Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/141

 1868.] The Penn Treaty-Ground and a Monument to William Penn. 113 THE PENN TREATY-GROUND AND A MONUMENT TO WILLIAM PENN. [Concluded from No. 1, page 32.*] OLD PROPOSED LOCALITIES FOR PHILADELPHIA. THERE was a survey made, in 16*2, for starting a city of Philadelphia at the mouth of Poetquessing creek, where is now [1835] G. W. Morgan's seat ; and many persons had gone into and made settlements in Byberry, both places within the bounds of King Tam- anen's lands. — Watson. Samuel Preston, of Stockport, Wayne county, formerly of Bucks county, Pa., saw in the Surveyor General's office of Bucks county, Pa., an original draft of the city, of older date than that by Holmes, and signed Phineas Pemberton. This was to be located upon the great bend of the Delaware, opposite Burling- ton. N. J., on the Pennsbury manor tract. — Barker. Du Ponceau. The charter from Charles II. to Wil- liam Penn. conveying proprietary rights for the Province of Pennsylvania and the " three lower counties on the Delaware," is dated March 4, 1681. Penn's con ditions to his purchasers of land in the new colony, called "concessions" in the document itself, are dated July 11, 1681. Markham, William Penn's cousin, came over to Pennsylvania in the month of May, 1681, to take possession in the name of the new proprietary. There is no trace of correspondence between agent and principal for seventeen months thereafter. A few letters might make the incipient history of the colony under Penn perfectly luminous. We have not found them, and we never may. Penn named, as his envoys to the Indians, three Commissioners, William Crispin, John Bezar, and Nathaniel Allen. Their appointment is dated September 30th. and their letter of in- structions, October 18th, 1681. They probably sailed the latter part of the last-named month, in the " Bristol Fac- tor," Roger Drew, Master, which, we are told, arrived at Upland, now Ches- ter, Pa. ; and the river having frozen the night they went ashore, they remained there all winter. Penn arrived out in his colony, Octo- ber 24th, 1682. He treated with the Indians within a few weeks, but bought no land of them. — Du Ponceau. Fisher. EXACT DATE OF TREATY, UNKNOWN. The exact date of the Treaty is now, and likely ever will remain, unfixed. It was certainly held late in 1682. It is not determinable to a week, much less to a day. After an exhaustive inquiry, and from a very strong array of circum- stances, Du Ponceau and Fisher place it towards the end of November, 1682-3, the double year arising from the old style calendar. It belonged, then, very exactly to our present Thanksgiving season, in the immediate neighborhood of one month before Christmas, a cir- cumstance tending greatly to enhance the value of that already genial festival to Pennsjdvanians, making the almost invariable Thursday, of variable date, a double holiday and a double Thanks- giving. It was in the peaceful, dreamy da3 r s of Indian summer, symbolizing case it must have been obscure to ail not possessing the authorities herein quoted, not at full but synoptically ; although due credit has been given wherever possible; and all the writers or speakers drawn upon are designated somewhere in the essay. He hopes that, though the matter could not, from the character of this publication, be worked up iu extenso, all the essentials are, at least, clearly indicated. He would have been glad to compress the histor- ical portion into a single page; but this is emphatically one of " those things, which cannot be sot locket-fashion."
 * The writer would willingly have confined this article to bis own reflections and recommendations, but in that