He was an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and served as President in 1799. He was the lover of fine horses and was himself an excellent horseman.
As a citizen he was highly esteemed, and as a physician greatly sought after and much beloved. He was a great Pennsylvanian.
First Permanent Settlement and Earliest
Church, Dedicated September 4, 1646
The first European settlement in what is now Pennsylvania was made on Tinicum Island, now Essington, not far distant from the mouth of Darby Creek on the Delaware River. The beautiful buildings of the Corinthian Yacht Club are now located on this historic spot.
A monument was unveiled June 14, 1923, to mark the place where the first permanent settlement in what is now Pennsylvania was made. This shaft was erected by the Swedish Colonial Society and was unveiled by Miss Nancy J. Paxson, tenth in descent from one of the original founders of the colony.
Here it was that Colonel John Printz, a Swedish military officer of note, who had recently been knighted by the Swedish Government for the conspicuous role he enacted in the Thirty Years’ War, accompanied by a few adventurers of the same nationality, located in 1643, erected a fort of green logs and named the settlement he founded New Gottenberg. The fort was mounted with four cannon. Provisions were made for the planting of corn and tobacco.
A short time thereafter Printz built a pretentious mansion on Tinicum Island, “very splendid,” with an orchard and pleasure house, and it bore the name of Printz Hof or Printz Hall. This mansion house was two stories high and built of hewn logs, while two or more fireplaces and ovens were made of bricks imported from Sweden for that purpose. There were even glass windows. The utensils were of copper and tin. Their light was candle. Printz Hall also contained a fine library and every convenience known at that period. This great house stood 160 years, when it was accidentally destroyed by fire.
Printz planted orchards, cleared fields and firmly established himself on the place he determined should be the seat of government for the Swedish colony on the South River, as the Delaware was then known.