We do not pretend to Manhattes was the name of a tribe there. decide in this last matter, but we can discern hereby, how it is, that given facts take a "local habitation and a name." Truth, therefore, requires much wariness, in seeking. My notices of olden time were wholly of my own conception and suggestion. I had never read any similar works, and even to this day, (1842,) although I have named them in my "Annals." I have not read Lewis' Lynn, Gibbs' Salem, Notices of Plymouth, &c., none of which have been made a part of the Philadelphia Library. We had thought to have here concluded this chapter, already longer than we had purposed, when we began it--but we think that a few beautiful remarks which we shall here give from Alison's Notices of the Beautiful and Sublime, will be willingly read by every intellectual reader. He says: "The delight which most men of education receive from the consideration of antiquity, and the beauty that they discover in every object which is connected with ancient times, is in a great measure to be ascribed to their perceptions of beauty. Surrounded by relics of former ages, we seem to be removed to ages that are past, and indulge in the imagination of a living world. "Tis then that all that is venerable or laudable in the history of those times, present themselves to the memory; then the imagination and fancy are stimulated. The subjects of consideration seem to approach him still nearer to the ages of his regard: the dress, the furniture, the arms of the times, are so many assistances to his imagination in guiding or directing its exercises; and offering him a thousand sources of imagery, provide him with an almost inexhaustible field in which his memory and his fancy may expatiate." "There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes. The view of the house where he was born, of the school where he was educated, and where the gay years of infancy were passed, is indifferent to no man. The scenes which have been distinguished by the residence of any person, whose memory we admire, produce a similar effect. The admiration which the recollections afford, seems to give a kind of sanctity to the place where they dwelt." "It is not the first prospect of Rome, as Rome only, which creates our emotions of delight. It is not the Tyber, diminished to a paltry stream. It is ancient Rome, with all its associations, which fills the imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, and Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. All that he has read and studied opens at once before his mind, and presents him with a mass of high and solemn imagery which can never be exhausted." I cannot but be aware, that my mind has been instinctive in its perception of matters and things in their state of transitu, that are habitually overlooked by many others. In the consciousness of my own peculiarity therein, I cannot but feel the force of remarks made by Colonel Trumbull, in his autobiography,-tending equally to show that in his department of national painting, which is, in fact, his desire for preserving his pictorial images of the past, we have been actuated measurably alike. "His aim (he says) has been to transmit to those who come after us, the personal resemblance of those who have been the great actors in those scenes that are past,-to portray which he had some superiority, because he had been an actor and a willing observer of things, for which no one then lives with him, possessing the same advantage; and withal, no one can come after him to divide the honour of their truth and authenticity. He may therefore cherish an honest pride (he says) in the accomplishment of a work-such as never has been done before, and in which it is not easy that he should find a rival." PENNSYLVANIA INLAND. THE whole of Pennsylvania-such as it was for the first half century of the settlement,-was comprised within the three counties of Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester; of these, therefore, we are chiefly to speak in the following pages. All beyond these-westward and northward, until of latter years, consisted of unsettled lands or Indian hunting grounds;-so very modern is every thing of improvement and civilization in Pennsylvania, which we now behold. Such a country, so rapid in its progress-so lately rising from comparative nothingness, to be."a praise in the earth," may well demand our admiration and regard. Cotemporary with the first settlement of Philadelphia, the colonists proceeded into the country, and laid the foundation of sundry towns and neighbourhoods; as this was done while the country was in a wilderness state, and in the midst of the Indian nations, it may justly interest our readers to learn the earliest known facts concerning several of such settlements. To this end, we shall relate sundry incidents concerning Pennsbury, Bucks county, Chester, and Chester county, Byberry, Germantown, Frankford, Lancaster, &c. begin with Germantown, the largest and oldest town begun in Philadelphia county, to wit: Germantown. The Germantown settlement was first taken up by Francis Daniel Pastorius, the 12th of the 8th month, 1683, by a purchase from William Penn, and was surveyed and laid out by the surveyor general, 2d of 3d month, 1684; under a grant to him for himself and others for 6000 acres. It proved, however, to contain but 5700 acres. It was a part of Springetbury Manor, and was distributed among the proprietaries as follows, viz.: 200 acres to Dr. Francis D. Pastorius himself, on Chestnut Hill, 150 do. to Jurian Hartsfielder (the same who in 1676 owned all Campington,) 5350 do. To Pastorius, as agent to German and Dutch owners, called the Francfort company. 5700 do. Pastorius and Hartsfielder were to pay yearly 1s. per 100 acres, quitrent and all the others at the rate of 1s. per 1000 acres, (" they having bought off the quitrents,") for ever to William Penn and heirs. The patent for all the preceding land from Penn is executed by William Markham, secretary for Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, the 3d April, 1689, and it therein specifies "the purchasers," as follows, viz.: The distribution of the lands was made as follows: All the above 2675 acres were sold in 1708, for £3000, to one Sprogel, by Daniel Faulkner, as agent to the Frankford Company, but as it was contrary to the wish of his principals, it was always deemed a fraud, and did not convey a transfer. Vol. II.-C 2* Germantown was incorporated as a borough town by a patent from William Penn, executed in England in 1689. Francis Daniel Pastorius, civilian, was made first bailiff; and Jacob Tellner, Dirk Isaacs op den Graff and Herman op den Graff, three burghers, to act ex-officio as town magistrates, and eight yeomen; the whole to form a general court to sit once a month. They made laws and laid taxes. The town lost its charter for want of a due election, officers not being found willing to serve; somewhere about 1706. In a letter from Pastorius to William Penn, dated in 1701-2, he states his concern that he should not be able to get men to serve in the general court for "conscience sake;" and he trusts, for a remedy, to an expected arrival of emigrants. This difficulty probably arose from the oaths used in court proceedings. All the settlers in Cresheim built on the Cresheim road, before settling a house on the Germantown road through Cresheim. There is an old map, made in 1700, in which all their residences and barns at that time are marked. The Germantown town lots (55) were located in 1687, and were drawn for by lot in 1689, being 27 lots on each side of the road. Their side lots up town began from Abington lane, (at Samuel Johnson's) and went up to the foot of the hill by Leibert's board yard. The original price of the township of Germantown was 1s. per acre. The original of the following curious paper is in the hands of John Johnson, Esq. "We whose names are to these presents subscribed, do hereby certify unto all whom it may concern, that soon after our arrival in this province of Pennsylvania, in October, 1683, to our certain knowledge Herman op den Graff, Dirk op den Graff, and Abraham op den Graff, as well as we ourselves, in the cave of Francis Daniel Pastorius, at Philadelphia, did cast lots for the respective lots which they and we then began to settle in Germantown; and the said Graffs (three brothers) have sold their several lots, each by himself, no less than if a division in writing had been made by them. Witness our hands this 29th Nov., A. D. 1709. Lenart Arets Jan Lensen Thomas Hunder Abraham Tunes The Frankford Land Company gave titles to much of the lands on each side of Germantown Main-street. The company at first consisted of ten gentlemen living in Francfort, on the Maine, in Germany; their articles were executed in that city on the 24th November, 1686. They bought 25000 acres of land from William Penn. The Germantown patent for 5350, and the Manatauney patent for 22,377 acres. F. D. Pastorius was appointed the attorney for the company, and after his resignation Dan. Faulkner was, in 1708, made attorney. Most of the old houses in Germantown are plastered on the inside with clay and straw mixed, and over it is laid a finishing coat of thin lime plaster; some old houses seem to be made with log frames and the insterstices filled with wattles, river rushes, and clay intermixed. In a house of ninety years of age, taken down, the grass in the clay appeared as green as when cut. Probably twenty houses now remain of the primitive population. They are of but one story, so low that a man six feet high can readily touch the eves of the roof. Their gable ends are to the street. The ground story is of stone or of logs or sometimes the front room is of stone, and the back room is of logs, and thus they have generally one room behind the other. The roof is high and mostly hipped, forms a low bed chamber; the ends of the houses above the first story are of boards or sometimes of shingles, with a small chamber window at each end. Many roofs were then tiled. In modern times those houses made of logs have been lathed and plastered over, so as to look like stone houses; the doors all divide in the middle, so as to have an upper and a lower door and in some houses the upper door folds. The windows are two doors, opening inwards, and were at first set in leaden frames with outside frames of ⚫ wood. The Germans who originally arrived, came for conscience sake to this land, and were a very religious community. They were usually called Palatines, because they came from a Palatinate, called Cresheim and Crefelt. Many of the German Friends had been convinced by William Penn in Germany. Soon after their settlement, in 1683, some of them who were yet in Philadelphia, suffered considerably by a fire, and were then publicly assisted by the Friends. The original passports of the first inhabitants coming from Germany to Germantown were written with golden ink on parchment, and were very elegant. Wishert Levering, a first settler, lived to the age of 109, and died at Roxborough in 1744. Jacob Snyder lived to be 97. Francis Daniel Pastorius was a chief among the first settlers; he was a scholar, and wrote Latin in a good hand, and left a curious manuscript work called "the Bee," containing a beautiful collection of writing, and various curious selections. He once owned all Chestnut hill on both sides of the road. He was a member of assembly in 1687; and attorney for the Frankford Land Company. He died about the year 1720. I have been indebted to the kindness of James Haywood, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for an explanation of the old German pamphlet, 12mo., in the Cambridge Library, done by F. D. Pastorius, as a "Description of Pennsylvania." Its consists of sundry subjects, printed in Holland, viz.: A voyage from London to Pennsylvania, in 1683. Pastorius' Account of the condition of Pennsylvania, in 1683. The Charter by Charles II. to William Penn, of March 1681— Penn's Constitution,-a Geographic Description of the Country, its Trade, and a History with some account of the Aborigines,-and |