Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/755

Rh guished as a Quaker minister and an author, and a grandson of Sir Isaac Penington, who was lord mayor of London in 1648, member of parliament, lieutenant of the tower, and one of the commis- sioners of the high court of justice for the trial of Charles I. Edward received a liberal education, and in 1698 accompanied William Penn, his half- brother by marriage, to Pennsylvania, where he became in 1700 surveyor-general of the province. He published " The Discoverer Discovered " (1695) ; "Rabshakeh Rebuked" (1695); and "Some Brief Observations upon George Keith's Earnest Ex- postulation " (1696). — His grandson, Edward, mer- chant, b. in Philadelphia, 4 Dec, 1726; d. there, 30 Sept., 1796, was the son of Isaac Penington. who was for several years sherifE of Bucks county, Pa. The son was educated in the best Quaker schools, and afterward was a merchant in Philadelphia. In 1748 he became a member of the " Colony on the Schuylkill," in 1761, and for some years there- after, he was one of the judges of the court of common pleas, and in 1762, under an act of the assembly, he became one of the trustees in whom was vested the State-House (now Independence Hall) and other public buildings, " for the use of the freemen of the province and their representa- tives." In 1768 he was elected to membership in the American philosophical society, and, through the action of the institution in 1770, a " Society for the cultivation of silk " was formed, of which he became treasurer. When Paul Revere brought to Philadelphia the news of the passage by parliament of the Boston port bill Penington was among those who, in May, 1774, assembled at the "Coffee- House " and formed a committee of correspondence, and in the month of July of that year he was a member of the Provincial convention. Notwith- standing these sentiments, when the war for inde- pendence began his Quaker principles led him to join the " non-resistants," and he came to be classed among the disaffected, and, on the approach of the British in 1777, he was arrested and sent to Virginia. He was a manager of Pennsylvania hos- pital in 1773-'9. In 1790 he was elected a city councilman, and the year before his death he was appointed by the legislature one of the commis- sioners to distribute money among the French refugees. As the attorney for Ann Penn, in 1767, he offered Pennsbury Manor for sale, and pub- lished a description of the same, setting forth her title to, and giving some historical incidents con- cerning it. He wrote a " Poetical Proclamation," a satire on the committee of inspection in Phila- delphia. — The second Edward's son, John, physi- cian, b. in Philadelphia, 29 Sept., 1768; d. there, 20 Sept., 1793, was graduated as a physician in Philadelphia in 1790. afterward studied for two years at London, Edinburgh, and Paris, and began practice in Philadelphia in 1792. During the yel- low-fever epidemic of the next year he remained at his post and soon fell a victim to the disease. He was a member of the American philosophical society, and the author of " Chemical and Eco- nomical Essays to Illustrate the Connection be- tween Chemistiy and the Arts" (1790) and " In- augural Dissertation on the Phenomena, Causes. and Effects of Fermentation" (17901.— The second Edward's grandson, John, author, b. on his fa- ther's estate of Mulberrv Hill, Monmouth co., N. J., 1 Aug., 1799 : d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 18 March, 1867, entered Princeton, and afterward studied law with John Sergeant at Philadelphia, but never en- gaged in its practice. Subsequently he became a clerk in the Bank of the United States, where he was thus engaged at the time of the failure of this institution. He owned an extensive private library, with which, and with other books, he established in 1841 a book-store for the sale of rare English, French, and other foreign works, and he was for many years the most noted importer of foreign books in Philadelphia. He was a fine scholar and an accomplished linguist, for many years a mem- ber, and at one time an officer, of the Historical society of Pennsylvania, and from 1839 until his death a member of the American philosophical society. In 1845 the University of Pennsylvania gave him the degree of A. M. In addition to criti- cal articles, he published " An Examination of Beauchamp Plantagenet's Description of the Prov- ince of New Albion " (Philadelphia, 1840) ; " Scraps, Osteologic and Archjeological " (1841); and he edited " Description of New York, by Daniel Dan- ton, London, 1670: Reprinted by the Historical So- ciety of Pennsylvania" (Philadelphia, 1845). — His daughter. Meta Roberts, b. in Philadelphia, 4 Dec, 1837; d. in New York city in December, 1885, married Dr. Horatio Paine. She translated " Women of the French Revolution," from the French of Michelet (Philadelphia, 1855). — The sec- ond John's brother, Henry, lawyer, b. in Phila- delphia. 19 Sept., 1807; d. there, 11 Nov., 1858, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Phila- delphia in 1828. He edited and published, with numerous additions, Henry James Holthouse's " New Law Dictionary " (Philadelphia, 1847).

PENN, John, signer of the Declaration of In- dependence, b. in Caroline county, Va., 17 May, 1741 ; d. in North Carolina in September, 1788. He was the only child of Moses Penn, and Cather- ine, his wife, who was a daughter of John Tay- lor, of the same state and county. Owing to a singular neg- lect on the part of his parents, who could well af- ford to pay the expense of his tuition, at the age of eigh- teen, when his father died, he had only been instructed for a few years at a country school, and was largely self-educated. He studied law with his relative, Edmund Pendleton,was admitted to the bar in 1762, and displayed great ability and eloquence in practice. In 1774 he removed to Greenville county, N. C, his nearest relatives having removed there a short time before, soon became distinguished in his profession, and on 8 Sept., 1775, was chosen to the Continental congress to supply a vacancy, taking his seat on 12 Oct. He signed the Declara- tion of Independence in 1776, and was re-elected in 1777 and in 1779. When Lord Cornwallis invaded North Carolina, Mr. Penn was placed in charge of the public affairs of that state, given almost dicta- torial powers, and he discharged the duties of his trust with credit. In March, 1784, he was ap- pointed receiver of taxes for North Carolina, which office he resigned in the following April. His reason for so doing was principally owing to the fact that the state, while eagerly maintaining the cause of independence by resolutions and declara- tion, refused to furnish the means by which it could be secured. Mr. Penn afterward resumed his station of a private citizen, and, being pos-