Life In Philadelphia
The rapid increase of population and the growing prosperity in
Pennsylvania during the life of its founder present a striking
contrast to the slower and more troubled growth of the other British
colonies in America. The settlers in Pennsylvania engaged at once in
profitable agriculture. The loam, clay, and limestone soils on the
Pennsylvania tide of the Delaware produced heavy crops of grain, as
well as pasture for cattle and valuable lumber from its forests. The
Pennsylvania settlers were of a class particularly skilled in
dealing with the soil. They apparently encountered none of the
difficulties, due probably to incompetent farming, which beset the
settlers of Delaware, whose land was as good as that of the
Pennsylvania colonists.
In a few years the port of Philadelphia was loading abundant cargoes
for England and the great West India trade. After much experimenting
with different places on the river, such as New Castle, Wilmington,
Salem, Burlington, the Quakers had at last found the right location
for a great seat of commerce and trade that could serve as a center
for the export of everything from the region behind it and around
it. Philadelphia thus soon became the basis of a prosperity which no
other townsite on the Delaware had been able to attain. The Quakers
of Philadelphia were the soundest of financiers and men of business,
and in their skillful hands the natural resources of their colony
were developed without setback or accident. At an early date banking
institutions were established in Philadelphia, and the strongest
colonial merchants and mercantile firms had their offices there. It
was out of such a sound business life that were produced in
Revolutionary times such characters as Robert Morris and after the
Revolution men like Stephen Girard.
Pennsylvania in colonial times was ruled from Philadelphia somewhat
as France has always been ruled from Paris. And yet there was a
difference: Pennsylvania had free government. The Germans and the
Scotch-Irish outnumbered the Quakers and could have controlled the
Legislature, for in 1750 out of a population of 150,000 the Quakers
were only about 50,000; and yet the Legislature down to the
Revolution was always confided to the competent hands of the
Quakers. No higher tribute, indeed, has ever been paid to any group
of people as governors of a commonwealth and architects of its
finance and trade.
It is a curious commentary on the times and on human nature that
these Quaker folk, treated as outcasts and enemies of good order and
religion in England and gradually losing all their property in heavy
fines and confiscations, should so suddenly in the wilderness prove
the capacity of their "Holy Experiment" for achieving the best sort
of good order and material success. They immediately built a most
charming little town by the waterside, snug and pretty with its red
brick houses in the best architectural style. It was essentially a
commercial town down to the time of the Revolution and long
afterwards. The principal residences were on Water Street, the
second street from the wharves. The town in those days extended back
only as far as Fourth Street, and the State House, now Independence
Hall, an admirable instance of the local brick architecture, stood
on the edge of the town. The Pennsylvania Hospital, the first
institution of its kind to be built in America, was situated out in
the fields.
Through the town ran a stream following the line of the present Dock
Street. Its mouth had been a natural landing place for the first
explorers and for the Indians from time immemorial. Here stood a
neat tavern, the Blue Anchor, with its dovecotes in old English
style, looking out for many a year over the river with its fleet of
small boats. Along the wharves lay the very solid, broad, somber,
Quaker-like brick warehouses, some of which have survived into
modern times. Everywhere were to be found ships and the good
seafaring smell of tar and hemp. Ships were built and fitted out
alongside docks where other ships were lading. A privateer would
receive her equipment of guns, pistols, and cutlasses on one side of
a wharf, while on the other side a ship was peacefully loading wheat
or salted provisions for the West Indies.
Everybody's attention in those days was centered on the water
instead of inland on railroads as it is today. Commerce was the
source of wealth of the town as agriculture was the wealth of the
interior of the province. Every one lived close to the river and had
an interest in the rise and fall of the tide. The little town
extended for a mile along the water but scarcely half a mile back
from it. All communication with other places, all news from the
world of Europe came from the ships, whose captains brought the
letters and the few newspapers which reached the colonists. An
important ship on her arrival often fired a gun and dropped anchor
with some ceremony. Immediately the shore boats swarmed to her side;
the captain was besieged for news and usually brought the letters
ashore to be distributed at the coffeehouse. This institution took
the place of the modern stock exchange, clearing house, newspaper,
university, club, and theater all under one roof, with plenty to eat
and drink besides. Within its rooms vessels and cargoes were sold;
before its door negro slaves were auctioned off; and around it as a
common center were brought together all sorts of business, valuable
information, gossip, and scandal. It must have been a brilliant
scene in the evening, with the candles lighting embroidered red and
yellow waistcoats, blue and scarlet Coats, green and black velvet,
with the rich drab and mouse color of the prosperous Quakers
contrasting with the uniforms of British officers come to fight the
French and Indian wars. Sound, as well as color, had its place in
this busy and happy colonial life. Christ Church, a brick building
which still stands the perfection of colonial architecture had been
established by the Church of England people defiantly in the midst
of heretical Quakerdom. It soon possessed a chime of bells sent out
from England. Captain Budden, who brought them in his ship Myrtilla,
would charge no freight for so charitable a deed, and in consequence
of his generosity every time he and his ship appeared in the harbor
the bells were rung in his honor. They were rung on market days to
please the farmers who came into town with their wagons loaded with
poultry and vegetables. They were rung muffled in times of public
disaster and were kept busy in that way in the French and Indian
wars. They were also rung muffled for Franklin when it was learned
that while in London he had favored the Stamp Act--a means of
expressing popular opinion which the newspapers subsequently put out
of date.
The severe Quaker code of conduct and peaceful contemplation
contains no prohibition against good eating and drinking. Quakers
have been known to have the gout. The opportunities in Philadelphia
to enjoy the pleasures of the table were soon unlimited. Farm,
garden, and dairy products, vegetables, poultry, beef, and mutton
were soon produced in immense quantity and variety and of excellent
quality. John Adams, coming from the "plain living and high
thinking" of Boston to attend the first meeting of the Continental
Congress in Philadelphia, was invited to dine with Stephen Collins,
a typical Quaker, and was amazed at the feast set before him. From
that time his diary records one after another of these "sinful
feasts," as he calls them. But the sin at which he thus looks
askance never seems to have withheld him from a generous indulgence.
"Drank Madeira at a great rate," he says on one occasion, "and took
no harm from it." Madeira obtained in the trade with Spain was the
popular drink even at the taverns. Various forms of punch and rum
were common, but the modern light wines and champagne were not then
in vogue.
Food in great quantity and variety seems to have been placed on the
table at the same time, with little regard to formal courses. Beef,
poultry, and mutton would all be served at one dinner. Fruit and
nuts were placed on the table in profusion, as well as puddings and
desserts numerous and deadly. Dinners were served usually in the
afternoon. The splendid banquet which Adams describes as given to
some members of the Continental Congress by Chief Justice Chew at
his country seat was held at four in the afternoon. The dinner hour
was still in the afternoon long after the Revolution and down to the
times of the Civil War. Other relics of this old love of good living
lasted into modern times. It was not so very long ago that an
occasional householder of wealth and distinction in Philadelphia
could still be found who insisted on doing his own marketing in the
old way, going himself the first thing in the morning on certain
days to the excellent markets and purchasing all the family
supplies. Philadelphia poultry is still famous the country over; and
to be a good judge of poultry was in the old days as much a point of
merit as to be a good judge of Madeira. A typical Philadelphian,
envious New Yorkers say, will still keep a line of depositors
waiting at a bank while he discourses to the receiving teller on
what a splendid purchase of poultry he had made that morning. Early
in the last century a wealthy leader of the bar is said to have
continued the old practice of going to market followed by a negro
with a wheelbarrow to bring back the supplies. Not content with
feasting in their own homes, the colonial Philadelphians were
continually banqueting at the numerous taverns, from the Coach and
Horses, opposite the State House, down to the Penny Pot Inn close by
the river. At the Coach and Horses, where the city elections were
usually held, the discarded oyster shells around it had been
trampled into a hard white and smooth floor over which surged the
excited election crowds. In those taverns the old fashion prevailed
of roasting great joints of meat on a turnspit before an open fire;
and to keep the spit turning before the heat little dogs were
trained to work in a sort of treadmill cage.
In nothing is this colonial prosperity better revealed than in the
quality of the country seats. They were usually built of stone and
sometimes of brick and stone, substantial, beautifully proportioned,
admirable in taste, with a certain simplicity, yet indicating a
people of wealth, leisure, and refinement, who believed in
themselves and took pleasure in adorning their lives. Not a few of
these homes on the outskirts of the city have come down to us
unharmed, and Cliveden, Stenton, and Belmont are precious relics of
such solid structure that with ordinary care they will still last
for centuries. Many were destroyed during the Revolution; others,
such as Landsdowne, the seat of one of the Penn family, built in the
Italian style, have disappeared; others were wiped out by the city's
growth. All of them, even the small ones, were most interesting and
typical of the life of the times. The colonists began to build them
very early. A family would have a solid, brick town house and, only
a mile or so away, a country house which was equally substantial.
Sometimes they built at a greater distance. Governor Keith, for
example, had a country seat, still standing though built in the
middle of the eighteenth century, some twenty-five miles north of
the city in what was then almost a wilderness.
Penn's ideal had always been to have Philadelphia what he called "a
green country town." Probably he had in mind the beautiful English
towns of abundant foliage and open spaces. And Penn was successful,
for many of the Philadelphia houses stood by themselves, with
gardens round them. The present Walnut was first called Pool Street;
Chestnut was called Winn Street; and Market was called High Street.
If he could have foreseen the enormous modern growth of the city, he
might not have made his streets so narrow and level. But the fault
lies perhaps rather with the people for adhering so rigidly and for
so long to Penn's scheme, when traffic that he could not have
imagined demanded wider streets. If he could have lived into our
times he would surely have sent us very positive directions in his
bluff British way to break up the original rectangular, narrow plan
which was becoming dismally monotonous when applied to a widely
spread-out modern city. He was a theologian, but he had a very keen
eye for appearances and beauty of surroundings.
Back to: The Quaker Colonies
