| THE claim of the Dutch
to the soil of Pennsylvania
rested on the discovery of
Delaware Bay by Hendrik Hudson in
1600. Seven years later, Cornelis
Hendricksen explored the Delaware
River as far as the Schuylkill,
and ephemeral colonies soon arose
along the lower shores. Swedish
ships entered the Delaware in
1638, and their people founded
the first towns in Pennsylvania.
The Puritan immigrants from
Connecticut, settling on the
Schuylkill in 1641, were ousted
and sent home by the Swedes and
Dutch. When the
brave Admiral Sir William Penn
died, the British Government owed
him £16,000. In 1680, his son,
William Penn, petitioned King
Charles II. to discharge this
debt by granting him a tract of
land in America, north of
Maryland and west of the Delaware
River; and so the next year, Penn
was made absolute proprietor of
the new province. During the
forty years after 1683, more than
50,000 Germans and Swiss settled
in Pennsylvania.
After
the death of the wise Quaker
founder, in 1718, the government
lay in the hands of his kinsmen,
John, Richard and Thomas Penn,
and their heirs, until 1776.
Although
contiguous to one of the most
conservative slave States,
Pennsylvania was strongly opposed
to human servitude, and its
Quaker population took strong
ground against the Southern
institution. The battle of
Gettysburg has made the peaceful
little Pennsylvania village of
that name immortal. The field
where the battle was fought
contains a large number of
monuments.
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