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PHILADELPHIA FOUNDING
Before Philadelphia was founded, the area was inhabited by the Lenape (Delaware) Indians. The Dutchman Mey (after whom Cape May, New Jersey is named) explored what is now Delaware Bay in the 1620s, and the Dutch built a fort on the west side of the bay at Swanendael. In 1637, Swedish, Dutch and German stockholders formed the New Sweden Company to trade for furs and tobacco in North America. Under the command of Peter Minuit, the company's first expedition sailed from Sweden late in 1637 in two ships, Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip. Minuit had been the governor of the Dutch colony, New Netherland, centered on Manhattan Island, from 1626 to 1631. The ships reached Delaware Bay in March 1638, and the settlers began to build a fort at the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. They named it Fort Christina, in honor of Sweden's twelve-year-old queen. It was the first permanent European settlement in the Delaware Valley.Part of this colony eventually included land on the west side of the Delaware River from just below the Schuylkill River.
The first English settlement was around 1642 when 50 Puritan families from the New Haven Colony in Connecticut led by George Lamberton attempted to establish a theocracy at the mouth of the Schuylkill River. The New Haven Colony had earlier struck a deal with the Native Americans to buy much of New Jersey south of Trenton (although the tribes Lenape were to be accused of selling the same land twice).The Dutch and Swedes in the area burned their buildings. A Swedish court under Swedish Governor Johan Bjornsson Printz was to convict Lamberton of "trespassing, conspiring with the Indians."The New Haven colony received no support and Puritan Governor John Winthrop testified that the New Haven colony was dissolved owing to summer "sickness and mortality." The disaster was to contribute to New Haven's ultimate loss of its home colony to the Connecticut Colony.
In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their victory in a war against the English Province of Maryland. A series of events led the Dutch — led by governor Peter Stuyvesant — to move an army to the Delaware River in the late summer of 1655. Though New Netherland now nominally controlled the colony, the Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to enjoy a degree of local autonomy, having their own militia, religion, court, and lands. This status lasted officially until the English conquest of the New Netherland colony, in October 1663-1664, and continued unofficially until the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania, in 1682.By 1682 the area of modern Philadelphia was inhabited by about fifty Europeans, mostly subsistence farmers.
In 1681, as part of a repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted William Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Shortly after receiving the charter, Penn said he would lay out "a large Towne or Citty in the most Convenient place upon the [Delaware] River for health & Navigation." Penn wanted the city to live peacefully in the area, without a fortress or walls, so he bought the land from the Lenape. The legend is that Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Kensington section. Penn envisioned a city where all people regardless of religion could worship freely and live together. Being a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution. He also planned that the city's streets would be set up in a grid, with the idea that the city would be more like the rural towns of England than its crowded cities. The homes would be spread far apart and surrounded by gardens and orchards. The city would grant the first purchasers, the landowners who first bought land in the colony, land along the river for their homes. The city, which he named Philadelphia (philos, "love" or "friendship", and adelphos, "brother"), would have a commercial center for a market, state house, and other key buildings.
Philadelphia's seal when founded.
Penn sent three commissioners to supervise the settlement and to set aside 10,000 acres (40 km?) for the city. The commissioners bought land from Swedes at the settlement of Wicaco and from there began to lay out the city towards the north. The area went about a mile along the Delaware River between modern South and Vine Streets. Penn arrived in Philadelphia in October 1682. He felt the area was too cramped and expanded the city west to the bank of the Schuylkill River, making the city a total of 1,200 acres (4.8 km?). Streets were laid out in a gridiron system. Except for the two widest streets, High (now Market) and Broad, the streets were named after prominent landowners who owned adjacent lots. The streets were later renamed in 1684; the ones running east-west were renamed after local trees and the north-south streets were numbered. Within the area, four squares (now named Rittenhouse, Logan, Washington and Franklin) were set up as parks open for everyone. Penn designed a central square at the intersection of Broad and what is now Market Street that would be surrounded by public buildings.
Some of the first settlers lived in caves dug out of the river bank, but the city grew with construction of homes, churches, and wharves. The new landowners did not share Penn's vision of a non-congested city. Most people bought land along the Delaware River instead of spreading westward towards the Schuylkill. The lots they bought were subdivided and resold with smaller streets constructed between them. Before 1704, few people lived west of Fourth Street.
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