Thomas Penn

Thomas Penn (1702 – 1775) was a son of William Penn, founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony that became the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Thomas Penn was born in Bristol, England after his father returned there in 1701 because of financial difficulties. Thomas Penn's mother was his father's second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn (1671-1726), daughter of Thomas Callowhill.

Penn inherited the position of Proprietor of the Colony of Pennsylvania for the Crown of England in 1718 along with his brothers John and Richard on the death of their father William Penn, until 1746 when John deceased. Thomas continued as the Proprietor with Richard's son, John, and his own son John Penn until 1775. He tried to bring his family out of the debt that had plagued his father. He asserted his independence from the Quakers, and tried to assert his control of the colony almost as a feudal lord.

Penn arrived in Pennsylvania in August, 1732, and organized the purchase some of the lands at the outskirts of the Pennsylvania colony. He met with some of the local Indian chiefs and tried to keep the peace as immigrants poured into the countryside north and west of Philadelphia on the Susquehanna, Schuylkill, and Delaware Rivers. Many of the Indians did not want to sell their land, and had not heard of William Penn's 1686 treaty. Finally in 1737 Acting Governor James Logan convinced several Indian Chiefs to confirm the 1686 deed, which according to the Penns had given them land west of the Delaware River to the extent that a man could walk in a day and a half. Logan hired several men to walk the measure, but they walked west at a very fast pace, and the Indians felt cheated. Logan and the Penn sons including Thomas were later criticized for this fraudulent "Walking Purchase" and their questionable treatment of the Indians. Part of the difficulty lay in the conflict with the French who laid claim on the back country west of Pennsylvania and the ensuing hostilities of King George's War (1744-1748) and the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Penn lobbied against Quaker efforts to make peace with the Iroquois and Algonquin tribes some of whom were allied with the French. The proprietor Penn brothers became rich selling their newly and fraudulently acquired land to European settlers, who as a result became resentful of the proprietors. The new land Penn acquired was not taxed by the Crown until it had been surveyed many years later.

Penn tried to stop the introduction of Roman Catholicism in the colony. In 1733 a Catholic chapel was built in Philadelphia, and in 1734 Penn attempted to suppress the movement, but the Quaker-led legislative assembly protected the rights of Catholics to worship and build churches.

Penn visited the countryside of Pennsylvania to look for sites to establish towns and county seats. He appointed surveyors for the colony and for the "Lower Counties" which became Delaware, including Joshua Fisher, a prominent merchant in Lewes at the mouth of Delaware Bay. On one occasion in 1739, Penn visited the future site of Reading, Pennsylvania, where he found only one cabin. As Proprietor he realized the site would be good for the layout of a county seat because it sat in the Schuylkill River valley with hills nearby. Although he never returned to the site, the knowledge he gained on this visit was helpful later when he drew up the plan for Reading. He planned the street map and the water system, and helped surveyors and realtors with suggestions about the sale of lots, from which he stood to profit. Penn took the name from Reading, Berkshire, England and established the town in 1748, and on creation of Berks County in 1752, Reading became county seat.

Penn returned to England and in 1751 joined the Church of England and married Lady Juliana Fermor, fourth daughter of Thomas the first Earl of Pomfret. He did not hold many of the beliefs of the Quakers who had come to Pennsylvania, and lived the life of an aristocrat who had taken from the poor, identifiably different from his Quaker father who had tried to purchase land fairly from the Indians and live a life of peace.

The politics of the colony were complex, with the Quaker population declining and the legislature increasingly at odds with its proprietor. In 1756, Penn attempted to remove the Quakers from power in the colony by having a petition granted by Parliament that would require an oath of loyalty in all colonial legislative assemblies. Because the Quakers never took oaths, they would be banned from power. The attempt failed and the colonial Quakers remained free of any oaths to Parliament.

Penn sent his nephew John Penn to govern the colony in 1763. The new governor faced many problems: Pontiac's Rebellion, disputes over the Penn family lands and taxation, and efforts of Pennsylvanians led by Benjamin Franklin to have the Penn proprietary government replaced with a royal government. Thomas Penn died in England on March 21, 1775, soon before the American Revolution brought an end to the Penn family's control of Pennsylvania.

References

* Lorett Treese. "The Storm Gathering: The Penn Family and the American Revolution". 1992; rept. Stackpole Books, 2002.
* Penn Family Papers, 1629-1832. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
* William A. Hunter. "The Walking Purchase." Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission:Harrisburg, 1972. 2nd Ed. [http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/walking/page1.asp?secid=31]
* Steven Craig Harper. "Promised Land: Penn's Holy Experiment, The Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares, 1600-1763". Lehigh University Press, 2006.
* Francis Jennings. "Thomas Penn's Loyalty Oath." In "The American Journal of Legal History" Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1964), pp. 303-313.
* Francis Jennings. "Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America". Norton, 1988.

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