Hardly had Penn outlined the map of what he hoped his little village of Philadelphia would grow to be, than he set about planning for the education of the people he was urging to follow him from Europe. He had induced William Bradford, a printer of Leicester, England, to make the sea voyage with him, and set up a printing-press in the province. In December, 1683, Enoch Flower opened a school in a two-room shack built of pine and cedar planks, and six years later a public school was founded, to be known in time as the William Penn Charter School, destined to continue to the present day. Although the post office had existed in England for only a few years, Penn thought it so valuable that he issued orders to have a post office installed in his province with deliveries once a week, and letters were sent at the very reasonable cost of twopence from Philadelphia to Chester and sixpence from Philadelphia to Maryland.
The first frame building that had been completed in Philadelphia was the "Blue Anchor," which was at one and the same time an inn, an exchange, a corn market, a post office, and a landing-place. It stood fronting the river, and was built of heavy rafters of wood and bricks that were brought from England. The colonists were men of energy and resource; they built substantial houses rapidly, and before long residences with pointed roofs, balconies, and porches were common sights, while an enterprising man named Carpenter built a quay three hundred feet long, where a ship of five hundred tons could be moored. Penn was justly proud of the achievements of his colonists. To Lord Halifax he wrote, "I must without vanity say, I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did on private credit;" while to Lord Sunderland he said, "With the help of God and such noble friends, I will show a province in seven years equal to her neighbor's of forty years' planting."
When he had started men to work on his new city, Penn traveled through West and East Jersey, saw Long Island, and incidentally stopped and preached to any Quakers he found in that part of North America. It used to be supposed that he made his famous treaty with the Indians at Kensington at about that time, but historians now believe that it was not made until the following year.
As soon as his new government was in order, the owner of the province of Pennsylvania, accompanied by his council, went to Maryland to discuss the boundary line with Lord Baltimore. The two proprietors met at West River, but could reach no satisfactory adjustments. Then Penn returned to his own colony and spent the winter in the little settlement of Chester. By this time other ships were bringing Quakers to Pennsylvania; twenty-three vessels had arrived within a short time, and their passengers were made very welcome by the settlers who were already established. The young proprietor—he was only thirty-eight years old—must have enjoyed his experience in his new country, if we may judge from his letters. He wrote to his wife, "O how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from the anxious and troublesome solicitations, hurries, and perplexities of woeful Europe!" And again he wrote, "I like it so well that a plentiful estate, and a great acquaintance on the other side, have no charms to remove; my family being once fixed with me, and if no other thing occur, I am like to be an adopted American."
In the spring he was very busy overseeing the building of the houses of Philadelphia, and moved from Chester to what was known as the Letitia House in Philadelphia. This house had been built for him facing the river south of what is now Market Street, in a lot that contained about half a city block. The house was built of brick and was later given by Penn to his daughter Letitia.
The Letitia House.
While the newly arrived settlers were building their frame houses, they lived in huts of bark and turf, and some even in caves excavated in the steeper parts of the river bank. There was none of the famine and illness, and few of the hardships, that attended the early settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia. There was plenty of game to be had in the woods and along the river, stone for buildings was plentiful, and the clay beds under the soil provided material for bricks. The colony was comfortable and prosperous, and Penn's system of government had been so well planned that laws were made and enforced with very little friction.