Penn's Seal.
CHAPTER VIII First Visit to Pennsylvania
The proprietor of the new province sailed from Deal, in England, on August 30, 1682, leaving his wife and children at their home in the country. His ship was the Welcome and carried about one hundred passengers. The voyage across the Atlantic took nearly two months, for it was the 24th day of October when the Welcome sighted the capes of the Delaware. During the voyage thirty of the passengers died of smallpox, a common sickness for a ship to carry in those days.
The Welcome took three days to sail up the Delaware to New Castle, which was the chief settlement thereabouts. This place was in the territory that had been granted to Penn by the Duke of York, and here the agents of the duke gave the title to the land to its new owner in their master's name by the old ceremony of "turf and twig and water," a custom long continued in Pennsylvania, and which meant that the former owner, by giving the new owner a piece of turf, a bit of twig, and a cup of water, transferred to him full possession of whatever was to be found on the land in question.
After this ceremony Penn sailed on up the river to the small village of Upland, where his agent, William Markham, was waiting for him. When he had landed at Upland, he asked his friend Pearson to choose a name for the town there, and Pearson, who hailed from the town of Chester in England, gave the settlement the name of that English place.
From Chester William Penn began to explore his new possessions. He found a soil that was rich, woods and fields filled with animals and birds of many kinds, and a wide river with many tributary streams that led far into the interior of his province. Along the Delaware wild birds were plentiful, and every day Indians brought deer from the forests and sold them to the settlers for small amounts of tobacco. The settlers who were already living in the clearings along the Delaware were chiefly Swedes and Dutch, with a few English, who fished in the river, hunted in the bays, and pastured their cattle in the open meadows along the river banks.
Penn was rowed in a barge up the Delaware past a place called Old Tinicum, which had been the residence of the Swedish governor, past that point where the Schuylkill joins the Delaware at what is now League Island, and on to a stretch where the Delaware grew narrower and deeper and where there was high land with a good frontage for deep-draft boats. Here the shore was covered with pines, chestnuts, walnuts, oaks, and laurel, and a small stream flowed into the river. This was the place that Penn's commissioners had chosen for the site of his city. He landed at the mouth of the small stream called Dock Creek, which to-day flows into the sewer under Dock Street, on the water front of Philadelphia, and where then stood a log tavern known as "The Sign of the Blue Anchor." Tradition says that some English settlers and Indians were on the shore to greet the new owner, and that he sat down with the Indians and ate the hominy and roasted acorns that they offered him. Then they indulged in some athletic sports for his entertainment, and Penn himself took part in a jumping match. Tradition has it that he out-jumped the best of the natives!
He liked the site of his "green country town" very much, and also the plans that had been made by his agents. Some of the names they had given to streets he changed. He altered Pool to Walnut and Winn to Chestnut Street, because of the trees that grew near those thoroughfares. One of the main roads he named High Street, which was later changed to Market Street. He planned the open square at Broad and Market streets where the City Hall now stands, but he intended to have it include ten acres of ground. He left a wide boulevard along the Delaware River, and staked out the city on the plan of a checkerboard, leaving four open spaces, which were later given the names of Washington, Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Logan squares.