Besides the territory granted, the charter gave Penn the power to make laws, set up courts, to trade, to erect towns, to collect customs duties; to make war, to sell lands and to impose taxes.
Copies of all laws were to be sent to England, and if disapproved within six months they became void. No war was to be made upon any State at peace with England. Any twenty of the people could request the Bishop of London to send them a preacher of the Church of England, who was to reside within the province without being molested.
Penn offered attractive concessions to the settlers. Land was sold to them at the rate of $10 for 100 acres and every purchaser of lands should have a lot in the city, to be laid out along the river. In clearing the ground care was to be taken “to leave one acre of trees for every five acres cleared.” This was the beginning of forestry in America.
At the time of the charter the present limits of the State were inhabited by the Indians, with some Swedes and Dutch settled along the Delaware.
The first real settlement under the new proprietor was made in 1681, when Penn sent William Markham, his cousin, to take possession of the province. The next year Penn himself arrived, bringing in his ship, the Welcome, a hundred colonists of his own faith, to found Philadelphia, the city of “Brotherly Love.”
Penn bought the land from the Indians, making a treaty of peace with them which remained unbroken for more than fifty years. “We shall never forget the counsel he gave us,” said an Indian chief at Conestoga in 1721.
Colonel Daniel Brodhead Arrives at Fort Pitt
to Fight Indians, March 5, 1779
Colonel Daniel Brodhead was sent to Fort Pitt to relieve General Edward Hand, and he arrived there March 5, 1779. He was a trained soldier and knew how to fight Indians.