William Penn: An Interesting Man to Know
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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.
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Penn was expelled from Oxford after coming under the influence of Quaker Thomas Loe. His father's first response was to beat him and drive him from home. Penn eventually became a Quaker when he was 23.
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United Nations Day is celebrated on 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.
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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.
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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.”
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King Charles II of England deeded Pennsylvania to William Penn to cancel a debt of x16,000 owed to the late Admiral Penn.
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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 extending it to “ Pennsylvania,” after Admiral Penn.
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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 America was held in Philadelphia. Church and state first became separated in Pennsylvania.
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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.
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Penn designed the city of Philadelphia as the first city build 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.”
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Penn represented himself in a trial in London that established the principle of “jury nullification” that 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 put in jail, but they still would not comply. Penn’s arguments prevailed, and as a result, a judge cannot tell a jury what to decide.
Research and design by Wen Jiang with Chel Avery.