and those of the Indian to the settler.
They will not listen to false reports of one another.
If quarrels arise, they will be settled by a jury of six on each side and then forgotten.
It is arguably the best-honored treaty in the history of North America.
Benjamin West: Penn's Treaty with the Indians
The Indians called Penn “Onus” which means “feather.” (Probably a reference to a quill pen.) When he died in England, they sent his wife Hannah a gift of animal skins to make a cloak “to protect her whilst passing through the thorny wilderness without her guide.”
King Charles II of England deeded Pennsylvania to William Penn to cancel a debt of £16,000
owed to his father, the late Admiral Penn.
Pennsylvania is not named for its founder, William Penn. Penn first wanted to name it “New Wales,” then proposed “Sylvania,” but the King insisted on “Pennsylvania,” after Admiral Penn.
Trivia Question: what best-selling book, published in 2007, begins with a quotation from William Penn? Hint.
Penn’s “Holy Experiment” was the first government in the western world to give the same political rights to people of all different religions. The first legal Catholic mass in the British colonies was held in Philadelphia. Church and state first became separated in Pennsylvania.
Penn started public education in Philadelphia, free for those who could not pay. He was ahead of his time in believing that girls as well as boys should be educated. He thought it was important for children to learn useful skills and wrote that “Nature is an excellent book, easy, useful, pleasant and profitable.” He thought it was a waste of time to study rules of grammar and “dead languages” such as Latin and Greek.
Penn designed the city of Philadelphia as the first city built with a grid of streets at right angles to each other. Since then, most new cities have copied this design. Streets and houses were widely spaced so fire and disease would not spread from house to house. Streets were named after trees, not “important people.”
Penn defended himself in a trial that established the principle of “jury nullification,” which is still in our justice system today. When the London jury would not find William Penn and William Mead guilty for holding a Quaker worship service in Gracechurch Street, the judge had the jury thrown into jail, but they still would not comply. Penn’s arguments prevailed, and as a result, a judge cannot tell a jury what to decide.
