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. We 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: Germantown (proper) contained Cresheim Somerhausen • 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. 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 18. 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 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, 12ino., 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 1681Penn's Constitution,-a Geographic Description of the Country, its Trade, and a History with some account of the Aborigines,-and Extracts of several letters of Pastorius to his friends in Germany, An extract of William Penn's account of Pennsylvania, in a letter to bis friends in London, &c. The whole seems to be an extract (im anszug) with notes, done from some larger work. Arents Klincken came from Holland with William Penn in his first voyage in 1682. He had seen and known Penn in Holland. He built the first two story house ever raised in Germantown; and Penn was present and partook of the raising dinner; the same old stone house on Justus Johnson's premises. He died at the age of 80. He left a son whose name was Anthony Klincken, a great hunter, who spent a long life in such exercises. He used to have the garret of the house filled in the winter with wild game, and had it marked with the date when he killed it, so as to eat it in due succession as an epicure. The same house next to Justus Johnson's premises. He even purchased a German Yager, celebrated for shooting, to aid him in his field sports; he had iron prickers to the hands and feet to aid in climbing lofty trees for crows' scalps, which bore a premium. He used to wade the Wissahiccon in the depth of winter; finally contracted rheumatism and gout, which so ossified the flesh of his knuckles, that he could scrape chalk from them when old! He never went to Philadelphia with. out taking his gun with him in the spring and fall, and never came home without several geese or ducks, which he had killed in a spatterdock pond, then at the corner of Fourth and High streets! He called it the best game pond any where to be found. This was pro bably about the years 1700 to 1710. He used also to speak with wonder of seeing hundreds of rats in the flats among the spatterdocks at Pool's bridge, and that he was in the habit of killing them for amusement as fast as he could load. He was born about the year 1677, and died about 1759, aged about 82 years. As early as 1700 there were four hermits living near Germantown -John Seelig, Kelpius, Bony, and Conrad Mathias. They lived near Wissahiccon and the Ridge. Benjamin Lay lived in a cave near the York Road, at Branchtown. John Kelpius, the hermit, was a German of Sieburgen in Transylvania, of an eminent family, (tradition says he was noble,) and a student of Dr. John Fabritius, at Helmstadt. He was also a correspondent of Mæcken, chaplain to the Prince of Denmark in London. He came to this country in 1694 with John Seelig, Barnard Kuster, (Coster,) Daniel Falkener, and about forty-two others, being generally men of education and learning, to devote themselves, for piety's sake, to a solitary or single life; and receiving the appellation of the "Society of the Woman in the wilderness." They first arrived among the Germans at Germantown, where they shone awhile " as a peculiar light," but they settled chiefly "on the Ridge," then a wilderness. In 1708, Kelpius, who was regarded as their leader, died “in the midst of his days," (said to be 35,)—after his death the members |