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Explore Pa History. By the nineteenth century, the home had fallen into disrepair and in it was demolished. William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa , which was founded by Quaker settlers in , was named in his honor.
Who founded pennsylvania.Who founded the state of Pennsylvania?
These huge companies exercised a large influence on the politics of Pennsylvania; as Henry Demarest Lloyd put it, oil baron John D. Rockefeller “had done everything with the Pennsylvania legislature except refine it”. The growth of industry eventually provided middle-class incomes to working-class households, after the development of labor unions helped them gain living wages.
However, the rise of unions led to a rise of union busting , with several private police forces springing up. Eventually, the eight-hour day was adopted, and the “coal and iron police” were banned. During this period, the United States was the destination of millions of immigrants.
Previous immigration had mostly come from western and northern Europe , but during this period Pennsylvania experienced heavy immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Pennsylvania and New York received many of the new immigrants, who entered through New York and Philadelphia and worked in the developing industries. Many of these poor immigrants took jobs in factories, steel mills , and coal mines throughout the state, where they were not restricted because of their lack of English.
The availability of jobs and public education systems helped integrate the millions of immigrants and their families, who also retained ethnic cultures. Pennsylvania also experienced the Great Migration , in which millions of African Americans migrated from the southern United States to other locations in the United States.
By , African Americans made up almost five percent of the state’s population. Even before the Civil War, Pennsylvania had emerged as a center of scientific discovery, and the state, led by its two major urban centers, continued to be a major place of innovation.
The state continued to innovate, as Pennsylvanians invented the first iron and steel t-rails , iron bridges, air brakes , switching signals, and drawn metal wires. Pennsylvanians also contributed to advances in aluminum production, radio, television, airplanes, and farm machinery.
During this period, Pittsburgh emerged as an important center of industry and technological innovation, and George Westinghouse became one of the preeminent inventors of the United States. Education continued to be a major issue in the state, and the state constitution of guaranteed an annual appropriation for education. The Pennsylvania State University was founded in , and in the school became Pennsylvania’s land-grant university under the terms of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts.
Temple University in Philadelphia was founded in by Russell Conwell , originally as a night school for working-class citizens. The Western University of Pennsylvania had been operating since , but the school changed its name to the University of Pittsburgh in Additionally, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in as the flagship American Indian boarding school. Thousands of Pennsylvanians volunteered during the Spanish—American War , and many Pennsylvanians fought in the successful campaign against the Spanish in the Philippine Islands.
Pennsylvania was an important industrial center in World War I , and the state provided over , soldiers for the army. Pennsylvanians Tasker H. Bliss , Peyton C. March , and William S. Sims all held important commands during the war. Following the war, the state suffered the effects of the Spanish flu. As with much of the rest of the country, Democrats were much more successful in Pennsylvania during the Fifth Party System than they were in the previous two party systems.
The Great Depression finally broke the lock on Republican power in the state, as Democrat Franklin Roosevelt won Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in all three of his re-election campaigns. Roosevelt was the first Democrat to win the state’s electoral votes since James Buchanan in In , Pennsylvania elected Joseph F. Guffey to the Senate and George Earle III as governor; both individuals were the first Democrats elected to either office in the 20th century. Earle, with the help of a Democratic legislature, passed the “Little New Deal” in Pennsylvania, which included several reforms based on the New Deal and relaxed Pennsylvania’s strict Blue laws.
Leader ‘s successful candidacy in Earle signed the Pennsylvania State Authority Act in , which would purchase land from the state and add improvements to that land using state loans and grants. The state expected to receive federal grants and loans to fund the project under the administration of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his New Deal. Pennsylvania, with its large industrial labor force, suffered heavily during the Great Depression. Pennsylvania manufactured 6.
During the war, over one million Pennsylvanians served in the armed forces, and more Medals of Honor were awarded to Pennsylvanians than to individuals from any other state. The Republican lock on Pennsylvania was permanently broken in the era after World War II, and Pennsylvania became a somewhat less powerful state in terms of electoral votes and number of House seats.
Pennsylvania adopted its fifth and current constitution in ; the new constitution established a unified judicial system and allows governors and the other statewide elected officials to serve two consecutive terms. In presidential elections , the Republican Party won Pennsylvania in seven of the eleven elections between and , but Democrats have won the state in every presidential election from to When Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey won Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in , he became the first non-Republican since to win Pennsylvania’s votes without winning the presidential election.
After having the second most electoral votes since the 18th century, Pennsylvania was eclipsed in electoral votes by California in Texas and Florida also now have more electoral votes, while New York also has more electoral votes and Illinois has the same number of electoral votes and a slightly larger population.
Since the s, Republicans have usually controlled both houses of the legislature , while candidates from both parties have been elected to the statewide offices of governor , lieutenant governor , attorney general , treasurer , and auditor general.
Democrats generally win the cities and Republicans win the rural areas, with the suburbs voting for both parties and often acting as the key swing areas. The state was hard-hit by the decline and restructuring of the steel industry and other heavy industries during the late 20th century.
With job losses came heavy population losses, especially in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. With the end of mining and the downturn of manufacturing, the state has turned to service industries.
Pittsburgh’s concentration of universities has enabled it to be a leader in technology and healthcare. Similarly, Philadelphia has a concentration of university expertise. Healthcare, retail, transportation, and tourism are some of the state’s growing industries of the postindustrial era. As in the rest of the nation, most residential population growth has occurred in suburban rather than central city areas, although both major cities have had significant revitalization in their downtown areas.
Philadelphia anchors the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the country, while Pittsburgh is the center of the twenty-second largest metro area in the country. The growth of the Lehigh Valley has made it one of the seventy most populous metro areas in the country, [56] while Pennsylvania also has six other metro areas among the top most populous American metro areas.
Philadelphia forms part of the Northeast megalopolis and is associated with the Northeastern United States , while Pittsburgh is part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis and is often associated with the Midwestern United States and the Rust Belt. After , as information-based industries became more important in the economy, state and local governments put more resources into the old, well-established public library system.
Some localities, however, used new state funding to cut local taxes. For example, in Chester County, Mexican migrants brought their Spanish language, Catholic religion, high birth rates and cuisine when they were hired to as agricultural laborers; in some rural localities they made up half the population.
On September 11, , during the terrorist attacks on the United States , the small town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania received worldwide attention after United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township , 1. The hijackers had intended to fly the plane to Washington, D. However, after learning from family members via airphone of the earlier attacks on the World Trade Center , the passengers on board revolted against the hijackers and fought for control of the plane, causing it to crash.
It was the only one of the four aircraft hijacked that day that never reached its intended target and the heroism of the passengers has been commemorated. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Aspect of history. Main article: New Sweden. Main article: Province of Pennsylvania. Main article: Pennsylvania in the American Revolution. Main article: Pennsylvania in the American Civil War. Main article: Historical outline of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Retrieved December 8, Retrieved November 30, Many Quakers pledged to release their slaves upon their death, including Penn, and some sold their slaves to non-Quakers. The Penns lived comfortably at Pennsbury Manor and had all intentions of living out their lives there. They also had a residence in Philadelphia. Their only American child, John, had been born and was thriving. Penn was commuting to Philadelphia on a six-man barge, which he admitted he prized above “all dead things”.
James Logan , his secretary, kept him acquainted with all the news. Penn had plenty of time to spend with his family and still attend to affairs of state, though delegations and official visitors were frequent. His wife, however, did not enjoy life as a governor’s wife and hostess and preferred the simple life she led in England. When new threats by France again put Penn’s charter in jeopardy, Penn decided to return to England with his family, in Penn returned to England and immediately became embroiled in financial and family troubles.
His eldest son William, Jr. Penn had hoped to have William succeed him in America. His own finances were in turmoil. He had made many generous loans which he failed to press. Making matters worse from Penn’s perspective, Philip Ford, his financial advisor, had cheated Penn out of thousands of pounds by concealing and diverting rents from Penn’s Irish lands, claiming losses, then extracting loans from Penn to cover the shortfall.
When Ford died in , his widow Bridget threatened to sell Pennsylvania, to which she claimed title. There were considerable discussions about scrapping his constitution. Ford took her case to court. At age 62, Penn landed in debtors’ prison; however, a rush of sympathy reduced Penn’s punishment to house arrest, and Bridget Ford was finally denied her claim to Pennsylvania. A group of Quakers arranged for Ford to receive payment for back rents and Penn was released.
In Berkeley Codd, Esq. Some of William Penn’s agents hired lawyer Andrew Hamilton to represent the Penn family in this replevin case. Hamilton’s success led to an established relationship of goodwill between the Penn family and Andrew Hamilton. A second stroke several months later left him unable to speak or take care of himself. He slowly lost his memory. William Penn died penniless in , at his home in Ruscombe , near Twyford in Berkshire, and is buried in a grave next to his first wife in the cemetery of the Jordans Quaker meeting house near Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire.
His wife, as sole executor, became the de facto proprietor until she died in Springett the Posthuma in her name indicating that her father had died prior to her birth and Lady Mary Proude Penington. They had three sons and five daughters: []. William Penn married Hannah when she was 25 and he was They had nine children in twelve years:. After Penn’s death, Pennsylvania slowly drifted away from a colony founded by religion to a secular state dominated by commerce.
Many of Penn’s legal and political innovations took root, however, as did the Quaker school in Philadelphia for which Penn issued two charters and Sometime later, the institution was renamed the William Penn Charter School. Voltaire praised Pennsylvania as the only government in the world that responds to the people and is respectful of minority rights. Penn’s “Frame of Government” and his other ideas were later studied by Benjamin Franklin as well as the pamphleteer of the American Revolution , Thomas Paine , whose father was a Quaker.
Among Penn’s legacies was the unwillingness to force a Quaker majority upon Pennsylvania, allowing his state to develop into a successful “melting pot”. In addition, Thomas Jefferson and the founding Fathers adapted Penn’s theory of an amendable constitution and his vision that “all Persons are equal under God” informing the federal government following the American Revolution. In addition to Penn’s extensive political and religious treatises, he wrote nearly 1, maxims, full of wise observations about human nature and morality.
Penn’s family retained ownership of the colony of Pennsylvania until the American Revolution. However, William’s son and successor, Thomas Penn , and his brother John , renounced their father’s faith, and fought to restrict religious freedom particularly for Catholics and later Quakers as well.
Thomas weakened or eliminated the elected assembly’s power, and ran the colony instead through his appointed governors. He was a bitter opponent of Benjamin Franklin and Franklin’s push for greater democracy in the years leading up to the revolution. When installed in , the statue represented the highest point in the city, as City Hall was then the tallest building in Philadelphia.
Urban designer Edmund Bacon was known to have said that no gentleman would build taller than the “brim of Billy Penn’s hat”.
This agreement existed for almost years until the city decided to allow taller skyscrapers to be built. In March , the completion of One Liberty Place was the first building to do that.
This resulted in a ” curse ” which lasted from that year on until when a small statue of William Penn was put on top of the newly built Comcast Center. The Philadelphia Phillies went on to win the World Series that year. A lesser-known statue of Penn is located at Penn Treaty Park , on the site where Penn entered into his treaty with the Lenape , which is famously commemorated in the painting Penn’s Treaty with the Indians.
In , Hajoca Corporation, the nation’s largest privately held wholesale distributor of plumbing, heating, and industrial supplies, adopted the statue as its trademark symbol. The Quaker Oats cereal brand standing “Quaker man” logo, dating back to , was identified in their advertising after as William Penn, and referred to him as “standard bearer of the Quakers and of Quaker Oats”.
In the logo was changed into a head-and-shoulders portrait of the smiling Quaker Man. Bil Keane created the comic Silly Philly for the Philadelphia Bulletin , a juvenile version of Penn, that ran from to Penn was depicted in the film Penn of Pennsylvania by Clifford Evans. Chigwell School , the school he attended, has named one of their four houses after him and now owns several letters and documents in his handwriting. A pub in Rickmansworth, where Penn lived for a time, is named the Pennsylvanian in his honour, and a picture of him is used as the pub sign.
The Friends’ School, Hobart , has named one of their seven six-year classes after him. The William Penn Society of Whittier College has existed since as a society on the college campus of Whittier College and continues to this day.
William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa , which was founded by Quaker settlers in , was named in his honor. Penn Mutual , a life insurance company established in , also bears his name.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see William Penn disambiguation. London , England. Ruscombe , Berkshire , England , Great Britain. New Castle Crier. Archived from the original on 14 July William Penn : a life. New York, NY. ISBN Penn is often remembered as the first to envisage a European Parliament.
Gale Research, Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich. Because God commanded his people to love others, his colony would treat the Indians with honesty, fairness, and peace. Having arrived, Penn worked on bringing his plans to fruition.
The Quakers refused to take any land unless the Indians agreed to it. During the first couple of years, Penn purchased land from the Lenape and Susquehannock leaders, including large areas along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. As he stood side by side with the Indian leaders and signed the purchase contracts, he may have felt a measure of pride that his land was being honestly bought rather than stolen from the Indians.
However, he did not realize that these peaceful transactions were being aided by forces beyond his control. Since Europeans had arrived in the New World, disease and war had reduced the Lenni Lenapes to a mere five thousand people. Their alliance with the English thus provided much-needed protection from their rivals, the Iroquois League, the most powerful Indian alliance in the region, and contributed to their willingness to sell their land.
How does West portray the relationship between the Quaker settlers and the Lenni Lenapes? Not long after the ink on the purchase agreement was dry, the Quakers began to build a city on the land between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Only four years after Penn landed, the colony was home to a diverse group of more than eight thousand settlers of many different religions and ethnicities: Quakers, Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, German Lutherans, and many Christians who had been persecuted in England — including Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics.
Holme was a surveyor who worked with Penn to devise a system of grid-patterned streets. In spite of good intentions to foster religious harmony and toleration, the City of Brotherly Love was not entirely peaceful. The leading Quakers thought him too divisive and removed him as pastor. Keith ignored this judgment and increased his criticism, arguing that Quaker ministers had been corrupted by their own political influence.
The dispute culminated in an attempt by Keith and his followers to set up their own gallery in the Philadelphia meetinghouse, at which point a brawl broke out and both galleries were destroyed. This dispute showed the difficulty Quakers had in maintaining authority and religious orthodoxy in their own city. Even though Pennsylvania aspired to harmony between Christians of all kinds, it still experienced strife and rivalry within its own denominations.
Pennsylvania can claim America’s first hospital, first library, and first insurance company. Quakers held their first religious meeting at Upland now Chester in , and they came to Pennsylvania in great numbers after William Penn received his Charter. Most numerous in the southeastern counties, the Quakers gradually declined in number but retained considerable influence. Although the Lutheran Church was established by the Swedes on Tinicum Island in , it only began its growth to become the largest of the Protestant denominations in Pennsylvania upon the arrival of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg in The Reformed Church owed its expansion to Michael Schlatter, who arrived in The Moravians did notable missionary work among the Native Americans.
The Church of England held services in Philadelphia as early as The first Catholic congregation was organized in Philadelphia in , and the first chapel was erected in ; Pennsylvania had the second largest Catholic population among the colonies.
The Scotch brought Presbyterianism; its first congregation was organized in Philadelphia in Scotch-Irish immigrants swelled its numbers. Methodism began late in the colonial period. George’s Church, built in Philadelphia in , is the oldest Methodist building in America. There was also a significant Jewish population in colonial Pennsylvania. Its Mikveh Israel Congregation was established in Philadelphia in The southern boundary, especially the famous Mason-Dixon Line dividing Pennsylvania and Maryland, which was surveyed and marked by the English team of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in and approved in Britain two years later, ended arguments begun when Charles II had issued Pennsylvania’s Charter in Maryland’s Charter of extended to the Delaware River above Philadelphia, and the boundary description in the Pennsylvania Charter was obscured by ambiguous terms and its creators’ limited knowledge of geography.
In King James II determined that Maryland would not have the three counties of Delaware, but it was not until that Maryland’s proprietor agreed that the longitudinal line separating his colony from Pennsylvania would run from a point fifteen miles south of the most southern point in Philadelphia. Within a year he changed his mind, so that lengthy High Court of Chancery proceedings in England and armed clashes between Maryland and Pennsylvania settlers had to occur before a chancery decree in authorized the final settlement, a refinement of the bargain.
Mason and Dixon were called in when American surveyors were unable to calculate boundary lines that matched the authorized specifications. The Charter’s provisions for Pennsylvania’s western expanse clashed with the land description in Virginia’s older charter.
From until the opening of the American Revolution, Virginia’s governor, Lord Dunmore, controlled southwestern Pennsylvania as a district of Virginia, and irregular warfare took place between his followers and settlers loyal to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s northern boundary was also undetermined, and settlers from Connecticut, organized as the private Susquehannah Company, arguing on the basis of both Connecticut’s colonial charter and a questionable land purchase deed made from some Iroquois chiefs in , occupied the Wyoming Valley and had hopes of obtaining much of northern Pennsylvania.
At the Treaty of Fort Stanwix or “Old Purchase” in , Pennsylvania purchased from the Iroquois a vast expanse of the land included within the Charter.
Arguing that this confirmed their deed, the Connecticut settlers re-entered northeastern Pennsylvania. In , Connecticut’s government decided to officially support the Susquehannah Company settlers, and by the beginning of the American Revolution they had defeated the neighboring Pennsylvania settlers in several campaigns known as the Yankee-Pennamite Wars.
Also dating back to an ambiguity in the Charter of , and overlapping with the dispute with Connecticut, was the question of the longitudinal line separating New York and Pennsylvania. The intervening controversy with Connecticut and the Revolutionary War delayed surveying and marking the line until The career of the versatile genius and popular leader Benjamin Franklin spans Pennsylvania’s history from his first appearance in Philadelphia until his death in He led the way to the establishment of beneficial civic institutions including newspapers and other popular publications, a fire company, a circulating library, a hospital, paper money, and a postal mail system.
The persuasiveness of his popular writings imbued the public with common sense, public morality, and optimism. His scientific research explored natural phenomenon, and his inventions enlarged human mastery of the environment. His political leadership was critical to the movement for independent establishment of governments intended to operate for the best interests of humanity. As an outstanding example of an individual rising through his own abilities, Franklin has always been upheld as a model for Americans.
By , the Province of Pennsylvania had become the third largest English colony in America, though next to the last to be founded. Philadelphia had become the largest English-speaking city in the world next to London. There were originally only three counties: Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks, but by there were eleven. Westmoreland, the last new county created before the Revolution, was the first county located entirely west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The American Revolution had urban origins, and Philadelphia was a center of ferment.
