NOTE
[1] The spot where Fort Casimir (or Trinity) once stood, is now covered with water, the Delaware flowing over it. It was a little north of where the town of New Castle now stands. A boulder with an inscription has been placed near the shore, on the road, by the Colonial Dames, to mark the vicinity of the old fort.
How Once Upon A Time
William Penn Landed
In New Castle.
IT WAS in the year 1682, and Delaware had seen many changes since Peter Minuit and his little band of Swedes had landed on her wild shores. During those years the Swedes had been driven out by the Dutch, and the Dutch had afterward surrendered to the English; then the Dutch, growing stronger, had driven out the English; but again the English had taken possession and now owned all of what had once been New Netherlands and New Sweden. New Netherlands was now called New York, and it was the English Directors, (living in the town of New York, formerly New Amsterdam), who made the laws for Delaware.
Only a few English, however, had come to Delaware to live. The people of Wilmington (once Christinaham, or Christina Harbor) and of New Castle, were principally Dutch and Swedes. They were simple farmer people, raising crops and cattle and chickens, and they were very willing to keep the laws that the English at New York made for them. The Indians were still troublesome at times, but the settlers had their block-houses or forts to retreat to and were generally able to protect themselves.
But now it had come to their ears that a new governor was coming out from England to rule over them, and they wondered anxiously what sort of man he would prove to be. Governor Printz had been coarse and violent; Governor Stuyvesant, hot-tempered, ambitious, and overbearing; and terrible tales had been told of the cruelty of Governor Kieft. There had been a long line of governors since Minuit’s time, both in Delaware and in New York; and few of them had seemed to care for the good of the poorer people. And now this new man was coming and, for all they knew, might be the worst of all.
The name of the new Governor was William Penn. The Duke of York had given Delaware to him, and King Charles the Second, had given him a great tract of land farther to the North, which he called Pennsylvania. More than this, the people did not know; but they often talked about the new governor and wondered what he would be like, and when he would come, as they sat around their fires in the early fall evenings.
Then they began to learn more about him; for his cousin, Captain William Markham, came out to America to act as Governor till Penn could come himself. They learned that Penn belonged to the Quakers—a strange, new religious sect; and that it was the rule that Quakers must dress very plainly and say “thee” and “thou” to people instead of “you” and take off their hats to nobody, not even the King himself. That seemed a strange thing indeed to the settlers, and they wondered how the King liked it.
Penn had bought the land from King Charles, and his brother the Duke for an absurd price—a price so small that the poorest farmer among them all might have bought it if he had had the chance.
For all of Pennsylvania, with its wooded hills and fertile valleys and well-stocked streams, he had paid only twelve shillings[1] and, at Michaelmas, was to pay the King five shillings more.
For Delaware, he had paid ten shillings to the Duke of York; and every Michaelmas he was to pay to the Duke, a rose. He was also to pay over one half of the profits he drew from the southern part of Delaware. Yes, any of the honest farmers might have bought the land at that price, but then, the great people most probably would not have sold it at all to anyone but their friend, William Penn.
Captain Markham was buying for Penn, from the Indians such rights as they had in the land, and was paying them well—better than they had ever been paid before—so perhaps the new governor was a generous, fair minded man after all.
So, in talk and wonderings, the days slipped by. September had passed, and October was almost gone, before the governor’s English ship, the Welcome, was sighted coming up the river from the bay. The news of its coming spread from house to house, and from farm to farm, and even back into the country to the villages of the Indians.
All work was laid aside, and the people of New Castle and the country round about gathered down at the shore to watch the approach of the vessel. Captain Markham himself was there, gorgeous in his English uniform, having come down to New Castle to meet his cousin.
Nearer and nearer came the ship, looming up bigger and bigger, stately and slow, its sails spread wide, and the English colors fluttering at its masthead. Then it came about, and the great anchor dropped into the water with a splash. Boats were lowered, and the people of the vessel clambered down into them and were rowed toward the shore. In the very first boat came William Penn himself.
He was a tall, noble looking man, with large, dark, kindly eyes, and hair that fell in loose locks to his shoulders. He was very simply dressed, as were all the men with him. The only way in which his dress differed from theirs was that he wore a light blue silken sash around his waist. He was worn and thin, and some of his companions looked even ill.
This was not to be wondered at, for he told his cousin that soon after they had set sail from England, smallpox had broken out on board the Welcome. Of the one hundred men who had started with him, almost one-third had died on the voyage. The colonists heard afterward of the goodness of William Penn to the sick. He himself had never had smallpox, but everyday during the voyage he went down to the bedsides of the sufferers. He gave them medicines, talked with them and cheered them, and ministered to the dying.
It had indeed been a terrible voyage. Fortunately, the ship had been well stocked with provisions of every kind, and many luxuries.[2] Still, these could ease but little the sufferings of the sick, shut up for two months in that rolling, tossing vessel. A blessed sight the shores and wooded hills of Delaware must have been to those sick and weary voyagers.
As Penn landed, Captain Markham came forward eagerly to greet him. It was a strange and varied crowd that had gathered there to meet their governor—Swedes, Dutch, Germans and Welsh, many of them dressed in their national costumes, and back of them the tall, red skinned Indian, Sachem Taminent, with his party of Leni Lenapes in their paint and feathers.
Penn was escorted by his cousin and the principal men of the village, to the house that had been made ready for him, there to eat and rest after his long journey.
The next day, October 28, 1682, the new governor went to the Courthouse to speak to the people. The room was thronged with those who crowded in to hear him. Before he began, however, two gentlemen, John Moll and Ephraim Herman, performed what is called “livery of seisin;” that is, they gave to Penn earth, water, a piece of turf, and a twig, in token that he was ruler there of land and water and of the fruits of tree and field.
After that, Penn spoke to the people with such kindness, that their simple hearts were filled with joy. He bade them remember that they were “but as little children in the wilderness,” and under the care of one Father. He told them that he wished to found a free and virtuous state in which the people should learn to rule themselves. He promised that every man in his provinces should “enjoy liberty of conscience,” and have a voice in the ruling of the colony.
The people listened to him in deep silence; and when he ended his speech, they had but one thing to beg of him, and that was that he would stay among them at New Castle and rule over them. This he told them he could not do; and then they begged him to join their territory to Pennsylvania, that the white settlers might have one country and one ruler. He promised to consider this, and then he bade them good-bye and returned to the ship.
The sails of the vessel were spread wide like great wings of peace, the wind filled them, and slowly the ship began to move. The colonists upon the shore still lingered there, gazing after her, and straining their eyes to see, as long as they could, the tall man that stood there in the stem with a light blue sash around his waist At last they could see him no longer, and then they turned and went back to their daily toil.
Penn did not forget them or his promise to them. At the first General Assembly held at Chester, it was declared that the two provinces were united, and that the laws that governed one should be for the other too.
In 1701, Penn visited New Castle again and was received with joy by its people.
A few years later he made the town a gift of one thousand acres of land lying to the north of it, to be used as a public commons by its people and to belong to them.
This tract of land still belongs to the town of New Castle, but since 1792 it has been rented out in farms, and is no longer a public commons.
William Penn did much to bring the Indians into truer friendship with the settlers. He treated them justly. He trusted them and went among them unarmed and unprotected. He walked with them, attended their meetings and ate of their hominy and roasted acorns. One time it happened the Indians were showing him how they could hop and jump, and after sitting watching them for a time, the Governor rose up and out-jumped them all.
Penn’s word was trusted by Indians and settlers alike, and they knew their interests were as safe in his hands as in their own.[3]
New Castle has just cause for pride in the fact that William Penn’s first landing in America was made upon her shore.
