YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Philadelphia A History of the City and its People A Record of 225 Years By BLLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER, Ph. D. Author of " The Literary History of Philadelphia " " Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier ' "Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War " ILLUSTRATED VOLUME II THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY Philadelphia Chicago — St. Louis TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII The War of 1812 9 CHAPTER XVIII Amusements of the People 31 CHAPTER XIX Physical Progress , 53 CHAPTER XX Social Life in 1825 79 CHAPTER XXI Newspapers, Professions and Institutions 111 CHAPTER XXII Lafayette's Visit 132 CHAPTER XXIII The Age of Steam 149 CHAPTER XXIV Girard's Death 169 CHAPTER XXV Theatres, Books, Magazines, Newspapers 190 CHAPTER XXVI Further Material Advancement 225 CHAPTER XXVII Splendors of the Forties 248 CHAPTER XXVIII Negro and Anti-Catholic Riots 272 CHAPTER XXIX Consolidation 3°° CHAPTER XXX The City Before the Civil War 325 CHAPTER XXXI The Civil War 349 CHAPTER XXXII The Centennial Exposition 388 CHAPTER XXXIII The Modern City 420 The Mayors of Philadelphia 440 ILLUSTRATIONS Facing page Map of Philadelphia, 1811 8 Stephen Girard 16 Fourth of July at Centre Square 20 Zachariah Poulson 24 Henry Pratt 24 Paul Beck, Jr , 24 Thomas P. Cope 24 Invitations to the Wistar Party 28 William Warren ., 32 William B. Wood 32 Thomas Apthorpe Cooper 32 Mrs. Warren 32 Chestnut Street Theatre (Second Building) 36 Walnut Street Theatre 36 Tivoli Garden 40 Centre Square, about 1815 40 C. W. Peale in his Museum 46 View of Upper Ferry Bridge So View of Schuylkill Bridges from the head of Chestnut Street 54 Chain Bridge at the Falls 54 Masonic Hall, (First Building) 58 Manayunk 62 Fairmount Basin 62 "Sedgeley" 66 "Solitude" 66 United States Bank, Chestnut Street 70 Hall of Academy of Natural Sciences in Twelfth Street 70 Election Day at the State House 74 Procession of Victuallers 78 Conestoga Wagon 84 Lottery Advertisement 02 Gardens at Fairmount 96 Dr. Caspar Wistar 106 Dr. Philip Syng Physick 106 Dr. Nathaniel Chapman 106' Dr. George McClellan 106 Diagram of Wards as they were after 1825 , 112 First Presbyterian Church in Market Street 118 Girard's Gig 118 City Hotel in Third Street 118 The Marquis de Lafayette 124 The Lafayette Arch in front of the State House 128 5 6 ILLUSTRATIONS Fairmount Dam I3° Inclined Plane at Belmont '4s "Old Ironsides" at the Station at Ninth and Green Streets H& Railway Station at Eleventh and Market Streets '5° Advertisement of Germantown Railroad Trains '50 Eight-wheeled Railway Car J50 Girard College, 1838 l64 Eastern Penitentiary , J"4 Blockley Almshouse r°8 University of Pennsylvania in Ninth Street I0° Merchants' Exchange l72 United States Mint in Chestnut Street 176 Naval Asylum 176 Edwin Forrest 186 Arcade 100 Commissioners' Hall, Southwark 190 Commissioners' Hall, Richmond 100 Map of City in 1840 196 Edgar Allan Poe 204 Poe's House in Seventh Street 208 Nicholas Biddle 208 Hall of American Philosophical Society 208 Wire Bridge at Fairmount 220 State House in Winter 220 Delaware Front from the Navy Yard 230 Central High School, Juniper Street 236 Launch of the "Pennsylvania" 236 Philadelphia Looking East from the State House Steeple 242 Philadelphia Looking North from the State House Steeple 246 Philadelphia Looking West from the State House Steeple 250 Commissioners' Hall in Northern Liberties 254 Spring Garden Water Works 254 Unitarian Church 270 Market Street Ferry 270 John Swift 274 Burning of Pennsylvania Hall 278 John G. Whittier 278 Firemen's Parade in 1852 204 Shakespeare Building 298 A Watchman and His Box 298 Philadelphia from Camden, 1850 302 Invitation to Consolidation Ball 306 Invitation to Dancing Assembly 306 Diagram of Streets to Illustrate the Decimal System of Numbering 310 A Street Car 320 Richard Vaux 320 Front Street End of the Market Houses in Market Street 320 Masonic Hall, Chestnut Street 334 A Typical Fireman _ ,34 Dr. Kane's Body Lying in State 334 Frankford Insane Asylum 33g Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in West Philadelphia 338 Continental Hotel .-_ Pennsylvania Hospital, 1852 " --„ Independence Hall, Declaration Room, i860 ,.. Ja* Cooke '.'.'.'.. '.'.'.'.'.'.'.. ""\'.'.'.\\'.'.'.tfo ILLUSTRATIONS 7 Lincoln's Catafalque 378 Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon 378 Girard Avenue Bridge 396 Horticultural Hall and Academy of Music 400 Post Office, Chestnut Street, Adjoining United States Bank 400 Main Building, Centennial Exposition 400 Memorial Hall 404 City Hall 410 Girard College (A Recent View) 410 Philadelphia from a Balloon from a Point above Girard College 416 Fairmount Park from a Balloon • 424 _saB8ffiipD dodqsid poaacro GGnffiDDGGL] IDT anQGaoDEiIai! DDQaaoiiD ganDO JUUUU! ^mt ^i—iaaaaiG' jooti'Bc _. ? ._DDOfl3DBlia IDC DOS ^SSauiEDirnsDEJiSaDSgi &m3$l'iKjBO^M- /jniiGia: j j zj^cfJcJigcEGCo jaa|orjEziye§§i8E93aigaBS^iif s&g* . _ _ - fi j Jr-f fl (m, A * *---—; -*»" MAP OF THE CITY IN 1811 Made by John A. Paxton CHAPTER XVII. THE WAR OF 1812. The second war with England, toward which the country had been gravitat ing for many years, was brought very closely home to Philadelphians by reason of their important shipping interests. Large sums of money were invested in, and a considerable portion of the population was directly or indirectly sustained by over-sea commerce. It was to be a war on the ocean, directed against inter national trade, and much of the weight of the conflict fell upon the most popu lous, the wealthiest, and in other ways the leading city of America. The various embargoes of England and France during the period of the Napoleonic wars, the general invasion of the rights of neutral powers, and the impressment of their seamen by the belligerents, led to a feeling of great resentment in the United States. For years the English and French parties in this country had been con ducting a savage warfare upon each other, and while the outrages of either power upon American shipping were now sufficiently great to warrant a declaration of hostilities against it, those of England seemed the greater and appealed more strongly for redress at the hands of the administration and the people. On June 28, 1807, the news reached Philadelphia of the British "Leopard" firing its guns on the American frigate "Chesapeake" five days before, outside the Virginia Capes. Several men were killed and wounded, and some sailors who were said to be deserters from the British service, were carried off. The excitement was intense, and war seemed immediately at hand. A meeting in the State House yard was called for July 1st. Matthew Lawler presided while Joseph Hopkin- son served as secretary. Dr. Leib offered the resolutions. The old militia com panies were hastily mobilized and new ones were formed. At the Cock and Lion, the Harp and Eagle, the Sorrel Horse, and other taverns, men gathered together to offer their services for the defence of the city and the state. General Macpherson and other old "Blues" proposed to reorganize that famous com mand. Companies, many of which at this time were numbered quite arbitrarily — since there were the 67th, 80th, 88th and even a 140th and a 156th — were formed into brigades under Brigadier-Generals Michael Bright and Michael Leib. John Barker, who supplanted John Shee as major-general, had command over all, and issued a ringing address : "Fly to your arms, my young soldiers ! Justice is your path. Let prudence be your guide, mercy your watchword, and the Omnipotent Generalissimo that led your fathers through a long and cruel war will take charge of you and lead you to conquest and honor." 9 10 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA As provoking as were the restrictions upon trade, chargeable to England and France, the shipping interests were still more aggrieved when this government began to retaliate with its embargoes and non-intercourse acts. The substantial shipowners were nearly all Federalists and shared the resentment against Jeffer son and the Republican party for their course in regard to Great Britain, which found more violent expression in New England, and there at length led to the Hartford Convention. The sailors, too, were in great discontent because of a lack of employment, and assembled idly and at times riotously upon the wharves. In January, 1808, a large number of them marched up to the city hall and de manded a redress of their grievances. The mayor, at this time Robert Wharton, commanded the men to disperse. He told them that their case was being con sidered by the Chamber of Commerce whose members were the leading merchants of the city, and money would be subscribed for the relief of the needy. After some persuasion by this able magistrate, the crowd scattered, but it was only one manifestation of an unrest on the riverside which was an inevitable accompani ment of the period. It was a time of riots. The year 1809 was marked by many disturbances. The country was greatly excited over the choice of a new president, and party feeling ran high. In January the Republicans held a great meeting in the State House yard to express the popular favor for an embargo recently established by Jefferson. A little later the Federalists, in the name of "the friends of the Con stitution, Union and Commerce," called another meeting in the yard. The Repub licans could not look on idly while their opponents arrogated to themselves so much public distinction. In ward meetings everywhere they declared that they were the "real friends of the Constitution, Union and Commerce." It was quite plain, long before the meeting assembled, that attempts would be made to break it up. With this warning the Federal leaders, whose names included Thomas Fitzsimmons, Timothy Paxson, Joshua Humphreys, Robert Wain, Benjamin R. Morgan, James Milnor, Charles W. Hare, Commodore Richard Dale, Commo dore Thomas Truxtun, James Read, George Clymer, General Francis Gurney, John Dunlap, Samuel Wheeler and Moses Levy, engaged a body of sailors, about a thousand in number, as a defence against possible interruption. Commodore Truxtun presided, and George Clymer was appointed secretary. The Republicans came upon the ground with their drums beating and colors flying, and tried to capture the stand, but they were roughly treated by the sailors upon every at tempt, and withdrew to some distance where they kept up their drumming, hiss ing and cat-calls throughout the proceedings. When the meeting was over, the sailors put Truxtun into a chair and carried him to one of the coffee houses, where he further addressed them to their great satisfaction. At the departure of the Federalists, the Republican crowd pressed in, took possession of the stand and organized a meeting of their own, at which Alexander James Dallas, Mayor John Barker, and others officiated. Afterward a procession was formed and the mob marched with music through the principal streets. The Aurora declared that eighteen thousand men had participated in the parade, but this is clearly an exaggeration, for from other accounts it would appear to have reached nothing like this magnitude. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 11 Timothy Pickering, now a Federalist senator in Congress who expressed him self in opposition to Jefferson's embargo in unmistakable terms, was particularly marked for the opprobrium of the Republicans. In January, 1809, they printed and circulated the following hand-bill : * TAKE NOTICE! On the sixth of February A GIBBET will be erected at 3 o'clock in the afternoon at the Town-House in the Northern Liberties on which will be HUNG IN EFFIGY TIMOTHY PICKERING, Having the British Orders of Council hanging to his neck, and the French Decrees to his heels — at the hour of seven of the same evening the whole will be set on fire and BURNT. All people are invited to the exit of a traitor. The friends of Timothy are particularly invited, if they have hearts in their carcasses to come and rescue their favor ite traitor from the Flames. N. B. — Timothy's friends will not be disappointed in the hour, as there will be no burning before seven o'clock. Second street near the town hall was filled with the rabble, and Pickering was hung fifty feet high. The old Olmsted case in this year led to a conflict of state and federal au thority which almost produced a local war. Gideon Olmsted was a Connecticut fisherman who, with some other sailors, had overpowered the crew of the British sloop "Active" during the Revolution. Two American vessels, the Pennsylvania state cruiser, the "Convention," and a privateer, the "Gerard," overtook her and carried her into Philadelphia. A contest was begun for the prize money in the Pennsylvania courts. One-fourth was awarded to the crew of the "Convention," one-fourth to her owner, the state of Pennsylvania, one-fourth to the "Gerard," and one-fourth to Olmsted and his associates. Congress, however, which had been appealed to, said that the whole sum belonged to the sailors. A legal battle, marked by all the technical confusion and delay which lawyers delight to invent, followed. The proceeds of the sale of the sloop and its cargo were paid to David Rittenhouse as the treasurer of the state, and finally by him to those to whom the awards had been made. A bond of indemnity was given to the state judge. Suit was entered on this bond to Olmsted's use, and time passed on. The case stood in Rittenhouse's name when he resigned his office, and at his death it passed to his daughters, his executrices, Mrs. Sergeant and Mrs. Waters, who lived in adjoining houses at the northwest corner of Seventh and Arch streets. 1 Life of Timothy Pickering, IV, p. 158. 12 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Olmsted, now an old man, finally advanced his suit to the United States supreme court, where he was fortunate to find John Marshall as chief justice. "If," said this strong, clear-headed Federalist, whose services in cementing and strengthen ing the Union at a necessary time cannot be overvalued, "the legislatures of the several states may at will annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution becomes a solemn mockery. * * * The state of Pennsylvania can possess no constitutional right to resist the legal process which may be directed in this case. * * * The order which this court is enjoined to make by the high obligations of duty and of law, is not made without extreme regret at the necessity which has induced the application. But it is a solemn duty and therefore must be per formed." i In 1809 the federal authorities made ready to move upon the ladies in "Fort Rittenhouse," as the corner house which had been their father's home soon came to be called. The state prepared to resist federal action amid much popular ex citement. General Michael Bright led the Pennsylvania forces, and the United States Marshal John Smith defended the interests of the government which he represented. On March 23d a guard of militia was posted at Seventh and Arch streets. The next day the marshal went to arrest the ladies, but found his ad vance resisted by soldiers who presented their bayonets. Though he spoke to them, urging their submission to the higher law of the United States, they re fused to recognize his authority. It was not until the early morning of April 10th that he managed to elude the vigilance of the guards and entered Mrs. Ser geant's parlor, greatly frightening her and her children. She succeeded in es caping by a back gate to her sister's house, where they secured themselves be hind locked doors. By this time the militiamen were aroused, and they drove the marshal off, whereupon, as a counter movement, he issued a call for a posse comitatus to meet at the State House on April 18th. General Bright ordered out two regiments of militia, and for a time the affair wore a very serious appear ance. Marshal Smith, preferring stratagem to force, again eluded the guards. Scaling various fences, he entered the house and arrested and made a prisoner of Mrs. Sergeant. However, Governor Snyder and his advisers were now de vising a way out of the embarrassing position which they had come to occupy. Discretion being the better part of valor, the state paid over the money to the United States marshal; the interesting constitutional question of what its rights were in such a case when its interests came into conflict with those of the United States, was passed on for future tests in other parts of the Union ; while Bright and some of his soldiers were put into prison for resisting the federal authority. After a few days they had their liberty again and were ready to eat a dinner at the expense of Mayor Barker and other Republican citizens.2 This dispute between the nation and the state did nothing to allay party acri mony in Philadelphia. The taverns resounded with the revelries of the Republi- 1 "Many times Providence has aided the American republic; hardly any time more plainly than on the day John Adams appointed John Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."— Jenkins, Memorial History, p. 420. 2 The Case of the Sloop "Active," by Hampton L. Carson. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 13 cans and the more sober dinners of the Federalists. The construction of new inns constantly made the old ones seem shabby and unsuitable for important feasts. The City Tavern, on the west side of Second street, above Walnut, which was once accounted so fine, was now known as the Merchants' Coffee House. For a time it had much the same use which was made of the London Coffee House before the Revolution, serving as a kind of exchange. The proprietor was James Kitchen, and he kept a marine diary, a register of vessels for sale, ships' letter bags, and other conveniences for those who were identified with maritime pursuits. William Renshaw leased the splendid mansion of William Bingham on Third street above Spruce. He first called it the Exchange Coffee House, and then the Mansion House. It was well adapted for use as an aristocratic hotel. The guests walked directly into it without ascending steps. Its hall disclosed a broad stairway of white marble of a variety not before seen in America, which gave the entrance an air of Roman elegance. The parlors, the library, the card rooms and all the sumptuous apartments which had played so prominent a part in the social history of Philadelphia during the Washington administration, were now for many years to be the public's for a price. About 1812 Thomas Leiper built a hotel for Renshaw at the southeast corner of Eleventh and Market streets, the site of the present Bingham House. This was one of the first buildings in the city to be specially erected for hotel uses. It now became the Mansion House, but it was too far away from the center of affairs to succeed, and hence two years later Renshaw returned to the Bingham house in Third street, to which additions had been made for this use by the new owner of the property, the Washington Benevolent Society. This association was one of several of the day formed for the purpose of maintaining and perpetuating the "political principles" of the first president. It was strongly under Federalist influences, and it appeared during the War of 1812. The society was described as "a social compact constructed upon liberal principles competent to afford adequate means of relief of individual exigencies, and calculated to secure and perpetuate our constitutional rights and liberties." It received its charter in 1813. During the war it relieved the wants of many militiamen, while absent from home, "with the necessaries of life." Nor, we are told, were "their suffering wives and children forgotten." 1 In 1824 the society had 2,111 paying members. It always played a leading part in the celebration of Washington's birthday. In 1814 the cornerstone was laid for a large hall, with a marble front and a fine doorway, to adjoin the hotel. The building was finished in 1816. It was known as Washington Hall, and was long a favorite place for dinners, oratorio concerts, and other entertainments. For a while Renshaw called his hotel the Washington Hall Hotel, but he soon returned to the use of the old name, the Mansion House. The hall itself was destroyed by fire in February, 1823, to be rebuilt in the following year. The hotel was seriously damaged at this time also, but repairs soon put it into better condition than before. A European traveler in 1822-23 declared it to be the "only good hotel in the city." His praise covered the table, the furnishing of 1 United States Gazette, April, 1824. 14 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the house and the service. "The public room in the Mansion House," he said, "was one of the handsomest and best furnished I have ever seen in a hotel." 1 A little later Renshaw drifted to Long Branch, but in the next few years the house, under the management of Joseph Head, of whom more is to be said, reached still higher standards of excellence. A favorite house of which much was said in praise, was the City Hotel, opened in 1809 in the old McCall mansion, on Second street at the corner of Union street. Much feasting went forward at this inn, which until it reached the end of its unsuccessful career about 181 5, was declared to be "the foremost house of the kind in the United States." There was another City Hotel on High street, a point of departure for several stage lines. The Shakespeare Hotel, kept by David Barnum, afterward the pro prietor of a house in Baltimore, was also for a time a popular tavern, and stages made their departures from this place. It was established in a large four-story brick building, east of the theater, at the northwest corner of Sixth and Chest nut streets, usually called the Shakespeare building, which enjoyed various uses until its destruction by fire in 1851. At their dinners in the various hotels of the city, the Federalists toasted: "A philosopher in dignified retirement: — May he find full employment in forcing exotics, coercing bullfrogs and pinning beetles by the side of butterflies." "The Sword of Independence: — May American blades never have French handles." "The People of the United States and of Great Britain — united in interest and assimilated by education and manners : — May they never be set at variance by the mistaken or sinister policy of their rulers." "The Embargo : — Wise at first, but too tedious to mention." The militiamen were constantly drilling, and engaging in sham movements and mimic battles which were witnessed by thousands of people. The dress of the men was as various as their commands. There were scores of little com panies bearing different numbers and names. There were "Blues" and "Greens" and "Grays;" foot, horse and artillery; soldiers with muskets and with pikes. It was even proposed to enlist the negroes in a "legion," and it is stated that the design was actually carried out. French citizens formed a company called the Philadelphia Chasseurs. There had been a large Irish immigration during the past few years, as was evidenced by the number and prominence of Irish names in the city, and' the anti-English feeling was increased by elements introduced into the population from this source. At one meeting, a body of these foreign advocates of war, carpeted the platform with a British flag and their speakers had the joy of trampling it under their feet as they uttered their denunciations of England Only another spark was needed to set the country on fire, and that was provided by the affair between the American frigate "President" and the British sloop-of- war Little Belt," off Cape Henry in May, 181 1. In the autumn a war party, with Henry Clay at its head, took charge of affairs at Washington, and led the nationmto hostilities with Great Britain. The militia continued to drill and * An Excursion through the United States and Canada by an English Gentleman, p. 27. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 15 engage in sham fights, but the declaration of war in June, 1812, really found the city, as well as the nation at large, ill prepared for the contest. Colonel Winfield Scott came to Philadelphia to raise a regiment for the regular service, pitching his camp west of the Schuylkill river, near the Upper Ferry, soon de parting with the men, for Canada. David Moffat and other bold merchants and sea captains, fitted out privateers and the sailors who had been idle under the embargoes entered a service which called them to rich returns. Moffat "scoured the coast of Great Britain to her great annoyance and loss by his fre quent captures of her merchant ships." * His best vessel was the "Rattlesnake." Prizes soon began to come into port. In September, Captain David Porter, the younger, started out with the United States sloop-of-war "Essex" to southern seas. On this vessel young "Davy" Farragut was a midshipman. After various exploits and many rich captures, the ship, in 1814, was taken by the British "Phoebe" in the harbor of Valparaiso. Built for the expected war with France in 1798 at a cost of $154,687.77, the "Essex," before her destruction, in one cruise not a year long earned in damage done to the enemy and in the saving of national property, upwards of $6,ooo,ooo.2 When the ice broke up in the Delaware river in the spring of 1813, the Philadelphians found that they were entirely shut off from the sea. A British squadron, under Sir John Beresford, had: placed itself at the Capes and block aded the bay. This made the war seem very real and near to the people of the city, and they were at once brought to a realization of their undefended posi tion. At Fort Mifflin, which had been put into some kind of order at the outbreak of the war, there were but thirteen or fourteen invalids; all the rest of the garrison had left with Winfield Scott the year before. What the British intended to do, no one quite knew, and the fear that they might sail up the river and bombard the city was never out of the people's minds. What was very well known was that they were asking for water, bullocks, and various kinds of provisions from the inhabitants of Lewes, and threatening to fire upon the town if their demands were not complied with promptly. Small craft were being captured, scuttled and burned, and in March, 1813, the "Montes quieu" of Stephen Girard, with a fine cargo from China, was seized. This vessel had left Philadelphia a few days before Christmas, 18 10, for Valparaiso, and had gone on to Canton where she arrived on February 19, 1812. In the following November she had set sail from that place on her return to Phila delphia, with a cargo valued at $164,744. The ship itself was worth from $15,000 to $20,000. Girard's captain had no inkling of the blockade, or indeed of the war. The old mariner knew what added value the goods would have at this time, if he could secure them, and he sent to Sir John Beresford an offer of $180,000 if the captors would release his property. This plan was agreed to and the ransom money was paid in coin. As usual, Girard's judg- 1 Ritter's Philadelphia and her Merchants, p. 213. 2 John R. Spears, David G. Farragut in American Crisis Series, p. 63. 16 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ment was right. He succeeded in selling the cargo of the "Montesquieu" for $488,655.! On April 6th the British opened their guns upon the town of Lewes, to which militiamen had been hurried from all directions, and kept up the bombard ment for twenty-two hours. The injury, however, was very trifling, and the performance resulted chiefly in fright. Some companies of volunteers were sent south while this excitement lasted, but they saw no active military service. Bri gadier-General Joseph Bloomfield was in command over this district, and he established a camp, which bore his name, near the village of Staunton on the Baltimore road. New Castle on the Delaware was only six miles away and the Head of Elk, which led to the waters of the Chesapeake, but seventeen miles. Three or four hundred Philadelphia volunteers, aided by some troops from Delaware, comprised the entire force, which continued to reconnoitre the ground for several weeks. The camp was moved two or three times, and on July 26, 1813, was broken up, the companies entering Philadelphia again on the after noon of the succeeding day. They were given a meal at the "Woodlands" and escorted with honor into the city, to be dismissed in front of the State House. The excitement now somewhat abated. It was a difficult matter to make any proper arrangements for defense be cause of the violence of party feeling. The Federalists, who were in control in select council, declared that the war was unnecessary and one not to be supported on that account. Common council, which was Republican, was power less without the cooperation of the other body. Stung into action by the in dignities which the national name was compelled to suffer on land and sea at the hands of the enemy, and by a crystallization of public sentiment, practical measures were finally resolved upon. A squadron of armed galleys was set afloat upon the river. While this was not a formidable fleet, at no time num bering more than nineteen gunboats, six barges and two block sloops, it. could have offered some resistance, perhaps, to the progress of a hostile invasion, such as that which was aimed at Washington City in 1814. That outrage at once warmed the people's blood. On August 25th news came to Philadelphia of the battle of Bladensburg, and the burning of the Capitol. The city was "in the greatest agitation."2 The Federalists were aroused at last, though they still principally excelled in abuse of President Madison, and Secretary of War Armstrong, and their "conceited, ignorant and improvident cabinet " Thus spoke Samuel Breck, one of their number. The "culpable neglect of the government- he continued, was such as to stain our national character with the deepest dye of infamy. Snyder,3 the first German governor of Pennsylvania, son of a 1 Ingram, Life of Girard, p. 80. 2 Breck's Recollections, p. 253. himlftlrieoefanra" t"** " ^ £*" ^ Ws J0Urnalistic advocate- bribes had had a collegiate educalTiStc^p^r"' """"^ "*"** * "^^ ^ STEPHEN GIRARD HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 17 Palatine immigrant of 1758, it was complained by Mr. Bre,ck, had "never visited the great head of the state, the city of Philadelphia," during the six years of his administration. "And why," he inquired, "dost thou not come down here to see, thou soi-distant commander-in-chief, the disorganized state of thy militia ? Thou goader of this war! Thou democratic feeble disorganizer! Say what hath thy imbecility, thy guilty incompetency to answer for? Is Philadelphia safe, I ask, even against four thousand men? I shall be answered by thee T know not,' and perhaps, thou phlegmatic chief, thou wilt add, T care not.' " 1 That all men asked one another — was Philadelphia safe against the small number of British soldiers who had visited so much humiliation upon the nation at Washington? The army might be in Baltimore in a few days; in a few days more in Philadelphia, the old capital and the principal city of the republic. A town meeting, called for the State House yard for the next day, brought out citizens of all ages, classes and parties. Thomas McKean, now eighty years old, presided. "This is not a time for speaking," he said, "but a time for action." Joseph Reed, the son of the Joseph Reed of Revolutionary times, was the secre tary. A committee of defence was appointed, headed by Charles Biddle. The names upon it included Jared Ingersoll, John Sergeant, Thomas Leiper, George Lattimer, Thomas Cadwalader, General John Steele, General John Barker, Mayor John Geyer, Manuel Eyre, Michael Leib, Condy Raguet, Jonathan Williams, John Barclay and John Naglee. They organized at once, and appointed four persons for each of the fourteen wards of the city, twenty-one for the districts of the Northern Liberties and Penn Township, and twenty-six for Southwark, Moyamensing and Passyunk. It was the duty of these committeemen to urge the able-bodied men of their respective neighborhoods to enroll themselves in military companies for the city's defence. Signals of alarm were agreed upon. At six guns fired in quick succession at Fort Mifflin, at the Navy Yard, or at the Arsenal, drums would beat to arms and all the soldiers of every kind would rendezvous in Broad street. The people were in fright, and many left for the interior with their money and goods. Stephen Girard engaged ten Conestoga wagons to take away a quantity of silver, silks and nankeens to Reading. He entrusted this caravan to the care of a young apprentice, William Wagner, re membered as the founder of the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Mr. Wagner used to tell with interest of his adventures while upon this journey through deep and miry roads in pouring rains, which required him when he reached his destination to open the cases and hang the damaged fabrics on bed- cords to dry, afterward sending them out to be dyed and pressed, a provident care very pleasing to his chief.2 Plans were laid to impede the progress of the enemy, if news were received of his march toward the city. All horses, cattle and vehicles were to be driven into the interior, out of reach, so that no facilities of transportation should be left to the invaders. Provisions of all kinds were to be removed or destroyed. The lower box and the spear in every pump were to be taken out so that the iBreck, pp. 254-55. 2 Ingram's Life of Girard, p. 81. 18 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA wells could not be drawn upon for water. Passes in the roads were to be stopped by felling trees and throwing them across the way. An "indispensable wheel" was to be taken from every mill on the probable route of march. While these measures promised a rather puerile resistance, they seemed to be the best which the ingenuity of the people, with their limited means, could devise. A number of forts and other works of defence were hastily thrown up on the western side of the city— at Gray's Ferry; at a place near "Woodlands," named "Fort Hamilton" in honor of the Hamiltons who interested themselves in the undertaking; in a situation commanding the Lancaster pike; and on the south side of the hill called Fairmount. An effort was made to command all of the southern roads. These fortifications were planned by Colonel I. Fonciu, a French officer resident in the city, and other competent engineers, and the work was done by the citizens in turn. The members of various trades and other organizations contributed their services gratuitously for one day. There were parties composed of 400 victualers, 300 hatters and brickmakers, the crew of the privateer "Washington," 300 cordwainers, 500 "friendly aliens," 510 Free Ma sons, 2,200 "sons of Erin, citizens of the United States," 650 colored men, 540 men from the German societies. Silversmiths, artists, doctors, lawyers, took up the pick and spade. In all, 15,000 persons worked upon the forts for one day each. Many who could not assist with their own hands, gave money to forward the end in view. Every morning between five and six o'clock, from September 3d to October 1st, a crowd of these volunteers with their food in knapsacks and handkerchiefs, left the city and trudged out to the scene of their labors. As a rule, each party had its fife and drum. A Scotchman named James McAlpin, dressed as a Highlander, played on the bagpipes, as he led some thirty other Scots, each with a spade, out Market street to the redoubts.1 Grog was gen erously dealt out, and for many the service was a grand frolic. Others gave a care to the better defence of the Delaware. The most im portant undertaking in this direction was the fortification of the Pea Patch, a shoal on which the reeds nodded in the tide some distance below New Castle. Great activity was manifested at the Arsenal on the Gray's Ferry road, and the city was scoured for cannon, muskets, powder and balls, uniforms and other military material. General Bloomfield, who was still the military commander in Philadelphia and its neighborhood, took charge of the volunteers. Large bodies of them were drilled in the State House yard and in the Southeast Square. Several hun dred were encamped beyond the Schuylkill near the line of the Lancaster Pike. They were out during a heavy rain, and Mr. Breck rode over from "Sweetbrier" to offer them straw to sleep on.2 All the old companies and several new ones were formed into one body known as the "Advance Light Brigade." Now, as before, the value of Du Pont's powder works near Wilmington, as booty for the enemy was well understood. Both the Delaware and the Chesapeake approaches to the city were to be guarded. With all these ends in mind Gen eral Bloomfield decided to establish a camp at Kennett Square in southern 1 Souder's History of Chestnut Street, chap. 36. 2 Recollections, p. 254. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 19 Chester County. This place was only about thirteen miles from Wilmington and within easy reach of the Elk river. The First City Troop proceeded to Mount Bull, a height overlooking the Chesapeake, and formed a chain of videttes extending to the camp and on up to Philadelphia. They thus performed the most useful sentry and scouting service. The camp at Kennett Square was named Camp Bloomfield. Here were as sembled the Franklin Flying Artillery, Richard Bache, captain ; the Second Troop of City Cavalry of which William Rawle, Jr. was the captain; the Independent Artillerists, the Junior Artillerists, the Northern Liberty Artillerists, the Wash ington Guards, an organization of Federalists, handsomely uniformed and well drilled, the Independent Blues, Peter A. Browne, captain ; the Union Guards and other organizations, with names long ago forgotten. Only one do we know today, and this was the third company of the "First Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry," as it was called for this service, the State Fencibles and its captain, Clement C. Biddle 1 became the colonel of the regiment. When he was ad vanced to this post, the company passed under the immediate command of Hartman Kuhn, numbering such young men in its ranks as Henry C. Carey, James Page, Isaac W. Norris, Charles V. Hagner, Richard Willing, Joseph R. Ingersoll, Samuel P. Wetherill, Thomas Dunlap, Charles Grice, Samuel Grice, Henry J. Biddle, James Barclay, William L. Sonntag, Jr., and Joseph B. McKean. The company had been formed on May 26, 1813, and is still in existence after a continuous history of nearly one hundred years. The State Fencibles were the first to leave the city for the new camp. General Thomas Cadwalader com manded the brigade, while John Hare Powel was brigade-major, and Richard McCall and John G. Biddle aides-de-camp. The volunteers were reinforced by some companies of regulars, and they were in this situation under these officers when news came of the landing on September 12th at North Point, only twelve miles away from Baltimore, of the transports, laden with the troops which had so lately devastated Washington. Their object now was the destruction of the city on the Chesapeake. The word was soon passed to Philadelphia where men wrought themselves in to the greatest excitement. It reached its height around the postoffice which at this time was situated in a building in Third street above Chestnut, later con verted into the well known Judd's Hotel. Crowds of men and women, the old and the young, met here to glean the latest news, and to discuss the military outlook. On September 12th the British General Ross had been killed, but the American militiamen were routed by the seasoned regulars of the enemy who pushed on toward Baltimore. They found their way obstructed, and it was evening of the next day before they reached the guarded heights surrounding the city. The ships bombarded Fort McHenry, and the other works in the river without avail for twenty-five hours. The land forces attempted some scaling operations, but at length firing ceased and on the morning of the 14th it was discovered that the 1 Son of Colonel Clement Biddle and a nephew of Owen Biddle, "Fighting Quakers'' of the Revolution. 20 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA British had returned to their boats. One who was present on the 15th, when Phil adelphia received the grateful tidings, says : "Upon reaching the corner of Fourth and Chestnut streets which was accom plished with considerable difficulty, as the streets were packed with men, women and children, we heard the horn of the express rider. Down Chestnut street he came at a full gallop, the crowd opening right and left. He pulled up at the cor ner and after a pause of a few moments, during which an awful silence reigned, and nothing was heard but the quick and heavy breathing of the horse and rider, he cried out in as loud a tone of voice as he could command. 'The d — d British have been defeated at North Point and their general, Lord Ross is killed;' and then such a fierce cry of triumph, such cheers I have never heard equalled since that memorable night. The streets were packed in every direction. * * * The cry of 'Huzza for the brave Baltimoreans ! Our city is safe !' was taken up by the immense throng and echoed far and wide." 1 Another with memories of this time wrote of the shouting and hurrahing, the clapping of hands and the throwing up of hats and caps when the news came in : "AH the way from Third and Market down to Dock, around to the Merchant's Coffee House, Second and Walnut streets, and along Chestnut up to the State House was in one constant blaze of excitement. One old fellow, a jolly old land lord of a noted hotel down town, was so full of joy that he pulled off his coat and hat at Third and Chestnut streets and hurrahed until he came to South street. His excitement raised a crowd which he addressed lustily. Others took the fever and it spread rapidly in all the southern districts; so in the north it was spread in the same way by other old 'seventy-sixers.' " 2 The excitement grew less, but despite their repulse at Baltimore there was still no assurance that the British might not yet appear in the Delaware. The com mittee of defence urged the secretary of war to send them a commander of the first rank, either General Winfield Scott or General Edmund Pendleton Gaines. Scott, since he had left the city for the northern frontier had made a great name for himself. At the battle of Lundy's Lane, late in July, he had had two horses shot from under him. He was wounded in the side and later in the day was shot through the shoulder. After lying for a month in New York state, he was able to come to Philadelphia to receive treatment from Dr. Physick. He arrived by way of Princeton in September, and was escorted into town with much ceremony, later to be dined at Renshaw's new Mansion House Hotel at Eleventh and Market streets. He was already so far advanced toward recovery that he was urged to take command in this district. But the plan must be abandoned, and General Gaines early in October established his headquarters in the city. The Philadelphia troops at Kennett Square moved their ground on September 17, and drew nearer to Wilmington. Two camps, called Camp Brandywine and Lamp Du Pont, were successively established in this neighborhood. The men remained in the field through the cold rains of November, but reached home again lSouder's History of Chestnut Street, chap. 36. Paulson's Advertiser says that the express arrived at about eleven o'clock on the morning of the 15th, having been seven hours on the way from Elkton. 2 Souder, chap. 11. FOURTH OF JULY AT CENTRE SQUARE IN 1819 Picture by J. L. Krimmel, in possession of Historical Society of Pennsylvania HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 21 early in the afternoon of Friday, December 2d. The cavalry and infantry com panies which had staid in town met the returning soldiers west of the Schuylkill, and they together entered the city by way of the Market street bridge. At Eleventh and Market streets, General Gaines reviewed the men from his head quarters, and they passed to the State House, where they were mustered out of duty, the heroes of a bloodless campaign. The Aurora, with whose editor the War of 1812 was almost a personal matter, said that every corps, "infantry, artil lery and riflemen represented such a body of vigorous and admirable materials for war as we believe has never been surpassed in any country." He found noth ing to criticize except the "enormous train of baggage" which suggested extrav agance.1 During the progress of the war many of its revered figures came to Philadel phia, and they were shown those attentions for which the city had long been famous. As the principal commercial and financial centre of the republic, its literary and publishing centre, the seat of the best hotels, some of the finest American homes and the most interesting society — still controlled as it was by the memories of the brilliant days when it had been the capital of the United States — it held its predominant place in the view of visitors. Foreigners who had not seen the city had not seen the country at all. Americans who did not visit it from time to time could be accounted to be little traveled men and women. It was on the high road between north and south ; it was the principal outfitting station and entrepot for the west. The city which had so many interests allying it with the sea, sent a number of young men into the naval service, and their achievements awakened a deep feel ing of pride. There were at hand swords, pieces of plate, silverware, dinners and votes of thanks for its gallant sons. Other heroes of the war were as hospitably welcomed. The capture of the British frigate "Guerriere" by Captain Isaac Hull in the "Constitution," was celebrated in September, 1812. In December Captain Jacob Jones of the "Wasp," fresh from his sensational engagement with the "Frolic," came to the city. He was dined at the City Hotel, where Chief Justice Tilghman presided. An incident of this testimonial banquet was a procession of sailors in the street. The men bore transparencies, flags and a triumphal boat decorated with the colors of many nations. Captain Jones was called to the front of the hotel, to receive the acclamations of the crowd. On February 1, 1813, Stephen Decatur was escorted into town to be given a dinner on the 5th at Renshaw's Mansion House Hotel at Eleventh and Market streets. On September 24th the city was brilliantly illuminated in honor of Perry's victory on Lake Erie, which had taken place a fortnight before, though 1 Aurora, December 3, 1814. "Such a sight as the march of a body of 3,000 well dis ciplined and uniformed soldiers with all their baggage and munitions of war had not been witnessed since the period of the Revolution. * * * Citizens of every rank and profes sion, and of every political name were there commingled in the ranks, united in a common cause. Wives met their husbands, parents their sons, and sweethearts their lovers." — A His tory of Philadelphia, published by Daniel Bowen, 1839. See also Minutes of the Committee of Defence, Memoirs of Pennsylvania Historical Society, Vol. VIII. 22 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA news of it had just come to hand. On October 21st another illumination was arranged to celebrate Proctor's defeat by General Harrison. A triumphal arch forty feet high was erected at Eighth and Race streets, and painted transparencies exhibited the rout of the enemy at the hands of the hero of Tippecanoe. Captain William Bainbridge, who had captured the British frigate "Java" came in Nov ember, and was dined at the City Hotel. The spirit of celebration reached its height on the receipt of the news of General Jackson's signal victory at New Orleans. The battle was fought on January 8th, but the news was not received in Philadelphia until the 5th of February. Then the ships in the harbor fired salutes and flung their colors to the breeze. The streets were filled with huzzaing people. A week later word came of the signing of the treaty of peace.1 Mayor Wharton suggested a general illumination of the city on the evening of February 15th. The Schuylkill bridges were lighted; Paul Beck's shot tower, on the Schuylkill river near the foot of Arch street, rose up into the night "like a pillar of fire, the top being crowned with one hundred and sixty lamps." 2 Illuminated arches were thrown over Eighth street at Callowhill, Market and Locust streets. Peak's Museum at the State House, the Chestnut Street Theatre, the Masonic Hall, the office of Poulson's Advertiser, the house at the northeast corner of Ninth and Market streets of Jacob Gerard Koch, the merchant who in 1812 had offered to build a ship of war for the government at his own expense, and many other pri vate residences, were brilliantly lighted and decorated. Jackson's name was in every mouth. A ball was given in his honor in May at the Vauxhall Garden, a new place of amusement at the northeast corner of Broad and Walnut streets. He was toasted at the dinners on the Fourth of July and prominently mentioned for the presidency. He did not himself come to the city until February, 1818; his first visit, it was said, since he had been here as a senator from the new state of Tennessee for a short time in 1797-98. He was then on his way to New York, and declined a proffered dinner, but his scruples were overcome and he became the guest of a distinguished company at the Washington Hall hotel. Pierce Butler, earlier a senator from South Carolina, who had long resided for at least a part of the year in Philadelphia, presided. The "old hero" when he was called upon for a toast, proposed "The memory of Benjamin Franklin." A dinner was tendered to Commodore Perry, the hero of the battle of Lake Erie, at the City Hotel on February 8, 1814, and a sword which had cost $700 was presented to him in the following year. General Jacob Brown, who like Scott had performed military feats on the Canadian frontier calling for public appreciation, was dined at Washington Hall in February, 1815. Henry Clay, just home from Ghent, where he had been one famf h" BmnS ,b:leved .that he wa* t"e first to receive the news in Philadelphia. It ZZTJ ' r V IT1" Co hC " °nCC instructe<5 * clerk to spread upon the books of the Merchants Coffee House. Soon "sailors in port were all hard at work to send the ships he ZiToi f, ^ «' ^^ a"d ^ and ever-v fieet horse wa* on his way to order n ' nl? C°feeS and SUgarS and other Colonial Pr°d«ce was stored away on speculation. Official confirmation of the report came a little ^.-Recollections, p. 223. I hompson Westcott. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 23 of the commissioners of peace, came and was the guest at a fete at the same hotel in September. Considering the fact that war with either France or England had been so long expected, it is remarkable that so little preparation had been made. One very serious difficulty was found in the condition of the public finances. These were further embarrassed by the failure of Congress to renew the charter of the United States Bank, and disorder was invited at the very time when there should have been confidence and stability in the financial community. The bank, which was at first established in Carpenters' Hall and removed in 1797 to its fine new build ing on Third street, had performed a greater service to the infant republic than the average man was willing to concede. Its branches in other parts of the Union brought it near to the people, and it served them in a variety of useful ways which they did not at all times understand or appreciate. It had been chartered for twenty years, and this period would expire on March 4, 181 1. The opposi tion to it before that time was at hand, had assumed such strength that its destruc tion seemed quite certain. In a crisis, when the prospect is dark, the people will turn to wise counselors and the measures which they have to propose. So had it been when Robert Morris founded the Bank of North America and when no other way offered in the Revolution. So, too, was it after the government was established and its future hung in the balance; the country was willing to heed Hamilton and to adopt his policies, one of which called for the organization #of a Bank of the United States. Then, as the sense of national security grew and some degree of material prosperity was attained, the people again overleaped wise barriers and restraints. Bankers all came to be looked upon as public enemies. Popular liberty was endangered by the concentration of money in their hands. Long before the expiration of the charter of the first Bank of the United States both those who favored and those who opposed its renewal were busy in Philadelphia, as elsewhere, adopting resolutions and signing memorials. There were meetings at the Coffee House, at the Shakespeare Hotel and at other inns. The rich Federalist shipping merchants naturally wished to see the bank's lease of life extended, while the Republicans, led by the Aurora, insisted that Congress should compel it to wind up its affairs. Its stock was owned in large part by rich dukes and princes of Europe, who sucked the blood of life out of these free United States, and if banks there must be, they should be small democratic institutions, consonant in some way with the spirit of a people correctly grounded in the principles of liberty. Failing to obtain a renewal of its charter in Congress, its affairs were wound up, though not before its officers had appealed to the legislature for a state charter, offering large bonuses, after the manner of the time. They agreed to subscribe $175,000 for the road from Harrisburg to Pitts burg; $100,000 for the road from Northumberland to Waterford; $50,000 for bridges over the Susquehanna at Columbia; $30,000 for improving navigation in the Lehigh river; $30,000 for the road from the Perkiomen Bridge to Reading; $15,000 for a bridge over .the Delaware between Black's Eddy and Wells Falls; $20,000 for a road from Berwick to Newtown, N. Y. ; $15,000 for the Centre Turnpike; $15,000 for a road in Wayne County. 24 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Furthermore, the bank would loan the state directly $500,000 at five per cent for prosecuting other internal improvements. No portion of Pennsylvania which sent representatives to the legislature would seem to have been forgotten, but they resisted the blandishments of the negotiators. Stephen Girard had become the owner of a large block of the stock of the bank, purchased at a low price in Europe when its future value seemed very problematical; and seeing a way to enrich himself, which he never knowingly passed, he purchased the building in May, 1812. Here he continued to take care of the accounts of the depositors. The bank which uses these walls still bears his name and is the legitimate successor of Girard's bank. It should have been plain to any one with the least financial experience that the bank could not be closed without general disaster, but counsel to this effect did not prevail. Albert Gallatin was now secretary of the treasury. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1761, he reached this country when less than twenty years of age. At first going to Boston, he for a little while taught French in Harvard College. He was one of those European democrats who found Phila delphia their happy hunting-ground after the French Revolution. Here he did not long remain, passing west to take up lands which lay partly in Virginia and partly in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. For a short time he was Robert Morris's colleague, as a United States senator from Pennsylvania, and for sixteen years, through Jefferson's and Madison's administrations, formed with those two men a triumvirate of controlling influence in the direction of public affairs. For twelve of these years he was secretary of the treasury, and in that time had brought down the public debt to $45,000,000, although compelled during the period to find $15,000,000, with which to compass the purchase of Louisiana. With the outbreak of the war, recourse must be had to loans. In May, 1812, Secretary Gallatin offered $11,000,000 of bonds, bearing interest at six per cent for twelve years. In all, about $6,000,000 were subscribed by banks and indi viduals to this loan. The total for Philadelphia was given as $1,645,800, to which the four banks of the city contributed as follows : Bank of Pennsylvania, $500,- 000; Farmers and Mechanics' Bank, $300,000; Philadelphia Bank, $100,000; Bank of North America, $100,000. Under the circumstances, this was considered to be a very favorable showing. As a supplementary device, Gallatin suggested an issue of treasury notes which were destined to have so large a use in the Civil War. He was authorized by Congress to negotiate $5,000,000 of these for one year, bearing interest at five and two-fifths per cent. But all such expedients were very inadequate. It was computed that $21,000,- 000 would be needed to cover the charges of the year 1813, and Congress again gave the secretary of the treasury permission to sell stock, amounting this time to $16,000,000. The outlook was very unfavorable. Mr. Gallatin might appoint agents in all parts of the country, paying them one-quarter of one per cent, upon the subscriptions which they should receive, and the treasury in the spring of 1813 was so bare of funds that he offered an annuity of one dollar on every one hundred dollars for thirteen years. In spite of these arrangements to facilitate the distribution of the loan, the yield from all sources at the first call in March /ACHARIAH POULSON HENRY PRATT I'AIM. HECK IK THOMAS P. COPE HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 25 was less than $4,000,000, and at a second call, later in the month, the total was increased by less than $2,000,000. Gallatin was now obliged to turn to the money lenders. Himself of foreign birth, three other adopted citizens of the United States came to his aid : Stephen Girard, who, as we know, was a Frenchman; John Jacob Astor, a German who was accumulating a fortune in the fur trade ; and David Parish or Parrish. Mr. Parish was at this time a notable figure in American finance and he had influential European connections. He came to this country in 1805 as an agent of Hope and Company to direct one of the gigantic financial operations which marked the Napoleonic wars. The head of this firm was Henry Hope, son of a Scotchman settled in Boston. Born in that city, he went to England and later to Amtserdam, where he established a great banking house, for a long time accounted the first in the world. An important partner in the business was P. C. Labouchere. He was a son of a French dry goods merchant and married a daughter of Sir Francis Baring, the English banker, thus closely allying the two houses. Ouvriard, the great French financier, and Labouchere formulated a scheme for a triangular trade between Vera Cruz, New Orleans and Baltimore or New York by which large quantities of Mexican silver were to be obtained. To manage the undertaking they sent a man named Lestapis to Vera Cruz, Vincent Nolte to New Orleans, while David Parish, who was the principal agent, settled in Philadelphia, midway between New York and Balti more, the ports which were to be used during the operation. Parish had been in business in Antwerp. He was the third son of John Parish, a Scotch merchant of Hamburg. He had agreeable manners and was accomplished in whist, at which game, it is said, he had gained much of his money, as he played for high stakes. He was a friend of Prince Talleyrand, Napoleon's minister of foreign affairs, who was often a guest at his fine table in Antwerp. It was on account of his valuable connections that he was entrusted with the agency. During the American embargoes the business was interfered with. Nolte and Lestapis left their posts and came to Philadelphia, Lestapis marrying here and residing for a time in Germantown. Parish lived at first in the mansion of Archibald McCall, the East India merchant, at the northeast corner of Second and Union streets, which later became the City Hotel. In the Philadelphia directories in subsequent years he is described as a "gentle man," and his address is given as the "York Buildings," a row of houses sit uated on the south side of Walnut street above Columbia avenue, what is now Seventh street, on the west side of Washington Square. His home was at the corner, and was entered from Columbia avenue.1 Here Mr. Parish lived in a nearly regal style. Among his guests were General Moreau, Gouverneur Morris, George Ticknor and most Of the city's distinguished visitors. Ticknor, who came in 1814, said : , "I dined today with a large party at D. Parish's and for the first time in my life saw a full service of silver plate for twenty persons with all the accom- 1 Later Joseph Head had a hotel here. Still later, it was the home of Dr. George Mc- Clellan. 26 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA paniments of elegance and luxury to correspond, and a well-trained body of servants in full livery. * * * He is a banker, a man of fortune, and a bach elor and lives in a style of great splendor. Everything at his table is of silver, and this not for a single course, or for a few persons, but through at least three courses for twenty. The meat and wines corresponded ; the servants were in full livery with epaulettes, and the dining room was sumptuously furnished and hung with pictures of merit." * It was to this man, to Astor and to Girard that $9,000,000 of the loan was sold. Astor took $2,000,000 in New York, while Girard and Parish somehow divided $7,000,000 between them in Philadelphia. Their subscriptions were made at $88 for $100 worth of stock, and they required that if Gallatin should borrow later during the year 181 3 at less than the price which they had paid, they should have a rebate upon their purchases equal to the difference in such price. These were "hard conditions," as Professor Bolles truthfully remarks, and were "a mournful proof of the pitiable plight of the government." 2 The lenders needed only to wait until the course of the war should change. To Girard, much merit for his action at this time has sometimes been ascribed, but without great reason. He had been and was still an avaricious trader. He had come to America from Bordeaux as a cabin-boy prior to the Revolu tion. Primarily a sailor, and then an owner of ships and employer of sailors, he disdained no occupation by which money could be accumulated. During the Revolution, he had bottled claret and cider for sale to the soldiers of both armies He would procure himself infinite trouble, those who knew him were wont to remark, to gain two or three cents upon a transaction which might involve thou sands of dollars. It was said of "old Girard" that, while he was "a just man, it was according to his own measure of justice." That he was inspired by any important patriotic consideration in subscribing for this loan, is far from prob able. In the market the stock was then selling, when it was sold at all, well above 88, the price which he and his associates paid. He had money in plenty for investment and there were Federalists in all parts of the country whose conscientious scruples prevented them from subscribing to war loans in their own names, though they were glad enough quietly to relieve the "foreign brok ers" of government stocks when they were procurable at these alluring discounts. More disinterested were the services of Jacob Barker, of whom something can well be said because of his residence later for many years in Philadel phia.3 He was nearly thirty years younger than Girard, having been 1 Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres; also Pennsylvania Magazine, IV, pp. 404-5. 2 Even so, Mr. Parish, like Girard, is thought to have taken a risk. His effort to sell his portion of the war loan to the Barings failed. They would not honor his drafts upon them and the venture came near leading to his serious embarrassment. He purchased from Gouverneur Morris, whose friend he was, large tracts of land on the St. Lawrence in western New York and he and his family thus became possessed of valuable estates around Ogdens- burgh in that state.-Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres. 3 Jacob Barker was the father of Abraham Barker, and the grandfather of Whar ton Barker. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 27 born in 1779 in Maine, where his parents were temporarily residing. Their home was the little island of Nantucket, and to that land of whale oil, cod fish chowder and green corn puddings, he had an attachment which was life long. He came from the same stock as Benjamin Franklin, for whom he was supposed to have a physical resemblance. He entered a counting house in New York while still a boy. Establishing a firm of his own, he became a wealthy shipping merchant before he was thirty. He traded extensively with Russia and owned more vessels, it is said, than any other American of his day except William Gray, of Salem, Mass. For twenty years his confidential clerk was the poet, Fitz-Greene Halleek. While the embargoes played havoc with his busi ness, as with that of the merchants in Philadelphia, he remained a devoted admirer of Jefferson and Madison. In his financial relations with the govern ment he seems to have been entirely a volunteer. In the summer of 1813 he visited many rich men who told him that they would subscribe to a loan upon the same terms as Girard. He himself headed the list for $100,000, and very soon had pledges in hand amounting to $2,400,000. When he had raised the sum to $5,000,000, he went to Washington. Congress at the time was in the midst of an angry discussion. The Federalists were loudly proclaiming that no more money could be obtained for war purposes, wherefore he was the more warmly welcomed by the Republican leaders. Here was a business man who brought the news that he and his associates would subscribe $5,000,000 to another loan. The Federalists- denounced him as an impostor and said that the names upon his list were forged, but his presence in Washington discomfited them thor oughly. His generous action naturally improved the public credit, and when Congress in 1813 authorized a new loan for $7,500,000, it was over-subscribed at a price above Girard's. Mr. Barker bid for $2,000,000 for himself, and for $400,000 in the name of Fitz-Greene Halleek, but was awarded only $1,723,000 worth of stock on the two accounts. In the summer and autumn of 1814, the military situation grew worse. The sack of Washington and the burning of the Capitol created so much alarm that the banks of Philadelphia were compelled to suspend specie payments. The financial institutions in New York and elsewhere soon followed. In March, Congress had authorized another loan of $25,000,000, but the treasury depart ment determined to limit its demands to $10,000,000. Jacob Barker at once subscribed $5,000,000. As stocks were falling in value — the treasury depart ment itself later sold $100 worth as low as $65 in specie — he thought that he should not be obliged to pay more than 85, but he agreed to give Girard's price in 1 81 3, 88. He encountered many difficulties which seemed purposely to be put in his way by the secretary of the treasury, now George W. Campbell of Tennessee, Gallatin having gone abroad as one of the commissioners to nego tiate for peace. Yet he performed his part at much personal risk and appar ently with no advantage to his fortune. "Jacob," a friend remarked one day, "the government may be so embar rassed with this ruinous and expensive war that it will not be able to pay, and fail or break down before it is ended." "If government fails," he replied, "I am willing to fail with it. Property 28 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA and everything else are of little or no consequence compared to the success of my country. I am willing to risk everything I have for her." 1 The financial complications of this period were directly induced by the clos ing up of the United States Bank. Seven of the ten millions of its capital came from abroad, and must go back to Europe in hard money. The protectionists argued that the war stimulated industry. When the coast was blockaded and commerce was interfered with, some branches of manufacturing business were naturally invigorated. Prices leaped to a great height. The demand, if it were to be satisfied at all, must be met at home, and steps. were taken to supply the market with that which had hitherto been received from Europe. It is a poor political economy which preaches that prosperity can be created and wealth in creased through the destruction of property by fire, earthquake and war. But there were protectionists at this period in America whose arguments carried them to these lengths. The prices of agricultural as well as manufactured prod ucts suddenly increased. Rice, which was sold in 1813 at Charleston and Savan nah at $3 a hundredweight, brought $12 in Philadelphia. Sugar, worth $9 per hundredweight in New Orleans, rose to $21 in August, and to $40 in De cember, 181 3. These changes brought great hardships to the poor. Meetings were held, as during the Revolution, though the people had learned much in forty years, and no longer deceived themselves with the thought that prices could be regulated by mobs. They did, however, in at least one instance, in Oxford and Lower Dublin townships, resolve not to pay more than twenty cents a pound for brown sugar, or a dollar a gallon for molasses. Money, which had been scarce before the suspension of specie payments, nearly disappeared afterward. The state banks had their notes, but these did not suffice. Shin-plasters of various denominations, sometimes as small as two cents, made their appearance everywhere.2 They at first bore the names of well- 1 Incidents in the Life of Jacob Barker, published in 1855. 2 Two examples of notes of this kind are given by Thompson Westcott as follows : TWO CENTS TWO CENTS I promise to pay the bearer TWO CENTS On Demand at the Schuylkill Bank When a sum amounting to One Dollar Shall be presented RICH'D BACHE Philada. July 4th 1815 A General Assortment of Groceries , . Chest of Tea o-J* cts- and Hogshead No. 233 I promise to pay the bearer on demand, in groceries, or Philadelphia Bank Notes, at No. 130 North Water Street, six - and - a quarter cents. _.., J „ JOHN THOMPSON Philada. December 10, 1814. fr. /, 7/ //YYYY.JYYYY' y; Y'//'Y'Y'.f /YY/YYY'.JY.J / /r* ( Zy'S////// // //, Y>// ' /yy/yY/y/y/ Y/ Y Y'Y YYY YYYY yyy .r/ ' t/i***- j ft? yy INVITATION TO A WISTAR PARTY womifi IROO'T //y///y. *.)/j /j "u (// // / / 0 / / ' ,Yt ?'/lf />!'/'/¦ "/'I" '"//// ///l.v/J/iV r.\- /yy/c/.i//i her gu thor was heTa's the^ foVthYi^sTnVhe novel which he was then revolving in his millThe theatre underwent a very creditable development in Philadelphia in the early part of the century. So long repressed the taste for stage representations now asserted itself strongly. The managers of the Chestnut Street Theatre soon succeeded in giving the city a conspicuous place in the dramatic history of Amer ica Philadelphia was "the centre of commerce, finance, letters and science, of the Union," and under such circumstances it was likely to be the most responsive and profitable community for the actor. Wignell, in partnership with Reinagle, whose interests in the stage were mainly confined to its musical side, had a good group of players. He was the son of an actor in the company of David Garrick, of whom he had vivid recollections. William B. Wood, who was soon to become a, factor of so much value in the theatrical history of the city, speaks of him in his Recollections with friendly, almost fond, appreciation. He died in 1803,1 as a result of an awkward use of the lancet by some bleeder of the day, and Mrs. Wignell (who a little while before had been Mrs. Merry,2 a member of his company) was subsequently associated with Reinagle in the manage ment of the theatre. William Warren, another member of the company, be came the stage director, assisted by Wood who, as a boy, Wignell had introduced to the stage, and who was now a favorite with Philadelphia audiences. In 1806 Mrs. Wignell married Warren. She, in turn, died in 1808, and the business was thrown into her husband's hands. Wood bought an interest in 1810, and as Warren and Wood they continued a partnership of the greatest value to the American stage for more than fifteen years. They had theatres also in Baltimore and Washington. Their stock company included, in addition to Mr. Wood and Mr. Warren themselves, Joseph Jefferson, the elder; his sons John Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson; John Darley; Mrs. John Darley and Mrs. William B. Wood who were sisters, earlier the Misses Westray; Mrs. Burke, who married young Joseph Jefferson and became the mother of Charles Burke Jefferson and the Joseph 1 He is buried in St. Peter's churchyard without a stone to mark his grave, though he did so much for the drama in America. His brother actors discussed the question of rearing a monument over his remains but they never succeeded in executing their design. 2 Earlier a Miss Brunton, well known and liked in England. Her first husband, Robert Merry, the Delia Cruscan poet, had died in Baltimore in 1798. She was a very winning actress and a lady who enjoyed general respect off the stage. She habitually came to the theatre in a chariot drawn by two sorrel horses which stood in the street while her re hearsals and performances were in progress ready to bear her home.— Charles Durangfs Phila. Stage, chap. 32. CHESTNUT STREET THEATRE, SECOND BUILDING WALNUT STREET THEATRE, 1830 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 37 Jefferson of our later time; F. C. Wemyss; J. Wheatley; Mr. and Mrs. John Duff;1 Mrs. Entwistle; Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wallack;2 Mrs. Oldmixon; the Durangs ; Mr. and Mrs. William Francis ; Francis Blisset, and many others whose names enjoyed great favor at that day, and are not unknown in this. They added to their forces, for longer or shorter engagements, important "stars" such as John Hodgkinson, a dashing young Englishman who had come to the old Southwark Theatre in 1792, spoken of as "a theatrical wonder," a "master spirit of the stage," by some, despite his wayward fate, brought into comparison with Garrick himself ; 3 James Fennell of towering form, who came from Eng land in 1794, at one time the idol of the Chestnut street audiences and who wasted and ended his life in riot and dissipation; and, best of all, Thomas Apthorpe Cooper. Cooper, as so many more, was brought to this country by Wignell. He was a brilliant young actor who for many years never failed to pack a house of amuse ment. A haughty man known often to his comrades as "King Tommy," he was long a reigning favorite in Philadelphia. His activity in moving from place to place caused him to be called the "flying actor." For him the stage coach, was too slow. Even in the depth of winter it was not unusual to see his sulky drawn by two horses, which he drove tandem, standing at the stage door. Mounting his vehicle at the end of his evening. performance he would drive all night over the worst of roads in order to keep an engagement in New York the next day. He often had relays of horses on his theatrical journeys and bruised and killed many animals, to say naught of the danger to which he subjected his own person. Yet traveling as he did, by night and by day, from New Orleans to Boston, in all weathers, no accident is said ever to have befallen him. As a star he "received more money from the public and drew more into the treasury of the theatre" than any actor of his time.4 After Hodgkinson, Fennell and Cooper came a series of the greatest of the English actors — John Dwyer in 1810, George Frederick Cooke in 181 1, James William Wallack in 1819, Junius Brutus Booth in 1823, Edmund Kean in 1825 and again in 1826, William C. Macready in 1827, Charles Matthews, the excel lent English comedian, Miss Lydia Kelly, the "dashing English comedy actress," Conway, Tyrone Power and the Kembles. There was not an actor of note appear ing in America who did not find his way to Philadelphia to be introduced to the public by Warren and Wood. Cooke's arrival in 181 1 was a sensational event. He was the first of the famous English actors to visit the United States. A great contest for seats was begun. "Porters, draymen and persons of every hue," says Durang in his History of the Philadelphia Stage5 "received large sums for securing 1Mrs. Duff was earlier a Miss Dyke whose sister had married Tom Moore, the Irish poet. 2 Henry was the elder brother of James Wallack. 3 Durang, chap. 17. 4 Durang, chap. 32; F. C. Wemyss, Theatrical Biography, p. 70; W. B. Wood, Recol lections, p. 418. 5 Chap. 44. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA oo rr,«n " Cooke was to play Richard III on a Monday night. Already on Sun- ay^enfng heleps ofYe theatre were filled with the fellows whom the gentle men of the city had sent to await the opening of the sale "Coats were torn off the backs of those who tried to get near the box office; hats were lost. * The struggle to gain certificates for places during the first few days resembled a tumultuous riot. A certain Doctor B g hit upon the expedient of throwing Scotch snuff into the faces of the crowd. On the first occasion he carried his point by this brutal ruse. He was marked, and on the second trial he was severely handled for the atrocious act. The crowd blocked up the Chestnut and Sixth street corners even to the court house and old Mr. Duponceau's dwelling. It was prodigious !" 1 The people on the evening of the performance obstructed the stage entrance in their eager desire to get a view of Cooke, and it was doubtful for some time whether either he or the ticket holders could make their way into the house. His Richard III, it is said, "was received with shouts." Philadelphia at this time had a very creditable critical journal called The Mir ror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, which the Bradfords began to publish in 1810. It was edited by Stephen Cullen Carpenter, who came from England by way of Charleston, S. C. With high standards for the stage, and fearless in the ex pression of his judgments, he often did affront to those who could not think as he.2 One of his most notable services, perhaps, was the bringing forward of the young Philadelphia artist, Charles Robert Leslie, who attended Cooke's perfor mances and drew vivid portraits of the great actor as King Lear and Richard III. These were engraved for The Mirror of Taste, and attracted so much attention that a fund was collected to send him to Europe to pursue his studies in art. The receipts during Cooke's engagement ran up to $1,475 f°r a single night, an unex ampled figure. As the prices were only one dollar in the boxes, seventy-five cents in the pit and fifty cents in the gallery, any larger yield was out of the question. James William Wallack made his first visit to the United States in 1818. His engagement in Philadelphia opened on January 8, 1819, the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, then a great popular holiday, as Rolla in Pizarro. He was seen later as Macbeth, Hamlet, Shylock and in other parts.3 Mr. Wood's Recollections are filled with references to the anxieties which a manager of the day was compelled to undergo. The great theatre fire in Rich mond in December, 181 1, in which so many lives were lost diminished the receipts of the Chestnut Street Theatre. The War of 1812 very unfavorably affected busi ness. Accidents to or the sickness of favorite players, or their failure to arrive at certain times because of their intoxication— a trouble then it would appear, of serious proportions— or because of mud in the roads or ice in the rivers over 1 Durang, chap. 44. 2 See, for instance, Mr. Wood's Personal Recollections. 3 His career, subsequently so brilliant, was interrupted on November 29, 1821, by a la mentable accident while on his way to Philadelphia to keep an engagement of six nights at the Walnut Street Theatre. He sat beside the driver on a post coach. By a lurch of the vehicle he was violently thrown to the road near New Brunswick and sustained a compound fracture of the leg, which surgeons from Philadelphia, whom his brother Henry despatched to the scene, had the greatest difficulty in setting. The great actor was not able to appear again m Philadelphia until January 17 1823 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 39 which they must pass in order to fulfil an engagement, frequently upset all cal culations. Furthermore a snowfall, as Mr. Wood and the other managers of the day knew full well, made the audiences small. Then the population very gener ally went "sleighing" instead of attending the play. On cold nights, anyhow, the attendance was always slim. There were no arrangements for heating theatres and other public buildings. Only a dense audience made a house comfortable in winter time ; some warmth coming then from the exhalations of their bodies. In 1820 the theatre was burned. Mr. Wood received word of the fire while he was with his company in Baltimore for its usual spring engagement. On April 4th he was awakened at an unusually early hour, by his property man with a number of letters. The first one which he opened ran as follows : "Philadelphia, April 3rd, 1820. Dear Wood: This letter bears sad news for you. Early last evening your beautiful theatre was wholly consumed by fire. Yours, Richard Bache, Postmaster." Nothing had been saved, as Mr. Wood and Mr. Warren discovered upon their hurried return to Philadelphia, "but the green-room mirror, a beautiful model of a ship, and the prompter's clock." The expensive gas works, the scenery painted by fine English artists, a wardrobe recently much replenished by purchases in England and France, a valuable theatrical and musical library including orchestral scores, two grand pianos valued at a hundred guineas each, a "noble organ," and other property, made the loss seem very great. The stockholders owned the building, but the rest of the burden fell upon the managers. "On this night," says Mr. Wood, "Mr. Warren and I lost all that we possessed, and with the burning of this theatre we saw sunk the toilsome earnings of twenty years." They were at once offered a lease on the new theatre at Ninth and Walnut streets. This building, which with alterations still stands, had been erected for use as a circus in 1809. After Ricketts' Amphitheatre at Sixth and Chestnut streets had been burned, and the roof of Lailson's Circus in Fifth street near Prune had fallen in, near the end of the century, no suitable place was at hand for equestrain performances. They still enjoyed great favor, and there were many itinerant circus men who came to visit the city from time to time. Riding houses were improvised. One, Swann, had an amphitheatre at Thirteenth and Market streets, near Centre square ; Victorien, another equestrian of the day, had a "sawdust ring" on the west side of the square, at Market and Schuylkill Eighth streets. On February 2, 1809, a building called the "New Circus" was opened at Ninth and Walnut streets under the management of Victor Pepin, an 'Acadian, born in the "neutral huts" of Philadelphia, and Jean Baptiste Breschard, a Frenchman. Both were daring performers. They had an excellent company, brought hither from Spain, and divided the theatre-going portion of the popula tion of Philadelphia, naturally hurting the business, to some extent, of the man agers of the Chestnut street house. Nor was the experiment financially profit- 40 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA able to the undertakers on Walnut street. The name of the circus was changed to the Olympic Theatre in 1812. It had various uses by Pepin and Breschard and other circus managers for their performances, and by regular theatrical com panies formed around different "stars," but no one seemed more profitable than the rest. The house was long on the verge of bankruptcy, and finally reached that point in its history. It was sold by the sheriff in 1813. In 1818 the theatre was taken over by a joint stock company made up of public-spirited citizens, who were unwilling to see the enterprise drift on friend- lessly, as in the past, but it still had indifferent success,1 and the owners were glad to tender it to Warren and Wood upon the destruction of their Chestnut Street Theatre in 1820. These two unfortunate managers gratefully accepted the offer. They refitted the stage and made other changes in the house to adapt it to their uses. It was now called the "New Theatre," or the Walnut Street Theatre, and the Chestnut street company appeared there for the first time in Wild Oats on Friday evening, November 10, with Warren and Wood themselves in the cast, assisted by Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Wheatley, Mr. and Mrs. Darley, Mr. and Mrs. Francis, Mr. Blisset and others. On the 27th of November the company produced Home's tragedy Douglas, or the Noble Shepherd, then a general favorite. The part of Young Norval, it was announced, would be taken "by a young gentleman of this city," who was soon after identified as "Master Forrest," no other than Edwin Forrest at fifteen years of age. His father had died, leaving the family in poverty, and he was at once thrown upon his own resources. He was employed for a while by Duane of the Aurora, and in a ship-chandler's house. His inclinations drew him to the stage Alexander Wilson, the ornithologist, gave him lessons in elocution and his first appearances^! a quite insignificant way-were at the old theatre in Southwark Colonel John Swift, a prominent lawyer of the day, noticed his ability, and became l5^ HeWuaS Se7eraI times seen wi* Warren and Wood's company, in comin, ", t\ ™dera\™s, and then decided to take to the road" be- . coming a strolling player in the west and south " Kean* came while Warren and Wood were in the Walnut street house (his tTZZTtro °T ?f 1 JanUa17 8' l821 in RiM '"> -dswiled their receipts, but, on the whole, their success here was not large. "An ill name circus iz.XT^iizi:2:r^h^ engaM °f west,s **•*•» been thrown overboard oT the WJ ? T* * "' StUd SeVWal °f the animals had during a stormy voyage but 1„ * "^ H™ °f inj'Uries which they h*d ""stained horses" ever TLTn Vl umrj wTa' so had "" *f, * ***** "* ** "^ "horse pieces" were ™t „uuZ \ , T d an excelle"t «>rps of performers. His scaled LZtZZS^ZZ ofnedeaetShPeCiadlly *?""• '* ^ *° **> h™* people in the pit and boxe™ 1 h a"d Performed other unusual feats. "The hands and wil ^^^TS^tiT tanC°US imPUlSC t0 ** ** a"d ^ «"* Olympic was crowded LhT 1 Z °nt Upr°ar °f shouts for five minutes." The -Such SvCaruming ant L "a « TT ""l^ " ** d*-D«^ <**p. 54- performed very like one of her Z ! ' Seld°m Seen" He 0UtraSed natur* and of wild and hurrtd J sttuSoI ^rneyTn- Kean'S "** WaS in general a course gibly pronounced, the ot r h alf uttered * * fl . deliberate"half a se*ence in*I]i- ^ - the most attentive ^^IZ^l^^l^T^ ^ *°° TIVOLI OR COLUMBIAN GARDEN North Side of Market Street between Thirteenth and Juniper Streets CENTRE SQUARE ABOUT 1815 Erom Another Picture by Krimmel HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 41 hung to this Walnut Street Theatre," says Mr. Wood, "rendering all our efforts fruitless." Meanwhile, the stockholders of the burned Chestnut street house chose William Strickland to design a new building, which was ready to be opened on December 2, 1822. The structure had much to commend it. It had a hand some front "built of marble in the Italian style;" the leading features of which were an arcade supporting a "screen of composite columns, and a plain entablature flanked by two wings." Two niches in these wings contained masks representing tragedy and comedy, cut by William Rush, which when the theatre was torn down in April, 1855, were sold to Edwin Forrest, to be taken later to the Actors' Home near Holmesburg, for which he provided at his death. Great attention was be stowed upon the interior. It was said that it had "advantages which the best theatres of Europe did not possess," although they might "exceed it in magni tude." The house had a dome forty-six feet in diameter, the crown of which was perforated and formed into a ventilator. From this depended "an elegant chandelier nine feet in diameter, containing sixty patent lamps enriched with appropriate ornaments." The proscenium was forty-six feet by twenty-five feet, an opening "well calculated" for the "best exhibitions of the drama." Over the stage was the motto — "To raise the genius and to mend the heart." There were three rows of boxes, placed in a semi-circle forty-six feet in diameter, and rest ing on iron columns. The pit floor would accommodate four hundred persons, and the entire house, upwards of two thousand. The "New Theatre" was opened with the School for Scandal in which all the old favorites of the company appeared.1 The prices were one dollar, seventy- five cents and fifty cents, as before, with the novel provision that children should be admitted at half price. When Warren and Wood left the Walnut Street Theatre that house was again fitted up as a circus. It returned to its old name, the Olympic Theatre, and eques trian and mixed performances were attempted once more, with a success not much greater than before. While the Chestnut and Walnut street houses were having these experiences' strolling players appeared from time to time in the old theatre on South street, whose hey-day, however, had passed. It was offered for sale in 1814, in the hope that some one would find it useful as a manufactory. It became distinctly a sec ond rate house, and its destruction by fire in 1821 occasioned no regret. Sometimes native plays were given at the Philadelphia theatres, but they were not general favorites, though they had no fault, as Mr. Wood with local loyalty said, "but being American productions." The principal writers were 1 Sir Peter Teazle, Mr. Warren ; Sir Oliver Surface, Mr. Francis ; Charles Surface, Mr. Wood; Joseph Surface, Henry Wallack; Crabtree, Mr. Jefferson. Wemyss who had just come from England full of the good traditions of the London stage said: "Every part was filled by an actor fully competent to sustain the reputation of the theatre; and the unfavorable opinion I had formed of the state of the drama from the first play I witnessed in the city of New York was converted into a feeling of gratification at the regular manner in which the business of this theatre was conducted. The members of the Philadelphia company were veteran actors who understood their profession, and whose exertions were duly appreciated by a discriminating audience." — Wemyss, Theatrical Biog raphy, p. 69. 42 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Mordecai M. Noah, a Jewish lawyer, politician and journalist, and James N. Barker, a mayor of the city, a son of General John Barker, also for several years the mayor and a well known town figure. Marmion and other pieces of his were occasionally given. Noah, known to every one as "The Major," was the author of The Wandering Boys, Marion or the Hero of Lake George, The Siege of Tripoli, and other plays which for a time enjoyed popular favor. The theatre at this time was in a very unregenerate condition. The gallery boys were often in undisputed control, and frequently a great deal of interruption was offered from other parts of the house. Correspondents of the Mirror of Taste begged the editor not to criticize the players, but the ruffians who "crim soned the cheeks of decency" by their lewd remarks as the play proceeded. The occupants of places in the pit often sat in a shower of nut-shells and apple par ings, a condition of affairs which caused gentlemen to wear their hats in the theatre and to leave their wives and daughters at home. In the pit itself a young Englishman complained that there was "such a disgusting custom of drink ing wine or porter, and smoking tobacco between the acts" that he had no in clination to visit it again.1 The boxes it was complained were sometimes the scene of drinking jousts; jugs, bottles and glasses from which both men and women regaled themselves being in the fore-ground during the progress of the performance. Wemyss' objection to the new Chestnut Street Theatre, when he first saw it, was the handsome chandelier suspended in its dome. It exposed to view "the third tier of boxes where licentiousness prevails in its worst form," and which in his opinion should be kept "as much as possible in the shade." 2 The women of the streets were always found in these boxes and later invaded the pit, driving out respectable ladies from families of moderate incomes who were formerly seated there with their children. Mrs. Trollope who attended a per formance at the Chestnut Street Theatre in the summer of 1830 saw men in shirt sleeves in the boxes. They generally wore their hats and spat upon the floor unceasingly.3 Hissing and cries of all kinds were indulged in by the audi ences, and so persistent and brutal were the attacks upon some actors that more than one man in the early history of the stage in America sought refuge in suicide. When Forrest, a lad of eleven, made his first appearance at the old Southwark theatre in the part of a girl, Rosalia de Borgia, in Rudolph, or the Robbers of Calabria, one of his mates, recognizing him, yelled: "The heels and the big shoes ! Hi yi ! Hi yi ! Look at the legs and the feet !" Forrest, unable to contain himself, replied, "Look here chap, you wait till the play is over and I'll lick you like h— 1." Then the boy in the pit bawled out, "Oh, she swears ! She ^ Excursions in North America by Priscilla Wakefield, p. 9. Compare Janson, A Stranger t» America, p. 247, for the same evils at a somewhat earlier time; also Weld's 1 ravels, p. 32. 2 Theatrical Biography, p. 68. 'Rowdyism was just as prevalent in the old South Street Theatre in Washington's day. though Carlisle, the high constable of the period, a man of gigantic stature, attended to preserve order, "as soon as the curtain was down the gods in the galleries would throw apples, nuts, bottles and glasses on to the stage and into the orchestra. That part of the nouse being always crowded it was hard to discover the real perpetrators."-Durang, HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 43 swears !" This experience came near nipping in the bud the career of a brilliant American actor. He was unceremoniously hustled off the stage.1 There were disturbances at the Chestnut Street Theatre nightly in 1811, at the time when a young man named McKenzie, who had been a member of the company, broke his contract with Warren and Wood and went over to the Wal nut Street Theatre. Wood himself took the part which this sudden secession had made vacant, — Mordent, in The Deserted Daughter — but whenever he appeared, there was "a brutal effusion of hisses, howlings and imprecations" which caused the ladies to leave the house. Cries of "Kill him !" "Drive him from the stage !" "Kill him!" were heard in all parts of the theatre. The play came to an end in noise and confusion. The next night Mr. Wood appeared as Romeo and Mrs. Wood as Juliet. The scenes were repeated. Mrs. Wood was struck on the arm by a musket ball thrown with great force from an upper box. The actor-manager then went to the front of the stage and demanded a hearing. It was necessary to lower the curtain, but when Wood came out a crowd of fellows still lingered in the lobbies. He determined to go to his lawyer for advice, but the mob fol lowed threatening his life. Edward Tilghman, Jr., joined him, and the two men together, with loaded pistols in their hands, with great difficulty made their way to Fifth and Walnut streets. Mr. Wood was entirely at a loss to know what was the reason for the uproar, but he was told afterwards that it was because he "habitually indulged, publicly and privately, in most insulting attacks upon the Scotch portion of our citizens." 2 McKenzie was behind the movement, but it was the belief of Mr. Wood that the disturbance was mainly created by a party of pickpockets, for their own purposes. When Kean played a return engagement at the Walnut Street Theatre in April, 1 82 1, he was one night set upon by a mob. He was not playing his part well, being probably drunk. Hisses and groans, with cries of "Off, off !" greeted him. He turned upon the men, calling them "cowards" and other names, but was soon obliged to leave the stage. Young Bingham, (William Bingham, Jr.,) then the leader of the gilded youth of the town, who occupied one of the boxes with a party of friends, espoused Kean's cause. They were thrown over the edge of the box to sprawl upon the stage. The lights at this point were fortunately ex tinguished, and the riot was precipitately ended.3 When Kean returned in 1826 it was to meet the resentment of the Philadel- phians induced by his discourtesy to the people of Boston. He had refused to appear there, because the audience which had assembled to witness his perform ance, was small. On January 18, 1826, at the Chestnut Kean was pelted with eggs, children's bullet buttons and other missiles. There was such a din that the actor could not proceed except in pantomime.4 Actors and managers carried their disputes to their audiences. When the in tractable Wemyss refused to say "brave man" instead of "Englishman" at a re hearsal and defied Mr. Wood, the town took up the case. Hissing in the theatre 1 Alger's Life of Edwin Forrest, I, p. 61. 2 Recollections, pp. 148-150. 3 Durang, chap. 71. * Wemyss, p. 87. 44 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA led to speeches by both Wemyss and Wood in the midst of a play. The former, according to his own accounts, threatened to "thrash the manager. When the new Chestnut Street Theatre was built, it was promised that the "greatest attention will be paid to the decorum of the theatre; special officers of police are expressly engaged for the preservation, of order, and every violation of propriety will be referred immediately to the magistrate without the least respect to persons." Even a man of the position in the community held by General John Barker, several times mayor of the city, could not be prevented from making a scene during the War of 1812. It was the play Marmion by his son James N. Barker. The king was made to say: "My Lord ! my Lord ! under such injuries How shall a free and gallant nation act? Still lay its sovereignty at England's feet- Still basely ask a boon from England's bounty- Still vainly hope redress from England's justice? No! by our martyred fathers' memories: The land may sink— but, like a glorious wreck, 'Twill keep its colors flying to the last !" Old Mr. Barker at this point rose in his box and swinging his cane over his head, shouted, "No sir! No! We'll nail them to the mast and sink the Stars and Stripes before we'll yield!" This outburst led to a demonstration on the part of the audience which could not be suppressed for several minutes. ^ But whatever the disorder in the theatres, which was not at all peculiar to Philadelphia, the audiences here were considered to be the most critical and in telligent on the continent. This was largely due, no doubt, to the excellent productions to which the people had become accustomed for twenty or thirty years by the Chestnut Street stock company. Many visiting actors and actresses spoke of the anxiety which they felt concerning their debut in Philadelphia. The lack of applause disconcerted them. The knowledge that they were in the presence of the best judges of the drama in America made them feel little at their ease. Tyrone Power, the Irish actor, who after winning the love of Ameri can theatre-goers in 1833, 1834 and 1835 lost his life on a vessel which myste riously disappeared at sea, had heard much of the Philadelphians before he came, but he was agreeably disappointed. It must be remembered, however, that he was a comedian and he was repaid by the laughter of the people. Of the clapping of palms, the hammering of sticks and cries of "bravo" there were not any. To him the women in his audience seemed pretty and attractive, and the men "sing ularly respectable and attentive." There was always "an evident anxiety to lose no word or look of the artist, an evident abstraction from everything but the scene. Fanny Kemble at about the same time, however, in more serious playing got an entirely different impression. The people were the "most unapplausive" she 1 Wemyss, pp. 92-3. 2 Impressions, I, p. 61. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 45 had- ever acted to, not excepting the Scotch. Another time she found them "literally immovable." It was "all but impossible to act to them." 1 The Chestnut Street Theatre stock company, the equestrian and other perform ances at the Olympic or Walnut Street Theatre, and the barn-stormers who ap peared from time to time at the old South Street Theatre, did not entirely supply the public need for entertainment. The city in the first quarter of the century had a number of pleasure gardens, at some of which concerts and dramatic per formances were given Gray's Gardens, at the lower ferry, in such high repute during Washington's presidency, fell in the public estimation, when rival resorts were established elsewhere. It at length became a mere road-house, at which parties stopped for refreshment while upon excursions in the country. Some what the same fate befell Harrowgate, north of the city, at one time so fashionable for its waters, and for the entertainment which the proprietors prepared for their guests. The Lebanon Garden, at the south-east corner of Tenth and South streets continued in popular favor. Public dinners were often arranged there, and it was a pleasant shaded retreat on hot summer evenings. The Lombardy Garden was at Market and Schuylkill Eighth, now Fifteenth street, and here concerts and fireworks attracted visitors. Opposite lay the much older Centre House Garden. It was there that Victorien had his amphitheatre and circus. The most important resorts of this kind, however, were the Tivoli Garden, on the north side of Market street between Thirteenth and Centre Square, and the Vauxhall Garden at Broad and Walnut streets. The Tivoli Garden was first opened as the Colum- bian Garden in 1813. It contained a summer theatre, in which pantomime and other kinds of entertainments were frequently seen. After 1820, when the garden changed owners, the performances assumed more importance. The house came to be known as the Tivoli Garden Theatre, and plays of a serious kind, with well-known actors in the presenting companies, were occasionally given. The season continued only during the summer. It was so successful that the owner in the autumn of 1820 determined to establish a theatre in the city, and hired a building which had been erected for use as a cotton factory on the south side of Prune (Locust) Street, between Fifth and Sixth streets. Here tragedy, as well as comedy, was fairly well produced. The house was called the Winter Tivoli Theatre, then the Prune Street Theatre, and still later the City Theatre. The experiment seems to have been continued for only two or three years. The Vauxhall, which was opened in May, 1814, soon gained a deserved pre eminence among the city gardens. The grounds, of themselves, were very beau tiful. John Dunlap, earlier editor of the American Daily Advertiser, owned the property and, possessed of much taste, he had laid it out with trees, flower beds and gravelled walks, until it was "a little paradise." Facilities were at hand for illuminating it handsomely, with colored lights suspended from the boughs and peeping out among the foliage, and the guests were assured of pleasant music. A summer theatre was erected for concerts and vaudeville, suited to those who had a few hours to lounge about on summer nights. There was a room large enough for balls, and from 1815 on, it was for many years the most fashionable of all the Philadelphia gardens. Exhibitions of fireworks were not infrequently 1 Journal. 46 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA given and a number of balloon ascensions were undertaken here. One of these led to a very disastrous riot. A Monsieur Michel announced that he would in flate his bag in the garden on September 8, 1819, and rise to a height of about two thousand feet, when he would descend in a parachute thirty feet in diameter, to a spot near that from which he had ascended. The farmers for miles around were notified of his intention, and were requested to look out for the balloon. Whosoever should secure and return it would receive a reward. The space around the garden was open, and it is estimated that some 35>o°° persons crowded into it. They craned their necks for a long time. The balloonist had much diffi culty with his gas, and it was very late in the afternoon before all was ready for the ascension. A boy more impatient than the rest attempted to climb the fence and was seriously hurt by a guard. • At this the crowd became inflamed and' resorted to stones and other missiles, one of which punctured the bag and made the feat impossible. The mob then broke into the enclosure, set fire to the theatre, drank the liquors, stole the cash-box, and engaged in a general destruction of property. No one seems to have been arrested or punished for this outrage, as indeed the leaders of mobs in the city in these and succeeding years seldom, if ever, were. The loss of the managers and exhibitors was very severe and, while repairs were made in a short time, the garden never quite re gained its earlier popularity. The memory of the events of this night rested heavily upon the place. In the folowing year, 1820, ascensions were undertaken by an aeronaut named Guille who, with Michel, had been experimenting for some time in Cam den and other places. On October 14th he went up from Vauxhall Garden, and was blown as far as Pennington, N. J., where he successfully effected a landing. On November 23d he again made a flight. He sent a monkey down in the para chute, and came to the ground himself in his balloon at Mantua village. The dar ing aeronaut for a time hovered over "Sweetbrier." x The State House was still an exhibition place for Charles Willson Peak's stuffed birds and quadrupeds, skeletons and wax figures, and it seemed difficult to rid these precincts, filled with memories which grew dearer to the people year by year, of such incongruous objects. The political influence which Peale pos sessed, the poverty of the city which caused it to value the price he now paid for the use of the rooms (he at first paid nothing), and an exaggerated notion of the worth of the collection, led to its remaining in its place in security. Illu minations of the building and other devices for attracting people to the Museum, so that they would pay the admission fee of twenty-five cents, were constantly announced, and were not very pleasing to any one. Now it was a new kind of lamp, and again an organ, or three living chameleons from Spain, or a devil-fish twelve feet long, or an Italian who "performed on five different instruments at the same time" called a "Pandean Band," or a machine called a physiognotrace, for taking profiles, operated by a mulatto, or lectures on more or less scientific subjects or magic lantern exhibitions, or electrical experiments. On Sunday Mr. Peale exposed a placard: "Here the wonderful works of the Divinity may be contemplated with pleasure and advantage. Let no one enter today with 1 Brecks Recollections, p. 69. CHARLES WILLSON PEALE (1741-1827) IN HIS MUSEUM After a painting by Mr. Peale in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 47 any other view." The right or wrong of a Sunday visit would depend wholly upon the spirit in which the spectator went into the building. Patent oil lamps and later gas enabled the proprietor to keep the rooms open in the evening as well as during the day, and he made from $7,000 to $10,000 annually out of his privilege, for which he never paid the city more than $1,200 and so much as that only for a short time. In connection with his curiosities Peale had a room filled with portraits painted by himself and members of his family. The best artist among his children was Rembrandt Peale, who set up a museum of his own in Baltimore in 1813, from material for which room could not longer be found in Philadelphia. In 1820, or a little later, he removed to New York and opened a museum in that city. In the winter of 1818-19 Mr. Peale, being then seventy-eight years of age, went to Washington and returned with portraits of many of the leading men of the time, — President Monroe, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun and others — which were added to his collection in the State House. The Washington Museum in Market street below Second street contained a number of wax figures. Many were of a very crude character, and here, as else where, were likely to depict bloody and horrible scenes on the battlefield. Only people of small intelligence and very primitive tastes were attracted to such dis plays. Several other museums existed for longer or shorter periods in various parts of the city. More demoralizing yet were exhibitions of men and women careening about under the influence of nitrous oxide gas, for a time accounted a fine amusement by the young dandies of the town.1 Equestrian performers, clowns, jugglers, and travelling mountebanks were constantly passing from place to place all over America, and they were frequent visitors to Philadelphia. The variety of these exhibitions was great. There were, in the first place, many kinds of curious animals, — "a pygarg from Russia," spoken of in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, having "the likeness of the camel, bear, mule, goat, and the common bullock," and weighing eleven hundredweight; an ostrich eleven feet high, which would swallow "stones, brass, wood, iron and leather, as readily as vegetable substances and strong enough to carry a man or two on his back, and so swift in running that no quadruped could surpass him;" a cassowary, "the giant of the feathered tribe;" learned pigs, which could read, write and spell and tell the time of day; African lions; decaying sharks and whales ; live porpoises ; elephants which could draw corks from bottles and per form other wonderful feats; panthers; "sea dogs;" dancing monkeys; royal Bengal tigers; camels; buffaloes; leopards; elks; "a female sea monster, caught upon Elk river;" and "the wonderful leviathan or sea-serpent, lately caught at Brown's Point, New Jersey, supposed to be the same seen in Cape Ann Bay, Massachusetts, in the years 1819-20." This creature measured more than thirty- two feet in length, and when taken had "about two bushels of lamprey eels ad hering to its sides." 1 The Hermit in Phila., second series, p. 72. 48 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Animals were beginning to come in the form of menageries. In January, 1824, as many as twenty-one, representing several different species, were ex hibited in Market street just above Eighth street. Likewise there were various human curiosities. Dwarfs were looked upon with unceasing pleasure. Three, said to be sisters, of the name of Hatch, were exhibited together. Their height ranged from thirty-six to forty-two inches Their sponsor said in his advertisements: "Such a family of females is worthy of attention by all the rational and curious part of society. Ladies in particular may be expected to view these interesting individuals of their own sex " "A mammoth child," which came in 1819, some young mathematical prodigies, "a white negro boy," and a "beautiful albiness" whose eyes were "a delicate red," were among the sights which Philadelphians might pay to see. Performers in magic and ventriloquists frequently came to amaze the popula tion. The newly discovered biloquial power, of which Charles Brockden Brown was quick to make ingenious use in Wielamd, enriched many of those who suc ceeded in cultivating it. One named Smith promised many feats. When ques tions were addressed to him, he would "make the answer appear to come from outside of any door or window, as the audience may please to direct, in a bold and articulate voice, either the voice of a lady or a gentleman, and keep a fixed situation himself, not moving out of his chair." More than this, he had in his possession "some very fine canary birds." One would sing "the favorite air of 'Owen.' " Then two birds would sing "a piece called 'Britons, Strike Home!' all in the most perfect harmony." The sound afterward would be "imitated so perfectly by Mr. Smith that no person shall be able to tell the difference, only its coming from another part of the room." There were also many mechanical exhibitions which were entertaining and sometimes mystifying. Moving painted panoramas and wax works were in dulged in pleasantly for a number of years. The newspapers of the time are filled with the advertisements of these travelling showmen who stopped for a few days or weeks at some tavern or hall. For the well-to-do classes able to absent themselves from their homes, to travel in their own conveyances or to use the stages and boats, the inland water ing places and the villages which were beginning to be formed on the Atlantic coast, offered entertainment and recreation in the summer months. One of the most popular resorts in the interior was the Moravian town of Bethlehem on the Lehigh river. It was prettily situated; the Brethren kept it tidy and clean, and had established the Sun Tavern, long one of the best, as it was the most famous, of Pennsylvania inns. Its roof had covered many distinguished men, and the comforts here provided were of themselves a reward for the stage ride from Philadelphia. Mineral springs in the country were abundant, and as Samuel Breck affirms, much was made of them now, as earlier. Their waters were supposed to possess great medicinal value. The baths were cooling in summer, and as they were usually situated in pleasant hilly neighborhoods, they were much frequented at that season. The chief of these places was still the Yellow Springs, in Chester County. There was a boarding-house on the grounds long before the HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 49 Revolution. Washington was here with his army after the battle of Brandy- wine, and a large military hospital building, erected before or during the winter which was so haplessly spent at Valley Forge, was now open for guests. A Dr. Kennedy of Philadelphia had to do with the resort early in the century, as did John Bailey, a silversmith. A family named Holman had one of two or three hotels which were situated in the place. The baths were well supplied from the springs and from the Pickering Creek, which flowed through the rneadows in front of the buildings, and it was for years the meeting ground in summer for the wealthy families of the city. In 1818 a stage left the Shakespeare Hotel three times a week for the springs, by way of Valley Forge, the Phoenix iron works and the French Creek boarding-house. It was stated that there were seven mineral springs here, with a number of pretty groves and other attractions in the surrounding country. The place was rather widely advertised in the Philadelphia newspapers, and its facilities for accommodating guests were considerably extended to meet the demand which arose early in the century!1 The Bath springs, about four miles from Bristol, were also very fashionable. A coach marked "Bristol and Bath Stage" ran from Bristol and reminded English visitors of what they often saw at home. At this place there were chalybeate springs; one hot bath, four plunging and two shower baths.2 Here, for a time at least, there was a race course. The resort numbered very promi nent people among its patrons. In 181 5, at a ball to celebrate Napoleon's over throw at the battle of Waterloo, the Swedish and Spanish representatives in the United States, both residents of Philadelphia, Captain James Biddle, and others, were present. Bedford Springs and Saratoga Springs began to attract the attention of Philadelphians as soon as the roads were sufficiently improved to make journeys of this length feasible. The Hamiltons, of the "Woodlands," patronized Sara toga, and it was on a trip to these springs in his coach in 181 7 that James Hamilton, William Hamilton's nephew, died.3 Cape May and Long Branch, were the earliest seaside resorts to be visited by Philadelphians. Already in 1801, Ellis Hughes advertised that he had "pre pared himself for entertaining company who use sea-bathing." He had "ex tensive house room, with fish, oysters, crabs and good liquors." By way of recommendation of the place he further said : "The situation is beautiful, just on the confluence of the Delaware bay and. the ocean, in sight of the light house, and affords a view of the shipping which enter and leave the Delaware. Carriages may be driven along the margin of the ocean for miles, and the wheels will scarcely make any impression upon the sand. The slope of the shore is so regular that a person may walk out a 1 Described and pictured in Port Folio, July, 1810, and after it was in decay by Mrs. Kemble, who sojourned here for a time with her children in 1843.— Records of Later Life, PP- 389, 394. 2 Wansey, p. 95. sWm. Hamilton's death had occurred in 1813. vol. n— 4 50 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA great distance. It is the most delightful spot that citizens can retire to in the hot season." , , In the summer of 1801 a stage left Cooper's Ferry every Thursday and arrived at Cape Island the next day. It returned on Tuesday. Gentlemen could thus enjoy what we now call the week-end at the seashore. For those who drove their own carriages, the route lay through Woodbury, the Glass House, Malaga Mill, Lehman's Mill, Port Elizabeth, Dennis's Creek, Cape May and Pitch of the Cape— in all a distance of eighty-two miles ; the last eighteen, "open to the seashore." Those who chose "water conveyances" were reminded that they could "find vessels almost any time." Later, a sailing packet departed at regular intervals during the summer. In some seasons connection was made by sloop with the Baltimore steamboats which ran to New Castle. The "Vesta," in 18 19, according to Thompson Westcott, was the first steamboat which car ried passengers the entire way. It made the trip twice a week, and the fare was five dollars. For lack of a dock, the people were landed by means of boats in which the beach men caught whales for oil in the winter, and were hauled for fifty cents each up to the boarding-house where they could remain for six dolars a week. The "land stages" continued their trips, lodging their passengers over night at Bridgeton. A four-horse coach which, by leaving at sunrise, got through in one day, was put on the line in 1822. The fare was reduced to three dollars in order to compete with the steamboats. In 1823 there were three hotels at the Cape, generally known as the "upper house," the "large house" (which was Hughes's), and the "lower house." Some times the accommodations were far from good, especially after a sudden and large influx of visitors. One time in 1822, when Watson visited Cape May1 the steamboat took down as many as forty passengers, and the three houses to gether had nearly 200 guests. Late comers were obliged to sleep upon the floor and upon settees. When the ladies went to the surf to bathe, at appointed hours, "gentlemen did not walk on the banks." As none ventured beyond half her depth, no chivalrous sentiment having to do with the safety of the bathers could excuse a violation of this rule. Men, meantime, could pitch quoits, play domi noes, or indulge in the other amusements which these early visitors to the place devised to pass away the time. From 1820 on this resort during the summer months was in good regular communication with the city, which long sent so many people thither to enjoy its cool breezes and its surf baths. Long Branch, in the neighborhood of the old Shrewbury meeting, built to serve a little Quaker community early established on the coast in the northern part of New Jersey, was commended to the attention of Philadelphians, by the Aliens of "Mount Airy," who had a home here in the eighteenth century,2 and William Bingham and his family. The patronage of such social leaders as the Binghams with their aristocratic English connections, established by the marriage of a daughter to Alexander Baring, afterward Lord Ashburton, was 1 See his appendix. 2 See D. P. Brown's Forum. THE UPPER FERRY BRIDGE OVER THE SCHUYLKILL Built by Lewis Weruwag in 1813 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 51 conclusive testimony in favor of the place. Indeed, the Baring marriage is thought to have been solemnized in the Bingham villa, "Bellevue," at Black Point, near Long Branch. It was a time when to have a seaside home was an almost unknown luxury, and at Mr. Bingham's death no one could be found for many years to buy his seat. Other Philadelphia families, the Perots and the Biddies among them, early discovered the attractions of the place, and a board ing house was set up for the accomodation of visitors. For a long time those who did not use their own carriages to this or any of the other New Jersey seaside places, were obliged to depend upon the civili ties of owners of the oyster wagons and the fish flats which occasionally passed up and down the sandy roads. As early as 1800 there were stages in summer to Long Branch by way of Trenton, Allentown and Monmouth Court House. At either one or other of the last named places the passengers spent the night. The fare was six cents per mile. Steamboats quickened the service and changed the route, which was first by way of Burlington, and later Bordentown. In 1820 there were two stage lines. One left every morning by steamboat for Bordentown, whence a wagon carried passengers at five dollars each by way of Allentown, Monmouth and Edenton, reaching the seashore during the after noon of the same day. A second line made its departure at noon, and came to Long Branch the following day. There was a regular steamboat service from Long Branch to New York, so that Philadelphians could conveniently take that place, if they desired, on their way home. William Renshaw, so well known through his connection with the Mansion House, opened a hotel at Long Branch after 1820, and for one season at least had Joseph Bonaparte as his guest. The trip must have been a very unpleasant one. The roads were heavy with sand, so that progress, as one traveller records, was at a rate not above two and a half miles an hour. Accommodations were not better than at Cape May. Some ladies who visited Renshaw's in 1826 were obliged to occupy "one-half of the cock loft of the ice house." 1 There were no amusements better than a ride with "the girls" in a fish wagon to Deal, Black Point, Edenton or the light-house, and occasionally what was called a ball to the music of "one poor blacky" who scraped a fiddle. The ladies bathed alone, as at Cape May, the gentlemen turning their eyes away whenever a white flag was set up on the beach, the signal for the ceremony. One who was there in 1826 declined availing herself of the opportunity "after witnessing the exhibition." The cost of staying at Long Branch in 1825 seems to have been not more than at Cape May, about six or seven dollars a week.2 The attraction of the place consisted largely in the fact that the grassy fields and the forests ran up to the very borders of the sea. On the bank little arbors were placed, and the visitors could sit on benches under green boughs while looking out upon the sandy beach and the breaking surf, as he could do nowhere else, on the New Jersey coast at least.3 1 Pa. Mag., XXII, p. 259. 2 "Letters from Long Branch" in chapter IX, Hermit of Phila., 2nd series. 3 Theodore Dwight, Summer Tours, 2nd ed., chap. VI. 52 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Others in search of the ocean, made their way to Long Beach, and Short, or Tucker's Beach, sand bars or islands lying between Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor inlets. While Cape May and Long Branch were backed by a farming country, those who visited the Long or Short Beaches found themselves prac tically out at sea. The Tuckers had a boarding-house on Short Beach, probably the first to be established anywhere on the New Jersey coast. There were stages in 1818 and perhaps much earlier, to Tuckerton, a village of about fifty painted and unpainted wooden houses, a brick store, a Methodist church, a Quaker meet ing, a grist and sawmill, and a windmill for making salt out of sea water. CHAPTER XIX. PHYSICAL PROGRESS. The leading economic interest of the people in the period following the War of 1812 was the improvement of the methods of communication. Bridges, turnpikes and canals still claimed their attention. The old scheme for a canal to connect the waters of the Delaware and the Chesapeake, which had so early engaged the interest of the American Philosophical Society, lagged. A con tract for the work was not let until 1824. In April of that year the first earth was thrown up at Newbold's Landing, opposite the Pea Patch Island, where a fort had been built during the second war with England. Many distinguished guests attended and Thomas P. Cope gave a history of the undertaking in an address which he delivered to the assembled company. In June, 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York whose name was now everywhere connected with the Erie Canal visited the city. He was dined and taken down the river to view the work. In September Governor Shulze of Pennsylvania made a similar trip and enthusiasm for the project was at last thoroughly aroused. A scheme fraught with larger value for Philadelphia was the plan to make the Schuylkill river navigable. As we have seen the proposals for the im provement of this stream antedated the Revolution by many years. Afterward the Schuylkill and Susquehanna, and the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Com panies under the presidency of Robert Morris, had essayed the task of improv ing the stream. The works still being in an unfinished state, in April, 181 1, the companies were combined and re-incorporated under the name of the Union Canal Company. Another lottery was authorized for the benefit of this very unprosperous enterprise. Under various lessees, among them the wealthy mer chant, Henry Pratt, who had the country-seat at Lemon Hill, the Grand State Lottery, as it was called, yielded little fruit, from the point of view of either the managers of the scheme or the stockholders of the canal. Finally with new direction the business assumed such proportions that a legislative investigation was instituted. The committee reported that between 181 1 and 1832 the "schemes" had altogether amounted to $18,180,191, while before 1811 their total had been $3,068,000. The company, which was originally authorized to raise $400,* 000, by this means had profited, it was said, to the extent of more than $2,000,000, a statement which its agents vigorously denied. At any rate the business went forward at an alarming rate, corrupting the consciences and depleting the purses of all classes of man and womankind. 63 54 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The money assembled in this way was used in making a way west from Reading; none of it was expended upon the Schuylkill. In that river some thing had been done in a century toward the removal of obstructions, so that skiffs, shallops and rafts could pass up and down. Dr. Mease said in 1811 that "loaded sloops" could ascend to the Falls, while the river was navigable above this point "in boats about ninety miles." These boats, however, must be small and their movements were limited to seasons of high water.1 A very enterprising and useful man now appears in the annals of Phila delphia. This was Josiah White, a young Quaker born in Mount Holly, N. J. He came to Philadelphia in 1797 at the age of fifteen, and apprenticed himself to a hardware dealer. In 1810 he purchased a mill-seat from Robert Kennedy, a tavern-keeper at the Falls of Schuylkill, and in partnership with Erskine Hazard and Joseph Gillingham made other investments in the vicinity. He established a rolling mill and wire and nail works. Of an inventive turn he developed a number of mechanical contrivances and his ingenuity, industry and pertinacity caused him to be heard of frequently during the next few years in Philadelphia. The purchase of the mill-seat included the right to build a dam with a canal around it for the passage of boats which should pay the owner fifty cents each. In carrying out this work Mr. White had erected, in great part with his own hands, often up to his "brest in water" in cold weather, a guard wall and gates in the bed of the river. It was said that the Schuylkill was too large a stream to dam. Very few locks had been built up to this time anywhere in America; but White succeeded where others had failed. The works although placed in "apparently the most unfavorable and difficult" situation, he said in 1812, had "withstood the force of the stream," for a year. He now advocated an application of his system to the business of rendering the Schuylkill generally navigable. By the construction of four dams, Mr. White stated that vessels of thirty tons, drawing not more than two feet of water, could pass from Philadelphia to Norristown, and that in a similar way the river, except when choked with ice, could be navigated to Reading. In the eighteenth century the weir fishermen had resented any attempt to improve the stream. Indeed they had defied the constables violently and they were still far from friendly to the undertaking. The shad which swam on the Schuylkill's gravelled bottoms were accounted of a finer quality than those caught in the Delaware, and they could be sold at a higher price.2 There were profitable fisheries between Arch and Race streets, and the business was actively prosecuted at the Falls. Shad ranjtp^the river as far as Phoenixville, and sometimes even beyond that point. lareefanTfulLTtr ****** ***? ** eadier the Schuvlki11 and the Wissahickon were wTswti t ta" m atCr yearS' Xt may have been so' but » W ^ent the boats- verv tr "T f ^ 'I ^^^ DuHn* freshets wh* ™« *ted "^g agea in the currenT'h" « * * ^ "**' ™™ d°Wn fr°m Readin* Ea<* was man oexper that the ? ,7 "*" f 1 ***** 75 t0 IS° barrels of flour- The guides were not wfthou. accident ShnT* ^ ** ^ ^ ** Carg06S' th°U*h at tim6S with *£££?,£; s,;:; rzi :;* great difficuity by the aid of poies shod * Mease, p. 120. ' VIEW OF SCHUYLKILL SHOWING THE BRIDGES FROM THE WATER WORKS AT THE HEAD OF CHESTNUT STREET, 1828 (Beck's Shot Tower at Right) CHAIN BRIDGE AT FALLS OF SCHUYLKILL HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 55 Many were taken by the owner of an estate near the mouth of the Perkiomen.1 Almost every farmer who had a field on the banks of the river kept a net. This was usually fifty or sixty yards in length and about six yards wide. The lower side was weighted with lead and the top was kept up by pieces of cork. One end of the net was fixed firmly to a stake on the shore, while the other was carried out into the stream in a small boat. Then the boat was rowed down with the current and returned to the bank near the stake, with such fish as could be taken during the circuit securely enclosed. Several hundreds were, at times, captured in a single draught.2 Godfrey Schronk, a well known fisherman at the Falls, is said to have taken 439 shad at one time in his seine, and many men at this place with dip nets habitually caught enough during the season to support themselves and their families throughout the year. The river was also well filled with perch, rock- fish, suckers and catfish. Schronk often, it is said, would take three thousand catfish in a net in a night. They were early served at the taverns on the river side, and to this day have remained a specialty of the Schuylkill and Wissahickon inns.3 The farmers protested against the movement to make the river navigable on other grounds. They feared that their lands would be cut up by the canals, and that the dams would cause overflows which would damage their meadows. Some Germans in Schuylkill County, however, were intelligent enough to rec ognize the value of the proposed improvement. Already, visions of the wealth which would flow to the people from the coal lying under their lands, were seen. The canal promised a rich commerce not only to Philadelphia, but also with New York state by connections to be established in the north. The Schuyl kill County men passed resolutions in which they said: "The plaster from Onondaga and the borders of the Cayuga, will be seen like the fertilizing Nile, producing abundance in our soil. The wheat trade, which hitherto has been enjoyed but partially and at seasons, will become a constant source of wealth to our citizens. Perhaps soon the salt which is manu factured in the central part of the state of New York may afford us supplies in time of scarcity. Above all, our extensive coal mines will afford cheap fuel and comfortable fires to the citizens of Reading, Philadelphia and, perhaps, even New York, and will, together with our lumber and iron, become inexhaustible sources of prosperity to the inhabitants of Schuylkill County." These bodies of citizens, local to the Schuylkill valley, soon gave strong and needed support to the movement and on March 8, 1815, the legislature chartered the "president, managers and company of the Schuylkill Navigation Company." They were to construct a lock canal from Fairmount at Philadelphia to Port Carbon in Schuylkill County, a distance of about 1 10 miles. Josiah White, Sam uel Wetherill, Jr., Jonathan Williams, Samuel Richards and Robert Kennedy were named in the act as commissioners from Philadelphia. Subscription books were 1 SutclifFs Travels, p. 31. 2 Ibid., pp. 248-49. 3 Watson in his Annals and Charles V. Hagner in his Early History of the Falls of Schuylkill, Manayunk, etc., are the authorities for these statements. 56 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA opened here and in Norristown, Pottstown, Reading, Hamburg and Orwigsburg. When financial success seemed assured a committee consisting of Casper W Morris Samuel Baird and Cadwalader Evans, Jr., repaired to New England to inspect the works recently built with success in the Connecticut river. They discovered that Ariel Cooley had taken a leading part in this improvement. He had also constructed the locks near the falls of the James at Richmond, Va. He was living at Springfield, Mass., and there they visited him. Mr. Cooley was invited to come on to Philadelphia, and inspect the Schuylkill, which he did in the spring of 1816. He made a report to the company declaring the enterprise to be entirely feasible. The river was divided into two sections. Work was to begin at or near the Falls of Schuylkill on the lower sectioned at Reading on the upper section, proceeding northward from each point simulta neously. Mr. Cooley himself proposed to construct the dam at Flat Rock above the Falls at a place now called Shawmont. In 181 7 he was given the contract, agreeing to finish the work by November 1, 1818. To do all that had been planned called for the expenditure of a much larger sum of money than was originally supposed, and great despondency prevailed until Stephen Girard who had invested in coal lands, shrewdly foreseeing their great future value, liberally subscribed to the stock. His pecuniary support was very useful in forwarding the undertaking. A great number of dams, canals and locks must be built, but finally in 1825 boats which had traversed the whole length of this important navigable system came into the city. By this time the very great value of the anthracite coal deposits in the interior of the state began to be understood. For several years soft coal from Vir ginia had been used at the engine house in Centre Square, the "trees and houses adjacent," it is said, looking in consequence "as black and gloomy as those of Pittsburg." 1 This fuel was also burnt to some extent elsewhere in the city, but the first successful experiments with the hard or stone coal of Pennsylvania, are credited to White and Hazard, in their wire mill at the Falls. It is said that as early as in 1786 a company was formed to mine coal near Pottsville. Gen eral Arthur St. Clair, Thomas Rutter and members of the Potts family were interested in the plan. They purchased about 1,800 acres of land where Potts ville now stands, and sent a wagon load of the black stones to Philadelphia. The driver was more than a week in making the journey. The coal was distributed for trial among the ship-wrights and smiths, but most of it found its way into the cellar of Robert Morris's partner, John Nicholson, who lived on the North east (Franklin) Square. When he went to prison for debt the coal, regarded as rubbish, was thrown out into the square where it long remained.2 The development of the deposits in the Lehigh valley was proceeding also. As early as 1792, Michael Hillegas, Charles Cist, Jacob Weiss, William Henry and others, formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company to open up a tract at a place afterward called Summit Hill.3 Here the measures were exposed, and 1 J. Cuming, Sketches of a Tour, 1807. 2 These facts are taken from a circumstantial account published in the Public Ledger, June 11, 1850. 8 Hist. Soc. Memoirs, I, paper' of Dr. T. C. James. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 57 the coal could be quarried like stone. But there were few willing to believe that it was of any use. Smiths, millwrights and machinists required hot fires, but their grates were adapted to bituminous coal, so much easier to ignite. Moreover, there was no way to bring the coal to them. The company persisted, and built a road from the mines to a landing on the river, a distance of nine miles. There it must wait for weeks or months sometimes, until enough water was at hand to bear it down the stream. In 1798 a navigation company was formed for the purpose of making the river useful to the people settled upon it. The mines had several lessees, but one after another abandoned the work of operating them. Charles Miner, at one time associated with Mr. Cist in the work of development, states that he and his partners issued hand bills in Eng lish and German, explaining the method of burning the coal. They visited several houses in the city and asked to be permitted to kindle fires of anthracite in grates which had been erected to burn Liverpool coal. They went also to blacksmiths' shops, exhibited certificates from smiths who had successfully used the new fuel, and sometimes bribed the journeymen to make the experiment fairly. All these efforts' availed very little.1 In 1813 two out of five arks from Mauch Chunk, the others having been wrecked on the way, reached Philadelphia, and were sold to White and Hazard for $21 a ton. In the summer of 1814, another cargo arrived, and it seems to have been in that year that the value of this coal came to be understood. White and Hazard had had experience with bituminous coal in their rolling mills. Mr. White now insisted upon a thorough trial of the new fuel, but his workmen could not make it burn in such furnaces as they were provided with. Finally, in disgust, they threw a quantity of the "black stones" upon the fire, shut the doors and went home. One of the men had left his jacket behind and returning for it some time afterward, found the furnace red hot. He called his fellows, and they ran "four separate parcels of iron" through the rolls with that one fire.2 About 181 5, prior to or after this historic experience, Mr. Hazard started for the upper Schuylkill, taking with him a sheet iron boat which would draw not more than ten inches of water, and which he hoped to fill and send down in a freshet. In this boat, or in crude arks built near Pottsville, and in wagons, a considerable quantity of coal came to the Falls.3 As success ful as these experiments may have been Mr. White and Mr. Hazard soon turned to the Lehigh region which they visited in 181 7 and, in conjunction with a foreign adventurer, George F. A. Hauto, leased 10,000 acres of land for twenty years "for an ear of corn per year if demanded." In 1818 they obtained the passage of an act of assembly authorizing effectual improvements of the river through the offices of the Lehigh Navigation Company. In 18 19 1 It was some of this coal which found its way to John Binns, the publisher of the Democratic Press in the hope that he would commend it in his newspaper. He paid a stove- maker $50 for a sheet iron stove in which to burn the lumps and attempted to light them with charcoal, but "all they would do was to look red like stones in a well-heated lime kiln." When they were taken out at night they were "to all appearances as large as when first cast into the stove." — Binns, Recollections, p. 265. 2E. Hazard, Hist. Soc. Mem., II, pt. 1, p. 159. 'Hagner, p. 44; Hist. Soc. Memoirs, II, pt. 1, p. 160. 58 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA they constructed a good road from the mines. The quarry which it virtually was, for the measures lay quite near the surface, was worked with wedges and gunpowder and the coal was then immediately thrown into the wagons. A pair of horses could draw from four to six tons down to the riverside, and in 1822 the legislature united the separate companies under the general name of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. In 1820 White, Hazard and their asso ciates sent three hundred and sixty-four tons of coal to Philadelphia. In November, 1822, it was announced in the newspapers that in one week nearly fifty arks, containing two hundred bushels, or about eight tons each, had reached the city. The Schuylkill stone coal also found its way to market. The canal was so far completed in April, 1822, that twenty-one arks were unloaded at the new wharf of Jacob Ridgway, on the Schuylkill at Fairmount. Mr. White himself made experiments with grates and devised a type which masons soon found employment in putting in, not only for smiths, millwrights, and machinists but in private homes. Thompson Westcott says that the first advertisement of anthracite coal in any newspaper was that which appeared in the United States Gazette for January, 1819. The advertiser, who did not announce his name but who was no other than Mr. White, would receive orders at 172 Arch street (his own residence) for "quantities of not less than one ton between the 1st of April and the 1st of December at thirty cents per bushel of eighty pounds." He added that "the coal may be seen burning at the above place." This price was equal to $8.40 a ton, according to Mr. Hazard "about half the price it had ever been offered for previously." Mining and shipping methods were so much improved before 1824 that in that year Lehigh coal could be purchased in Phila delphia at $7 a ton, while Schuylkill coal in 1830 was selling as cheap as from $5 to $6.50 a ton, though the freight was $2 and the tolls on the canal $1 more. In 1825 the Lehigh company forwarded 28,393 tons of coal to Philadelphia, and the Schuylkill miners about 5,000 tons. The new fuel was now fairly introduced. Hazard's Register for Jan. 31, 1829, gives a table of the shipments of coal in tons to Philadelphia up to the end of the year 1828. It is as follows : 1820 18211822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 Lehigh Schuylki 365 .... 1,073 .... 2,440 5,823 9,541 .... 28,393 5,000 31,280 16,767 30,305 3T,36i 30,111 47,284 Other revolutions were in progress on the Schuylkill. Before the war work • begun on the second "permanent bridge." The increase of traffic over the MASONIC HALL IN CHESTNUT STREET Built in 1810. Burned in 1819 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 59 river made this step necessary, and in 1811 the assembly chartered "the managers and company for erecting a permanent bridge over the river Schuylkill at or near where the floating bridge is at present situated, and known by the name of the Upper Ferry." It, too, was to be supported by tolls, and Abraham Sheridan, the keeper of the old bridge of rafts or boats, was one of the leading spirits in the work. Lewis Wernwag, a German millwright,1 who had lately built a bridge over Frankford creek which was generally admired, was chosen to be the architect, and he projected a distinctly novel structure. It stood on abutments thirty feet above the river. The chord of the arch measured 340 feet, which was considerably in excess, it was positively stated, of that of any arch hitherto known. It was called the "Colossus of Fairmount" and was regarded by the crowds which came to view it as one of the wonders of the world. The length of the bridge was four hundred feet ; its width at the centre was thirty-five feet, widening as it reached the abutments to fifty feet. The work was finished in eight months, and it was opened for traffic in January, 1813. Roads approaching it were laid out and piked. The crossing was at Callowhill street, and the improvement played an important part in the upbuilding of Penn Township and the Northern Liberties.2 Proposals were also made for a permanent bridge at Gray's Ferry, but no arrangements could be effected as to the passage of boats, and the floor was required to be set at so great a height that the work was delayed for several years. At the Falls of Schuylkill, the public demand for a crossing was met by the erection of an odd structure. Robert Kennedy before Josiah White pur chased the water power rights there, and some of his neighbors, fitted up on two piers of hewn stone a chain bridge of three spans. It was regarded as one of the curiosities of the neighborhood. Two years later, however, when a drove of cattle were passing over it, a coupling piece of the chain broke, and it was put out of use. Another chain bridge was erected, but in January, 1816, it fell under a weight of snow and ice. White and Hazard, who were trying to effect the introduction of their wire for fencing and for other uses, conceived the idea of a wire bridge. At their own risk, they threw wires from the upper windows of their mill across the river to some large trees, and from these sus pended a walk about eighteen inches in width. Passengers were to pay one cent each as toll until the cost was met, when it would be free. It was "a trembling pathway,"3 and only eight persons were to be allowed to cross at a time, but a correspondent of a newspaper remarked that he once saw thirty people on it, "including rude boys, running backward and forward." In 1817 a new chain bridge designed by Mr. Wernwag, was put in place at this point, but 1 Subsequently the builder of many bridges. He had a nail factory at Phoenixville when the Schuylkill canal was projected through that place and like Mr. Cooley was a con tractor for several dams. 2 This bridge was burned in 1838, and replaced four years later by a wire suspension bridge which was free of toll. It, in turn, as it gave signs of decay, made way in 1875 for an iron bridge. 3 Remarks Made During a Tour in 1817-19, by Wm. T. Harris. Mr. Harris saw "sev eral lasses trip over it very gaily, accommodating themselves adroitly to its motions." go HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ill fortune pursued it also. In the great freshet of the spring of 1822 it was swept away, carried whole over Fairmount Dam, and broken up against the abutments of the Upper Ferry Bridge. The completion of the reservoir at Centre Square, with its wooden trunks in the streets for making the water of the Schuylkill river available, soon led to plans for a better service. In 1810, 1,922 breweries, manufactories and private families took the water at an anual rental of $10,931. The enlargement of the supply, and the improvement of the methods of distribution now claimed the at tention of the city. The water, when it was taken out at Chestnut street, was considered to be impure, and it was proposed that works should be erected at Morris's Hill, (the name which had come to be given to Fairmount), near the Upper Ferry. Other schemes were discussed, but this, among many, appeared to be the best, and in 1812, while the second "permanent bridge" nearby was under construction, work upon the steam pumping works at this point was begun, un der the practical direction of Frederick Graff.1 The water was raised through a sixteen-inch iron main 239 feet in length to a reservoir upon the hill, a level 102 feet above the river surface at low tide. The capacity of the pump was 1,733,632 ale gallons per diem. The engine, which was of local manufacture, burned seven cords of wood daily. It was finished and ready for use in September, 1815. At first the water was taken directly out of the current of the stream, but an other plan now presented itself. Indeed it had found an advocate in Josiah White for many years. His property at the Falls was little profitable to him and his interests were now transferred to the Lehigh coal region. He desired the city to purchase his mill and dam rights, and harness the river -so that it would hoist the water into the reservoir by its own power. He advocated this step in and out of season with a zeal which was not entirely unselfish. At length, on April 7, 1819, councils bought the rights of White and his partner for $150,000, and by arrangement with the navigation company set about the construction of the Fair- mount dam. The Schuylkill canal had enlisted the services of Mr. Cooley. He had succesesfully built the Flat Rock and other dams on the river, and he was entrusted with the work at Fairmount. A short canal with locks was constructed on the west bank for the navigation company's boats. On June 25, 1821, the last crib was sunk and the dam was closed. The engines could be discarded, and the water-wheels installed, as they were in a new building which was pushed to com pletion very rapidly. Crowds of people now and for many years afterward, as sembled here to see the great wheels at work. Elaborate designs which had been carved by Rush were placed over the door of the house. They were described as follows : "The male figure is recumbent on a bed of rocks, the water flowing in several directions from it. It represents Old Age, the head covered with flags; a long flowing beard; the body covered with water grass, etc., and a chain attached to the wrist intended to emblemize the state of the Schuylkill no longer running un controlled but flowing gently from dam to dam, and passing through artificial canals by locks and gates. A bald eagle at his feet, with wings opening, is about Souare T^lff Ph|!adelphia ™ho had as^ted Latrobe in designing the works at Centre bquare, and afterward served there as an engineer. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 61 to abandon the banks of the Schuylkill in consequence of the busy scene which art is introducing. The female figure is represented as seated near the pump, which pours water into the reservoir. On her left side is represented a water wheel. Her left arm gently waving over it, is indicative of the power of the water. Her right arm rests on the edge of a large vase, representing the reservoir at Fairmount. On the side of the vase a pipe represents the ascending main. Water gushes out of the top, falling into the vase and, in token of its abundance, overflowing the vase, and falling down its sides." 1 In their annual report for 1823, the committee said : "On the 24th of October last the steam engines were stopped, and it is believed will never again be wanted." Iron pipes were gradually being substituted for the hollowed logs, which burst in freezing weather and were very ineffective, but they were introduced slowly. In 1822 thirty-two miles of wooden pipes were still in use in Philadelphia. In 1830 the works at Fairmount had three water-wheels in operation capable of pumping four million gallons in twenty- four hours. The cost of the Centre Square works, including the engine at the river, is stated to have been $690,402 ; of the steam works at Fairmount, $320,669 ; of the dam and water-wheel arrangements, $432,- 512; in all, nearly $1,500,000. The income from water rents in 1830 was $70,000 per annum.2 The Navigation Company in 1819 offered water power for sale at Flat Rock. This was the first dam above Fairmount in the new Schuylkill system. The price, it was said, would be "three dollars per annum in the nature of a ground and water rent for each square inch of aperture under a three foot head." An aper ture of one hundred square inches, it was computed, would yield water sufficient to grind ten bushels of wheat per hour. The existence of these water power privileges at this point led to the development of an industrial town, which was at first called Flat Rock, and then Manayunk, a happy employment of the name by which the Indians knew the river. John Towers, an old sea captain, built the first mill in 1819. Charles V. Hagner, whose father had long spun candle wick in the neighborhood, was the second purchaser of Flat Rock power, in 1820, and erected mills for making oil and grinding drugs, and later for fulling and weaving. He is said to have brought into use here the first power loom to be set up in a woolen mill in Pennsylvania. The development from this point was rapid. Up to 1825 the company had sold 1,330 inches of power; the sales prior to 1833 reached a total of 2,665 inches. Until the dam was built there were between Righter's ferry and Flat Rock bridge, only eleven houses. These were occupied by farmers and shad fishermen. In 1827 there were about 1,100 people in the place; in 1831 over 2,000, and in 1836 3,175. Meanwhile the old settlement at the Falls, known for a century as Fort St. Davids, 'dwindled in importance. The construction of the dam at Fairmount robbed it of its water power and closed its mills. Fishing was no longer profit able and the town for some years almost ceased to exist.3 1 Viewing these models today it is impossible to share the enthusiasm of this descrip tion. 2 Jenkins, Memorial History, p. 452. 8 Hagner, p. 51. 62 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA These improvements, great as they were, boded no good to those who had es tablished country seats on the east and west banks of the river. As we have seen every wealthy man in colonial and Revolutionary times had an estate a few miles from the city. The elevated and wooded banks of the Schuylkill on both sides of the river up to the Falls were early occupied, as were most of the country roads running in all directions. Some of these mansions were elaborate, though it is probable that none surpassed "Lansdowne" under the Binghams, or the "Woodlands" of the Hamiltons.1 None had a finer outlook than Judge Peters' "Belmont." Among the later seats were the house of John Penn called "Soli tude," built about 1785, now in the confines of the Zoological Garden ; 2 "Eggles- field" or "Eaglesfield," also on the west bank of the river, a little north of the present Girard Avenue Bridge, built for James Greenleaf, a native of Massa chusetts, who had been United States consul at Amsterdam, who had married the eldest daughter of James Allen of Mount Airy, "one of the most splendid beauties this country ever produced," 3 and who later as a land speculator did much to ruin Robert Morris, the home being subsequently occupied by Robert Eaglesfield Griffith; "Sedgeley," on a tract cut off of "The Hills," Robert Morris's estate, a beautiful seat built about 1800 after Gothic designs by Latrobe for William Cra- mond, a merchant, near the present Sedgeley guard house ; Henry Pratt's "Lemon Hill," on or near the site of the old Robert Morris mansion ; "The Laurels," Joseph Sims's place, afterward converted into the Laurel Hill cemetery; Commodore Barry's seat on the east side of the Ridge Road called "Strawberry Hill," near the Robin Hood Tavern; the present Strawberry Mansion property then called "Summerville," the home of William Lewis, the lawyer; "Fairy Hill," the seat of the Pepper family; "Sweetbrier," on the west bank near "Solitude," the estate of Samuel Breck; General Mifflin's "Fonthill" at the Falls ;Powel's house, at what was later called "Powelton;" "Mount Prospect" and "Montpelier," later "Cha- mouni," both beyond "Belmont." The "Fountain Green" of Samuel Mifflin and subsequently of other owners ; "Ormiston" which had been the home of Joseph Galloway, then of Joseph Reed and more recently of Edward Burd; "Mount Peace" of the Ralstons; "Harleigh" of William Rawle; "Woodford," said to have been occupied as early as 1741 by William Coleman, later used by David Franks and still later by Isaac Wharton; * "Rockland;" "Edgley;" "The Cliffs;" and "Mount Sidney" were other fine houses standing upon these charming hills through which the Schuylkill wound its way.5 A VIS,tor t0 "Woodlands" in 1815 said: "Everything within doors is elegant." The gardens were still in "fine order." The hothouse contained "the greatest collection of plants in the United States." In the preceding winter the Hamiltons had supplied the sick with 500 or 600 lemons from their own trees.— Pa. Mag., XV, p 496 *The proprietor of "Solitude" was John Penn, the younger,' a son of Thomas Penn and a cousin of the Governor John Penn (son of Richard Penn who had married a daughter of Chief Justice Allen). 3 Griswold, Rep. Court, p. 326. 4 Keyser, Fairmount Park. 6 These homes had a series of owners. Macpherson's "Mount Pleasant" now for many years had been the property of General Jonathan Williams. Rawle's "Laurel Hill" had passed into the hands of Dr. Philip Svng Physick MANAYUNK ABOUT 1S38 FAIRMOUNT BASIN HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 63 Not only did the backing up of the water submerge islands and meadows hitherto considered both useful and picturesque, but mill-seats encroached, and worst .of all, the stagnant water in the dam and the canals was held to breed malarial fevers. The completion of the Navigation Company's line and the Fair- mount Water Works put an end to the high favor in which the Schuylkill river side homes had been held ever since the establishment of the city. As early as in 1832, when Fanny Kemble came, the Schuylkill mansions were "either utterly deserted and half ruinous, or let out by the proprietors to tavern keepers." 1 The improvement of the water system was calculated to afford the growing city greater protection against fires. These had been numerous. On March 9, 1819, the Masonic Hall, a comparatively new and very fine struc ture on the north side of Chestnut street, between Seventh and Eighth streets, was destroyed. It was a Gothic building of brick and marble, designed by Will iam Strickland, and the entire cost of the work, including the grounds, had been about $87,000. It was a disagreeable evening. Snow lay on the roofs of the houses and in the streets. The city dancing assembly was about to be held in the building and it was with difficulty that some of the ladies were extricated. A portion of the ceiling fell as they entered, revealing a mass of fire and smoke and the alarm was at once given.2 The flames, as they lapped up the steeple, form ing a pillar of light in the sky, presented a very picturesque sight, and almost the entire population of the city gathered to view it. It was long remembered as "the grandest exhibition of the effects of fire" which had ever been witnessed in Philadelphia. The loss was stated to be about $35,000. A movement for the erection of a new hall was started at once. Benefit performances were given at the theatre, and soon a sufficient sum of money was at hand to proceed with the work. This temple was finished at a cost of more than $55,000, and dedicated in 1820, when about a thousand Masons marched through the streets in a procession which attracted a great deal of attention. In February and March, 1820, a report which had been heard several times before, concerning attempts to fire the city, was persistently circulated. The danger seemed so imminent to the mayor, that he addressed councils on the subject, and a reward of $1,000 was offered for the apprehension of the mis creants who had the object in view. The watch was increased, and the popular fear was not at all allayed by the mysterious burning down of the Chestnut Street Theatre, on Sunday evening, April 2, 1820, when practically everything was con sumed at a loss estimated at $100,000. The next year, in May, the old South Street Theatre building, of so many interesting and historical associations, was burned to the ground, carrying with it a number of adjoining houses. In Decem ber, 1821, Congress Hall, now the county court house, at Sixth and Chest nut streets, was damaged by a fire resulting from a damaged flue. In 1823 the city hall, on Fifth street, took fire, and the cupola and roof sustained considerable injury; and in March, 1824, the State House again barely escaped destruction. This was clearly the attempt of incendiaries. Chairs and books were piled up in the corner of the mayor's court, but an alarm was given before the flames had 1 Journal, Vol. I, p. 164. 2Souder, ch. 73. 64 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA an opportunity to spread. Councils offered a reward of $300 for the detection of the man or men who would commit "so bad an act." 1 The guilty persons who proved to be some men convicted of earlier crimes under Mayor Wharton, con spiring to gain revenge, were arrested, and sent to prison for long terms. The most terrible fire which had occurred in the history of Philadelphia up to that time, and one of the most disastrous which it has ever had, from the stand point of the destruction of human life, occurred at the Orphans' Asylum, on the outskirts of the city on Cherry street. This institution had been estab lished by the Orphan Society of Philadelphia, which was formed in 1814 by women connected with the Second Presbyterian church. It was incorporated in 1816, and being presented with a piece of ground at the corner of Cherry and Schuylkill Fifth streets, a brick building, three stories in height, was erected there in 1818. The fire broke out at about two o'clock in the morning of one of the bitterest of winter days, January 24, 1822. The neighborhood at the time was a lonely one, and the alarm was not easily spread. When it did reach the city, the night was so cold that even members of the fire companies turned over in their beds and did not venture out to the scene of duty. Those who came with their apparatus found that it was wholly useless. The water froze in the hose, causing it to burst, and nothing could be done except to put forth efforts to get as many as possible of the ninety children, who comprised the family, out of the house. In spite of great activity on the part of a number of watchmen, firemen and others, twenty-three perished. The survivors, with nothing but the few garments in which they slept, were taken to the Widows' Asylum, situated on the south side of High, west of Schuylkill Seventh street, and in a few days, through public generosity, a house in the neighborhood, was procured for their use. Here they remained until, in a year or two, "an elegant two-storied fireproof" building was erected on the ruins in Cherry street. In addition to the fire in the city hall, in 1823, there were fires in the Northern Liberties, in which some twenty houses were destroyed; at Washington Hall, where the loss was $40,000; in a trunk factory, near Front and Chestnut streets, and adjoining property, valued at $40,000; and in a four-story building, owned by Jacob Ridgway, at the corner of Third and Chestnut streets, and occupied by Thomas Passmore and Company as an auction house, valued, with adjoining structures to which the flames spread, at $35,000. The city was in a state of not unnatural excitement which led in April, 1823, to the adoption of a system of ringing the State House bell, whereby the citizens enrolled in the fire companies could judge of the direction in which they should run with their engines and hose. Franklin Peale, a son of Charles Willson Peale, who still used the State House as a museum, agreed to serve as watchman. He announced the following arrangements: "North, one stroke; south, two strokes; east, three strokes; west, four ont3''^ .f' °nC "^ aftCr an interva1' three strokes>- northwest, one-four; Lnown 1 K°; ^ S°UthWeSt' tW°-f°Un When the direction <>f the nre is not known, the bell to be struck five times in rapid succession, and at intervals five 1 Pa. Mag., XXXI, p. 492. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 65 times again. The bell will not be rung before ten o'clock p. m., unless there is actually fire; after that time, at all hours." It was stated in 1818 that there were then in the City and Liberties 34 fire engines and 15,000 feet of hose, under the control and direction of 49 separate fire companies. The lighting as well as the better watering of the city claimed public attention, and the experiments with illuminating gas proceeded, though very slowly. Mich aux in 1802 found each street pump surmounted by a "brilliant lamp," x but after Schuylkill water was introduced the pumps gradually disappeared and posts must be substituted. In 181 1 Philadelphia had 1,132 street lamps "enclosed in glass lantherns" which were affixed to the tops of posts.2 The lamps under the market house were lighted every night at dusk; elsewhere throughout the city only in the dark of the moon, since at other times its beams would make artificial illumination "unnecessary." Whale oil was used — 14,355 gallons in 181 1 — but this became very dear, as a result of the war, in spite of the fact that whales were still seen in contiguous waters. One twenty-four feet in length was taken in the river near Trenton, in 1814. Other lighting agents were now proposed. A man named Clark advocated the use of a mixture of tallow and pig fats. Philip Mason had a somewhat similar suggestion, and councils caused several lamps to be altered with the view of utilizing these substitutes. In the latter part of 1815 councils received a letter from James McMurtrie, proposing to light the city by gas. He had recently, in company with Dr. Bollman, inspected the gas manufacturing plants of England. His plan was to generate the gas from burning wood. In consequence, William Lehman3 offered the following resolution: "Whereas gas lights have, by actual experience in the city of London, been found to cost less and to yield a better light than oil lamps, and there is good reason for believing that they may be introduced with advantage into the city of Philadelphia, as the materials for making the apparatus and preparing the gas are abundant in the United States, "Be it resolved, That a committee of two members from each council, be appointed to ascertain the facts, as far as they are able, relative to the effect and economy of gas lights, and to procure for the use of councils, copies of such books, relative to the subject of gas lights, as they may deem useful, and to con sider the practicableness and expediency of facilitating and encouraging the use of them within the city of Philadelphia." The committees were appointed, but definite action on the part of the city failed. In April of the next year, 1816, Dr. Kugler of the firm of Pratt and Kugler, made a number of successful experiments with gas at Peak's Museum in the State House. Here all who came would see "lamps burning without wick or 1 Travels, p. 20. 2 Mease, Picture, p. 25. 3 A very enterprising druggist who later for many years was a member of the legis lature, where he evidenced a great interest in railroads, canals, and other public improve ments. At his death in 1829 he left $10,000 to the Athenaeum for the erection of a building for the library. Vol. n— 5 66 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA oil " which could well be regarded as very great curiosities. Warren and Wood we're so much pleased with the demonstration that they installed a gas plant in their theatre. Here councils repaired at half past eight on the evening of Nov ember 14th, to view the illumination. Warren and Wood, at the opening of the season, ten days later, on November 25th, issued the following announcement: "The theatre is to be hereafter entirely lighted with gas lights, established under the inspection and control of Dr. Kugler. The managers are happy to be the first to introduce this system of lighting theatres and flatter themselves that its superior safety, brilliancy and neatness will be satisfactorily expressed by the audience." William Henry, a copper and tinsmith at 200 Lombard street, who had to do with the construction of the apparatus, installed a small plant in his own house which Thompson Westcott declares to have been "the first private residence in the United States to be lighted by gas." x Councils were still content with the appointment of a standing committee "whose duty it shall be to ascertain and communicate from time to time whatever improvements may be made in the art, and to recommend, when they think proper, a plan for its introduction into general use." The Free Masons when they built their new hall in Chestnut street above Seventh, in 1820, installed a small gas manufactory. They had more than they required for their own purposes, and in 1822 they asked permission of the city to lay pipes in the streets to convey it to those who might desire to purchase it from them. Councils refused the request. Complaints reached that body from the citizens that the works were a nuisance. "This gas," a writer said, "must soon go out of use." The lights consumed the oxygen of the air, and foul and dangerous odors were produced wherever they were employed. Peale was taken to task by councils in 1819 for making gas in the State House, whose safety was considered to be imperilled thereby. In 1825 the Philadelphia Gas Light Com pany asked the legislature to be incorporated. Councils made ready to protest against this step, which still seemed to be in derogation of the rights of the city. A writer in the United States Gazette declared the project to be "a folly — unsafe, unsure, a trouble and a nuisance. Common lamps," he continued, "take the shine off all gas lights that ever exhaled their intolerable stench." Though the plan was postponed by reason of popular opposition, the extension of the use of coal brought nearer the time when resistance to the introduction of one of its most useful products could no longer prove availing. The prison system, as has been related in an earlier chapter, enjoyed a thor ough reformation before the end of the eighteenth century. Inspectors came frequently to visit the Walnut street jail. Men and women no longer mingled; the sexes were confined in entirely separate apartments. No longer could the jailer enrich himself by garnish and other fees, and by the sale of liquors. The introduction of intoxicants of any kind was forbidden. The condition of affairs in 1810 awakened the enthusiasm of Dr. Mease.2 Both men and women were employed in a variety of ways and credited with the profits of their labor, so 1 Ch. 47S. 2 Picture, p. 163 et seq. 'SEDGELEY" MANSION OF WILLIAM CRAMOND ON A SITE NOW IN CLUDED IN THE EAST PARK "SOLITUDE," JOHN PENN'S HOUSE NOW IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN ABOUT 1805 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 67 that they usually had small balances at the time of their discharge. Indeed to a young Englishman who visited the prison early in the century, it seemed more like a manufactory than a jail. Tailors, shoemakers and carpenters were busy from morning till night inside the building, while outside in the court there were stone-cutters, smiths and nailers. In 1796 five hundred weight of nails were made in a day in the prison. Still others ground plaster of paris, shaped cedar for pencils, picked moss, hair, wool or oakum, and beat hemp.1 The female prisoners were all spinning flax when Anne Royall, a Maryland woman who had married a Virginian (a captain in the Revolution) came to Philadelphia and visited the jail. She counted eighty-four of them. They sat on long benches close to the wall and were turning their wheels as fast as if they were working for a wager.2 The prisoners were dressed in gray cloth made inside the jail. The men's heads were cropped once a month and they were shaved twice a week. They must wash their hands and faces each morning, and change their linen weekly. They slept upon the floor on blankets, thirty together in a room, in each of which there was a light suspended from the ceiling out of their reach, so that the keeper might have them always in view. They went to bed and got up at the sound of a bell. The bakers and cooks were convicts. The food was "wholesome, plain and invigorating." At breakfast each man received three-fourths of a pound of good bread, molasses and water; at dinner a half-pound of bread and beef, a bowl of soup and potatoes, with herrings when this fish came up the river in the spring ; at supper corn-meal mush and molasses, and sometimes boiled rice. The drink was molasses and water which was found to be "highly useful as a refreshing draught and as a medicine." The blacks ate at a separate table. Corporal punishment was prohibited. Indolence, profanity, quarreling and other unruliness were punished by confinement in the solitary cells, of which there were sixteen in a separate brick building. Here totally segregated on a low diet, — only a half pound of bread in the morning, — a refractory criminal was left to repent at his leisure. To the prison projected at Broad and Arch streets vagrants and minor offend ers who crowded the old building, contaminating their morals by association with hardened criminals, were to be transferred. It was so far completed in 1816 that the debtors confined in the Prune street side of the Walnut street prison were removed to the new jail. With all these reforms, which were spoken of with so much pride, riots and escapes at Walnut street were still very frequent occurrences. In August, 181 1, three women — two black and one white — dug under the walls, came up through the street, and gained their freedom. One night in July, 1819, a number of prisoners confined together in a large room, attempted to saw through their iron doors. They did not succeed. The next day they made a rush upon the keeper. He fired at them but they were not deterred from going down to the dungeons for props and poles to scale the walls. A negro prisoner named Powell interfered in behalf of the keeper. One man was 1 Excursions in North America, by Priscilla Wakefield; R. J. Tumbull, A Visit to the Philadelphia Prison; Melish, Vol. I, p. 160. 2 This was in 1823. Sketches, p. 218. 68 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA knocked down, stabbed and killed. The prison bell was rung, and the citizens assembling put an end to the disorder. In March, 1820, the disturbance was renewed. Powell was much disliked for the part he had taken in the riot of the year before, and some forty of the con victs made an attack upon him with their hand-spades. He held them at bay for a time with a bar of iron, but was finally killed in a brutal way. The men were got back into their cells by a vigorous ringing of the prison bell. The in spectors and keepers resolved to discipline the ringleaders, whereupon many of the convicts, black and white, rushed out with various weapons and the officers took flight. The insurgents released their fellows, including the women in their separate apartments, and all hands entered the yard with a determination to scale the walls. An alarm was spread through the city, and men with muskets mounted the sheds near by. One was killed, and several were wounded by this fusillade. Then, some militia companies and marines appeared upon the scene, and under the sheriff, who was in command, the prisoners were driven back into their rooms at the point of the bayonet. For some time fifty armed men patrolled the building, but quiet being restored, the guard was withdrawn. Again, in February 1823, thirty-five prisoners broke out of their rooms into the corridor, but the keepers, armed with muskets, drove them back. On one Sunday in March a party was discovered at work with picks and crowbars en deavoring to undermine the walls. The citizens were alarmed once more, and coming to the scene, forced the fellows to surrender. The old villages in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, such as Southwark, which had become an integral part of the city to all intents and purposes; Ger mantown, Frankford, Bustleton and Roxborough, did not hold the field alone. Many more appeared. Some which were projected led brief lives, while others won lasting place in our municipal geography. These places were now coming forward: Manayunk at the Flat Rock Dam, Spring Garden, in the Northern Liberties ; Morris City above Fairmount, long ago forgotten ; Kensington, farther east in the Northern Liberties, on the Delaware river ; Richmond ; Bridesburg, at first Kirkbridesburg, at Point-No-Point, in honor of Joseph Kirkbride, who kept the ferry here over Frankford creek; Nicetown, named for the Nice (earlier pronounced "Neece") family, near the famous old Rising Sun Tavern on the Germantown Road ; Francisville, also in the north, in the old Vineyard plot, named for Tench Francis whose heirs owned the tract; Holmesburg, according to some accounts, in honor of Thomas Holme, the surveyor of Penn's day, who took up ¦ lands here; and, west of the river, Hamiltonville, projected by the Hamiltons of the "Woodlands" at the fork of the West Chester and Baltimore Roads; Mantua village, farther north and east on the road leading from the Upper Ferry bridge to the Lancaster Road; Haddington, on the Haverford Road; and Hes- tonville, on property of the Heston family, near George's Hill, in the neigh borhood of the Columbus tavern. Out the York Road set around inns there were Branchtown, Milestown (now Oak Lane) and Shoemakertown (now Ogontz.) The use of steamboats rapidly increased and these were built at as early a date and as well, in the yards in Kensington, as anywhere else in the country. Daniel Large was an engine builder whose machinery soon came to enjoy a high reputa tion, and his work was such that passengers felt themselves safeguarded against HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 69 the explosions which so soon made river travel in these craft very terrifying. In September, 1812, there was launched at Grice's shipyard a fine new steamboat called the "Delaware," which was intended for one of the Baltimore lines. A half dozen boats propelled by steam were in service on the river in 18 13. The number grew larger year by year,1 and before 1825 considerable progress had been made, both in reducing the price and increasing the speed of travel to New York and Baltimore. Lines were being established constantly. Some were unsuccessful, and there were frequent changes in fares and schedules. The steamboat was a vast improvement over the packet boat which moved only with the wind and tide. When Melish went to Baltimore by the river route in 1806 he left Philadelphia at seven in the morning and did not reach New Castle until the next morning at five o'clock, though it was a distance of but forty miles. Another time, leaving at eight o'clock in the morning, he came to New Castle at five in the evening. Crossing the peninsula to Elk river it was only to lie all night at the wharf because of unfavorable winds.2 Such experiences were very com mon and no engagement could be kept with certainty. The boat propelled by an engine gave a different appearance to the business of travel, though it was still impossible, except in the mildest of seasons, to keep communication open in winter time. In February, 1834, Tyrone Power anxiously looked forward to the day when the steamboat would be able to make its first trip down the Delaware. "A journey by land to Baltimore," he said, "was an adventure by no means to be desired." Under the best circumstances departure from Philadelphia was at 7:30 a. m., arriving at Baltimore at 4 a. m. the next day. But lately the time consumed had varied from three to nine days. The "waters" were up and the bridges were down. One road was washed away and another was filled with rocks and trees. Finally, on February 8th, the ice was sufficiently broken in the river for Mr. Power and several "weather-bound South erners" to proceed on their journey.3 The usual route, as hitherto, was to New Castle and then by stage across "the petty state" of Delaware, a distance of sixteen miles, to Frenchtown, on the Elk river a few miles below the Head of Elk. This place consisted of "one or two farm-houses, a storehouse and a pier." 4 Here another steamboat could be boarded for the voyage to Baltimore down Chesapeake bay, where "myriads of canvas back ducks" were seen, and birds of other kinds filled the rigging of every passing ship. In 1824 the journey was usually accomplished in 18 hours, though Anne Royall, who made the night trip north at this time, being roused at midnight for the stage ride, speaks of having left Baltimore "about sundown" and arriving in Philadelphia "about sunrise" the next morning.5 In 1816 a new line to Baltimore by way of Wilmington and Elkton had been opened. The steamboat "Vesta" engaged in this service left the first wharf above 1A traveller in October, 1817, says that his steamboat passed six other steamboats on a trip down the river from Trenton. — Fearon, Sketches of America, p. 133. 2 Travels, Vol. I, pp. 160-61. 8 Impressions, I, p. 117 et seq. 4 Wm. T. Harris, Remarks, p. 38. 6 Sketches of History, Life and Manners, p. 202. 70 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Market street every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The steamboat "Eagle" connected with the stage at Elkton and took passengers down the Elk river and into the Chesapeake. The fare which at first was $6 was raised later in the year to $10. The next year the "Vesta" was burned at Wilmington, but another boat of that name took her place in 1818. The fare on the New Castle line when Mrs. Royall made the trip in 1823 was $4. The route from New York was around the south shore of Staten island, among the clammers at work in the shallows with their tongs, and schooners and sloops carrying wood, fish and other produce to the city. Elizabethport, a new town at the mouth of the creek running up to Elizabethtown at or near the old Elizabethtown Point, where Washington was met with a barge when he went to New York to be inaugurated in 1789, was passed to the right at a distance of about fifteen miles from the city. After reaching the village of Perth Amboy two miles more brought the boat to the Amboy landing. Packets had long run from this place, but the steamboats could now go up the Raritan river to New Brunswick. Here the passengers were put into stages and drawn across "a dreary barren-looking country," as Tyrone Power described it, to Trenton or Bordentown, to board another steamboat which passed two "very charming look ing villages" situated at "opposite angles of a fine bend of the river," Bristol and Burlington, on the way to the wharf in Philadelphia. The steamboats soon became comfortable and attractive. Mrs. Royall said that they were "elegantly furnished," though she missed the satin spreads and the gold fringe which adorned the boats on the Mississippi and some of the western rivers. Books, newspapers, draughts, backgammon, etc., in the cabins served to beguile the time for travelers. Each boat had its bar-room and often a barber shop, and, as compared with anything which preceded it, the river steamboat could be fairly accounted luxurious. A steamboat called the "Trenton" which had been built at Hoboken appeared in the Delaware in 1825. She was adjudged to be laiger, swifter and handsomer in every way than any yet put into the service on the river. The deck offered a clean sweep to the eye from stem to stern, everything having been put below or outside the hull. Paintings and statuary adorned the saloons. The "Trenton" made her first trip on April 27th and at once ran away from the "Congress," the "Pennsylvania" and the boats which until her coming were accounted the fastest on the river. She went to Burlington in one hour and twenty-nine minutes, and to Trenton in three hours and nine minutes, without deducting eighteen minutes for calls at wharves on the way. By this boat the company maintained a service between New York and Philadelphia twice a day. Leaving at 6 a. m. she con nected at New Brunswick with the "Thistle," Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was thus laying the foundations of his fortune; and left again at noon, connecting with the "Bellona," Captain Jenkins. Passengers by the morning boat reached New York on the same day. Arrival there was expected at six o'clock in the evening. The fare had been reduced to $3, even at periods under competi tion, to $2.50 and $2, and the time, in the best circumstances, to less than twelve hours. In April, 1824, the United States Gazette noted as a great achieve ment the receipt at its office of a copy of a New York newspaper in eleven hours and eight minutes. In the following year a trip was made in nine and a half SECOND UNITED STATES BANK. CHESTNUT STREET, 1831 HALL OF ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES , TWELFTH AND SANSOM STREETS, 1831 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 71 hours. Many of these lines carried light freights as well as passengers, having drays and wagons to transfer the goods overland from steamer to steamer. Travel between New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore was still accompanied by much picturesque incident. The passenger was nearly always wakened at a very early hour — in winter-time before it was yet light — in order to make the boat. A cup of coffee was hastily drunk at his home or his hotel. As he reached lower Chestnut street he met men, women and children, carts, coaches and wheel barrows passing in columns to the Delaware. Here the bells were clanging, the steam pipes hissing, the wood fire under the boiler sending up into the air a fountain of sparks. Porters, black and white, were noisily engaged in loading luggage. Wharf-hands were endeavoring, sometimes vainly, to place the New York and Baltimore passengers on the right boats, since the two usually lay side by side in the river. Many came to bid their friends farewell as they started on the fateful voyage. Even though it was still gray dawn passengers brought their friends to the water-side, and there was such a waving of handkerchiefs and kiss ing of hands as now attend the departure of a transoceanic steamship. Candy men, fruiterers, boys with early copies of the morning papers passed through the crowd. A harper played in the ladies' cabin, and a Scotch piper on the upper deck. Out in the river the passengers were called down to breakfast in a saloon where long ranges of tables were abundantly set with beefsteaks, chops, omelettes, ham, chicken, game, fish, hot-bread and tea and coffee. All was better than a trip at night. To be confined in one of the cabins was a trying experience. There were berths for some; others must sit up or lie on the floor. The gasey stove in cold weather, the thumping of the billets of wood on their way to the furnace, the bawling of the engineers, firemen and pilots, the ceaseless pattering of the paddle wheels, with the crying of infants and the moaning of the sick made sleep practically out of the question. Ten or a dozen, and sometimes twenty coaches were assembled at the end of the river trip. They proceeded overland in a procession, that in advance being preferred, since the passengers in it escaped the dust of those which came after. When negroes were included in the party they were placed in a vehicle which brought up the rear of the line. Fat and lean were packed in together to be shaken into shape, as Tyrone Power observed, upon the rough roads. In order that the stage drivers should know how many coaches to provide, the steamboat exhibited signals which could be read while it was still at some distance from the wharf. It was considered an important feat to take a steam vessel around by sea to New York and Baltimore, though the attempt was now and then necessary in order to equip the various lines. Captain Moses Rogers made his third outside voyage in November, 1816. He came with the "Phoenix" from New York in 1809; he had taken the "Eagle" to Baltimore in 1813, and now, three years later, in 1816, successfully navigated the "New Jersey," said to be the fastest boat afloat, to Baltimore. In 1817 the "Sea-horse" was steamed around from Elizabethport to Philadelphia in forty hours. Captain Rogers in 1819 went so far as ^o propose a coastwise line of steamers to Savannah, but the coasting and the foreign trade 72 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA was still in the hands of the fine sailing vessels which carried the American flag into every sea. There were at this time a number of packet lines out of Philadelphia to foreign ports. Cope's well known Liverpool line in 1824 met a competitor in a new line which was established by Spackman and Wilson and S. W. Downing. It had five boats, the "Florida," "Julius Caesar," "Delaware," "Colossus" and "Courier." In 1826, 482 vessels arrived in Philadelphia from foreign ports and 1,320 vessels which were engaged in the coastwise trade. The ship builders in Kensington and South- wark were very busy. The Eyres, the Grices, Robert Burton, the Bowers, Nicholas Van Dusen, Joseph Ogilby, Tees and Van Hook, Haines and Vaughan and others were constantly launching vessels for the coasting service and for the foreign trade. Indeed, they received and executed a number of contracts for foreign govern ments. Bowers and Van Dusen built a fleet of gunboats for the Colombian government. The Tees began to construct a corvette for Mexico, which, how ever, was sold and found its way into the Russian navy. In 1825 a vessel of 1,800 tons was launched in Kensington at the Bowers and Van Dusen yard. It was estimated that 20,000 people were assembled to see her slide down her ways. The yards in Philadelphia in 1826 built five ships, one barque, ten brigs, nineteen schooners, twelve sloops and four steamboats, in all 7,587 tons of shipping. Many persons, from the beginning, had considered steamboats unsafe, and various committees were appointed to discuss the question of "high pressure" and "low pressure" engines. In 1824 the boilers of the "Eagle" on the Balti more line exploded off North Point. In this accident two persons were killed and* three badly scalded. A month later the "Etna's" boilers burst in New York har bor. Several passengers from Philadelphia were on board. Eleven were killed and sixteen wounded in this disaster. In June, 1825, an explosion on the "Legis lator" in New York harbor, a steamboat plying on a Philadelphia line, killed five persons and wounded a number more. Such accidents were frequent in all parts of the country where steamboats were in use, and the accounts of them were very disturbing. For the satisfaction of nervous passengers- one or two of the lines carried safety-barges, which were towed behind. Some of these, such as the "Cherry" and the "Fair Star," attached to steamboats on the Delaware, were quite luxurious. An extra charge was made for riding in them. Those who preferred to go the entire distance to New York by stage could still be very well accommodated. Every morning at five o'clock a post coach left Judd's Hotel, established by Anson Judd about 1819 in the old post office on Third street above Chestnut, for Paulus Hook, reaching New York in the afternoon. A coach which left at 3 p. m. placed its passengers in New York the following morning. The "Swift Sure" stages over the York Road left the Green Tree Inn at eight o'clock in the evening, and traveled all night. Indeed in the summer the roads were full of coaches. Samuel Breck said there were forty-four in the service between Philadelphia and New York in 1829. They carried "going and coming a daily average of 350 to 400 passengers." In 1789 there, had been but two lines and these were little favored with passengers. He attributed the great growth of travel to the mineral springs and the fashion- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 73 able "watering places" to which the people now flocked. Forty years earlier there had been no such "rendezvous for the rich and idle." x The stages for Pittsburg, in 1824, left Philadelphia at 4 a. m. daily, the route carrying them through Lancaster, Harrisburg and Chambersburg, and there was regular communication with Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading, Norristown, Down- ingtown, Doylestown, Egg Harbor and all the nearer places, such as Germantown, Chestnut Hill, Flourtown, Frankford, Bustleton, Holmesburg, Bridgeton, Mount Holly, Haddonfield, Burlington, Hamilton Village and the Falls of Schuylkill. Steamboats carried passengers to many places up and down the river — to Mount Holly, to the mineral springs on Rancocas Creek, to Kaighn's Point, as well as to wharves called at by the New York and Baltimore boats, and in the summer a service was maintained between Philadelphia and Cape May. The public school system which had been introduced rather crudely, now underwent a rapid development. In the summer of 1817, it was found that 3,092 children in the city and county of Philadelphia were going to school at the com mon expense. By a new law of March 3, 1818, the assembly greatly extended the advantages of public education. The city and county were created into a state school district, which was subdivided into several "sections." School directors were elected by councils and in the outlying districts by the commissioners. These elected the members of a general supervisory body called "The Controllers of the Public Schools of the City and County of Philadelphia," the president of which for many years was that philanthropic citizen Roberts Vaux.2 Under this authority schools might be established and maintained in each "section." In them the children of indigent parents would receive instruction free of cost. For the purpose of training suitable teachers a "Model School" was recommended. At this time the "monitorial system" of Joseph Lancaster, an English Quaker, en joyed high favor. It had been introduced with some success at the Adelphi School in Pegg street, and so great was the craze for it that private schools for girls and boys, founded on this principle were set up in considerable numbers in all parts of the city. The system was now generally introduced into the new public schools, and Lancaster himself was engaged to come to Philadelphia in 181 8 to take charge of the "Model School." A substantial brick building was erected on Chester street above Race street. Before the first quarter had ended he had 413 boys and 320 girls under his care. New schools were built, and old schools adapted to the new use in the city and districts very rapidly. The number of pupils at the end of the first year was 2,845. I*1 twelve years, from 1818 to 1830, upwards of 34,000 children received instruction in the public schools of Philadelphia at an average cost of $4 per annum. Girls between five and thirteen, and boys from six to fourteen years of age might enjoy the advantages of this free education. 1 Recollections, p. 102. 2 Roberts Vaux was born in 1786. He came of a family which had passed from France to England, where they joined the Society of Friends. Richard Vaux came to, Philadel phia in his youth during or soon after the Revolution. He married into the well known Roberts family settled beyond the Schuylkill. His son Roberts Vaux was engaged in busi ness for a time, but soon left it to devote himself to charitable undertakings such as prison reform, the anti-slavery movement and public education. He died in 1836. — Hist. Soc. Mem., IV, p. 105. 74 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Mr. Vaux officially appealed to the people in 1830 as follows : "You are earn estly and affectionately recommended to send your offspring and those under your care to these seminaries ; they have proved of great value to thousands of our youth and will no doubt yield blessings to thousands in time to come." Besides the Model School in Chester street there were the— Locust street school house, at the corner of Locust and Twelfth streets. Northwest school house, at the corner of Race and Schuylkill Seventh streets. Southwest school house, on Schuylkill Fourth near Spruce street. Northern Liberties school house, Third above Brown street. Kensington school house, Marlborough street, Kensington. Penn Township school house, Buttonwood street near the Ridge Road. Franklin street school house, Franklin east of Fourth street. Southwark school house, Catharine between Third and Fourth streets. Moyamensing school house, Beck west of Sixth street. Lombard street school house for negro children, Lombard near Sixth street. Germantown school house, "about the centre of Germantown." Frankford school house, Back street, Frankford. Little was taught except reading, writing and arithmetic for the boys, with the addition of needle-work for the girls, and as the scholars by the Lancastrian system instructed and disciplined one another, there was computed to be a very con siderable saving in expense. To Thomas Dunlap, long a controller of the public schools, the system was "a patent scheme, the visionary hallucination of a wild though perhaps benevolent enthusiast." Chanting the multiplication table, stand ing up to and writing in boxes of moist sand with a pointed stick (the slate had not yet come into use) , reciting ballads in chorus with a master looking on at the "intellectual pandemonium" around him, while the monitors kept the children, no older than themselves, at their tasks, entering himself upon the scene with a rattan when his young agents were not equal to the undertaking — were the main features of a system seeming little to deserve the favor which it received for many years. An evidence of a growing popular interest in reading was found in the estab lishment of three new libraries. In 1814 the Athenaeum was formed at a meet ing at which Roberts Vaux presided, and a reading room was opened at the south east corner of Fourth and Chestnut streets, in the second story of the building occupied by Mathew Carey's book-store. From this situation in a few years it removed its books to the first story of Philosophical Hall, where it remained until its own building on South Sixth street was opened in 1847. The association was organized with William Tilghman, president; James Mease, vice-president; and Roberts Vaux, secretary. In 1820 a number of gentlemen, with Horace Binney at their head, met for the purpose of establishing a library for the use of apprentices. It was opened with second-hand books, which were for the most part gifts to the managers, in a room in Chestnut above Third street, and shortly removed to Carpenters' Hall. Books were at first given out only on Saturday afternoons.1 JIn 1828 this library was removed to a building near Seventh and Jayne streets, then to the old mint at Seventh and Filbert, and in 1841 to the Free Quaker meeting house at Fifth and Arch streets, where it remained until 1897, when it was established in its present building on Broad above Spring Garden street. ELECLTON SCKXE AT THE STATE HOUSE IN ISlj From Picture of J. L. Krimmel in Library of Pennsylvania Historical Society HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 75 In the following year, 1821, several bankers and merchants who wished to improve the condition of their clerks and accountants, met to form the Mercantile Library Association. Robert Wain was president until Thomas P. Cope was elected in 1824. Mr. Cope served by successive re-elections, for thirty years. The library was opened at 100 Chestnut street on March 5, 1822. The books could be consulted in the evening, thus bringing its advantages home to those who were actively employed during the day. On December 2, 1824, a number of gentlemen — Roberts Vaux, Thomas I. Wharton, William Rawle, Dr. Caspar Wistar, Dr. Benjamin H. Coates, William Rawle, Jr., John F. Watson, the annalist, among them — met and formed the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The following officers were elected : Presi dent, William Rawle ; vice-presidents, Roberts Vaux and Thomas Duncan ; cor responding secretary, Daniel B. Smith; recording secretary, George W. Smith. President Rawle said that the objects of the society would be "to trace all the circumstances of its [Pennsylvania's] early settlement, its successful progress and its present state : — to collect all the documents and written or printed evidence, and all the traditionary information that may still be attainable ; and, after having thus acquired possession of sufficient materials," to publish such portions as may be deemed "generally interesting and instructive." The society would seek "original letters, books, journals, or narratives of the early settlers of Pennsylvania, or of any distinguished persons among us in later times;" narratives relative to the Indians, vocabularies of Indian languages, ac counts of missionaries ; facts relating to the origin of the North American In dians; copies of records and proceedings of public bodies— political, religious, literary or otherwise; accounts of universities, colleges, academies, schools; topographical descriptions of cities, towns, boroughs, counties or townships; ac counts of population, births, longevity, deaths, endemial or local diseases ; facts relating to climatology, meteorology and general employment and customs of districts; biographical notices of eminent and remarkable persons, etc., etc. Another purpose of the society would be "to form an ample library and cabinet," and it would gratefully receive "all donations of books, pamphlets or manuscripts on any subject or of any date; medals, coins or any other article de riving value from historical or biographical affinities; Indian idols, ornaments, arms or utensils, etc." The society began the publication of its Memoirs in December, 1825. It kept its collections for many years in the hall of the American Philosophical Society, later removing them to rooms of its own on South Sixth street, and when the Athenaeum building was completed, to the upper stories of that edifice. Within this period, too, falls the establishment of the Jefferson Medical College. The widespread reputation of the University of Pennsylvania's medi cal school drew students from all parts of the country. Many, indeed most of these, continued under the old system to be apprentices to physicians, who were willing to become preceptors to them, as in Dr. Kearsley's day, and not a few, as might have been expected, remained in the city when their courses of study came to an end. Thus Philadelphia became an active hive of investigation, criticism and debate. The institutions already in existence were too few to employ the talents and satisfy the ambitions of all the scientists congregated here. The conduct of 76 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania blocked the way to the progress of several men. Dr. Charles Caldwell, Dr. Thomas Cooper, and William P. C. Barton, felt the force of their disappointment, as now did Dr: George McClellan, a native of Connecticut, born in 1796. He graduated at an early age at Yale, and came to Philadelphia in 1817 to study medicine. Here he married a daughter of George H. Brinton, and established a private lecture room for pupils in Swanwick street. He, together with Dr. John Eberle, a native of Maryland who had graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, Jacob Green, a son of Dr. Ashbel Green, pastor of one of the Presbyterian churches of the city and later president of Princeton College, and one or two others, had a plan to found a medical school. It was foreseen that it would be a difficult matter to obtain a charter, as this would, of course, meet with the opposition of the inter ests identified with the University. It was discovered that a charter had been granted in 1802 to a Jefferson College to be established at Canonsburg in Jefferson County. The terms were liberal and Dr. McClellan and his associates organized their school in the old cotton factory on the south side of Prune street, between Fifth and Sixth streets, which had been used for a time as the Winter Tivoli Theatre. The lectures began in October, 1825. It was felt to be desirable to have some amendments to and a confirmation of the charter at the hands of the legis lature, and that body was appealed to. The trustees of the University made their arguments in opposition to the memorial, saying: "Philadelphia has become the great seat of medical education, and it is but just that those who have made her so should not be deprived without strong and convincing reasons, of the benefit of her celebrity in this respect, and most of all that the city should not lose this pre-eminence which has been obtained by a con centration of all her forces in the support of our medical school, and which will inevitably be lost if it shall be divided and distributed among rival institutions." The protest did not avail, and by the service of devoted and able men, the new school was soon established upon firm ground. The Philadelphia College of Pharmacy had been founded not long before. In February, 1821, several of the apothecaries of the city, among them Henry Troth, Robert Milnor, Daniel B. Smith, Peter K. Lehman, Stephen North, Samuel Jack son, and Frederick Brown, met at Carpenters' Hall to devise a plan for training druggists' apprentices. It was at first called the Philadelphia College of Apothe caries, but this name was soon changed to the College of Pharmacy. The follow ing officers were chosen : President, Charles Marshall, a son of old Christopher Marshall; vice-presidents, William Lehman and Stephen North; secretary, Daniel B. Smith; treasurer, William Heyl. The lectures, which began in No vember, 1821, were held in the hall of the German Society, on Seventh street just south of Market street. The first professors in the school were Samuel Jack son, Gerard Troost, a native of Holland who had some knowledge of chemistry and, after 1822, George B. Wood. The history of the Academy of Natural Sciences began at an earlier date. In 181 1 John Speakman, a young Quaker apothecary with a taste for natural history, conferred with his friend, Jacob Gilliams, on the subject, with the result that six persons met at Speakman's store on January 25, 1812 and formed the society. They hired a small room over a milliner's shop in Second near Race HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 77 street, and laid the foundations for a library and a museum. The movement was not unnaturally looked askance at by better qualified scientists. Thomas Say, son of Benjamin Say, a druggist and physician, and Gerard Troost, were interested in the undertaking. Others joined the young men. In 1817 they hired a building at $200 a year, on Arch street between Front and Second streets, and in 1826 purchased the Swedenborgian church at Twelfth and George, now San- som street, a little Gothic temple in the form of a parallelogram which had been designed by Mr. Strickland. To this building the collections and the lectures were soon taken. Troost was the first president of the Academy, but he was followed in a year or two by William Maclure, a Scotchman of fortune, with a liking for geological exploration, a branch of knowledge to which he is held to have made substantial contributions. In 1824 a number of young men, interested in the mechanic arts, among them Samuel V. Merrick, Prof. William H. Keating, Matthias W. Baldwin and Fred erick Fraley, established the Franklin Institute. The association organized with the following officers: president, James Ronaldson, a type founder; vice presi dents, Mathew Carey, and Isaiah Lukens, a clockmaker; recording secretary, William Strickland, the architect; corresponding secretary, Peter A1. Browne, a lawyer. The managers were Robert Patterson, the old director of the United States Mint; Paul Beck, Jr., proprietor of the shot tower on the Schuylkill; Thomas Leiper, the tobacconist ; John Harrison, chemist ; Thomas Gilpin, a manu facturer of paper; Samuel R. Wood, a tanner; Henry Horn, a silver plater; William H. Keating, professor of chemistry in the university; J. Katez a book binder ; Daniel Groves ; John Haviland, the architect ; Samuel V. Merrick, a brass founder ; William Abbott, a brewer ; John D. Eisenhut a coppersmith ; John Price Wetherill, the paint and color manufacturer ; David H. Mason, machinist ; Clement C. Biddle ; Adam Ramage, printing press maker ; James J. Rush, iron founder ; James Clarke; Abraham Miller, a potter; M. T. Wickham, a gunsmith; James Harper, brickmaker ; and Joseph Cloud, refiner at the mint. The institution was incorporated by the legislature for "the promotion and encouragement of manu factures and the mechanic and useful arts, by the establishment of popular lectures on the sciences, connected with them; by the formation of a cabinet of models and minerals and a library; by offering premiums on all objects deemed worthy of encouragement ; by examining all new inventions submitted to them ; and by such other measures as they may judge expedient." Almost immediately courses of lectures were begun under the society's auspices, at the old College on Fourth street, by William Strickland on archi tecture and by Peter A. Browne on the law of patent rights. An exhibition of American manufactures was arranged for Masonic Hall in October, 1824. It was highly successful and various silver medals were awarded. Subsequently the Institute kept its collections, gave its lectures and held its meetings in Carpenters' Hall until it could procure a building of its own. This came soon. A fund was raised by the sale of stock, a lot was chosen on the east side of Seventh street below Market street, and the cornerstone was laid on June 8, 1825, with notable ceremonies. The city authorities, representatives from other scientific societies and various prominent guests, including Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York 78 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA and Governor Geddes of South Carolina, attended. The building was completed in 1826. Some public enlightenment on the subject of mechanics was sorely needed by the city, during this period of its history. The people had lately been the victims of a very successful hoax by a man named Redheffer, of Germantown, who claimed the honor of inventing a system of perpetual motion. This was one of the subjects which men sought to master, as they had earlier sought for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. An inventor of perpetual motion had come to Robert Morris, while he was Superintendent of Finance during the Revolution, "to go away," as that shrewd man observes in his Diary, "convinced that his discoveries were very defective." In 1812- Redheffer exhibited his con trivance to many people who seem not to have been very learned in regard to mechanical subjects. Councils proposed to erect such a machine in connection with the water works, and the legislature in 1813 appointed a committee to find out what merit, if any, was possessed by the invention. Redheffer escaped de tection, by various ruses, until he transferred his enterprise to New York, where Robert Fulton found it not difficult to discover that the "perpetual motion" had its source in the labors of a man at a crank in a building nearby. Redheffer had charged gentlemen $5 each to see his machine at a tavern at Chestnut Hill, in Germantown township, and even after his fraud was exposed, he in 1816 had in fluence enough to secure the appointment of a committee to investigate his alleged discoveries. After he had repeatedly made excuses for the failure of his demon strations, they "withdrew from further attendance upon Mr. Redheffer, with strong sentiments of disapprobation of his conduct." In 1819 a number of citizens desirous of encouraging the poor in habits of economy and thrift, established the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society. Among the incorporators were Andrew Bayard, Richard Bache, Clement C. Biddle, Charles N. Bancker, Reuben Haines, Richard Peters, Jr., Condy Raguet, Roberts Vaux, John Vaughan, Daniel B. Smith, Samuel Breck, Turner Camac, Ludwig Krumbhaar, John Strawbridge, and Isaac W. Norris. The society at first kept its offices open only on Mondays and Thursdays, from 9 to 1 and from 3 to 7 o'clock. It was authorized to receive deposits up to $300,000, a limit soon increased to $600,000 and later in further amounts. By January 1, 1824, $676,000 had been deposited in small sums, a considerable part of which remained in hand and was judiciously invested. Interest was paid at the rate of 4 8/10 per cent per annum. PROCESSION OF VICTUALLERS, MARCH 15, 1821 Conducted by William White. Print in possession of Pennsylvania Historical Society CHAPTER XX. SOCIAL LIFE IN 1825. The population of Philadelphia, including the Northern Liberties and Penn Township and the southern districts — Southwark, Moyamensing, and Passyunk — in 1810 was 96,660. In 1820 this total was increased to 114,410. The centre of population was moving away from the Delaware so rapidly that the question of making a street west of Fourth street the dividing line for the wards was agitated. The western wards were becoming too large and populous. In 1800 the eastern wards contained 21,198 inhabitants; the western wards, 20,002. In 1820, 22,216 people resided in the wards on the Delaware, and 39,297 in the wards running west of Fourth street to the Schuylkill. Some advocated three tiers of wards, others were in favor of moving the line west to Sixth or even Eighth street. The legislature in 1825 compromised on Seventh street. The Northern Liberties had become so populous that this district was divided in 1818 into seven wards. The holding of both county and city elections at the State House had long since been abandoned. The first division seems to have been effected by the law of September 13, 1785, when it was provided that the free men of the townships of Germantown, Roxborough and Bristol should vote at the Union Schoolhouse in Germantown. Electors of the other portions of the county and the city still met at the State House. Bucks County, at this time, had only two voting places ; Chester County, four (the town of Chester; Chatham, formerly called the Half Way House ; the Pennsylvania Arms, a tavern in East Cain ; and the Yellow Springs in Pikeland township) ; and Lancaster County, four. New election districts were created in Philadelphia County until in 1816 there were nine voting places. The people of the fourteen wards of the city voted at the State House. The polls were opened between eight and ten o'clock in the morning, as the election officers might determine, and closed about ten o'clock in the evening. Southwark, Moyamensing and Passyunk voted in the Commis sioners' Hall in Southwark (Second street above Christian, on the east side) ; Blockley and Kingsessing at an inn on the West Chester road; the Northern Liberties at the "Town House in Second street," which was situated between Coates street and Poplar Lane ; the Township of Penn and the district of Spring Garden, which had been taken from it in 1813, at a schoolhouse at Eighth street and Buttonwood Lane; Germantown and Bristol at the Union Schoolhouse in Germantown; Roxborough at the schoolhouse in that township; Lower Dublin Byberry and the Manor of Moreland at an inn in Bustletown ; Oxford at an inn in Frankford.1 1 Sheriff's Proclamation, Poulson's Advertiser, Oct. 15, 1816. 79 80 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA In 1820 the number of districts had been increased to thirteen. Southwark, Moyamensing and Passyunk all now had separate voting places. The Northern Liberties were divided into two election districts, the citizens of the unincor porated portions of Kensington voting at the Sign of the White Horse. Bristol was separated from Germantown and had its own polling place at Branchtown.1 The elections which had long been held on the first of October, were moved forward to the second Tuesday in that month. The scenes around the State House on this day were animated to a degree. What with the distribution of hand bills and tickets, flying flags at the headquarters of the various parties in the taverns of the neighborhood, carriages hired by the respective parties coming and going with invalids from all parts of the city, knots of men arguing and gestic ulating, clubs — such as the Democratic Cordwainers and the Republican Black smiths — marching to the election grounds, oyster men, chestnut men, cheese mongers, beer men, hot-muffin men, cake women and other venders all bawling their wares, it was one of the principal days of the year in the calendar of Philadelphia. Wooden platforms were built under the State House windows, and great num bers of men pressed up to them in their desire to offer their votes. Each ward had a window. Pushing and crowding, and not infrequently free fights, re sulted, especially when the elections were close and exciting. Often a party of rowdies would blockade their ward window so that the votes of opponents could not be cast. Such a trick inevitably led to disorder. The crowds began to come in after four o'clock, when men who were at work all day were released from their employments. From 181 5 to 1820 there were about 5,000 electors in the city. In the evening, as the time for voting grew short, and there were yet many to present their ballots, men would mount the shoulders of others and literally walk over the heads of the crowd. Hats and coats were torn to shreds in the melee. Throughout the day and evening the State House bell was rung at intervals of from three to five minutes to call the citizens to their duty. As darkness came on, candles were lighted in the transparencies at the party headquarters. The street lamps were supplemented by torches and lanterns. "There were times," says Thompson Westcott 2 "when the entire pavement in front of the State House, between the courthouse and the mayor's office, was a thickly crowded mass of human beings." It was "a swaying and surging mob" constantly in motion. Wagons covered with banners and placards, with buglers, fifers and drummers, were sent out through the wards to beat up voters for the respec tive tickets, and the crowd did not disperse until long after midnight. Even before the result was announced bonfires were kindled. Packing boxes, barrels and every kind of combustible material which could be gleaned from the shops and stores were set on fire. Perhaps an old boat found at the river would be filled with the staves of tar barrels, then to be mounted upon wheels and drawn blazing through the streets by hundreds of shouting people who tugged at the long ropes. The State House was surrounded by taverns, Federalist and Democratic, at which the people regaled themselves to their satisfaction, and 1 Poulson's Advertiser, Oct. 7, 1820. 2 Chap. 692. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 81 as the night wore on, many of the revellers were likely to be more than half tipsy with drink. The principal Democratic headquarters were found at the inn kept by Amos Holahan in Chestnut street directly opposite the State House. He was an Irish boniface, conspicuous in a blue coat with gilt buttons. He served his thirsty customers with beer in pewter mugs which were brought up from the cellar separately as the need arose, instead of being filled from pitchers, the usual custom at the day. It was in front of this tavern that the Democrats displayed their largest transparencies. Voters passed in and out constantly. Here men met, argued, laid wagers and drank for days and nights together, during close presi dential elections while they waited for the news to come in by the stage coaches.1 The principal opposition headquarters were usually established in a tavern next door below Holahan's. There similar scenes were enacted. The sceptre had passed from the hands of that type of citizen which was dominant in our politics at an earlier period. The substantial Quaker merchant of colonial times, the zealous Whig of the Revolutionary day, the dignified Federalist or the rest less Jeffersonian of the Washington administration had all given way in favor of loungers and brawlers who had begun to make politics more or less of a pursuit. The politician of 1820 is described, albeit rather satirically in The Hermit of Philadelphia. A man to succeed in politics at that day, it was said, must be "a constant attendant at taverns, and not even consider himself above Water street oyster cellars and tippling shops; he must become the boon com panion and 'hail fellow well met' of every blackguard in Southwark, Moyamensing and Penn; learn to become an expert dog fighter and delight in bull baiting; canvass the merits of an ox with every butcher in Spring Garden and talk about cattle, fodder and calves with every booby in the Neck. * * * He must attend scrub races, wink at his neighbors' wives, fondle his friends' daughters and swear like a trooper. A knowledge of cock fighting is indispensable; ha must be an old cocker — know how to handle his cock — fight half a dozen mains per week—be his own matcher and feeder— keep a regular stive— and talk about gaffs and slashers, blooming stags and Shropshire reds like the manager of the cock-pit royal. * * * He must furthermore learn to play all-fours, checkers, chuck penny, snake and shuffle board — lose with a pleasant oath and never win when he can avoid it. * * * In fine he must laugh with fools, talk with scoun drels, shake hands with everybody in a shabby coat, and walk arm in arm with everybody in shirt sleeves. By these various means he gains an ascendency over the dissolute and idle which is skillfully and by degrees extended to better classes, and finally secures to him an office of honor, or what is more enviable of profit. * * * Patriotic Americans born in all the countries of Christendom, excepting America, convert the theatre of election into a lively representation of the Tower of Babel." 2 The rapid growth of the population of the city called for new and larger markets. As late as in 1810 the markets on High street still did not extend west of Fourth street. They were at first advanced to Sixth street. In 182 1 councils 1 Souder, History of Chestnut Street, chap. 54. 2 Second Series, pp. 107-110. Vol. II— 6 82 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA authorized the erection of new buildings. Some recommended that they be run up as far as Tenth street but they were not extended beyond Eighth street. They now approached a mile in length. The fish house at the drawbridge was offered for rent and the fish wives, who came to sell what their husbands caught in nets, were moved into High street. Their stands were at the Delaware river end of the market. In the summer of 1816 it was noted that dealers for the first time went to sea in sloops loaded with ice to bring fish to Philadelphia. Turner Camac offered to build ice houses for the preservation of fish, meats, vegetables and other produce in hot weather, and some progress, though it be yet slight, was made in devising processes of refrigeration. Hitherto much produce in the markets in summer had spoiled, and to rid the city of the offense it was hauled away and buried in pits.1 The market never failed to receive the admiration of visitors in the nineteenth, as it had in the eighteenth century. Tyrone Power in 1833 twice rose at four o'clock in the morning to view it. "In no place," said he, "have I ever seen more lavish display of the good things most esteemed by this eating generation, nor could any market offer them in form more tempting. Neatness and care were evident in the perfect arrangement of the poultry, vegetables, fruit, butter, etc. * * * The market, at the early time I mentioned, offered a busy and amusing scene and I passed away a couple of hours here very much to my satisfaction) besides cheating those souls of d d critics, the moschetos out of a breakfast; for each day about the first light I used to be awakened by their assembling for a little dejeuner dansant whereat I was a victim." 2 Others remarked the tidy appearance of the market house, and of those who stood in them to sell their wares. No straw or leaves of vegetables were strewn upon the floor. "If a speck is to be seen on the white apron of the butcher," one observer wrote in letters to England, "it may be inferred that it came there on the same morning." Mrs. Royall said that "no one who has not seen it can form an idea either of the variety, abundance or neatness of the Philadelphia market. * * * Nothing can exceed the whiteness of the benches and stalls. The meat, which consists of every sort, is exquisitely neat, cut with the greatest care, smooth and disposed upon tables, on cloths as white as the whitest cambric. The butchers wear a white linen frock, which might vie with a lady's wedding dress." She thought it "one of the most interesting sights, perhaps in the world." 3 "It is indeed the very perfection of a market," wrote Mrs. Trollope. "The neatness, freshness and entire absence of everything disagreeable to sight or smell must be witnessed to be believed. The stalls were spread with snow-white napkins. * * * The dairy, the poultry yard, the forest, the river and the ocean all contributed their spoil— in short for the first time in my life I thought a market a beautiful object." 4 To Mr. Singleton, here in 1824, the Philadelphia market was "one of the most abundant and choice in the world." "The women of the city, and not the 1 Mease, p. 121. 2 Impressions, Vol. I, pp. 54-55. 3 Sketches, p. 207. 'Domestic Manners of the Americans, 4th ed. in one volume, p. 223. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 83 men," said he, "do the chief chaffering, going with the sun to the mart, with a servant behind elbowing the basket." x Women still came in large numbers to sell as well as to buy. "Girls arrive on horseback or driving light wagons," said James Flint, writing in 1818, "to sell vegetables or the produce of the dairy. Many of these females, I am told, are the daughters of farmers who are in good circumstances." 2 They were, as a matter of fact, the Pennsylvania German girls whose fathers' farms supplied many tables in Philadelphia, as the same farms do to this day. Some of them were perhaps the daughters of the women, whom Rochefoucauld-Liancourt had met on the roads around Philadelphia twenty years before. They would set out from their homes in the evening in order to reach the city by dawn. "I met on the road some girls of eighteen on horseback," the Duke wrote after a trip from Germantown to Quakertown, "traveling to Philadelphia and carrying forty pounds weight of butter with some cheese and poultry. Some of them travel alone ; and their youth and beauty, for the greater part of them are very pretty, give them no disturbance in a journey so long, so often repeated and the greatest part of which is made in the night time; no person thinks of injuring them." 3 Tyrone Power was also interested in the Germans who visited the market. "Their costume and manner," he said, "yet continue as distinct and recognizable as was the appearance of their progenitors on landing here some eighty years back, for the colony from which they are chiefly derived had existence about the middle of the eighteenth century ; and many of these men, yet speaking no word of English, are of the third generation." 4 Foreign visitors were greatly interested in the wild animals which were exposed for sale in winter time. These included not only deer and bear, but also opossums, raccoons, squirrels, ground hogs, hare and a great variety of wild fowl, often of beautiful plumage. Montule, the French visitor of 1821, wrote that the market looked to him like "a kind of granary supported by pillars," of which there were about three hundred. This description agrees with that of Mrs. Royall who said that the houses were "nothing more than a roof supported by pillars and quite open on each side." Montule, too, was struck by the general appearance of cleanli ness. The butchers' frocks were "of the most delicate whiteness." Fearon and other informants make the prices in the Philadelphia markets at this time about as follows : Fish 4 to 14 cents a pound Beef 6^4 to 10 cents a pound Mutton 4 to 6%. cents a pound Veal 6% to 10 cents a pound Pork 7 to 12 yi cents a pound Bacon 14 to 16 cents a pound 1 Arthur Singleton, Letters from the South and West. 2 Letters from America, p. 34. 3 Vol. IV, pp. 124-25. 4 Impressions, Vol. I, p. 59. 84 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Butter 20 to 40 cents a pound Cheese 10 to I2}4 cents a pound English cheese'.'.'.' 25 to 30 cents a pound Turnips 30 cents a bushel Onions 25 cents a Peck Potatoes 50 to 85 cents a bushel Cabbages 5 cents each Fowls 25 to 55 cents each Ducks 40 to 55 cents each Geese 85 to $1.12 each Canvasback ducks $* each Turkeys $J to $1.50 each Hares 25 cents each Strong beer 4<> cents a gallon Apples 5° cents to $1.00 a bushel Dipped candles 20 cents a pound Candles made in moulds 25 cents a pound Flour $4 to $10 a barrel Soft sugar 14 to 16 cents a pound Lump sugar 25 to 35 cents a pound Tea $1.12 to $2.25 a pound Soap 14 to 20 cents a pound Chocolate 27 to 40 cents a pound Coffee 20 to 27 cents a pound Liverpool salt 85 cents a bushel Oysters 50 cents a hundred Terrapin $1 to $2 a dozen Eggs 25 cents a dozen Milk 6%. cents a quart Honey in comb 25 cents a pound Wood $6 to $10 a cord Whiskey 50 cents a pint Madeira $1 a bottle Partridges 12^2 cents each Hams 18 cents a pound x Sturgeon meat was sold to the negroes at one cent a pound. Peaches at the wharves, from New Jersey and Delaware at the height of the season, could be had at 50 cents a bushel, and abounded, as did berries and cherries at their ripening times. The Northern Liberties, north of the city, had separate markets in Second street, as had Southwark in Second street, south of the city. The Callowhill 1The cost of getting fresh provisions to market from distant country places made them much cheaper in many of the rural parts of America. Harriet Martineau in the thirties found towns in Pennsylvania at which meat could be had for two and four cents a pound and butter at twelve cents. In a town in Virginia fowls were sold at one dollar a dozen. CONESTOGA WAGON From & drawing by F. O. C. Darley in Pennsylvania Historical Society Library HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 85 street market in Spring Garden was established in May, 1822. One day the people intercepted three farmers on their way to the High street market. On the second market day eighteen wagons attended at this place, and on the third day eighty. In the next year, 1823, the legislature authorized the district to erect a market house, with which a town hall might be connected, in the center of Callowhill street between Sixth and Seventh streets.1 The processions of the butchers were features of the street life of the day. It was very usual for "show" beef, mutton or pork to be driven through the city. Fine fat animals were often decorated with flowers and garlands. Rib bons were tied to their horns and tails, and they were announced by trumpeters. They were to be butchered on the morrow, and thus the citizens were informed where they might find good meat. There were longer processions in 1820 and 1821. On March 13, 1820, there were sixty carts in line carrying beef, mutton, pork and goat flesh. Each cart bore a white flag with the word "Pennsylvania" printed upon it. The owners wore white frocks and be-ribboned hats. A number of butchers accompanied the carts on horseback. The next year, on the 15th of March, a still greater parade was arranged. William White, who had a slaughter house on North Front street, managed the display. Eighty-seven animals — forty-three head of cattle, nineteen Bakewell sheep, eight hogs, ten kids, four bear and three deer, were exhibited by a drover in the Northern Liberties for several days. They were then killed and the meat was arranged on 200 butcher carts driven by boys in white frocks, behind deco rated horses. Two hundred butchers in their white aprons, tied with red sashes, led the cavalcade. Plows, harrows and various "floats," including small build ings and a ship on wheels, on which sailors heaved the lead and went through other maneuvers — a very favorite feature of processions at that day — accom panied the meat. A music wagon was fitted up with a platform. On a dais above it, as high as the second-story windows which it passed, was a stuffed figure of a bullock with gilded horns, on which oranges were impaled. It is said that the whole product of these eighty-seven chosen animals weighed 87,- 731 pounds. When the killing had been advertised sufficiently, the carts pro ceeded to the High street market, where the meat was "entirely disposed of in fourteen hours." What the city lost in beauty by the choking up of its streets by market houses, it was gaining by a delayed attention to the condition of its public squares. These were now generally called the Northeast, Southeast, Northwest and South west Squares. As we have seen, the Southeast Square was long used as a bury ing ground. One of the German churches had interred many bodies on the Vine street side of Northeast Square. The practice was stopped, but it appeared now that the Northwest Square, on the north side of Sassafras and between Schuylkill Fourth and Fifth streets, was being used as a place of interment for those who died at the almshouse, the state prison and the Pennsylvania Hospital. Councils in 1812 resolved that no one, after July 10th of that year, should be buried in any of the public squares of the city, but the Northwest Square 1Laws of Pa., 1822-23, P- 100. 86 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA continued to be a place of interment for the poor until 1816 at least, when a burying ground was opened in Francisville, on the Vineyard estate. A Potters' Field was created and fenced in with boards on the south side of Lombard street, between Ninth and Tenth streets, and interments might also be made in that en closure. The Southwest Square seems never to have been a general burying ground, but it was long a common depository for privy filth. As the city was extended in that direction, this nuisance became a subject for public protest. Just as citizens offered money to the corporation to lay out and pave the streets in their neighborhoods, so a number now offered to donate $500 for the purpose of put ting the Southwest Square into order. In 1816 councils resolved to destroy the weeds which had overgrown the space, till the soil, and lay it down with grass as soon as possible. At the same time the Northeast Square was to be leveled, sowed with grass seed and planted with forest trees. The cattle markets, which had been held on the Seventh street side of the Southeast Square, were sent up to the Hay Market on Sixth street, above Cal- lowhill street. The house in which the oil for the street lamps was stored was ordered to be taken down in 1818, and the oil removed and kept henceforward at Centre Square. In 1817 councils asked for a loan of $600 for three months to enable them to improve and plant the Southeast Square, but as late as in 1830 it was high in clover. There were benches under the trees in which no one seemed to have any time or wish to sit. The space was surrounded by a pale fence. In 1821 there was so much grass in the Northwest Square that councils leased it to the Orphans' Society for $50 a year as a pasture lot. The removal of the state capital in 1812 from Lancaster to Harrisburg, which was looked upon as its permanent location, led to a wish on the part of the legislature in 1816 to sell the State House to the city, as a means of raising money to erect a suitable new capitol building. The venerable structure and its grounds had been threatened with desecration many times on various ac counts. Plans were now on foot to run a street through the yard, and to cut it up into building lots. The city decided to take the property at $70,000, the price named by the legislature, which wisely reiterated an earlier provision, that the space behind the hall included within the walls "shall be and remain a pub lic green and walk forever." In 1816 proposals were made for naming the four squares. William Lehman in common council proposed that they should be called after Washington, Frank lin, Columbus and Penn, "four men of daring enterprise, heroic virtue, and exalted genius, to whom this nation is indebted for its existence, freedom and happiness, and for a large share of whatever reputation it enjoys in philosophy, in policy and in war." He went so far as to propose the appointment of a com mittee to consider the "expediency of an appropriation of money for the pur pose of procuring statues in wood of said benefactors of America, to serve as models of statues of bronze or marble which may hereafter be erected in said squares at the discretion of councils." The select councilmen did not concur with the members of the other branch of the city legislature on this subject, and some years must elapse before the matter would be definitely arranged. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 87 In 1818 the Southeast Square appears in the Directory for the first time as Washington Square. In May, 1825, councils passed an ordinance officially giv ing it this name, while the Northeast Square was named for Benjamin Frank lin, the Northwest for James Logan, and the Southwest for David Rittenhouse. Centre Square hereafter should be called Penn Square, and the State House yard should bear the more dignified name of Independence Square. The appearance of the State House yard was improved by lowering the walls which surrounded it. The east and west walls received attention first, and then, in 1812, it was resolved to take down the south wall along Walnut street also. The coping which remained was topped with iron palisades. There was no entrance to the grounds except through the State House and by the gates on Walnut street. The physical appearance of the city at this time is well delineated in an article m the Port Folio for May, 1818. This writer said: "It must be gratifying to every liberal-minded man to see the gradual im provement of our city. The buildings which have been erected, and the streets which have been paved during the past ten years, by far surpass the most san guine calculations of former days. "Vine street is built and paved as far as Ninth street. Race street is built and paved as far as Broad street. Arch street is built out entirely to Twelfth street, with beautiful houses, and is paved to Eleventh street. Market street is paved to Schuylkill Sixth street, and is entirely built up as far as the Centre Square, and is partially built up on all the squares between Broad street and the river Schuylkill. Chestnut street is entirely built up nearly as far as Twelfth street, and is paved and partially improved as far as Schuylkill Seventh street, which is two squares west of Broad street. Walnut street is nearly built out to Eleventh street; is paved as far as Twelfth, and will shortly be paved up to Thirteenth street. Spruce street is built up to Eleventh street, and is paved to Broad street; Pine street is built and paved up to Ninth street; South street is partially improved as far as Broad street, and is paved to Ninth street ; Broad street is paved from the Centre Square to Vine street. "All the streets running north and south as far west as. Eleventh street, and most of the intermediate and secondary streets are paved in whole or in part, according to the extent of the improvements. "What has very much contributed to the great extent of pavements within the last few years, has been the enterprise or, if you choose, the calculating spirit of some of our citizens who, in order to procure pavements in front of their property, before the regular period arrived at which they would be made by the .public, have loaned the money to the councils, free of interest, for such a term as would be likely not to make them a public burthen before their regu lar turn. Thus, for the pavement of Chestnut street west of Broad street, the money was loaned by the owners of the property interested, for fourteen years without interest. For the pavement of Walnut street between Eleventh and Thirteenth streets, the money was loaned without interest for seven years, and so of other streets." The writer went on to express the hope that the city would continue to make contracts of this kind with the citizens, with a view to the extension of the 88 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA paved district as soon as possible. The paving material was gravel and cobble stones, gathered from the beds of streams, chiefly, Dr. Mease says, from the Delaware near Trenton Falls. In many cases, the improvement was confined merely to a space in the middle of the street, but the change for the better was so great, and road building was still an art so little developed anywhere, that even this could be welcomed thankfully. The street life of the period in Philadelphia was picturesque in many re spects. The city still suffered for lack of a good police system; and many of its fires, riots and crimes, both now and in the two or three decades to come, were to be attributed directly to a lax constabulary. The paid watchmen were, of course, a more efficient body of men than the old volunteers of the ante- Revolutionary era. Their number, too, was greatly increased to accord in some way with the growth of the city. But they seem to have had no duties in day light. Then, the people could police themselves with the aid of the mayor and a few constables to be had upon call, if they could be found. At night each watchman had his beat; his only weapons were a stick and a wooden rattle which, when it was sprung, was a signal for all the householders to put their heads — in the night caps which they wore to prevent their greased and powdered perukes or natural back hair, as the style might be, from soiling the bed linen — out of the windows for two or three squares around. He often started the cry of fire. He lighted the lamps in the dark of the moon, when the city was willing to expend its money for the use of whale oil to illuminate the streets and alleys. On this duty he carried with him a long tin or sheet iron torch fitted up with a wick, with a reservoir for oil at its base. As yet there were no matches except clumsy brimstone ones — splints of wood, the ends of which were dipped in melted brimstone — to be lighted from the tinder box, and if the wind blew out his torch, it was a task of no mean proportions to light it again.1 With his lan tern in hand, he still stood at the corners of the streets, calling out his "Past ten o'clock and a rainy night," or "Twelve o'clock and all's well !" or "O-h pa-a-st three o'clock and a frosty morning !" with drawling variations of intonation pe culiar to himself. His sonorous voice ringing up and down the citys' thorough fares pleasantly impressed visitors to the city. Said one in 1824: "It is very agreeable to repose in bed and to hear the lanterned watchmen as they perambulate the wards which on a dark evening are lighted with near a thousand lamps, sing out: 'Past 11 o'clock and a cloudy night!' 'Three o'clock and bright starlight!' and thus to strike the slow passing note of time through all the weary watches of their walks."2 For some time now the watchmen had had watch-boxes at the street corners, square or hexagonal in shape, wherein small stoves were placed in winter for their comfort. They could also keep their lanterns and other paraphernalia when not in use, in these little houses at the street side. One of the greatest nuisances of this time, not forgetting other grave irregular ities in the city's social life, was the action of idlers and wags in raising false cnes of fire for the fun of seeing the engines dash down the street. It is to be 1 The lucifer match, lighted by friction, was not invented until 1820 2 Letters from the South and West by Arthur Singleton, p. 29. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 89 feared that many of the young volunteers, eager for a run and perhaps a fracas with a rival company, were themselves often guilty of this offense, thus putting the whole city in an instant in a state of general commotion. So much of this was done at some times, indeed, that men did not turn out "of their houses, know ing that it was but another jest. "It is one of the nightly amusements of the young hosemen," the Hermit was told when he came to Philadelphia in 1819.1 "The appointed hour is nine o'clock, and on particular occasions a repetition at eleven o'clock." There was no redress. The "youngsters" simply replied, "We brought the hose out when we heard the cry of 'fire', " and who had first uttered it no one knew. The practice was to be condemned without qualification. "It disturbs the repose and unnecessarily agitates the minds of our citizens. When a sick relative or friend has just sunk into slumber that is to decide recovery or death, and the rumbling of the fire engines awakens him to the latter, this disturbance is no trifling matter. The sick are oftentimes disturbed in a less degree. It lulls the people into a careless, false security and when the flames actually burst forth and the real cry of terror is heard in our streets, it is liable to be disregarded." There was no way to regulate the matter so long as it was a volunteer service. "You have no idea of the consequence that is attached to the directorship of a fire company," the Hermit was informed. "It is the summit of the hopes and wishes of one-half the clerks, counter-hoppers and quill drivers in the city. A trumpet in one hand, a spanner in the other and a lantern affixed to a leathern belt around his waist, and a director is in the zenith of his glory ; more especially if the night be dark; the effect of the various lights is more striking." The evil had reached a stage of great public offense in Southwark and thereabouts. "In the southeastern section of the city," said the Hermit's informant, "this custom has become so permanently fixed, and certain engines and hoses established in that quarter under the guidance of boys are in such constant practice of taking this nightly exercise, that the neighboring citizens almost without exception neither walk to their front doors nor hoist their windows to make the usual inquiry. It is, however, observed that when the night is particularly cold or other wise ill-favored, the alarm is never given." It was computed that twelve out of every one thousand of the people of Phila delphia, men, women and children, were firemen. Many of the old companies had ceased to exist, having been dissolved by common agreement of the sur vivors, or merged with other organizations. There was a time when the most notable men of the city were firemen, and they personally appeared in service when their attendance was called for. Some of them still belonged to the com panies and ran to fires as before, but their number was becoming fewer as the "Jclty~grewand its customs changed. The multiplication of organizations and the excessively bad behavior of the hoodlums who pressed into them, made the service much less respectable than it had formerly been. It was also much less necessary, when there were so many ready volunteers. The most prominent members now were likely to be lawyers or business men who had political ambi tions and who, in order to popularize themselves with the fire companies which 1 The Hermit in America, First Series. 90 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA had come to exercise a considerable influence at elections, joined the organi zations. From little bodies of gentlemen who met in the taverns, or in certain churches and Quaker meetings, to defend their own and their neighbors' prop erty, they had become, in many cases at least, companies of turbulent young fellows, equally eager for a fire or a fight. They not infrequently did more damage than their services came to at better times. Nevertheless, they were the recipients of much public favor. As they all now had engines, so they must have places to store their engines, and institutions and business men were likely to furnish sheds on their premises, or provide the ground for the erection of engine houses, in order to have them in the vicinity in case of need. Too often they proved to be much less protection than was expected. William B. Wood, in his Recollections, intimates that the company which he had quartered in one corner of the Chestnut Street Theatre had been, in all probability unwittingly, the occasion of his great misfortune in 1820. The appliances of the companies for extinguishing fires were still quite simple. A new engine, which was the subject of many boasts in 1820, had cost only $900. The pre-eminent place, early held by the Masons as builders was now occupied by Patrick Lyon who was generally favored with the orders of the firemen. The machine which he made for the "Diligent" in 1820 was considered a masterpiece of the manufacturer's ingenuity. It was capable of throwing 240 gallons of water in a minute from a spout much larger than any hitherto in use in America. The business of making hose carriages, when these were intrcn duced, also assumed importance. A considerable number were built by Lyon and other manufacturers, and a few hundred feet of hose and a carriage of some kind to trundle it to the scene of the fire became the necessary equip ment of each company after Schuylkill water had been introduced into the city: The completion of the works at Fairmount gave the firemen a larger supply of water under a greater head, and the buckets went out of public use. They still hung in shops, warehouses and other buildings for service before the engines could arrive. Many of the companies provided themselves with ladders of dif ferent lengths which were stored here and there in the city, depending usually from pegs driven into walls, up some alley, where they could be conveniently found. Their engines and carriages were painted, as a rule, in bright colors and otherwise decorated, as if intended for public parade. They were equipped with torches and lanterns, which in themselves were a menace to the safety of property. Alarm bells set on the roofs, or upon poles in proximity to the houses of the companies were rung to arouse the members and, incidentally, the entire neigh borhood. Bells and gongs were also attached to the engines and carriages, and were sounded noisily as the men rushed through the streets. The first distinguishing piece of uniform to be adopted by the firemen was a tall oiled or painted hat, ornamented prominently with the name and emblem of the company. This later became a very important badge. Coats, capes, shirts and belts were not generally added to the equipment until a later day. fhe apparatus was drawn by men and boys. The first engine to be drawn by horses is said to have been that of the Good Will Company, in 1804, which went into service with a special view to the protection of that part of the city HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 91 lying toward and beyond Broad street, while the streets there still were unpaved and at times very difficult to traverse. It was no rare thing to see Indians in the streets of Philadelphia as late as 1825 or 1830. The delegates from the tribes who used to come to visit President Washington and President Adams on business connected with the government, now went to Washington City, but the Lenni Lenape still had villages in the neighborhood, where they lived an easy life of semi-domestication. Some offered their small wares for sale, as so many had done before the Revolution. They brought in moccasins, baskets, bead-work of various kinds, and other articles. Occasionally squaws would seat themselves in front of the State House, or at frequented corners farther down town, deftly plying their needles for the adver tisement of their little stock in trade. The men often brought their bows and arrows and shot at and won pennies, "fips" or "levies," which were placed in some cleft for this purpose. They were not very noble specimens of the dis appearing race. They were fitted out, very likely, in some articles of apparel borrowed from the white man's wardrobe, incongruously mixed with their own. It was a fortunate time when they did not start home tipsy. Proprietors of taverns and summer gardens sometimes employed them for war dances in order to attract attention to their resorts. Boys and girls and even older inhabitants of the city had come by this time to regard the Indian as a great curiosity, and flocked around him wherever he went. Other street characters which have long since disappeared from the city were the porters, carters, stage-drivers, Conestoga teamsters and chimney sweeps. The porters usually had wheelbarrows or handbarrows. There were still designated stands for the carters, the draymen and the drivers of hackney coaches. Of these last, the city had come to possess a number by the year 1812. The Irish who were transferring themselves to America in such numbers at this period drifted into this employment, and several Jehus came to enjoy a high reputation on the sidewalks where they habitually stood. Some of the stage-drivers in the inn-yards and at the tavern doors, after whipping in their horses from New York, Baltimore, Reading, Lancaster or Bethlehem, drew crowds around them by reason of their wit, their impudence, or perhaps their profanity. The Conestoga teamsters congregated in Market street, now usually west of Eighth street and still later, as a rule, west of Broad street. They had made long journeys with flour, whisky, wheat, corn, pork, and other country produce. They would make long journeys back into the west with dry-goods, hardware, sugar, salt, and supplies wherein the interior of the country was not sufficient unto itself. The bottom of the vehicle was hollowed out so that the load would not slip in ascending or descending mountain roads. The great, long-limbed horses were covered with bells, which could be heard at a distance, a signal to the driver coming from an opposite direction that he might turn in at the first convenient place, to avoid blocking the other's way in the narrow roads whereon passing accommodations were scant. In the Alleghanies, where com parative silence reigned, the bells of an approaching wagoner could be heard for miles, and it was a breach of the unwritten rules of the road, as well ais a very serious inconvenience, for a driver not to heed the signal. Progress was very slow, but to this the men were accustomed. A pipe or a cud of tobacco 92 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA solaced the hours spent each day upon the road. Twenty days, at least, would intervene before the load from Philadelphia could be brought to Pittsburg. The Conestoga horses were seldom stabled, even while they were in the city awaiting the discharge and taking on of their freights. They were, tied to the wheels or tongues of their wagons in all kinds of weather, and fed and bedded where they stood. Isaac Weld, here in i795"97> wrote: "Market or High street, the street by which these people come into the town is always crowded with wagons and horses that are left standing there all night. * * * Food for the horses is always carried in the wagon and the moment they stop they are unyoked * * * and fed out of a large trough carried for the purpose and fixed on the pole of the wagon by means of iron pins." 2 Market street, another writer has said, resembled the terminal station of "some vast caravan" in Asia. James Flint, who visited Philadelphia in 1818, wrote of this traffic as follows : "The Market street is the resort of wagons employed in the transfer of goods to Pittsburg, etc. They are drawn by four, five or six horses. These are tied to the wagons all night, and are not allowed to enter a stable. In summer and winter this treatment is uniform. These animals are, notwithstanding, in high condition. They seem to be of a cross breed, betwixt the draught and the saddle horse. The carriage of goods to Pittsburg now costs seven and three-quarter dollars per hundred pound weight. Six weeks ago, six and a half were charged; sometimes it is so low as five. Towards autumn carriage usually costs more than it does early in the summer. When families and their baggage are to be transported, the persons who ride are paid for by weight, at the same rate as goods. The wagoner signs a bill of lading, and no other person is held respon sible for loss or damage. Fraud on the part of wagoners is said to be extremely rare. I have heard of one instance of the wagoner, with his team and the goods, disappearing; but that happened several years ago. The journey is commonly performed in eighteen or twenty days." 2 The chimney sweeps were still seen in numbers in Philadelphia, until after the general introduction and use of anthracite coal. This business, it is said, had by this time passed into the hands of negroes for the most part, though if the man were white at first, he might give up hope of being identified as a Caucasian after a short employment at this sooty calling. He nearly always was accompanied by from two to six negro boys of a size to be put into the chimney to pass on a rope from top to bottom to brush it out. This troop trailed along the street, singing in chorus their "Sweep oh ! Sweep oh !" and many quite "unmeaning syllables skilfully managed with rising, falling and rounding harmony, pleasant to the ear at all times," says Thompson Westcott, "and rarely tiresome by reiteration."The cry was by all accounts very musical. To an English visitor, it seemed "a kind of vocal voluntary * * * like the choruses of the Swiss peasants or the hunters of the Alps." 3 Another thought that the cry resembled a 1 Travels, p. 93. 2 Letters from America, p. 36. 3 Buckingham, America, Vol. II, p. 212. $15,000 for m. The above Handsome Prize in the Pennsylvania State Lottery, SECOND CLASS, G. W. WA1TE, Manager, Can be obtained at WAITE'S Fortunate Office, for the small sum of Six Dollars. Those pei'sons who wish to adventure in this Splendid Lottery, had belter apply immediately, as Tickets will rise to Seven Dollars in a few days. The drawing will commence IN A FEW WEEKS, and progress rapidly until its conclusion. 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Sept. 4, 1821. m LOTTERY ADVERTISEMENT, 1821 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 93 Tyrolese yodel.1 Still another, possibly with less music in his soul, was moved to speak of "the discordant gutterals 'uch, uch, uch, ooa-uch' of the half-naked sweeps." 2 The town crier had lost many of his earlier functions. Laws needed no longer to be proclaimed; the people now could read and they were published in the newspapers. His principal employment in Philadelphia was to announce lost children. With a bell which he rang vigorously, he went about the streets, giving the name, age and description of some boy or girl who had strayed away from its parents. Sometimes, too, he set out with his bell in search of a cow, horse or other piece of lost property. If any of the towns people had information concerning the child or the animal, they pressed out to tell him and he sometimes bore the object of his quest with him to its home. The street cries of the time might be made the subject of a separate treatise by some Philadelphia antiquary. To this day they ring in the ears of many citizens. The carters of wood continued to carry it through the streets. Though the trees were being rapidly cut and the supply was diminishing, it was still brought in in shallops from both sides of the Delaware above and below the city, except in winter when the river was frozen. Then it was conveyed overland. The business, as of yore, was subjected to the careful regulation of the govern ment. How after reaching the wharves it might be corded and hauled was specifically stated. The standards were lifted out of the cart, and it was dumped in a pile on the cobble stones. The sawyer followed with his saw-horse and silently did his work. Contrary to law, the lengths were usually piled upon the brick pavement until they were ready to be shot down the cellar door, or grate, which inevitably extended into the footway in front of every Philadelphia home. Then the sticks must be split, and if there was no one in the house for this service, it could be performed by a wood splitter. He came through the streets with an axe on his shoulders and wedges jingling on a string, with a musical cry "Spli-i-t wood," which brought many a housewife to her door. It was estimated in the American Register in 1807 that the City and Liberties at that time, com puting the population at 100,000 souls, consumed about 300,000 cords of wood annually, which at $6 a cord, hauled, sawed and in the cellar, cost $1,800,000. The industry of providing Philadelphia with fuel before coal appeared, em ployed 6,000 horses, 2,000 wagons and carts, 600 shallops and 9,000 men. The charcoal man was another familiar visitor to Philadelphia streets. He usually came from New Jersey where, in the pine woods, his ware was made. As summer approached, the ten-plate stove was always taken down, and for the comfort of the kitchen many household processes were transferred to the char coal furnace, which was set up out of doors. The business of these Jerseymen underwent a marked development after the introduction of stove coal. The people had not yet learned how to use it well, and the charcoal was accounted necessary in igniting it. It came in high, grimy wagons in the spring, and the cry of "Char-co ! char-co !" was familiar for many years. The price was thirty or thirty-five cents a barrel. The drivers usually blew a horn, but this noise 1 Combe, I, p. 328. 2 Singleton, Letters. 94 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA was objectionable and it was prohibited by councils in 1830, when they turned to bells. Another trade actively followed in the streets, was in ashes and soft soap. When wood was burned, the ash was considered quite valuable for the manu facture of soap. It was mixed with the refuse fats of the kitchen and converted into a cleansing agent which was an item of importance in the household econ omy, both because soap from the stores was expensive and because much was^ needed for pots and pans constantly blackened by the smoky wood fires. Those who did not care to boil their own soap could sell their materials to the man who made periodical visits crying "Soap fat and hickory ashes !" He was likely to be a negro, and when his mixture was ready for use he came again, shouting "Soft so-ap ! so-ap ! so-ap !" which he dealt out of a wheelbarrow with a ladle or a spoon at four or five cents a quart. The brickdustman brought powdered brick which he sold at from eight to twelve cents a quart. Housewives used it to scour their brass candlesticks, and irons, door-plates and door knockers, which must be kept bright. There were also steel knives and forks which required similar attention. The sand man, with his sand which came probably from the New Jersey seashore, was at times a welcome visitor also. There were kitchen utensils to be cleaned, unpainted wood to be made white, and before carpets were known, many sanded floors. All the rooms in the house needed to be washed periodically with a mixture of lime and water, as did the fences and the outbuildings, to make them wholesome and clean. Wall paper was yet rarely seen. Boston, it is said, preceded Phila delphia in papering her walls, while New York was using paint. The negro, with his pails and brushes, was a never-failing visitor in the spring. He may have been the same man who split wood during the winter. At any rate, his cry was the signal for house cleaning: "Yere's the white whitey-wash ! Brown whitey-wash ! Yellow whitey-wash ! Green whitey-wash ! Wash, wash ! I'm about!" The baker, for some years, had brought his bread in the morning in a basket. As his business grew, he used a hand-cart. He kept his ovens hot, too, to receive the bread and pies of private families who, in summer time after the stoves had been taken down, about the first of May, sent out their baking. The milkman came in a wagon from the country. His milk was brought in cedar churns, which were hooped with copper or brass. The wood and metal were scoured with sand until they shone. The milk was carefully measured in bright tins at the door. The scissors grinder, is still occasionally seen upon the streets with his sand stone wheel. His oft-repeated cry, "Any knives or scissors to grind!" and his bell, affixed very likely to the frame of his wheel to tinkle monotonously as he trundles it along, was heard earlier much oftener than now. Among other cries of the spring and early summer were those of the fisher men and women. They HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 95 often carried their shad, perch, catfish, sea-bass and other fish in trays upon their heads, announcing what they had to the extent of their vocal powers : "You buy an-y-y sha-a-d?" "You buy an-y-y pe-e-rch?" "You buy an-y-y ca-a-t-feesh ?" Sturgeon, then still plentiful in the Delaware, and porgies were sold by negroes out of wheelbarrows with great noise and commotion in the portions of the town inhabited by the poor. Fruit was always proclaimed in season in the - streets, very often by venders who sallied out for customers which they had not found in the market, though itinerant huckstering was usually a separate em ployment. Women with trays or baskets on their heads cried, "You buy an-y cher-rees!" "Straw-ber-rees! straw-ber-rees! fine ripe straw-ber-rees!" "Fine ripe black-ber-rees !" Men with carts cried, "Peeches, oh! here they go!" "Fine ripe Jersey watermelons !" while other fruits as they ripened were for sale at almost every street corner. The hominy man also had his song in which the words, "Hominy! beautiful hominy!" were likely to occur more than once. He was said to be "the most musical of all the criers." x Charles Godfrey Leland had many pleasant recollections of the city cries, particularly one old hominy man who sang: "De hominy man is on his way, Frum de navy yard Wid his harmony." (This spoken: "Law bess de putty eyes ob de young lady! Hominy's good fur de young ladies !" ) "De harmony man is on his way," etc.2 Hominy was much used as a food, instead of rice and potatoes, and was recommended to invalids for pulmonary troubles. It was the fare which con sumptives enjoyed in the West Indies, whither at this time they were usually sent for their malady. All these were cries which stirred the morning air. In the evening there were women who had ears of fine boiled green corn, each wrapped up in a napkin. They cried their "Hot corn ! Hot corn !" One is said to have sung this refrain : "You that have money — and I have got none — ¦ Come buy my hot sweet corn, and let me be gone." European travelers did not cease to marvel at this American taste and the method of gratifying it. William T. Harris, an Englishman who was here be fore 1820, said that to see a man taking up an ear of corn reminded him of nothing so much as his neighbor's dog gnawing a bone. He was obliged to apologize "for the involuntary movement" of his "risible muscles." 1 City Cries, published by George S. Appleton. 2 Memoirs, p. 11. 96 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Besides the hot corn women, there were women who sold pears stewed in molasses, and pepper-pot, a soup which was a favorite with the slaves in the West Indies. The people often heard the cry of "Pepper pot, right hot!" and this song: "Pepper-pot! All hot, all hot! Makee back strong! Makee live long! Come buy my pepper-pot!" If this mess was too pungent, there were the bean soup woman, the hot muffin man, the "mulled cider" girl, the lemonade man, the ice cream man, the gingercake and the molasses candy woman, and more important than all, the oyster man. While oysters had been used to some extent from the earliest times in Pennsylvania, the taste was not really acquired until early in the nine teenth century. To visitors from Europe they were always curious and not very much liked because of their size. An English Quakeress wrote home tell ing of "six of such oysters thou cans't form no idea of ;" two of them were "sufficient" for her.1 Because they began to be bred, because of cheaper facili ties for transporting them into the city, or for other reason, they gradually came to be regarded by Americans as an important article of food. Before there were proper means of keeping them on ice they were generally pickled. The well-stocked cupboards of our grandmothers were likely to contain a store of pickled oysters. In the markets criers offered them for sale with a song, "Oys! Oys! poor Jack wants his money for selling pickled oysters." Men and boys ate raw oysters out of carts and barrows on the street with the help of a little pepper, salt and vinegar. The dealer would roar, according to Thompson Westcott : "Ah, yer oys-ta-oh! Yer they go! Oys-ta-oh !" He opened the shells while his customers stood by. Others had wooden stands at fixed places in the streets, often using charcoal stoves for manufactur ing the characteristic "stew," for which the neighborhood early gained a repu tation. There were three-cent bowls, fip bowls and levy bowls to satisfy all varieties of need. The "oyster cellar" marked a distinct advance upon the wheel barrow, and it came to be an institution of the city. It threatened the prosperity of the tavern, and all classes of the people resorted to the basement rooms be neath the street which were fitted up to sell oysters. The guests usually sat at tables in little curtained compartments into which the space was divided. Some of these places became quite famous, and figure in the stories of George Lip- pard, and other Philadelphia writers of fiction of this and a somewhat later period. A British traveler, Adlard Welby, who was in Philadelphia in 1821, wrote : 1Pa. Mag., XVIII, p. 56. FAIRMOUNT GARDENS IN 1839, SHOWING THE WERNWAG COVERED BRIDGE (UPPER FERRY) HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 97 "Returning home, my companion proposed to dive into one of the oyster cellars, to which agreeing we vanished in a trice; and entering the informal abode, the heat of which was at least that of a hothouse, we found a room well lighted and boxes arranged like those in our coffee houses, except that the par titions were carried to the ceiling, with the addition of curtains in front. We supped well upon stewed oysters brought upon a chafing dish, and a salad of finely shredded raw cabbage and celery which I found very palatable. For these, with beer, we paid half a dollar." 1 While hotels of the larger sort, with a more or less elaborate service, were not very numerous, the Mansion House on Third near Spruce street, the old In dian Queen on Fourth street, and Judd's on Third street, being the most important in 1825, there was a great variety of taverns and inns, as there always had been. They were, for the most part, only drinking, gaming and lounging places. A number of them had extensive stables for the animals of the country people when they came to market, or perhaps drove in to spend a day or two among the shops which lined both sides of Second street. Inns on the outskirts of the city, which were numerous, were supported by the thirsty and the hungry, who were attracted by the signs in passing by. The sale of liquors was little restricted. In 1820, 220 persons held retail licenses in Philadelphia city, while 193 places were licensed in the Northern Liberties and 167 in Southwark. The tax was $16 a year in the city, and $8 a year in the Liberties and in Southwark.2 The rates were so low that the innholders in town and country derived a comfortable revenue, though they were subjected to much competition by reason of the great number of taverns to be found everywhere on all the frequented highways. As always, they were designated by characteristic names. Red Lions, Black Horses, Eagles, Indian Kings, Seven Stars, Rising Suns and Green Trees abounded. The business of painting signs for these taverns became an important one. A number of men executed striking designs, some of which survived until a very recent day. Others were merely curious. At the Dogs and the Moon in Southwark, the full moon was seen with a pack of dogs barking at it. Under neath the picture these words appeared: "Ye foolish dogs, why bark ye so, When I'm so high and ye're so low." The sign of the Man Full of Trouble displayed the figure of a man upon one of whose arms hung a woman carrying a bandbox on which a cat was perched. In the other hand he bore a parrot, while a monkey sat on his shoulder. The sign of the Declaration of Independence, a tavern on South street, con tained a reproduction of Trumbull's well known picture of the signing. The name of the Purple and Blue, in Southwark, was changed to the Quiet Woman. 1 For city cries, see Thompson Westcott's chapters, 1800-1825 ; and City Cries and City Characters or Familiar Scenes in Town, two little illustrated books published by Geo. S. Appleton in 1850 and 1851. 2 Pa. Mag., XVIII, pp. 263-64. vol n— 7 98 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA This house had a sign which was a favorite in England and some parts of this country— the figure of a woman without a head. A tavern in Sixth street bore the curious name of "The Four Alls." There were four figures— a king in his robe of office, a military man in uniform, a clergyman in his surplice, and a serving man. The following inscription appeared: "i. King — I govern all! 2. General — I fight for all! 3. Minister — I pray for all! 4. Laborer — And I pay for all!" On an inn near the navy yard there was a sign on which was painted a pic ture of a tree, a bird, a ship and a tankard of beer, and the words : "This is the tree that never grew, , This is the bird that never flew, This is the ship that never sailed, This is the mug that never failed." x The city was filled with these interesting signs on houses wherein there was often great merriment, and at times, undeniably, a certain amount of disorder. A period was approaching when a landlord would not desire any longer to keep an inn or a tavern. He would wish to have a hotel, both because of a rising temperance sentiment which frowned upon drinking places, and because of the greater dignity thereby attaching to his occupation. In many instances the hos pitality extended to guests was even now very inferior to that which travelers had earlier enjoyed. When the owner stood at his door to welcome visitors, and his wife and daughters kept the rooms in order and served the table, real comfort was often dispensed. A traveler named Francis Hall, a young British army officer who was here in 181 7, said: "The innkeepers in America are, in most villages, what we call vulgarly 'topping men' — field officers of militia with good farms attached to their tav erns. * * * They always give us plentiful fare, particularly at breakfast, when veal cutlets, sweetmeats, cheese, eggs and ham are most liberally set be fore us. Dinner is little more than repetition of breakfast, with spirits instead of coffee. I never heard wine called for. [This, of course, was in the country. Wine was plentifully served in all the principal inns in Philadelphia patronized by the better classes.] The common drink is a small cider. Rum, whisky and brandy are placed upon the table, and the use of them left to the discretion of the company who seem rarely to abuse them. Tea is a meal of the same solid construction as breakfast, answering also for supper. The daughters of the host officiate at tea and breakfast, and generally wait at dinner." The large hotels, such as the Mansion House, which in 1822-23 was visited by an "English gentleman" who wrote of his experiences, also had abounding tables. The charge at this and similar places was for lodging and meals, all 1 Thompson Westcott, Ch. 732. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 99 reckoned together on what then was called, and what we still call the "American plan." This traveler paid only $10 a week at the best hotel in the city for both room and board. "The table," he remarked, "is always spread with the greatest profusion and bounty, even at breakfast, tea and supper, all of which meals indeed, were it not for the absence of wine and soup might be called so many dinners." At breakfast "besides tea, coffee, eggs, cold ham, beef and such like ordinary accompaniments," he said, "we always had hot fish, sausages, beefsteaks, broiled fowls, fried and stewed oysters, preserved fruits, etc., etc., etc. The same variety of dishes was repeated at supper." All of which this traveler quite properly described as "good living."1 One feature of hotel life which travelers remarked with much disfavor was the custom of pressing several guests into the same room. Even Fanny Kemble when she came to the Mansion House in 1832 was invited to occupy a room with another woman to her great dissatisfaction, and a man was often expected to sleep with ten or twelve other snoring persons. Mr. Weld was "crammed into rooms where there was scarcely sufficient space to walk between the beds." The linen was changed for a new guest only at the best hotels. One or two travelers have left a record of the ants which ran through the inns and over their belongings in noisome multitudes. There were many to complain with reason of the mosquitoes, from which houses at the time seem to have enjoyed no protection. Flies, which bred in the closes and stables, were always a torment during the summer months. The taverns were the centers for the sports and games of the day, some of them sufficiently rude. Dining clubs met here; indeed, few, if any, with the exception of the Schuylkill Fishing Club, yet had houses of their own. Fox hunting was likely to revolve around some inn ; from it the huntsmen and their hounds started out for a chase over the neighboring country. This sport had many votaries among that body of well-to-do young men who were members of the First Troop of City Cavalry and the State in Schuylkill. After the Revolu tion they had reorganized their Gloucester Fox Hunting Club of which Robert Wharton was long the president. Indeed he was its last president. At his death it ceased to exist. In the early years of the century the members often crossed the Delaware for a run with the hounds through the pines of New Jersey. Occasionally a deer hunt was instituted. This animal was no longer found in Philadelphia County. A stag, therefore, would be taken alive, penned up for a time at some tavern, and then be released with the dogs and horsemen at his heels for a chase over ground in the outskirts of the city, now long since covered with blocks of factories, shops and dwelling houses. Often a cock fight was organized. Billiard tables were to be found in many of the inns. Here and there a bowling-green was seen, while shovel or shuffle board — the pushing of weights on a sanded table — and quoits played with iron rings or horseshoes, were almost indispensable features of life in the tavern yard. Horse racing and betting upon the speed of animals went forward as before. On the Fourth of July, on militia muster days and at other times a good deal xAn Excursion Through the United States and Canada During the Years 1822-23, by an English Gentleman, p. 27. 100 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA of disorder prevailed around the Centre House. So many tents, booths and gaming tables, with their venders and fakers, were assembled on these occasions that they were driven out of the city, whereupon they went to Bush Hill. The old Hamilton house had been a tavern for several years before it was burned in 1808. Later its walls were fitted up as a floor cloth manufactory. Here, too, the holiday crowds and their entertainments were declared to be a nuisance, and they again fell under the ban of the law. But whatever evils throve, no community which continued under government favor to authorize and approve of the sale of lottery tickets, and the drawing of prizes, for the benefit of canals and bridges, and churches, hospitals and schools, had a right to complain of a horse race or a dice-box. To make it seem more respectable and give it the stamp of official recognition, the wheel was often, if not usually, set up in the State House. The drawings for the lottery, of which Ritter tells, undertaken for the benefit of a bridge across the Delaware at Easton, and managed by Blair McClenachan, were made at the State House. Two boys about ten years of age, to typify Innocence, were dressed in blue uniforms trimmed with gold lace, and placed upon a table in front of the large box wheel. Their sleeves were made tight to bar any suspicion of fraud. When the wheel had been turned, a small door at the side of the construction was opened. A ticket was taken out, held up to public view, and presented to the manager who "clipped the thread" which held the secret,1 and read out the number for the information of the assembly. For a time the lottery had seemed to fall into disfavor, but the great demands upon the public treasuries by reason of various schemes for internal improve ment, and inadequate tax-levying arrangements, led to a marked revival early in the century. The selling of tickets became a business in itself. It had begun in the regular shops of the city as an incidental issue, but it reached such dimensions that individuals and firms engaged in it exclusively. They hired expensive offices in lower Chestnut, and Second, and Third streets, where trade then had its center, illuminated their windows at night, hung out placards and transparencies showily painted with figures of the goddess of fortune, cornucopias of plenty, the wheel of chance and other devices calculated to attract the passer-by, whether he be a jolly sailor from the wharves, a young "buck" from one of the fashionable families of the town, a countryman come to the city for the day, a market woman from her stall in High street, or a business man of the type who at this day buys or sells a hundred shares of stock on the New York Exchange on margin. All classes of people seemed to be engaged in the specula tion. Hope and Company, in Chestnut street, were a leading firm. They advertised lavishly. The business was not confined to the sale of tickets in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania lotteries, but chances could be taken in enterprises promoted in other states. The drawing of some handsome prizes by Phila delphians encouraged others to adopt the play. It is said that Mr. Littell, the publisher, drew a prize of $25,000. In 1822 Robert Patterson was paid $8,000 on a ticket which he had purchased, while in 1825 a prize of $30,000 was drawn by Joseph Dugan.2 There were lotteries for the Second Baptist church, the 1 Ritter's Philadelphia and her Merchants. 2 Th. Westcott, ch. 715. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 101 Bustleton and Smithfield road, the Universalist church, the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic church, the Pennypack Academy, the Surgical Institute of Baltimore, the Lower Dublin Academy, and the Grand Philadelphia Lottery for the encour agement of the Useful Arts. But the greatest of all these enterprises was the "Grand State Lottery," for the benefit of the Union Canal Company, authorized by the legislature as early as 1795, and carried on later at such a pace that its operations created a public scandal, as has been indicated at another place in this narrative. The Philadelphians were still regarded by strangers as a people with whom it was rather difficult to gain an acquaintance. Anne Royall, said in 1826 that she found them "easy of access, polite and condescending" to visitors, but they were truly kind and hospitable only after close acquaintance. She considered this attitude very short-sighted on their part in view of the fact that "thou sands of dollars are spent here annually." Fanny Wright, a visitor in 1819, remarked "something cold and precise in the general air and manner of the people" at first, but this impression wore off "in a great measure upon further acquaintance." 1 Another traveler wrote : "There is no American city in which the system of exclusion is so rigidly observed as in Philadelphia. The ascent of a parvenu into the aristocratic circle is slow and difficult. There is a sort of holy alliance between its members to forbid all unauthorized approach." 2 The principal occasion upon which strangers entered the home of a Phila- delphian was still the tea party. "Then," said Irving in The Stranger in Phila delphia, "the ladies in general are disposed close together like a setting of jewels or pearls around a locket, in all the majesty of good behaviour; and if a gentle man wished to have a conversation with one of them about the backwardness of the spring, the improvements in the theatre or the merits of his horse," he was obliged to subject himself to "such a formidable artillery of glances" as would annihilate him completely. It was at the tea party that Philadelphia's peculiar vice, punning, most throve. There Irving found it and suffered from it. "I can not speak two sentences but that I see a pun gathering in the faces of my hearers. I absolutely shudder with horror. Think what miseries I suffer — me to whom a pun is an abomination !" Once after a contest with a punster who had seized him "by the button" he went home a wreck, took to his bed and was confined for two days. Joseph Hop- kinson, Samuel Ewing, son of the provost of the University, a writer for the Port Folio and a lawyer; Mr. Duponceau, Judge Peters, Nathaniel Chapman and David Paul Brown, were Philadelphians who dealt in word play. It was the distinguishing mark of social meeting in the city and continued so to be. T. Buchanan Read died with a pun on his lip, and there are a dozen leaders in Philadelphia's literary group at this day with whom verbal legerdemain is their principal, if not their only title to a reputation for witty conversation. Judge Peters's puns won the dignity of being collected and published ; 3 while Brown, 1 Views of Society and Manners in America, p. 35- 2 Men and Manners in America by Thomas Hamilton, Vol. I, p. 388. 3 Pa. Mag., XXV, p. 366. 102 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA fearing that his might not be handed down to coming generations, recorded his own together with those of some of his admired contemporaries.1 The traveler who wrote some "Notes" under the title, Things as They are, said: "Punning is the perversion of the use of words; and the Philadelphians are notorious punsters. Some of them will manufacture more puns in a half hour than you may hear elsewhere in a twelve month."2 However much the cold spirit of aristocracy may have possessed Phila delphia, the city was not without its human side. One traveler was told of a porter who had a heavy burden to move upon the wharf. Joseph Bonaparte, ex- king of Spain, stood by and was addressed by the fellow : "Come Boney lend a hand." A foreign visitor to the mayor's court at Fifth and Chestnut streets happened in on a hot day while the room was crowded with such people as habitually attend the trial of petty cases at law. The mayor asked for a drink of water. It came in a brown earthen pitcher to which a man, who also thought himself thirsty, put his lips as it made its way from hand to hand to the chief magistrate of the city. Mrs. Fanny JCemble Butler was annoyed when traveling upon railway trains by the advances of men and women who came up and offered her children candy and cake. Washington, Robert Morris and some others had made High street above the market houses a fashionable street while Philadelphia was the capital, but a mile of jostling venders twice a week, and multitudes of Conestoga team sters entirely spoiled this neighborhood as a place of residence. The center had changed and the smart quarter of the city was that in the vicinity of Third and Spruce streets. In a circle of a few blocks, around the spot where Thomas Willing had fixed his home, there were now a number of fine houses. Many substantial Quaker families were settled in Arch street, and some had gone out to Spring Garden and the Northern Liberties where they had built themselves large and comfortable residences. This neighborhood, however, was identified in most minds with butchers, drovers and market people. The negro and poor white quarters were already in and south of Cedar or South street. Chest nut street was early spoken of as the city's fashionable promenade ground. The streets were of course still remarked for their very regular and right- angled appearance. Philadelphia's chief defect was considered to be its want of variety. "Street answers street, each alley has a brother. And half the city just reflects the other." 3 The street names commemorative of the forest and the orchard never failed to impress the visitor. Some of these, however, were disappearing. Just as High !The best in Brown's collection is probably that attributed to Sam Ewing. Called upon for a song he hesitated, only to hear Judge Hopkinson say that whether he should oblige the company or not would be no great matter, since it would be but Sam (psalm) singing. "Well," Ewing replied, "even that would be better than hymn (him) singing — Forum, II, Ch. XV. 2 P. 29. 8 Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, Vol. I, p. 344. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 103 had made way for Market, so Mulberry was now Arch ; Sassafras, Race ; and Cedar, South street in the speech of nearly every one. The pavements were gen erally of brick. The latter were impeded by the method of running out the open ings into the cellars, and as Fearon, an English observer, remarked, by "a very slovenly practice of the storekeepers which is common in America ; namely, plac ing quantities of loose goods outside of their doors," for advertising purposes.1 Mrs. Royall also remarked this custom. She said : "Dry-goods are strewed along the sidewalks near the store doors; flannels, cloths, muslins, silks and calicoes are hung up over the doors in whole pieces, hanging down on each side to the pavement; others are placed in rolls, side by side, on boxes standing each side of the door. Barrels of sugar, raisins, coffee and fruit stand out of doors." 2 In summer awnings covered the pavements, stretching from the walls of the buildings to the streets.3 The windows, which were filled with merchandise, projected still further to im pede the way. Inside of the glass there were rows of shelves which at night were lighted with numerous whale-oil lamps. Mrs. Royall at such a time thought the scene one of "astonishing beauty." These stores abounded in Second street, which now and for many years afterward played the part in the city later taken by Eighth street. Here "dry goods stores, drug stores, groceries, hardware es tablishments, fancy goods shops, iron mongers, factories, furniture warehouses, foreign fruit stands, bookstores and stalls, stationery establishments, clothing dealers, glass and china warerooms, hotels, restaurants, intelligence offices, and every class of place where the wants of an immense city are supplied," said a writer of the day, "range themselves along mile after mile of pavement. Crowds upon crowds of buyers, sellers and gazers at the busy scene throng the side walk from daybreak until long after dark." In addition to shops in Second street, there were the market houses, around which "venders from wagons" were clustered to increase the confusion. The houses of the city were still chiefly of red brick, interspersed here and there with wooden cottages, stables and sheds, of which it was not yet rid. Marble steps, often with iron railings, led down to the brick pavements which were washed every morning by the servants of each well-managed household. The doors, and the woodwork generally, were painted white, except for the shut ters which, as a rule, were of a dark color, usually green. The kitchen and laundry, in other cities often in the basement, were placed in the typical Phila delphia home in the "back buildings." Along many of the streets Lombardy poplars, introduced to the city from England about 1784 by William Ham ilton of the "Woodlands," 4 and other trees had been planted. They made a pleasant impression upon the visitor, despite the fact that their roots often pressed up the bricks, causing the surface of the pavements to become very uneven. 1 Narrative of a Journey, p. 134. 2 Sketches of History, Life and Manners, p. 208. 8 Mrs. Trollope, p. 210. * Mease, p. 26. Another authority credits William Bingham with the introduction of this tree since a number grew near his mansion at Third and Spruce Streets.— Simpson, Em, Phila., p. 88. 104 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA "I never walked through the streets of any city, with so much satisfaction as those of Philadelphia," said Fanny Wright, after her visit in 1819. "The neatness and cleanliness of all animate and inanimate things, houses, pavements and cit izens is not to be surpassed." x Unlike New York, the city had "the appearance of a finished and long established metropolis." She, too, found that the pavej ments were washed each morning, and remarked the marble and woodwork of the houses which were kept white by much scouring. Montule, the French visitor of 1817, writes that he found Philadelphia "the most beautiful and the largest city in the United States." Going on with his description, he says: "All the streets are either straight, or parallel with the Delaware, being at least eight fathoms wide, paved with small round stones similar to many places in the south of France. On either side there are foot ways from eight to ten feet wide, paved with bricks and kept remarkably clean, and about every hundred paces distant on either side of the street there are pumps supporting lamps, added to which poplars and plantain trees skirt the footpaths, whose verdure during the summer season must agreeably break the uniform color of the houses, the major part of which are built of brick."2 Whatever the condition of the footways, it is difficult to believe that the centers of the streets were kept clean. One of the employments for both men and women in wet weather was to precede a pedestrian with a twig broom, in the hope of receiving a penny for the service. The bringing of Schuylkill water into town made it possible for a citizen of Philadelphia to equip a bathroom in his house, as well as to wash his pave ments, but he did not very soon make this change in his domestic arrangements. When the water, little by little, was introduced into the dwellings of the people and the servants were no longer sent to draw it at the public pumps in the streets, or at the private pumps in wells sunk in the backyards of the more opu lent householders, it was received as a rule at hydrants only. These stood out side the house and, though they were protected by nicely turned wooden covers, the pipes were not infrequently frozen in winter time. Later, water in many cases was brought into the kitchen. Some may have had the pipes led into bathtubs, but this was done in few instances only. The water, if it were used in this way would be cold, as there were no warming arrangements. Fortu nately there were coming to be public baths, for both men and women, which in some cases had quite luxurious appointments with tubs of marble imported from Italy. The chief of these were established by William Swaim who had been a book binder and was now the proprietor of a famous patent medicine, the "panacea." He had seen the recipe for this remedy in a book at which he was working and, while exactly similar preparations, it is said, were being sold under other names, his, by skillful advertising, distanced them in public esteem. He made a large fortune out of the medicine and bought for himself a handsome mansion de signed by Latrobe for William Wain, a son of Nicholas Wain and a successful merchant in the China trade, at the southeast corner of Seventh and Chestnut 1 Views of Society and Manners., in America, by an Englishwoman, p. 61. 2 A Voyage to North America and the West Indies. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 105 streets. South of the house facing Seventh street, Mr. Swaim erected an office and a laboratory for his own use, and at the lower corner of the lot, on George (now Sansom street) extensive baths. Up to this time most Philadelphians seem to have been strangers to the warm bath; and Swaim, who had advertised his patent medicines into notoriety, be gan a similar campaign to draw attention to his new enterprise. He quoted Count Rumford, who had found "the luxury of bathing so great and the tran quil state of the mind and body following it so exquisitely delightful" that he could not "recommend it too highly," whether it should be considered as a meas ure of health or "merely as a rational and elegant refinement." Swaim called his establishment the "Philadelphia Baths." He had distinct and separate ranges of apartments "for the two sexes." He installed upwards of fifty tubs, "more than twenty marble ones, made expressly for this establishment." Others were of plated copper and zinc. There were showers and "a swimming room" for "the accommodation of such as are fond of this recreation." Those who were "ignorant of this necessary qualification" were "reminded that they could here acquire it without hazard." 1 In summer, at houses on the Delaware and the Schuylkill, large numbers of people bathed and swam in the rivers. On Windmill Island or Smith's Island, opposite Chestnut street, floating baths were fitted up and were liberally patron ized. This island with its old wharves, the hull of a ship converted into a tavern, its baths and its sand bar was a favorite resort, especially for sailors. Here they could assemble "to treat their Dulcineas with mint sling, mint stick, and gingerbread at the bar, and dance 'love and luck,' 'bulls and bears' and 'shuffle and cut' to the minstrelsy of a cracked fiddle on the dusty turf." 2 The rivers were less enjoyed in summer than in winter when their surfaces were frozen over, and the people could gather upon them for skating. This was a favorite amusement of an earlier day, though it seems to have been denied to ladies until the middle of the century. All classes were votaries of the sport. Men of great prominence in the city's affairs were to be seen in the crowd, even though they had reached a considerable age and might have been expected to prefer a place at their own warm firesides. Several leading Quakers were num bered among the city's expert skaters; and some of the townspeople were ac counted particularly graceful and skillful in their movements as they cut fig ures and "high Dutch." The well-dressed man on the ice wore a red coat and buckskin tights. Charles Willson Peale, Governor Mifflin, General Cadwalader, Charles Massey, the biscuit baker; Franklin Peale, Dr. Joseph Parrish, Captain James Page of the State Fencibles, and Dr. Foulke have been remembered by chroniclers of the time as more than commonly dexterous. The Schuylkill was too far away for most Philadelphians at that day, and they preferred the river nearer their doors. There was, however, good skating from Gray's Ferry to the Falls, before the Fairmount Dam was built. Afterward its fine surface was used by those who had the industry to walk to the Upper Ferry bridge. JDe Silver's Directory; for 1831. 2Th. Westcott, chap. 816. 106 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The freezing up of the rivers meant a stoppage of navigation. A frosty night late in the year warned a traveler that he must be off, for at any moment the steamboats might cease running, and then he would be obliged to betake him self to the "land stages" — the old coaches ; or, if snow covered the ground, to the sledges and mail sleighs, a method of travel as slow and uncertain as it was physically disagreeable. When the ice was strong enough, sledges laden with wood and other merchandise found the smooth surface of the river a good road into the city. During the winter of 1804-5 the Delaware was frozen to a depth of nearly two feet for a period of three months. Ships were bound fast where they stood in the stream. One of large size was manned by sailors whose wages had been partially paid in advance. The owners, therefore, fixed a strong net work all around her, and confined the crew who had "the appearance of a flock of birds in a cage." 1 Heavy teams passed over the river "as on dry land." Sleighs drawn by galloping horses were driven from side to side during this and other prolonged periods of cold, and when the ice became very hard an ox was sometimes roasted upon it, a feat usually performed on some gala day, such as Washington's Birthday or the anniversary of General Jackson's victory at New Orleans. Fakers sold doughnuts, spruce beer and gingerbread to skaters and pedestrians, or tempted the adventurous with thimblerig. At the inn on Smith's Island the crowd could regale itself with hot punch.2 An old resident of Philadelphia has told of an Englishman who was driven all the way from Market street to the Falls on the frozen surface of the Schuylkill. As they passed along he remarked : "What a beautiful valley and meadow this must be in summer," not suspecting that he was riding on the ice.3 Sleighing was a favorite winter pastime. Taking trips in buffalo skins, with bags of hot sand at the feet, behind fast horses whose harness was fitted up with tinkling bells to give notice to passengers in the street of their approach, to the Jolly Post Boy at Frankford, the Blue Bell on the road to Darby, the Lamb on the way to the Falls, or some of the other taverns in the neighborhood, with a hot toddy before the return, was a winter-time delight. Welby wrote in 1822 of what he had seen on winter days in Philadelphia : "There are sleighs of various sizes, drawn by from one to four horses; and some of these carriages are of a form elegant enough, and handsomely covered within by the rich furry skins of the bear and buffalo. The horses wear belts of bells around their necks and bodies and also some at their ears. This — which is a legal regulation, intended to give notice of their approach and thus to avoid accidents — is rendered an affair of ornament and delight to the eye and the ear, the bells being nicely assorted to harmonize, and affixed to handsome leather belts. The fun and frolic consists in large parties forming a cavalcade of these sleighs to some place of public resort at a distance where, when arrived, the dance is struck up and hot wines are drunk as a refreshment and in the night, after a good supper, wrapped in furs and huddled together, they drive helter-skelter home." 1 Robert Sutcliff's Travels. 2 Leland's Memoirs, p. 8. 8 Hagner, p. 70. DR. CASPAR WISTAR DR. PHILIP SYXG PHYSICK DR. NATHANIEL CHAPMAN DR. GEORGE McCLELLAN HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 107 There were dancing and music enough in the Quaker city now. Philadelphia had several dancing masters whose schools and academies were scattered over the town. A well-known teacher was William Francis, of the Chestnut Street Theatre stock company. A music teacher named Quesnet had a hall over Mathew Carey's printing house on Library street back of the Bank of the United States, and later at Washington Hall. He enjoyed much fashionable patronage. Other teachers were Thomas Whale; his son Henry Whale, who as a boy had danced very acceptably at the Chestnut Street Theatre ; F. C. Labbe who, when Quesnet left it, occupied the room at Carey's printing house; Victor Guillou, a French West-Indian planter, driven in poverty from his estates during the Napoleonic wars; F. D. Mallat; Ferdinand Durang; A. Bonnafon, and many more. The city dancing assembly still had its balls, numbering among its managers and in vited guests the representatives of the old colonial families. Its dances were given at different places year by year — at the City Tavern, at the house in which Washington had lived in Market street after it was converted into a hotel, at the City Hotel at Second and Union streets, the Bingham Mansion House, the Masonic Hall, and elsewhere. That dancing was enjoyed by all who indulged in it, seems not to have been pretended then more than at this time. Francis Hall, an English traveler who witnessed some of it in Philadelphia in 1818, writes : "When they dance, the men step forward; and, more by gesture than word, indicate their wishes to their fair partners. Cotillions then commence with a gravity and perseverance almost pitiable. 'Dancing,' says the Marquis de Chas- tellux, 'is said to be at once the emblem of gayety and love.' Here it seems to be the emblem of legislation and marriage. The animation displayed by the feet never finds its way into the countenance to light up the eye or deepen the rose on the cheek — 'Which hangs in chill and lifeless lustre there, Like a red oak leaf in the wintry air; While the blue eye above it coldly beams Like moonlight radiance upon frozen streams.' One conceives, on these occasions how dancing may become, as it is among the Shakers, a religious ceremony." Music as well as dancing was being taught by many masters, and the children in the wealthier families, which were not restrained by Quaker principles, began to receive instruction in singing and on the piano-forte, the harp, the violin and other instruments. Indeed some performers whom travelers from Europe met during their visits to Philadelphia seem to have been very excellent. Tyrone Power, Charles A. Murray and others speak in the highest terms of the proficiency of women upon the harp. Power thought that in no other American city had he met ladies whose musical education appeared "so exceedingly good." 1 Several musical societies were formed; the Uranian Society as early as 1787, the Harmonic in 1802, the Haydn in 1809, the Handelian, a little later and prob ably others.2 1 Impressions, II, p. 29. "Annals of Music in Philadelphia and History of the Musical Fund Society by L. C. Madeira. 108 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA But the opportunities for hearing good concerts in the city before the forma tion of the Musical Fund Society were not many. This society was organized in 1820 by Robert M. Patterson, Charles A. Poulson, William P. Dewees, John K. Kane, P. S. Duponceau and others, at a meeting held in the second story of a tavern, opposite the old Congress Hall, next to Mr. Duponceau's residence at the northeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets. It was incorporated by the legislature in 1823 for "the relief of decayed musicians and their families, the cultivation of skill and the diffusion of a taste for music." Such capable teachers, composers and performers as Benjamin Carr, Benjamin Cross, Charles Hupfeld, George Schetky and Raynor Taylor directed the society on its musical side. The first rehearsals were held at Carpenters' Hall, and the first concert was given in the "Grand Saloon" of Washington Hall on April 24, 1821. In May of the next year "The Creation" was produced in the same place with upwards of 100 vocal and instrumental performers. An unfinished Presbyterian church, in Locust above Eighth street was purchased and William Strickland converted the walls into a hall, which was opened in 1824. It was considered to be the first room devoted to musical purposes in the United States. It would accommodate 1,800 persons, and long enjoyed a very high reputation as a place of resort for Philadelphians. An English visitor of the early forties who attended an enter tainment here remarked that he had "never heard a concert out of London" which appeared to him "on the whole equal to this for numbers, correctness and gen eral efficiency." The orchestra contained seventy or eighty performers.1 Philadelphia was the home of several musical instrument makers. Charles Taws, his son John B. Taws, the Evendens who later changed the family name to Loud, Conrad Meyer and others were manufacturing pianos for the Phila delphia trade, in competition with imported pianos. There were also some organ builders and makers of other instruments. Two or three music stores further attested to the growth of interest in these subjects. The quiet comfort which had reigned in the homes of Philadelphia from an early time, was disturbed in some degree by a change in the terms upon which servants could be engaged. Slavery had disappeared. There were but 211 slaves in all Pennsylvania in 1820; there were but two in Philadelphia in 181 1. The possibility of finding servants at the wharves, who were willing to sell their labor for a few years for the payment to the captain of their passage money, was growing less, although immigrants procurable upon these terms were still arriving in the port. In August, 1817, Samuel Breck repaired to the wharves and boarded the ship "John" from Amsterdam, lately came in with 400 passengers. He "saw the remains of a very fine cargo consisting of 21 healthy, good-looking men, women and children." He "purchased one German Swiss" for his friend Mrs. Ross at the "Grange," and two "French Swiss," a woman and a boy, for him self. For the woman he "gave" $76, which was her passage money, "with a promise of $20 at the end of three years if she serves me faithfully ; clothing and maintenance, of course." The boy had paid 26 guilders toward his passage money. Mr. Breck agreed to refund this to him after three years and paid $53.60 in cash to release him from the ship captain. For two years he was to have six 1 Buckingham, Eastern and Western States, I, p. 466. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 109 weeks' schooling annually. Mrs. Ross obtained a girl who shed tears at parting from "her young friends." x Fearon, the English traveler who was here in 1817, visited a Dutch brig from Amsterdam, anchored in the Delaware opposite Callowhill street. All the legis lation of the eighteenth century in regard to the traffic in redemptioners seems, by his description, to have been in vain. The traffic in these poor white slaves went forward unhindered. The captain had an eye which flashed "with Algerine cruelty." A customer who appeared asked for shoemakers. The poor creatures clad in filthy rags all ran forward hoping for some release from their horrible pen. "The price for women," said Fearon, "was about $70, men $80, boys $60." 2 At the almshouses and by private arrangement with indigent parents, chil dren were bound out for their board and dress until they should come of age. The advance of democracy, however, together with the spread of prosperous con ditions in business, by which larger and larger numbers of people were brought to share in the general wealth, naturally militated against cheap and good do mestic service. Samuel Breck, in his Recollections, notes that his friend John Vaughan could not take his Christmas dinner with Mrs. Ross because she had no servants. Mr. Breck says: "This is a crying evil which most families feel very sensibly at present. The vast quantities of uncultivated land, the general prosperity and the unexampled increase of our city, unite to scatter the menial citizens and to make it extremely difficult to be suited with decent servants. I have, in the course of ten or twelve years' housekeeping, had a strange variety, among which I have heard of one being hung, of one that hung himself, of one who died drunk in the road and of another that swallowed poison in a fit of intoxication." 3 Another time he wrote that during the last twelve months he had had "seven different cooks and four different waiters." He thought them "the most pro voking compounds of folly, turpitude, ingratitude and idleness that can possibly be conceived by any one who has not lived in America." Nothing was wanting to a "perfectly happy" life, he thought, except good servants. He gave his chamber maids $1.25 a week, his governess $11 a month, his waiter $10 a month, and his farm servant $10 a month. Their clothing ought not to cost them more than $20 a year, so cheap were cottons, and he computed that in three or four years, "if pru dent and constant," they could "lay by enough to purchase two hundred or three hundred acres of new land." Yet what did he see? A servant girl in his employ, as soon as she received a few dollars, went to town and bought "some satin to trim her bonnet in the style of that of a young lady who was on a visit to me, a gilt clasp that must have cost three dollars, a parasol that came to perhaps four dollars more, a set of tortoise shell combs and some other trash; so that she brought home of real necessaries nothing but one poor shift." Many foreign travelers made similar observations. The wages of servants at that time do not seem large, and yet in comparison with wages paid mechanics 1 Recollections, pp. 296-9. 2 Sketches of America, pp. 149-50. 8 P. 296. HO HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA and the prices of necessaries, they were not disproportionately low. Fearon, a British traveler of 1817, prepared a table of wages which were about as follows: Laborers $T-T0 to $1.40 a day Carpenters $9 to $12 a week Cabinet-makers ' $9 to $12 a week Brick-layers $8 to $11 a week Tinmen $7 to $14 a week Shoemakers $8 to $10 a week Coach-makers $9 to $11 a week Tailors $9 to $11 a week Printers and compositors $9 to $1 1 a week The hours of labor were usually from sunrise to sunset. Apprentices who performed a large part of the work of the day received almost nothing for their services. Mathew Carey in an article in Hazard's Register, written in 1828, said that thousands of men traveled hundreds of miles to seek employment on the canals at 62^, 75 and 87^ cents a day. They must pay $1.50 to $2 a week for their board which left a mere pittance to be sent to their families at home. On turn pikes men worked for less — 50 cents to 75 cents a day. It was a drier and health ier employment, and moderately free from danger from fevers, often acquired in. the swamps through which excavations were made for the canals. Men piled wood in the city at prices which did not yield them more than 35 to 50 cents a day. Women, engaged in arduous and difficult occupations, often received only $1 or $1.50 a week.1 iVol. Ill, p. 42. CHAPTER XXI. NEWSPAPERS, PROFESSIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. The newspapers underwent changes of ownership, and gained or lost in char acter and influences in that process. The printing of a journal was still a busi ness in which, by its nature, competition was practically free. The principal equipment of an editor during the eighteenth century had been the ability to set and print from types. The printers, therefore, became the newspaper editors and publishers. The news which was offered to the reader nf a journal at this time came by the regular posts. It was very largely European, both because the people were so lately come out of Europe, and because of the fact that the readers were only a few more or less intelligent people who had a commendable concern in what was being done in the greater world from which they were withdrawn. The masses had not yet learned to read, and the most widely circulated newspaper of the day did not print more than a very few thousand copies. No attempt was made to exploit news for the ignorant, and to bring things down to the level of their understanding. The foreign topics which were told of were principally po litical. There were brief advices received through the postmasters, or in private letters to citizens from New England and the South, in regard to more important happenings, such as fires, frosts, epidemics, deaths of prominent citizens and the like. But the service was intermittent and so unsystematic that it is difficult to write a connected history of any subject from the files of the newspapers of the time. Local occurrences received almost no attention at the hands of the editors of the eighteenth century. These were supposed to be known to the people through an easier agency — by word of mouth — long before the paper could ap pear. And so they were, especially in a small town in which little happened in a day or even in a week. Local incidents, even those of great importance, when they were recorded at all were restricted to a few lines. In this the journals of Philadelphia were not exceptional. They but followed the general course of the history of the newspaper which began in central Europe with the publication of happenings in foreign lands, tidings of which were carried along the caravan and other trade routes from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. One additional feature early to appear in the gazettes of Philadelphia was the political article. The newspaper, in the English speaking world at least, had become a powerful agency in forwarding political discussion. For the free op portunity of performing this part, was expended all the impassioned speech and writing about the liberty of the press. Much political discussion in Pennsylvania, 111 112 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA before the Revolution, went on through pamphlets and tracts, since there was at times so much to be said by the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians and the Germans, and so few newspapers in which to place the material. The political article in the newspaper was at first, as a rule, a letter to the editor. He was supposed to accord nearly or quite with the views expressed in it, else he would not have published it. The reply must appear in a journal representing some other shade of public opinion. These letters were often long. At times of great political excitement, they were numerous, and to present them seemed to be the principal service of the newspaper. The editorial page had not appeared, nor were there columns or pages devoted to finance, — a short list headed "prices current" must suffice — or sports, of which there were few but skating in winter and swimming in summer, or "women's interests," — which did not have a separate existence except in the bringing up of their children and the management of their households and these seemed not to need to be proclaimed daily to the world— or the society page, or the religious, or the children's, or a dozen other pages which are characteristic of newspapers in this later age, ambitious to gain read ers and swell their circulations. These things came later with the development of the idea of "news," which at length has been brought to include so much that the journal is now a tolerably correct transcript of the thought and conversation of all classes of the people. In 1811 there were eight daily papers in Philadelphia, four of which appeared in the morning and four in the evening. They altogether printed only 8,328 sheets, 4,500 for the morning and 3,828 for the evening subscribers. In addi tion there were nine weekly papers which had a total circulation of 7,058; two semi-weekly, and two tri-weekly papers which printed 1,992 and 1,920 copies respectively. Prior to the establishment of the federal government the publishing trades were of small account in Philadelphia, but suddenly much vigor was in fused into them. In the year 1810 there were 51 printing offices and 153 presses in the city.1 Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette before the Revolution, passed into the hands of Hall and Sellers and was continued by members of those two families under that name until after 1800. It was then published by William Hall alone, by Hall and Pierie (George W. Pierie), and by Hall and Atkinson (Samuel C. At kinson) successively. It had lost its place, and was now only a weekly publica tion. In 1821, at the death of the last Hall, Atkinson associated himself with Charles Alexander, and together they converted the paper into the Saturday Evening Post. It now left the field of journalism and successfully invaded that of the magazine, an undertaking of which more can better be said in an other place. Bradford's Pennsylvania Journal, after various mutations had become the True American. It remained in the Bradford family until 1813, when it passed into the hands of new owners. In 1818 it was merged with the United States Gazette, the product for a little time being called the Union. The United States Gazette was Fenno's old paper which had done such excellent service in the Fed eralist interest. Soon after his death its proprietor was Caleb P. Wayne, who 1 Mease, pp. 84-6, 357. DIAGRAM, IIIOWIXC THR SITUATION OF THE WARDS IN THE CITY AND NEIGHBOURING TOWKSRIPS. Penn Township. o o a CO.¦S Northern Liberties. Vim cri ¦E es « **. c- 1 rs Ed0!H 02 S> Street. H North Mulberry Ward. Upper Delaware Ward. 5 Race or Sassafras Street. 3 South Mulberry Ward. Lower Delaware Ward. 0 Abch oe Mulberry Street. 2 North Ward. High Street Ward. jj Market or High Street. a Middle Ward. Chestnut Ward. Chestnut Street. at j South Ward. Walnut Ward. OJ, Walwdt Street. Locust Ward. Dock Ward. Spbdgi Street. 3X Cedar Ward. Pine Ward. VI Pine Street. a New Market Ward. 5 South or Cedar Street. Passyunk. c i Sc 1 j&'1* Southwark. •ST REGTHLATIOXS OF THE STATE HOUSE BELL VV CASE OF FIRE. NORTH, SOUTH,EAST, W,EST . , NORTH-EAST, NORTH-WEST, / ; SOUTH-EAST, SOUTH-WEST, One, One, One. Two, Two, Two. Three, Three, Three. Four, Four, Four. One, three, One, three. One, four, One, lour. Two, three. Two, three. Two, four, Two, four. FIFTEEN WARDS OF PHILADELPHIA AS THEY WERE ARRANGED IN 1825 WHEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH BOUNDARY LINE WAS MOVED WEST FROM FOURTH STREET TO SEVENTH STREET HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 113 published Marshall's Life of Washington. Later owners were Enos Bronson and Elihu Chauncey. A new era of prosperity for the paper began after Joseph R. Chandler be came its editor. A Massachusetts man, he in 1815 came to Philadelphia where he opened a private school. He first wrote stories and articles for the Gazette, beginning in 1822, and a little later became its editor. The Federal Gazette, which had begun to be published in 1788 by Andrew Brown, an Irishman,1 was still a successful paper. Samuel Relf was its publisher from 1801 until his death in 1821, when it was sold to Stevenson Smith and Will iam M. Gouge, a man known for his writings on financial subjects. The Aurora had lost its influence, in large degree, and after an unparalleled career in political scurrility was purchased from Duane in 1822 by Richard Penn Smith, a facile and industrious writer of whose work more is to be said at a later period. He changed its tone, but he retired in 1827, and it soon disappeared. Through much of this time, the old Pennsylvania Packet which became Dun- lap's and then Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, was the leading news paper of the city, as it had been at the close of the eighteenth century. Zachariah Poulson, Jr., had bought this paper in 1800 for $10,000. Long the librarian of the Philadelphia Library he had opened a printing shop in Fourth street opposite the Quaker burying ground as early as in 1787. He now became the publisher of this old newspaper, and he continued to give the business his direction for many years. John Binns in his Democratic Press opposed Andrew Jackson as a candidate for the presidency, and reaped the reward which awaited all of that man's ene mies. He was a Crawford man. After publishing his famous "coffin handbills" containing pictures of the coffins of six militia-men whom Jackson while in com mand of the army had, as it was alleged, inhumanly shot to death, Mr. Binns was violently attacked by his old friends. He turned to Adams whom he advo cated for re-election in 1828, but Jackson's success obliged him to cease the pub lication of his paper in the following year.2 After 1820 the city had a very good journal in the National Gazette, which was published by William Fry and Robert Walsh. Other papers appeared and disappeared. The improvement in them was noticeable. The political writing was less crude and abusive than it often had been earlier. Criticism of a political opponent did not consist in addressing him by a vile name and in knocking him to the floor. The development of regular stage service on the turnpike roads, and the steamboat lines on the rivers and canals, made the dissemination of news easier, and while there were still no paid staffs of reporters and correspondents, information about events elsewhere could be collected with much more facility than hitherto. While travelers, citizens who were in receipt of letters from relations and friends, packet and steamboat cap tains, Conestoga wagoners and market people coming in from interior places in the state and from New Jersey, might bear the news, papers published in Europe 1 Its name was changed in 1793 toj the Philadelphia Gazette. 2 Binns lived until i860 when he had reached the age of 88. In 1854 he published an autobiography. Vol. n— 8 114 .HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA and in other parts of the Union were most relied upon. The filchings were large and free, and they could be very conveniently effected when there was positive knowledge that a Philadelphian could not obtain and would not see a New York newspaper, and vice versa. The quickening of the time on the boat and stage lines was an important consideration to the editors. They announced in the sum mer of 1828 that the time between the two cities had been reduced to nine hours and forty-three minutes. A little later, there was a further reduction to nine hours and thirty-five minutes. In November the journey was made in eight hours and fifty-two minutes. The United States Gazette, in June, 1829, said that a copy of the New York Herald had come in on the Union line at 3 40 p. m. on the day of publication. In the next month, the New York papers arrived at 2:42 p. m., and in 1828 The United States Gazette declared quite triumphantly that it had received a copy of a Baltimore newspaper on the evening of the day of issue. In 1825 Philadelphia and its immediate suburbs had one hundred and sixty- nine physicians and surgeons, twenty-five cuppers, bleeders and leechers, eight een dentists, ten midwives, seventy-eight women who made a profession of nursing, and sixteen who were layers-out of the dead. Dr. Benjamin Rush died in 181 3, and Dr. Caspar Wistar, doubtless the most notable man of medicine who followed him, in 1818. Another group of men, some of whom have been mentioned on earlier pages of this narrative, came forward to take the places of those who were passing from the scene. They brought the reputation of the city, as a center for medical practice, research and instruction to a still higher estate. Most of these men, like the best of those who had gone before them, added train ing abroad, mostly at Edinburgh, to what they had received at home. One of the most prominent of the number was Philip Syng Physick, son of Edmund Physick, keeper of the great seal for the Penn family before the Revolution and grandson of Philip Syng, a goldsmith. He was born in 1768, educated at the Friends' school in Fourth street under Robert Proud, and at the University of Pennsylvania from which he graduated in 1785. He received his M. D. from Edinburgh and died in 1837. John Redman Coxe, whose name was closely iden tified with the medical profession in Philadelphia until his death in 1864 at the age of ninety-one, was a native of Trenton, New Jersey. Thomas Chalkley James, professor of midwifery in the University of Pennsylvania, was born in Philadel phia in 1766. He was a member of a Quaker family and had studied abroad. He was long a professor in the University of Pennsylvania's medical school. Na thaniel Chapman came here from Virginia in 1797 to study under Rush. John Syng Dorsey was a nephew of Dr. Physick, while William P. C. Barton was a nephew of Benjamin Smith Barton, so well known as a scientist. Robert Hare had his attention drawn to chemistry in his father's brewery. William Gibson, a native of Baltimore, came to the University of Pennsylvania in 1819 from the University of Maryland. Charles Caldwell, the forceful North Caro linian who at one time edited the Port Folio, and later went to Transylvania Uni versity in Kentucky; his friend Thomas Cooper who emigrated to South Caro lina; George McClellan, the founder of Jefferson Medical College, "born a sur geon," said Samuel D. Gross, one of the first pupils of the school; his brother, Samuel McClellan ; George B. Wood, Isaac Hays, John K. Mitchell, William P. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 115 Dewees, Charles D. Meigs, Jacob Randolph, Samuel Emlen, Jr., Joseph Harts- horne, Joseph Parrish, Thomas T. Hewson, Adam Seybert, Joseph Carson, William E. Horner, Samuel G. Morton, John C. Otto, Jonas Preston, John Eberle, Robert M. Patterson, Rene La Roche, who came here with the French refugees from the West Indies in 1793 ; Joseph G. Nancrede, another Philadel phia physician of French descent; George De Benneville of Branchtown, of a French Huguenot family which settled here, after a residence in England ; Sam uel Jackson, John D. Godman, James Mease, Richard Harlan and John Rhea Bar ton, were men who were coming forward, or were already prominent upon the scene. In the natural sciences, there was Thomas Say, who became quite noted as an entomologist. He was a man of the humblest tastes and lived a life of great self- denial in order to forward science. It is related that he slept beneath the skeleton of a horse, and was nourished chiefly by bread and milk, a process by which he is said to have put the problem of living upon a basis of twelve cents a day. He made many excursions, alone and with parties of government engineers and scientists, pursuing his studies in all parts of the country. C. A. Le Sueur was a French naturalist, who took up his abode in this coun try. William Maclure, long the president of the Academy of Natural Sciences, was well known as a geologist who became interested in Robert Owen's com munistic settlement at New Harmony, Indiana. With Say and Le Sueur, he re moved thither and was present at the breaking up of the experiment. The Abbe Correa da Serra, a Portuguese savant, was closely identified with science in Philadelphia, being mainly interested in botany. He lectured on his science, and was for some years Portugal's minister to the United States.1 Thomas Nuttall, another botanist of the day, was a Yorkshire Englishman who came to Philadelphia as a young man. Here he found generous patrons, and by 1822 had attained such distinction that he was appointed professor of natural history in Harvard College. He supplemented the excellent work of Francois Andre Michaux who, when only eighteen years of age, had accompanied his father, Andre Michaux, to North America for a study of the oaks, and had subsequently visited the country on behalf of the French government, sending home acorns and young trees with a view to the introduction of new species in European for ests. Desiring to repay America for its hospitalities, at his death he left a legacy. to be divided between Boston and Philadelphia for the encouragement of sylvi culture. The American Philosophical Society was made the custodian of the sum (about $8,000) which came to Philadelphia, and with the proceeds a Michaux grove of oak trees was planted in later years in Fairmount Park. William Darlington, of Chester County, had attained distinction as a botanist. George Ord shared with Charles Lucien Bonaparte the honor of carrying on Alexander Wilson's very useful work on ornithology. Ord was a native of Philadelphia, and lived until 1866 when he had reached the age of eighty-five' 1 The Abbe Correa da Serra is said to have originated the well-known saying that "the Lord takes care of little children, drunken men and the United States." He enjoyed great social popularity in Philadelphia. It was he too, it is said, who named the plant Wistaria in honor of Dr. Caspar Wistar. 116 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA years. Rafinesque, the son of a French merchant and a Greek mother, living at the time of his birth in Turkey, arrived in the city in 1802. He became a nat uralist of distinction, and for a long time was connected with Transylvania Uni versity at Lexington, Kentucky. He published many of his works in Philadel phia, and died here in 1842. Bernard McMahon, an Irishman who had a good deal of enthusiasm for science, or at any rate for the art of agriculture and herbiculture, had an excel lent botanical garden out the Germantown Road in the neighborhood of the pres ent Eleventh and Cumberland streets. He called it "Upsal." x He also had a shop for the sale of seeds and books about gardening in Second street. Mr. McMahon was the author of the American Gardener's Calendar, which be came very widely known. A committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural So ciety in 1830 made a report in which they said: "Perhaps we owe as much to the late Mr. McMahon as a horticulturist as to any individual in America. Besides his efforts in collecting and propagating, we are indebted to him for his excellent book on American gardening, which has passed through many editions." John James Audubon, a man who attained to even greater distinction than Alexander Wilson as an ornithologist, laid the foundation for his great work, The Birds of America, in or near Philadelphia. His father was a French naval officer and he presented to the boy, who had been studying art in Paris, a farm of two hundred and eighty-five acres, called "Mill Grove," on the banks of the Schuylkill where it is joined by Perkiomen creek, a few miles north of Norris- town in Montgomery County. Here he found the opportunity to indulge his love of nature, and in 1808 he married the daughter of a neighbor, very soon taking up his wanderings for purposes of study. He was frequently in consul tation in later years with the Philadelphia publishers who had made the volumes for Wilson and Bonaparte and whom he urged, though unsuccessfully, to re produce his drawings. The University of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical Society would not at all suffice for so many busy scientific minds, and at least four ex cellent establishments resulted from the movement to form societies and extend learning in this period. These were the Jefferson Medical College, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin Institute and the College of Pharmacy, the formation of which has been referred to in an earlier connection. Scientific journals and magazines began to appear as early as in 1804. In that year Benjamin Smith Barton commenced the publication of the Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal. John Redman Coxe's Philadelphia Medical Museum soon followed. In 1818 appeared the American Medical Recorder oi Dr. John Eberle and others, and in 1820 Dr. Chapman started the Philadelphia Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences which in a few years became the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, long edited by Dr. Isaac Hays. The Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences soon had their publications. So active were the medical writers that the city at a very early time 1 Not to be confused with a country place bearing the same name beyond Germantown. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 117 came to be the principal centre in the United States for the publication of med ical treatises. The healing art moved forward certainly, though too slowly. Doctors of the day expressed much pride in the progress which their science had already achieved. "Thirty years ago," wrote James Mease in 1811, "the disease from drinking cold water in summer when the body was heated by exercise ; the lock jaw, the croup or hives, mania and numerous other complaints that might be men tioned were seldom or never cured." Now, he said, they were "rarely fatal" when early assistance was given. "The free use of wine in low fevers," he con tinued, "of mercury, bark, opium and the lancet, all of which were used with a timid hand, and also warm and cold baths, have contributed to increase the em pire of medicine over various diseases." 1 Such statements betoken advancement very far from great, from any modern point of view. Yet something had been gained. Vaccination came to take the place of the old system of inoculation for smallpox. Instead of suffering a light attack of the disease to avoid heavier disaster at some future time it was found that it would be possible to render the system of man altogether secure against this old and terrible enemy. John Redman Coxe, it appears, was one of the first to introduce the new treatment in America. Thomas Jefferson aided him in ob taining some of the genuine cow pox from Europe. A society for promoting vaccination was formed in 1809. Up to the beginning of the year 1813, it had been instrumental in the vaccination of 4,589 persons. In 1816 councils made com pulsory the vaccination of the poor as a means of reducing the ravages of small pox, and doctors were appointed to treat such persons as should be brought for ward by the "collectors of cases" in the various wards. The Thomsonian doctors appeared upon the scene early in the century. The founder of the system was a certain Dr. Samuel Thomson of Boston. He prob ably performed a very useful service in leading the physicians away from the mercurial preparations with which for many years, they had plied their patients so diligently, and in turning their attention to herbs. But the "frequent and continued use of hot water and vapor baths, with strong alcoholic tinctures of capsicum, lobelia, myrrh and other stimulating vegetable articles" which distin guished the treatment, is believed to have sent thousands to join "the innum erable caravan." Dr. Mease thought that some progress was being made in the contest to van quish consumption. The increased cleanliness of the city had reduced infection. The diminished use of animal food, the drinking of malt liquors at meals and the "abolition of hot family suppers," were commended. "Dry gripes," formerly a fatal disease, had been conquered by the practice of wearing flannel or muslin next the skin, and the umbrella and the high-crowned hat were limiting the rav ages of "diseases arising from the operation of the sun." 2 The phrenological fantasy was productive of the formation of a society in Philadelphia in 1822. It gathered into it many of the city's most prominent phy sicians and surgeons who seemed to see value in the new principles. Dr. Physick 1 Picture of Phila., pp. 46-47. 1Ibid., pp. 46-47. 118 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA was elected president and among its other officers were William E. Horner, Ben jamin H. Coates, John Redman Coxe, John Bell and Jason Valentine O'Brien Lawrance, who for some years had a private anatomical school abutting upon the grounds of the University of Pennsylvania.1 The business of bleeding patients for their physical complaints proceeded actively. The experience of swimming in the streams where leeches attached themselves to the body and liberally fed, before their presence was discovered, was responsible for the idea that these little animals might take the place of the spring lancet. A number of the bleeders kept leeches at hand, although it was at first considered to be a patent process to which there were exclusive rights. The barber who daily shaved John Binns had a pond in his backyard. The leeches "swam in great numbers on the surface of the water," and bred there abundantly.2 A hundred were applied to Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler's throat in 1838 as a means of warding off scarlet fever. She tells how tonsils were ampu tated by wires and left to decay in the throat, and indicates how very little medi cine had to boast of even in the middle of the nineteenth century.3 The dentists were often mere bleeders, although the barber was getting away from the employment of blood-letting and moving into a place of his own. The attention given to the teeth by those who made a business of dentistry over and beyond the drawing out (with awkward instruments) of old snags and stumps, which aching rendered it impossible longer to retain in the mouth, was very in considerable. Such as could perform more complicated operations, found their patrons only among the rich. A Frenchman, James Gardette, who came to Phil adelphia in the eighteenth century and opened a dentist's shop in a fashionable neighborhood in lower Walnut street, was accounted one of the best. Edward Hudson, an Irishman, was well thought of also. Gardette was awarded several prizes for his inventions by the Franklin Institute. He made various discoveries in the use of gold braces instead of silk ligatures and wire for binding artificial teeth to good natural teeth. He found out how to arrange teeth on plates, a substitute for the awkward spiral springs which formerly had cumbered the mouth, how to fill cavities with gold instead of tin and lead, and contrived other devices designed to improve the state of his art. The dentistry of the day was distinguished by much unpleasant suggestion. The artificial teeth were, as a rule, taken from the jaws of the dead or from horses, hippopotami and other animals ; though one man early advertised a min eral composition which looked like bone and which he declared to be "harder than iron." The business was taken up by numbers of mountebanks who traveled about the country, transplanting teeth and performing other operations for which their unfitness was conspicuous. The dentists not infrequently advertised their skill. One, in 1808, asked all persons "whom accident, disease or age has occa sioned to want elegant and useful aids to beauty, utterance and mastication, to honor him with a call." Another, in 1818, who lived in Eighth street just north 1 See Dr. W. W. Keen's "History of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy," a lecture delivered at its dissolution, March 1, 1875. 2 Recollections of Binns, p. 273. 3 Records of Later Life, pp. 23, 82-83. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN MARKET STREET (Market houses at left of picture) -~~A _^ ii GIRARD'S GIG CITY HOTEL IN THIRD STREET BELOW ARCH STREET HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 119 of Market, offered "his services in all cases within the province of his profes sion, from the incipient forms of disease in dentition to the toothless defects of age or accident." It was added that "ladies or gentlemen who have objections to the use of foreign human teeth can be supplied with natural teeth which are not human, to answer all the valuable purposes of the grafted human teeth." From 1800 to 1825 about four hundred men had been admitted to the Phil adelphia bar. The leaders in the profession of the law of earlier years, disap peared one by one. Richard Peters, of "Belmont," from 1792 until his death in 1828 judge of the United States district court, was a venerable and respected figure, as was William Tilghman (1756-1827), for twenty-one years chief justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. Mr. Tilghman was born on the eastern shore of Maryland, which in the eighteenth century sent so many men to Phila delphia, then the metropolis for these counties and for Delaware, as it was for the counties of Pennsylvania and the entire southern portion of New Jersey The Hamiltons, the Chews, John Dickinson, Tench Francis, Charles Willson Peale, and other families followed this line of emigration northward. Mr. Tilghman studied law with Benjamin Chew, and came to Philadelphia to reside in 1793. In addition to eminence in his profession, he was soon in enjoyment of great public esteem. For many years no dinner or other gathering in the city was thought to be well directed if Mr. Tilghman were not in place as its presid ing head. His cousin, Edward Tilghman (1750-1815), had long been practicing at the Philadelphia bar. He married a daughter of Benjamin Chew and was offered the place of chief justice, which he declined and for which he recom mended his kinsman. He was a greatly valued friend of William B. Wood,1 of Horace Binney 2 and others who had high standards for their friends. Joseph Hopkinson was still in his prime. He was born in 1770, succeeded Judge Peters as United States district judge in 1828, and lived until 1842. The career of Will iam Lewis, who in his day had been probably the leading figure of the Philadelphia bar, albeit a most eccentric one, was brought to an end by death in 1819. William Rawle continued to be a very prominent figure until his death at a ripe age in 1836. After the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British he accom panied his stepfather, Samuel Shoemaker, a well-known Loyalist during the Rev olution, to New York. His legal education was acquired, or at least perfected, at the Middle Temple in London. He was not only an excellent lawyer of hon orable position at the bar, but was also a classical scholar of high attainments and a writer of power and authority on many subjects. Among his published works was A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, a very valuable treatise long extensively used. His son, William Rawle, Jr., (1788- 1858) was now also practicing in Philadelphia, as was his nephew, Thomas I. Wharton, an accomplished man, father of Francis Wharton, the well- known authority on international law. At the Philadelphia bar at this time, too, was William J. Duane, son of William Duane of the Aurora by an early marriage in Ireland, who took to wife a daughter of Richard Bache, the sister-in-law of 1 See his Recollections. 2 See "Leaders of the Old Bar," Pennsylvania Magazine, Vol. XIV. 120 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA his father's second wife, the widow of Benjamin Franklin Bache. He left print ing and editing for the law at the age of thirty-five, was a friend of Stephen Girard, as he was supposed to be too of Andrew Jackson until, invited to that president's cabinet as secretary of the treasury, he refused to remove the deposits from the United States Bank. Jared Ingersoll (1749-1822), son of the New England stamp agent of the same name, had sons who came to still greater distinction. Charles Jared Inger soll (1782- 1 862) held many offices and would have been minister to France but for the rejection of his name by the senate for political reasons during the ad ministration of President Polk. His brother, Joseph Reed Ingersoll (1786- 1868) was minister to England just prior to James Buchanan's incumbency of the office. He was a D. C. L. of Oxford. Like his brother, Charles Jared, and another brother, Edward, he was a writer on many subjects. William M. Mere dith, who was admitted to the bar in 1817, was a son of William Meredith, earlier of much prominence as a lawyer, and in later life as president of the Schuylkill Bank. For many years, William M. Meredith was considered to stand at the head of the Philadelphia bar. He was secretary of the treasury in President Zachary Taylor's cabinet. John Read (1769-1854) was the son of George Read, signer of the Declaration of Independence and grandson of John Read, a promi nent planter of Delaware of the eighteenth century. His son again was John Meredith Read (1797-1874) who held a number of prominent political positions, as did his son of the same name, for several years minister to Greece. George M. Dallas, a son of Alexander James Dallas, had made his appear ance at the bar, later to attain much distinction in state and Federal politics, as attorney-general of Pennsylvania, senator of the United States, minister to Rus sia, vice-president of the United States while Polk was president, and, from 1856 until the outbreak of the Civil War and Lincoln's appointment of Charles Fran cis Adams to the difficult position, minister to England. General Thomas Cadwalader, son of General John Cadwalader of the Revo lution, entered upon the practice of the law in 1801, and for many years was as sociated with the management of the Penn estates in Pennsylvania. His sons, John and George Cadwalader, were just coming forward as lawyers, though the latter was later to attain greater distinction as a general in the Mexican and Civil wars. Richard Rush was a son of Dr. Benjamin Rush. He was admitted to the bar in 1800, but his reputation rests upon his diplomatic career. He was attor ney-general of the United States, secretary of the treasury, secretary of state, minister to England from 1817 to 1825, and from 1847 to 1851 minister to France. He died at his country-seat, "Sydenham," near Philadelphia in 1859. Three very superior figures in the ranks of the lawyers of Philadelphia in the first half of the nineteenth century were John Sergeant, Horace Binney, and Charles Chauncey. There was something in them which may fairly be called elegance. They were regarded with right as "the models and the ornaments of the bar" and their influence extended to a larger sphere. They were educated thoroughly. Binney graduated at Harvard, Chauncey at Yale, and Sergeant at Princeton. "They shone wherever they moved and were equally distinguished HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 121 in social, political and professional life." x Sergeant was a son of Jonathan Dick inson Sergeant, a victim of the fever in 1793. He studied law with Jared Inger soll. He sat in Congress for several terms and held other political offices. Before that position came to be held by William M. Meredith he was doubtless the leader of the bar in Philadelphia. Mr. Binney was also a student of Jared Ingersoll. He was now well established in the place at the bar which he honorably held for so many years. Charles Chauncey, who was a native of Connecticut first prac ticed in New Haven, but soon came to this city to be taken into its best circles. He was one of Mr. Binney's warmest friends and most intimate associates. David Paul Brown who had studied in the office of William Rawle was com ing forward into that peculiar position which he held for so many years as a criminal advocate, play-wright and general town figure. Other members of the bar of Philadelphia of this day were Thomas Sergeant, a brother of John Ser geant, long a judge in the state supreme court ; Charles Willing Hare, the first after James Wilson to give lectures in law at the University of Pennsylvania; Peter A. Browne, later better known in mechancial science; Condy Raguet, at first a merchant, a volunteer soldier, a writer on economic and financial subjects and the occupant of a consular office; John Purdon, Jr., who compiled the well-known Digest; John Swift, admitted to practice in 181 1, a courageous and forceful man in local politics as well as at the bar; William Wilkins, who soon went to Pittsburg to become at a later day a United States senator, minister to Russia, and secretary of war ; Richard Peters, Jr., son of the old judge; Joel B. Sutherland, John B. Wallace, John Hallowell, John M. Scott, Henry D. Gilpin, John Bouvier, a French Quaker who came here with his parents, all in strange habiliments, as republican emigres in 1802, author of a well-known law dictionary and other legal treatises; John K. Kane, later a judge of the United States district court ; Thomas McKean Pettit, and a figure in Philadelphia for many years through his occupancy of a seat on the bench of the supreme court and then as chief justice, John Bannister Gibson, of Cumberland County, a man of huge proportions (six feet four inches in height) and of many legal and literary attainments. The first periodical devoted to the law in this country was The American Law Journal and Miscellaneous Repertory, which began to be published in Philadelphia in 1808 by William P. Farrand and Company, and was later published by Moses Thomas. The lawyers wielded busy pens, and many treatises upon their branch of learning appeared from Philadelphia presses. Several houses began to make a specialty of legal publishing, later developing the trade to proportions which, if not so important as the business of making medical books, was quite respectable. Like the physicians, the lawyers formed societies. The Law Academy, which claims an origin as early as 1783, was developed into a useful organization in this period. In 1802, as has been previously noted, the Law Library Company was chartered upon a petition to the legislature signed by seventy-two members of the bar. Art in the city at this time was upheld principally by the Peaks and Thomas Sully. Charles Willson Peale and his brother James Peale and their children, 1 Brown's Forum, II, p. 207. 122 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA were inseparably identified with painting and art affairs generally in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which had been founded in 1805, received an important impetus from them, as did the rival organization which existed for a while under the name of the Society of Artists of the United States, later called the Columbian Society of Artists. Exhibitions were given from time to time. A school was started, and in a variety of ways a wholesome tone was imparted to the whole subject of art in the community. Appreciation was developed in the people, criticism became more enlightened, latent talents in the young were brought out, and several accomplished artists were started on useful careers ; while a taste for good architecture, neatly furnished homes and a better kind of pictures and sculpture came to possess the popular mind. The movement for ladies and gentlemen to go together to look at nude and semi-nude representations in art, instead of at separate times made headway, and an hour was at hand when the entire mantle of foolish prudery was ready to be cast off. There was little enough pecuniary encouragement for artists in the America of that day. Benjamin West had gone to England and remained there, where he was now receiving enormous sums for his paintings. Few facilities were at hand here for profitable employment of the chisel or the brush. The sculptor's principal income was derived from carving figure-heads for ships, which was the source of William Rush's livelihood. When the head went out of fashion in marine ar chitecture, that disappeared. Latrobe once said that "the ship-heads of Rush, engraved, would form an invaluable work," but they never were collected, and the carvings went, one by one, to the scrap-heap. For the figure of the woman and the swan which he executed for the Centre Square water works, he was paid only $200, and for the carvings symbolical of the harnessing of the Schuylkill at Fairmount, only $450. There was little to employ the talents of painters but signs on taverns, shops, and lottery offices, firemen's hats and capes, the ornaments on the engines and the hose carriages, and banners, flags and transparencies. Many artists who might have done much to cause their names to be remembered were occupied in this way, as witness the cases of Matthew Pratt, John A. Woodside, George Rutter and several other men. Some of their signs are held to have had much merit. A tavern at the southwest corner of Fourth and Chestnut streets, known at various times as the Death of the Fox, the Anvil and Double Cross Keys, and the Moon and Seven Stars, at the end of the eighteenth century exhibited a sign by Matthew Pratt. It was a representation of the Convention of 1787 and contained recogniz able portraits of the members. Under the picture Pratt had placed these lines : "Those 38 great men have signed a powerful deed That better times to us should very soon succeed." His signs at the Lebanon Garden and at a tavern called the Fox Chase on Arch above Sixth street were also remarked.1 John Binns tells of a tavern on the north side of Walnut street below Fifth street whose sign was a life-size portrait of Franklin. He had heard "more than one of Franklin's descendants" say that 1 Pa. Mag., XIX, pp. 466-67. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 123 that picture was "the best and most characteristic likeness of the doctor that had ever been painted." x Peale was obliged to keep a museum to which he admitted the public at twenty-five sents a head. Others painted "panoramas," and formed exhibitions of pictures, many of them made large and depicting historic and other horrors in deference to a not too elegant public taste. Francis M. Drexel, who came to this country from Switzerland to take up the pursuit of a portrait painter, then necessitating wide travel over the country in search of commissions, saw so much greater opportunity for the upbuilding of his fortune in the changing of money that he established a banking business which bears his name to this day. The appearance in the community of families of opulence who had naught to do with, or perchance had gotten away from the strict Quaker influences, awak ened a considerable demand for portraits, and in this field, as ever since, lucra tive openings were presented to artists. It was charged against many of them that they were under the necessity of flattering their not always handsome clients, and of giving them presentments of themselves rather more beautiful than faith ful ; but they were at any rate enabled to thrive in their calling — in some instances better than men who led literary lives. There was a good nucleus of sentiment in the Academy of the Fine Arts in favor of aiding those who seemed to exhibit any of the signs of talent. Just as Provost Smith had encouraged West to go to England, so Thomas Sully and Charles R. Leslie were befriended. Sully was born in England, but came to the United States at nine years of age. The family had artistic connections. His father, Matthew Sully, was an actor. His older brother, Lawrence, attained some dis tinction as a miniature painter. At one time he was settled in Philadelphia, but later went South where he died. Thomas Sully married his widow. Like most artists of the day he first painted tavern signs. After wandering from Virginia to Boston, he finally in 1808 took up his residence in Philadelphia, sharing a home with Benjamin Trott, the miniature painter. He finished a number of portraits for Benjamin Chew Wilcocks, grandson of Judge Chew of "Cliveden," in such a way that that excellent patron of the arts interested himself in the young man. Mr. Wilcocks obtained seven subscriptions of $200 each to send Sully abroad for further study. In return he agreed to paint a picture for each of his bene factors. He carried letters to Benjamin West from William Rawle, and to others with whom it was thought acquaintance would be useful, and for several months in 1809-1810 he studied and worked in England. After his return, he rapidly forged his way into that enviable position which he holds in the history of Amer ican art. Stephen Girard built him a studio on the east side of Fifth street be tween Chestnut and Market streets, demolished when Ranstead street was run through at this point.2 He would seem to have surpassed every other American artist in pecuniary returns for his work. He kept a complete register of it. From 1801 till 1871 when his last portrait was painted, a year before his death, he recorded 2,520 pictures for which he received $246,744. This was an average 1 Recollections, pp. 182-83. 2 Pa. Mag., XXXII, p. 385. 124 HKTORY OF PHILADELPHIA of 36 paintings a year, but as his first and last years were not so prolific as those when he was in his physical prime and his reputation was at its height, it is clear that for the greater part of the period he worked at an even more industrious pace.1 In 181 1 Leslie was befriended in like manner. His drawings of George Fred- derick Cooke during that actor's sensational engagement at the Chestnut Street Theatre, as has been noted already, attracted great attention to him. He was the son of Robert Leslie, a clock and watch maker, a native of Maryland. He was at the time an apprentice in the printing house of Bradford and Inskeep.2 Mr. Bradford took the lead, and persuaded Joseph S. Lewis, Eliza Powel, Joshua Clibborn, Joseph Head, Joseph Hopkinson, George Clymer, W. Baker, Will iam Kneass, Alexander Wilson, George Murray and Edward Pennington to join him in making up a fund to send Leslie abroad to pursue his studies. The Academy of the Fine Arts also advanced one hundred dollars. The result was soon seen to be such as to warrant the verses which had been published in the Port Folio upon his departure, and of which these are some of the lines : "Go, youth! improve th' auspicious hour, and learn To win the splendid triumph o'er the urn; And warm'd to rapture by the gen'rous flame Seize th' inspiring pencil ; pant for fame ; And while a glance to future time is cast, Re-animate the glories of the past." John Neagle born in 1796 married Sully's stepdaughter in 1826. He is ranked very high — by one authority "among the most eminent of the portrait painters of America, easily standing second only to Gilbert Stuart." 3 Like Sully he was an industrious artist. He has given us portraits as various as Red Jacket, the In dian Chief, and Patrick Lyon, the fire engine builder on the one hand, and on the other, Charlotte, the Countess of Survilliers, daughter of Joseph Bonaparte and Junius Brutus Booth as Sir Edward Mortimer in The Iron Chest. Besides Sully, Neagle, the Peales, Leslie, and William Rush, there were Thomas Birch who, like his father, William Birch, had painted some Philadelphia views and later much else, including landscapes and marines ; Denis A. Volozan, a Frenchman, one of the first teachers in the art school; John Lewis Krimmel, a German who depicted many scenes of the day in Philadelphia, those of most local interest being pictures of the State House on election day and Centre Square on the Fourth of July; Bass Otis, a portrait painter; Joshua Shaw, Russell Smith, Hugh Reinagle, a son of Alexander Reinagle of the theatre; Thomas Doughty, known for his landscapes; Thomas Bishop; Jacob Eichholtz; John Eckstein; Gennarino Persico, an Italian who married in the city, a drawing master and a 1Pa. Mag., XXXII, p. 385. 2 Samuel F. Bradford and his brother-in-law, John Inskeep, Jr., son of John Inskeep, merchant twice mayor of the city, then struggling with the publication of their encyclo- pedia. 3 Pa. Mag., XXXII, p. 390. ,<: y- THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 125 miniature painter ; Luigi Persico, a sculptor who made busts of Washington and Lafayette. The principal architects of the city, after the departure of Latrobe, regarded by some as "the father of architecture in the United States" were his pupils Will iam Strickland, who designed so many notable works, and Robert Mills, and Strick land's pupil Thomas U. Walter. To this number the name of John Haviland, an Englishman who had come to this city in 1816, one of his first works being the new building of the First Presbyterian church in Washington Square, was to be added. The busy publishing trades continued to attract to the city a number of excellent engravers. James Earle's picture gallery, which was an institution of the city for many years, in connection with a salesroom, dates from about 1812. Thomas Sully was long his partner in the management at which time it was known as Sully and Earle's gallery. "Besides the large number of paintings of foreign artists it offered a great many of the happiest effects of Sully himself." x It was situated on Chestnut street opposite the State House. The city gained few works of art in these years, beyond those which were from the hands of its own painters. Such as were seen even in the Academy of the Fine Arts were for the most part copies. Not many homes, if we bar "Lans downe," the "Woodlands," and Joseph Bonaparte's contained European canvases or statuary. The pictures which were exhibited from time to time, here and there, for the profit of the owners, occasionally may have had merit, but usually they were not what they were represented to be. In 1804 the Pennsylvania Hospital acquired a leaden statue of William Penn which his great-grandson, John Penn of "Solitude," purchased in England at the moment when it was marked for destruction. The figure had been made about 1774 by John Bacon. In 1800 the managers of the hospital wrote to Benjamin West, soliciting something from his brush for the decoration of that building. The artist responded with a promise to paint a picture to the text, "And the blind and lame came to Him in the temple and He healed them." Years passed. The work, which was called "Christ Heal ing the Sick" was finished in 1810, and put on exhibition in London. So much was offered for it that the artist sold it, greatly to the disappointment of the Philadelphians, although he promised to make them a "better" one soon. It was 1817 before the copy arrived. It was hung in an exhibition room especially, designed for it in a separate building on the hospital lot, and a charge of admis sion of twenty-five cents was made. Up to 185 1, it is stated that more than $25,000 were received in fees from visitors. Later it was deposited with the Academy of the Fine Arts and now hangs in the Pennsylvania Hospital's Insti tution for the Insane, in West Philadelphia. In 1825 there were eleven Episcopal churches in Philadelphia and its out skirts. Old Christ Church, St. Peter's and St. Paul's were already too far down town for those families who were settled west of Eighth street. In 1807 the corner-stone of St. James' church was laid on the east side of Seventh street, north of Market. It was consecrated in 1810. In 1823 St. Stephen's church, still near the outer borders of the city, on Tenth street between Market and Chestnut 1 Lions of Phila., 1837, p. 16. 126 ' HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA streets, was built. It is a Gothic work, after Strickland's plans. In the same year .St. Andrew's church, designed by John Haviland, on the west side of Eighth street between Spruce and Locust streets, for a congregation which had been formed in that part of the city, was completed and ready for use. St. John's in the Northern Liberties, was established in 1816; St. Luke's, in Germantown, in 1818; Trinity, in Southwark, in 1821 ; St. Mark's, in Mantua Village in West Philadelphia, in 1821, started largely through the efforts of Judge Peters, of "Bel mont," and afterward burned; and in 1824, St. Matthew's in Penn Township, in the village of Francisville on the old Vineyard plot— a small, straggling country town reached by the Ridge Pike. There were some fifteen Presbyterian churches, including the Reformed Church of the Rev. Samuel B. Wylie, D. D., who for a time directed an excellent classical school. The First Presbyterian church, which had a house on the south side of Market street, at the corner of Bank street (between Second and Third streets), on the site of the "old Buttonwood," by 1821 was entirely surrounded by stores, and in that year the congregation erected a new building which remains at the corner of Seventh and Locust streets (on Washington Square), said to have been "the largest and finest yet erected in the city." The Second Presby terian church was still situated at Third and Arch streets. It removed to a marble edifice on Seventh below Arch in 1837, and not until 1872 to its present building at Twenty-first and Walnut streets. Two Presbyterian churches had been built in the Northern Liberties, one in Southwark and one in Kensington. Of Lutheran churches, there was Old Swedes', now for long under the care of the Rev. Nicholas Collin. He had come to America before the Revolution and at first preached in New Jersey. In 1786 he took charge of the three Swedish churches in Wicaco, at Kingsessing and at Upper Merion at the Swedes' Ford near Norristown, and continued at this post until his death in 183 1. He was a town character. His riding chair was as well known in the streets as Stephen Girard's or James Wills'. Drawn by an old horse at a jog trot this ancient man of many eccentricities was a figure to be remarked. He was the "marrying par son" of his day. In his 45 years at Old Swedes' Church he is computed to have joined 3,375 couples in wedlock. In 1795 he performed the marriage ceremony 199 times.1 At first using the Swedish language he was soon obliged to employ English in the city church. In 1786, at the time Mr. Collin's ministry began, it was explained that in the church council of eight members there was only one, John Stifle, who could speak or understand the Swedish tongue. The others were of Swedish descent, or perhaps had married Swedish wives. Most of them at tended other churches or absented themselves entirely from religious service.2 It is very doubtful whether Swedish was spoken from the pulpits even of the Kingsessing and Upper Merion churches after 1800. Besides the Swedish there were two German Lutheran churches and one Evangelical church. The German Reformed denomination had two churches ; the Dutch Reformed two; the Baptists five; the Universalists two; the Unitarians one, of which Will iam H. Furness was already the pastor; the Catholics four; the Methodists eight ; 1 Clay, Annals of the Swedes, p. 116. 2 Pa. Mag., XXXIII, p. 243. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 127 and the Swedenborgians one. There were as many as ten separate negro churches affiliated with the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist organizations. The Jews had two synagogues, the chief of which was a building designed by Mr. Strickland and situated on the north side of Cherry street above Third street. The Friends made their most important change when they built a very large house on their burial plot at Fourth and Arch streets. They transferred their Second and Market street meeting to this place in 1805. In 1812 they erected on the west side of Twelfth street below Market street, a meeting house which con tinues in use. In 1814 they built and occupied a large new edifice at Fourth and Green streets, in the Northern Liberties, a neighborhood which was largely settled by Quaker families. Among the churches, barring the Friends, there were few, in 1825, which had not come to have their Sunday Schools. Christ Church had opened classes in 1816, only three months after the pioneer which was the Presbyterian church at Third and Arch streets. In some instruction was given only to boys, but the young people of both sexes and of various ages were admitted to the schools which were maintained by most of the congregations. A number of Sunday school societies and societies for other religious purposes, both denominational and inter-denominational, were formed about this time. What is said to have been the first religious paper to be published in the city was The Herald of Gospel Liberty. It originally appeared at Portsmouth, N. H., under the editorship of the Rev. Elias Smith, and he continued it when he removed to take charge of a church in Philadelphia. The second religious paper to be published in Philadelphia, or indeed anywhere in the United States, was called The Religious Remembrancer. The editor was John Welwood Scott, who had a printing shop in North Tenth street. The officers of the principal institutions and societies in Philadelphia in 1825, both secular and religious, may well be given to indicate the interests and attach ments, at the time, of the leading citizens. The provost of the University of Pennsylvania was the Rev. Dr. Frederick Beasley ; the trustees, Right Rev. Will iam White (president), Chief Justice William Tilghman, Edward Burd, William Rawle, Benjamin R. Morgan, Moses Levy, Joseph B. McKean, James Gibson, Horace Binney, William Meredith, Benjamin Chew, Rev. James P. Wilson, D. D., Robert Wain, John Sergeant, George Fox, Thomas Cadwalader, Nicholas Biddle, Zaccheus Collins, Peter S. Duponceau, Charles Chauncey, Thomas Dun can, Joseph Hopkinson, Joseph R. Ingersoll. The Professors in Arts were : Provost Frederick Beasley, (the fifth provost, 1813-28), Robert M. Patterson, and James G. Thomson. Professors of Medi cine: Philip Syng Physick, William Gibson, Nathaniel Chapman, John Red man Coxe, Robert Hare and Thomas C. James. Professors of Natural Science : W. P. C. Barton, William H. Keating, Robert M. Patterson, Thomas Say and Thomas T. Hewson. Professor of Law: Charles Willing Hare. Professor of General Literature: Robert Walsh. The University still maintained its grammar school of which Rev. J. Wilt- bank was the master, and its charity schools. The managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital were Samuel Coates, president ; Thomas Stewardson, Thomas P. Cope, Israel Cope, Thomas Morris, Alexander 128 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Ehnslie, Matthew L. Bevan, Charles Roberts, Joseph Johnson, Roberts Vaux, William W. Fisher and Joseph Watson. Joseph S. Lewis was the treasurer. The attending physicians and surgeons at this time were John C. Otto, John W. Moore, Samuel Emlen, Joseph Parrish, Thomas T. Hewson, John Rhea Barton, Caspar Wistar, Jr., and Caspar Morris. The list of physicians to the almshouse included Nathaniel Chapman, William Gibson, John K. Mitchell, Samuel Jackson, and John Rhea Barton. The city had established an efficient poor system. The territory was divided into districts, with guardians for each. Physicians visited the paupers in their homes. There was a children's asylum, for white persons, in South Fifth street in "Walnut Grove," the old Wharton house, and a similar institution for colored children elsewhere. The Christ Church Hospital founded by Dr. John Kearsley as a home for aged women of the Episcopal church for a long time occupied a house at 107 Arch street (old number). Now in 1825 it was established in a much larger edifice erected in 1818 on the south side of Cherry, west of Third street. The Philadelphia Dispensary which, in 1802, had moved into its new building in Fifth street opposite the State House yard, in quarters which it still occupies, had the following managers: Bishop William White, Robert Blackwell, Robert Smith, Joseph Cruikshank, Elliston Perot, Roberts Vaux, Joseph Parrish, Thomas Cadwalader, John Markoe, William Davidson, Philip F. Mayer, S. P. Griffitts and Joseph M. Paul. It was now aided in its work by two other estab lishments, the Northern Dispensary, at Front and Green streets, of which the Rev. George Boyd was president of the board of managers, and the Southern Dispensary on Shippen street, Southwark, whose president was Dr. S. P. Griffitts. In 1820 the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb was founded by Bishop White, Horace Binney, Roberts Vaux, Clement C. Biddle, Correa da Serra, Jacob Gratz, Nathaniel Chapman, William Meredith and others. It was incorporated and endowed by the legislature. The pupils were taught on the plan of the Abbes de l'Epee and Sicard, in Paris. For a time, the school occupied a building at the southeast corner of Eleventh and High streets, until a new stone building designed by Haviland, which was going up at the north-west corner of Broad and Pine streets,1 could be completed. Bishop White was its president, while the vice-presidents were Horace Binney, Roberts Vaux, Thomas Cadwalader and Nathaniel Chapman. Another school, called the Philadelphia -In stitution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, which found its quarters at the northeast corner of Ninth and Market streets, was established by David G. Seixas, who had been instrumental in founding and was the first teacher in the other institution. In consequence of a disagreement with the management he was dismissed and began anew. Robert Patterson was the president of this in stitution. The Pennsylvania Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye and Ear was established in 1822. It was situated in Seventh street, south of Market street. Its managers 1 Now used by the Pa. Museum and School of Industrial Art. FROM A SOUVENIR PUBLICATION ON LINEN CLOTH IN POSSESSION OF PENN SYLVANIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 129 were James Gibson, William Meredith, Charles N. Bancker, Manuel Eyre, R. C. Wood, J. P. Hare, George B. Wood, John Vaughan, William Strickland, Samuel V. Merrick, William H. Keating, and William S. Warder. Its surgeons were Isaac Hays, John Bell, R. E. Griffith and William Darrach. The officers of the Chamber of Commerce were Robert Ralston, president; Henry Pratt and Louis Clapier, vice-presidents ; Robert Smith, treasurer ; and John Vaughan, secretary. The president of the American Philosophical Society was William Tilghman, elected in 1824, at the death of Robert Patterson who so long had been professor of mathematics in the University of Pennsylvania and then director of the United States Mint, still where Rittenhouse had established it in Seventh street; vice- presidents, P. S. Duponceau, Zaccheus Collins, and Robert M. Patterson, son of Robert Patterson; secretaries, Robert Walsh, George Ord, William H. Keating, and Franklin Bache ; treasurer, John Vaughan. The officers of the Franklin Institute were James Ronaldson, president; Mathew Carey and Isaiah Lukens, vice-presidents ; William Strickland, recording secretary; and Peter A. Browne, corresponding secretary. Of the Philadelphia Library, at Fifth and Library streets, including the 4,000 volumes of the Loganian Library in an adjoining building, George Campbell was librarian. He had succeeded Zachariah Poulson, Jr., in 1806, and retained the office until 1829. The directors were Thomas Parke, Joseph Parker Norris, Robert Wain, James Gibson, Zaccheus Collins, George Fox, Zachariah Poulson, Joseph S. Lewis, William Rawle and John Read. Of the Mercantile Library, at 100 Chestnut street, Thomas P. Cope was presi dent; of the Apprentices' Library in Carpenters' Hall, John Sergeant; of the Athenaeum in Philosophical Hall, William Tilghman. The president of the Phila delphia College of Pharmacy was Charles Marshall, with William Lehman and Stephen North as vice-presidents; Daniel B. Smith as secretary; and William Heyl as treasurer. The officers of the Academy of Natural Sciences were William Maclure, president; Zaccheus Collins and George Ord, vice-presidents; Reuben Haines, corresponding secretary; William H. Keating, recording secretary ;• Jacob Gill- iams, treasurer; Thomas Say, C. A. LeSueur, J. P. Wetherill and Isaac Hays, curators. The professors of the Jefferson Medical College in Prune street, below Sixth, which moved in a few years to a brick building on Tenth street where it has ever since found a site, were Nathan R. Smith, John Eberle, George McClellan, B. Rush Rhees, and Jacob Green. The president of the Magdalen Asylum, for reclaiming fallen women, at Schuylkill Second and Race streets, was Bishop White. Of the Orphan Society, whose asylum, rebuilt after its terrible fire, was situated at Schuylkill Fourth and Cherry streets, Mrs. Maria Dorsey was the directress and Miss Rebecca Gratz, secretary. The Widows' Asylum, near by, the first house in Cherry street east of the Orphans' Asylum had a board of managers made up of ladies drawn from many of the most prominent families of the city, whose interest had been enlisted in this charity. vol. n— 9 130 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Bishop White was president of the old Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons ; William Rawle, of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery ; Joseph Cruikshank, of the Humane Society, primarily established for the recovery of drowned persons ; Bishop White, of the Provident Society; Dr. William P. Dewees, of the Musical Fund Society; Alex ander Henry, of the American Sunday School Union, which was formed in 1824 from the Philadelphia Sunday and Adult School Union, and now had 723 schools with 7,337 teachers and 48,681 scholars in seven states ; Bishop White, of the old Sunday School Society; Jonathan Fell, of the Philadelphia Society for the Es tablishment and Support of Charity Schools, which administered Christopher Ludwick's and other legacies and established and maintained a number of schools ; Robert Ralston, of the Fuel Savings Society, formed to assist the poor in the pur chase of wood ; Richard Peters, of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agri culture, which had been organized as early as 1785. There were large numbers of beneficial societies, bearing the names of Wash ington, Franklin and other prominent men; trade organizations beneficial and otherwise; and some fifteen fire insurance companies, the oldest of which was the Philadelphia Contributionship founded in 1752 ; and the Insurance Company of North America established in 1792, at first primarily for marine underwriting, often called the "Green Tree" from the house badge it adopted, just as the Con tributionship was popularly known as the "Hand-in-Hand" because of its use of four clasped hands. The city had several patriotic national societies, including the St. Andrew's Society and two or three other societies for Scotchmen ; the St. George's Society for Englishmen; the Welsh Society for the emigrants from Wales, of which Joseph S. Lewis was the president; and the German Society which performed important service in the relief of poor German people. The last named had a hall in South Seventh street. The New England people in the city maintained a New England Society, founded in 1816, now under the presidency of Charles Chauncey. For two or three years prior to 1825, there was a Southern Society which met and dined. There were two societies for the employment of "indigent and in dustrious" women and the sale of the products of their labor. The principal of these was the Female Hospitable Society, which had a workshop and a wareroom in Appletree alley. The other, a still older society, was called the Female Society of Philadelphia for the Relief and Employment of the Poor. For years it main tained a House of Industry in which poor women spun wool and flax. Both societies sold sheeting, table linen, napkins, comfortables, stockings, yarns, muslin and linen shirts, floss, cotton bolster and pillow cases, and similar articles. The presidents of the various banks were : Bank of the United States, Nicho las Biddle; Bank of Pennsylvania, Joseph Parker Norris; Bank of Philadelphia, John Read; Bank of North America, Henry Nixon; Farmers and Mechanics' Bank, Joseph Tagert ; Mechanics' Bank, Lemuel Lamb ; Schuylkill Bank, William Meredith; Commercial Bank, Andrew Bayard; Northern Liberties Bank, John Barclay. The presidents of the principal internal improvement companies were : Lan caster Turnpike Company, Elliston Perot; Germantown and Perkiomen Turn- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 131 pike Company, Benjamin Chew; Ridge Turnpike Company, William Rawle; Cheltenham and Willow Grove Turnpike Company, Robert Wharton; Union Canal Company, Samuel F. Mifflin; Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company, Tames C. Fisher; Schuylkill Navigation Company, Cadwalader Evans; Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, Jonathan Fell ; Schuylkill Permanent Bridge Com pany, Richard Peters; Lancaster-Schuylkill Bridge Company (Upper Ferry), Jacob Ridgway. CHAPTER XXII. LAFAYETTE'S VISIT. All classes of the population were deeply stirred in 1824 by the visit of La fayette. Next to Washington the young French nobleman who had espoused the American cause early in the war in a true spirit of sympathetic knight-errantry, enjoyed the esteem and love of the people. After Washington's death the tie seemed stronger and the service he had performed still greater than at an earlier time. His fate during the French Revolution, involving a cruel imprisonment from 1792 until 1797 in Prussian and Austrian dungeons, had been the cause here of much unhappy reflection, and profound indeed was the regret when Dr. Erick Bollman, a Hanoverian friend of the general and Francis K. Huger, a young South Carolinian, then in Vienna, failed in the plans to effect his release at Olmiitz. The announcement that he would now visit the republic which he had done a great deal to help to found, a service in which he had renounced and denied himself the comforts of a substantial patrimony at home, and had fought, bled and suffered at Washington's right hand, almost from the beginning of the war until its end, awakened unexampled enthusiasm among the people. Nearly fifty years had passed since the Declaration of Independence; forty since independence was recognized in the treaty of peace. The marquis had been invited to the United States by Congress. It was proposed to send for him in a man-of-war, but the distinguished visitor wished not this attention, and embarked with his son George Washington Lafayette, a secretary and a valet, on the Amer ican packet "Cadmus," which arrived in New York on August 15, 1824. States and cities contended for the honor of receiving and entertaining him when he should come. Philadelphia was not idle. On July 29th, councils expressed their views upon the subject as follows : "Resolved, that it peculiarly becomes the city, where the Declaration was framed which gave freedom to the new world, to receive with affection and honor the brave man whose devotion to Liberty and whose gallantry as a soldier, so greatly contributed to the acquisition of that blessing. "Resolved, that the presence of General Lafayette is ardently desired, and that the chief magistrate of this city be requested to communicate to him the fervent wish of our citizens, and to invite him to become their guest," etc. The officers of the various militia companies convened and resolved to put their commands in order so that the visitor might be given a proper military recep tion. The famous First City Troop, the Second Troop, also ripe in years and serv ice, the Washington Grays, an infantry company formed in 1822 which had 132 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 133 adopted dress similar to that of the West Point cadets who had visited the city in a body in the previous year — a company afterward to enjoy great distinction — and various other troops and regiments, the 72d, the 96th, the I02d, the 123d and all the rest, which after the manner of the time sought dignity in the high numbers suggested by a reading of the accounts of the movements of armies in the Euro pean wars, were refurbishing their uniforms, polishing their arms and drilling re cruits for their ranks. News of the safe arrival of Lafayette at New York the day before, was re ceived on August 17th, and Mayor Watson ordered the bells of Christ Church to be rung. Citizens' committees were set to work to prepare for the reception. Prominent positions were assigned to the survivors of the Revolution, the "Revolu- tioners," whose number had been rapidly growing less for many years. Charles Thomson, the faithful secretary of Congress, upon whom so much had devolved during the struggle, had died on the very day that Lafayette's ship arrived in New York. Others remained, though age bore them down, and the burden of preparation fell, of course, upon younger men. Mrs. Robert Morris, the widow of the financier of the Revolution, was one of the most distinguished of those who were left from the days when Lafayette had last been in Philadelphia. Then there were Judge Richard Peters, of "Belmont," above eighty years of age, but "in sound health, good spirits and of conversation sparkling with wit and hu mour ;" 1 Bishop White, Mrs. Morris's brother, the first American bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church ; General John Steele, who was wounded at Brandy- wine, as Lafayette himself had been; Major William Jackson who had been secretary of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and afterward for a time President Washington's private secretary and aide-de-camp ; 2 Commodore Rich ard Dale; Thomas Leiper, who rode with the City Troop during the Revolution, now 80 years old; the daring cavalry raider, Captain Allen McLane; Peter S. Duponceau, and a considerable body of men and women who were less well known. Thomas Leiper was made the chairman of a committee of twenty-one to form appropriate plans. Horace Binney was appointed to head a committee of cor respondence. Councils named six members — Joseph S. Lewis, William Rush, John M. Scott, Aquila A. Browne, Benjamin Tilghman and James Wilmer — as a committee to make arrangements for welcoming the guest to the city, and the State House was to be put in readiness to play its part in the ceremonies. Now was the beginning of some appreciation of the value of this building. Attention was directed to the memorable scenes which had centred here, and there was dawn of regret that so precious a national monument had been converted into a mere show-room for mastodon's bones and stuffed birds, and that it had ever been subjected to alteration to satisfy fancied tastes and needs, so great that John Quincy Adams, who came in this year, was led to remark upon the very 1J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, Oct. 3, 1824. 2 Major Jackson had married Elizabeth, a daughter of Thomas Willing, a younger sister of the fascinating Mrs. Bingham, who survived her husband for thirty years and in 1856 at the age of 88 was "the only living representative of the especial entourage of Washington." (Griswold's Rep. Court, p. 307.) Major Jackson died in 1828; Mrs. Jackson in 1858. 134 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA material changes in its appearance. Even the Independence room itself awakened no patriotic spirit of reverence and pride. Foreign visitors for years had mar velled at the "dirty and neglected state" in which they found it and finally, says John Binns, "to give a job to one of our commissioners' relatives," the floor was torn up and the fine old cornice torn down to be sawed into pieces and sold for relics.1 It was resolved that during Lafayette's visit the citizens should wear a badge containing his portrait and the old black Revolutionary cockade. To this last proposal there was opposition, as might have been expected, from the disciples of Duane who had aimed to make the device seem so hateful during the anti-English excitement near the end of the century. Some wore the red, white and blue cockade. The Frenchmen, and sons of Frenchmen, in the city who were speedily organized under the aged Peter S. Duponceau, had adopted the old Alliance cock ade, the white emblem of the Bourbon days. As for the Lafayette badge, it found favor everywhere. No one seemed hitherto to know anything of his appearance, but a fine portrait of the expected guest was hung up at the Mer chants' Coffee House. In a little while his face was seen on watch fobs, neck ribbons, waist ribbons, snuff boxes, gloves and stockings. Ladies lifting their skirts would exhibit pictures of Lafayette. The store windows were filled with badges, prints and trinkets bearing his portrait, and soon transparencies were flung out and arches erected in his honor. The making of badges and cockades at once became a great industry, as did the manufacture of tin candle-holders to be stuck into the sashes and frames of windows for the illuminations which were in prospect nightly during the visit. While all the plans were being perfected, Lafayette's birthday, which fell on September 6th, came and called for a celebration. On this occasion, a public stable-keeper invited the "Revolutioners" to mount his vehicles, and he carried them in procession down Spruce to Second street, and up Second to the Coffee House. There "Yankee Doodle" and other national airs were played. Then the carriages proceeded up Chestnut street and finally to the Vauxhall Garden at Broad and Walnut streets where refreshments were served to the old men. On the 2 ist day of September Governor J. Andrew Shulze came to partici pate in the ceremonies. He had been escorted by militiamen down the pike from Lancaster and was met on the outskirts of the city by the First Brigade under General Robert Patterson. The guest was taken to the Franklin Hotel at the corner of Washington Square and Walnut street (southwest corner of Walnut and Columbia avenue, now called Seventh street.) It had been recently opened by Joseph Head, a young man of fashion and fortune, who, losing his money, was compelled to seek his living. He chose the vocation of a hotel-keeper, and after he left the Franklin Hotel was for many years the landlord of the excellent Mansion House in Third street. Lafayette was expected on September 28th. Troops were constantly coming in from New Jersey and from Easton, Reading, Lancaster and points in the interior, to participate in the reception, which would include a large procession 1 "Not a pen," save Binns', "was moved in reprobation of the sacrilegious outrage by any editor of any public journal."— Recollections, p. 194. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 135 in the streets of both military and civic bodies. Some of the soldiers were brought down in boats on the new canal from Reading; others marched in over the turn pikes which now radiated north, west and south, establishing camps on the banks of the Schuylkill or at other places in the city's immediate neighborhood. On Sunday the 26th of September the First City Troop, numbering about fifty men and three trumpeters, with Captain John R. C. Smith at their head, "took up the line of march for Trenton" to welcome Lafayette. At Holmesburg they met the Second City Troop and two county troops, and proceeded through Bristol to Morrisville, where the party was joined by other companies of horse. Gover nor Shulze had gone up to the New Jersey line also, to greet the Marquis as soon as he should enter the state. On Monday morning, September 27, Lafayette emerged from the western end of the long covered bridge at Trenton, and he stood on Pennsylvania soil. After listening to the governor's speech of welcome and offering an appropriate reply, he was placed beside Joseph S. Lewis, the well known Philadelphia merchant who headed the city committee, in a "splendid barouche drawn by six dark cream- colored horses with two outriders on horses of the same color." The governor and G. W. Lafayette followed in a barouche drawn by four black horses. The First City Troop formed an "oblong square" around the Lafayette carriage, the other companies serving as an advance guard for the cavalcade. Dinner was taken at Bristol, and for the night the famous guest was quartered in rooms in the United States Arsenal at Frankford. The next day the line of march was continued through the village to "Rush's Field" on the Frankford Road, a little beyond the first toll-gate, where many more troops had assembled to receive him. The artillery boomed and 6,000 soldiers, formed into a hollow square, presented arms. The bands played. Lafayette left his carriage and with his hat in hand passed along the whole line, bowing his compliments to the volunteers. The procession was organized for the entrance into Philadelphia under the command of Major-General Cadwalader. The venerable Judge Peters of "Bel mont," above eighty years of age, was now placed in the barouche with General Lafayette. The governor's and other coaches and carriages followed. Various civic organizations, which had rendezvoused at Kensington, were introduced into the procession at that point. These included the "Red Men," the "Lafayette Association of Young Men" and several political and semi-political societies, cordwainers, weavers, rope-makers, ship-carpenters, painters, coopers, butchers, carters and draymen. All had their banners and many were showily costumed. The printers struck off copies of an "Ode to Lafayette" as they proceeded ; the coopers made barrels on a car. The civic section of the parade was marshalled by John Swift. The military portions of the procession which were placed at the front and rear of the line, included fifty-four companies of infantry and artillery, ten com panies of cavalry and fourteen companies of riflemen. The line was three miles in length and it was more than an hour in passing a given point. Unheard of anxiety to witness the spectacle was manifested, and merchants and householders along the route took in large sums of money by the sale of eligible places from which to view it. Upwards of one hundred scaffolds and stages were erected, probably the first instance in which this had been done in the city's history. 136 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA While some held but twenty or thirty persons, others, it is alleged, would accom modate two thousand. Seats brought as much as three dollars each. The route, after the procession entered the Northern Liberties at the intersection of Front street and the Frankford Road, was to Green, to Fourth, to Arch, to Eleventh, to Chestnut, to Eighth, to Spruce, to Second, to Chestnut again, and up Chestnut to the State House, where Lafayette was to alight. The rest of the line then moved over to Market street and proceeded to Broad, where it dispersed at the convenience of the participating bodies. The streets were filled with people. Every available spot from which to view the sight was occupied. Arches had been erected in all parts of the city, some of them reaching a high degree of elaboration. The procession passed under the first of these in Kensington, where the local corporation had set up a structure which was supported by imitation marble pillars, crowned by the federal and state arms, and which bore on one front "Welcome, Lafayette ;" on the other, "In honor of Lafayette." Another arch was seen as the line approached Front and Green streets. The official testimonial of the corporation of the Northern Liberties, however, was erected at Fourth and Green streets, where William Strickland the architect, had designed a handsome arch. The president of the board of commissioners made an address of welcome as Lafayette's coach halted under the structure. At Fourth and Vine streets, where the cavalcade entered the city proper, there was an arch which was divided into thirteen squares, bearing the names of the thirteen original states, Pennsylvania being the keystone, a position which now for some time had been commonly assigned to her.1 Portraits of Washington and Lafayette, French and American flags, pillars bearing the names of various Revolutionary heroes and mottoes here and there over all, attracted much attention to the design. On one side twenty-four boys, on the other twenty-four girls, were assembled to sing an ode which began "Strike the cymbal ! Roll the tymbal ! Sound the trumpets ! Beat the drums ! Loudly ringing, cheerily singing — Lo ! the patriot hero comes !" and ending with lines sufficiently worse to excuse any omission of an attempt to perpetuate them. It was perhaps no great matter, therefore, when the proces sion moved off before a small boy who had been assigned to recite some verses by the same poet, succeeded in declaiming them. The sloop-of-war, "John Adams," in the river, fired a salute. Excitement ruled on every hand. "Huzza Lafayette! Lafayette! sprang from the voices 1 Much has been said to elucidate the history of Pennsylvania as the "Keystone State." In the rooms of the American Philosophical Society hangs a print which represents the thirteen states in the form of an arch with Pennsylvania in position as the keystone. This print comes down from about the time of the French Alliance. It is easy to show why Pennsylvania seemed — to France at least — to deserve this essential place in the community of American commonwealths. Various theories, none of which is entitled to particular credence, are assembled in A History of the Origin of the Appellation Keystone State, Phila., 1874. FAIRMOUNT DAM AND WATER WORKS AT FAIRMOUNT, LOOKING TOWARD "LEMON HILL" HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 137 of a multitude that rolled on and on — and on — like wave after wave of the ocean in numbers that we shall not presume to name," wrote the reporter for Poulson's Advertiser. "Lafayette beat in every grateful heart, Lafayette hung on every lip, Lafayette burst from every tongue, Lafayette glowed on every cheek, La fayette glistened in every swimming eye, Lafayette swelled on every gale." x On Eleventh street, near Chestnut, the Marquis arose in his carriage and bowed to the widow of Robert Morris, whose tall and venerable figure was seen at the window of her home. The plaudits of the people who understood this incident "seemed as if they would never cease." 2 Upon this distinguished sur vivor of Revolutionary days the guest found an early occasion to call. At the United States Bank in Chestnut street the Revolutionary soldiers were gath ered together on the steps under the "old standard of '76." Here the line stopped, and greetings were exchanged; after which ceremony, the progress was con tinued to the State House, where Lafayette passed under the finest arch in the city. It, too, was Strickland's, and was erected by order of the city corporation. The canvas had been painted by Warren, Darley and Jefferson, of the Chestnut Street Theatre stock company. The center of the arch stood twenty-four feet above the pavement. Thomas Sully had painted the arms of the city on an en tablature which rose above the arch, and William Rush had added some of the figures. Here the "nation's guest" dismounted, to be taken into the room in which Congress had sat when it adopted the Declaration of Independence. The apartment was elaborately decorated for this occasion, — from all accounts, in an excessive way. The windows were hung with red and blue draperies studded with stars, and other finery not too appropriate was introduced. Mayor Watson delivered an address of welcome in the city's behalf. General Lafayette replied as follows : "My entrance through this fair and great city amidst the most solemn and affecting recollections, and under all the circumstances of a welcome which no expression could adequately acknowledge, has excited emotions in my heart in which are mingled the feeling of nearly fifty years. "Here within these sacred walls, by a council of wise and devoted patriots, and in a style worthy of the deed itself, was boldly declared the independence of these vast United States, which, while it anticipated the independence — and, I hope, the republican independence of the whole American hemisphere — has be gun for the civilized world the era of a new and of the only true social order founded on the inalienable rights of man, the practicability and advantages of which are every day admirably demonstrated by the happiness and prosperity of your populous city. "Here, sir, was planned the formation of our virtuous, brave, revolutionary army, and the providential inspiration received that gave the command of it to our beloved, matchless Washington. But these and many other remembrances are mingled with a deep regret for the numerous contemporaries, for the great and good men whose loss we have remained to mourn. It is to their services, sir, to your regard for their memory, to your knowledge of the friendships I 1 September 30, 1824. 2 Griswold's Rep. Court, p. 310. 138 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA have enjoyed, that I refer the greater part of the honors here and elsewhere received — much superior to my individual merit. "It is also under the auspices of their venerated names, as well as under the impulse of my own sentiments, that I beg you, Mr. Mayor, you gentlemen, of both councils, and all the citizens of Philadelphia, to accept the tribute of my affectionate respect, and profound gratitude." Going out of the State House at the south door and passing through the yard to Walnut street, he re-entered his barouche and was escorted by the First City Troop to his lodgings at the Mansion House on Third street, handsomely fitted up after the recent fire in Washington Hall. There every comfort had been provided for him during his visit, which was one round of festivity. At night, the city was illuminated, though a sufficient number of workmen lacked, and not all which would have been done could be done in the time given for preparation. Paul Beck's shot tower on the Schuylkill was again a pillar of light. Transparencies were set up in front of the theatre, the Shakespeare building at Sixth and Chestnut streets, the Merchants' Coffee House, the postoffice, the news paper offices, and many shops and private residences. Windows were lighted with candles. The arches named and others were illuminated. There was one prettily festooned with evergreen and laurel at Second and South streets. Two squares farther down Second street in Southwark, the upper branches of four trees, two on each side of the way, were gathered together to form a natural arch. There was another archlike structure at the gate of the Navy Yard, and still another at Fourth and Race streets surmounted by a living eagle oddly attached, to survey the scene. Everywhere mottoes complimentary to the visitor were displayed: "A nation's welcome to Freedom's friend" — "The sons of freemen welcome the hero who burned to shed his blood in the glorious cause of Liberty" — -"Welcome to the nation's guest" — "Yorktown, Monmouth, Brandy- wine" (references to the battlefields whereon Lafayette achieved distinction) — "May the star-spangled banner of Columbia ever shield Lafayette and welcome him to our shores." Everywhere his name was coupled with Washington's, and he was heralded as "the friend of liberty." One attention followed another. The son of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state and soon to be president, came on to add distinction to the ceremonies. The Marquis dined with Judge Peters at "Belmont," with the Masons in their hall, with the French people of the city in Washington Hall, with the city corporation at the Mansion House. On the last occasion, he pro posed a toast to "The City of Philadelphia — where American independence was first proclaimed, and where the holy alliance of public order with popular in stitutions is every day happily demonstrated." He attended an "evening party" at General Cadwalader's, went to Christ Church where Bishop White preached, visited the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the Pennsylvania Hospital, a meeting of the Washington Benevolent Society of which he was made an honorary member, the Schuylkill Water Works, the Navy Yard, the old and new penitentiaries, the Orphans' and Widows' Asylums, the Academy of the Fine Arts, of which Joseph Hopkinson, the president, made Lafayette and his son honorary members, and the University. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 139 From various sources came addresses, — the Society of the Cincinnati; the American Philosophical Society, through its president, Mr. Duponceau; the Revolutionary soldiers ; the Chamber of Commerce, through its president, Robert Ralston. The bar, the clergy and other bodies sent their delegates to pay their respects. The Washington Grays, whose appearance Lafayette had commented upon at Frankford, remarking to General Cadwalader that they were the finest body of men he had ever seen, elected him an honorary member of their organi zation. The sculptor Persico made a bust of him ; William Rush modelled him in clay. The public school children assembled in a body in the State House yard on September 30th to honor him ; and the pupils of the private schools, carrying banners on which appropriate mottoes were inscribed, variously estimated to number from 3,000 to 6,000 children enrolled at some seventy different academies and seminaries, met at the same place for the same purpose on October 5th. John Quincy Adams, who attended says that 2,250 girls and 1,800 boys from seven to fourteen years of age were present on this occasion. Various addresses were read and speeches made, one in French by General Cadwalader's little son. Lafayette stood uncovered for nearly three hours while these ceremonies pro ceeded. The most notable attention bestowed upon the visitor, however, apart from the pageant by which he was welcomed and of which he was made to be a part, was the grand ball prepared in his honor at the Chestnut Street Theatre on the evening of October 4th. The price of the tickets was ten dollars each. The managers of the enterprise were Joseph R. Ingersoll, Samuel Breck, James N. Barker, Benjamin Tilghman, George M. Dallas, Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, General Robert Patterson, Louis Clapier, Andrew M. Prevost, John K. Kane, Nicholas Biddle and Joseph Mcllvain. The pit had been covered over to create a dancing floor and the interior was handsomely and expensively adorned with banners, standards, portraits, mottoes, and shrubbery which included orange and rose trees in bloom from some of the city conservatories. Over the entrance to the ball room, in gold on a blue ground, were these lines : "If to our thoughts there could but speech be found, And all that speech be uttered in one sound, It should be— Welcome!" Elsewhere was seen the inscription "Pompey's dignity, The innocence of Cato, Caesar's spirit, Wise Brutus' temperance, and every virtue Which, parted unto others give them name, Flow mixed in him." All the skill of William Strickland, William B. Wood and the very intelligent men who made up the theatre company, was exercised to perfect the decorations. More than fifteen hundred ladies attended the "Lafayette Ball," as it was al ways called. Mrs. Robert Morris at first declined on account of her age, and the habit of retirement which she had formed after her husband's financial down- 140 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA fall and demeaning imprisonment. She finally consented to grace the occasion by her presence, and in costume of the Revolutionary period occupied a place of honor during much of the evening beside the Marquis.1 The Misses Bollman, daughters of Dr. Bollman, who' assisted Colonel Huger in the vain but historic effort to release Lafayette from the prison at Olmiitz; John Quincy Adams, secretary of state; Governor Shulze of Pennsylvania; Governor Williamson of New Jersey, and other distinguished guests then in the city, together with many survivors of the Revolutionary time of whom so much was made during the visit, and the leaders in Philadelphia's social life of a newer day, were present at this ball. The music was provided by Frank Johnson's famous negro band. This organization of musicians was formed about 1815, and for twenty years or more enjoyed the greatest popularity. It first played marches for the Washington Guards, an aristocratic Federalist militia company, and later for the State Fenc ibles. Passing from military music the leader, who himself performed very skill fully on the Kent bugle, brought his men to a high state of efficiency in ball room music. He fulfilled engagements at Saratoga and other fashionable watering places. Essentially a reed band, it was strengthened by brass instruments. Noth ing was more natural than that the black master of melody should be engaged to play at the Lafayette ball. At twelve o'clock the dancing was interrupted, trum pets were flourished, the managers entered and proposed the toast : "Disinterested valor: Its fruits, — unenvied glory and unbounded gratitude." Suddenly, by a mechanical device, an allegorical painting was unfurled, show ing the head of Lafayette about to be crowned by Victory and Fame. These lines adapted from "Lalla Rookh" were reproduced at the foot of the picture: "He came when all seemed lost, and nobly hurled Himself into the scale and saved a world." The next day, on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 5th, after a week's visit, Lafayette with his suite, accompanied by Governor Shulze, embarked on a Dela ware steamboat, and was taken to Chester. The mayor and councils escorted him to the waterside. The shipping in the river was decorated and was filled with onlookers. Thousands of people crowded the wharves to cheer and wave him off. The First City Troop, and other military companies, also proceeded to Chester where they continued the work of escort. They did not leave the service until he had reached the Delaware line and was committed to the care of the authori ties of that state. Then the governor and the troops turned back, and the people returned to their accustomed avocations, distinctly improved by this season of communion with patriotic memories. Among the fruits of the visit was the announcement of a plan to place a fine monument of Washington in Washington Square. A meeting was called for the courthouse while Lafayette was still in the city, and it was designed that he should lay the cornerstone. A committee was formed with the following mem bers: John Sergeant, Horace Binney, Richard Dale, Dr. Philip Syng Physick, Stephen Girard, Major William Jackson, General John Steele, Joseph Reed, 1 Griswold's Rep. Court, p. 310. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 141 David Corry, Charles Chauncey, Paul Beck, Jr., General Thomas Cadwalader, Joseph R. Ingersoll, and Qement C. Biddle. But subscriptions were made very slowly and neither then nor during Lafayette's second visit in July, 1825, was it deemed feasible to proceed with the plans. Strickland had designed a work copied after "the famous choragic monument of Thrasyllus at Athens." It was to be 120 feet in height, and would cost probably $67,000, of which only $11,000 were in hand. It was several years before the cornerstone was set in place (Washington's birthday, 1833), and even then the movement proved to be pre mature for the work never rose above the ground. Lafayette's second visit was longer than his first. He arrived on Saturday evening, July 16th, on the steamboat "Delaware" of the New York line, on his way to Washington where he was to embark for France. He was joined at Bordentown by a committee of councils, and came in at the new Chestnut street wharf. He found lodgings this time at Head's Franklin Hotel on Washington Square, the entire house being assigned to his use. At a dinner with the mayor, he gave as his toast, "The great and beautiful city of Philadelphia, where I was first nearly half a century ago welcomed as a recruit, and am now as kindly welcomed as a veteran." During this stay he was allowed to live more quietly. He visited Germantown, taking breakfast at the "Chew House," and also Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. On the evening of July 20th, he was present at a dinner to Richard Rush who had just returned after a service of eight years as Minister to England. It was given in Washington Hall, and gathered at the table were Philadelphia's most distinguished citizens. Chief Justice Tilghman presided. The vice presidents were Mathew Carey and Charles Jared Ingersoll. On the evening of the 23rd, there was an exhibition of fireworks in Vaux hall Garden in honor of the guest. Decorated arches had been raised, a large number of boys and girls, each bearing a torch, were assembled to receive the general, and the scene was one of much beauty. He departed the city under military escort on July 25th for a visit to the battle-ground of Brandywine, whence he proceeded to Baltimore and Washington. In the navy yard at Washington, a United States frigate had been under construction for many months, and it was to carry him home. It had been named the "Brandywine," in allusion to the stream beside which he had been wounded while serving the American cause. It stood at the mouth of the Potomac under the command of Captain Charles Morris, ready for its maiden trip. Lafayette was placed upon this ship on Sep tember 7th, 1825, after his birthday had been appropriately celebrated the day before, and on the 3d day of October he was set down safely on his own shores. His remarkable tour had come to an end. The fruition of all the hopes and expectations, of all the planning, invest ment and labor of many years in reference to interior transportation, came about 1830. The Cumberland Road, which had been constructed and was controlled by the Federal government, until it was later taken over by the states through which it passed, furnished a cheaper way to the seaboard than the Lancaster turnpike, because it was free of toll. It was complained, with reason, that Balti more was benefiting at the expense of Philadelphia as an outlet for the team sters from the interior counties. The Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, was a new trade route that meant rapid and substantial growth for New York. 142 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The population of New York state and New York city, as compared with Penn sylvania and Philadelphia, for four census years, was as follows : 1800 1810 1820 1830 New York State 586,050 959,049 h37^i2 1,913,508 Pennsylvania 6°2.365 810,163 1,049,458 1,348,233 New York City (whole island) J 60,489 96,373 123,706 202,589 Philadelphia (county) 81,009 111,210 137,097 188.789 Supremacy which had been held so long, seemed to be on the point of taking flight. Philadelphia's exports in 1820 were about $6,000,000 ; New York's with her salt water port, which was open all the year, $12,000,000. Philadelphia im ported goods valued at about $9,000,000 as against $23,000,000 for New York. Supremacy in the foreign trade had definitely passed several years before; it was seriously threatened in other fields, and Philadelphians with the clearest under standing of the situation in which they were placed, felt the necessity of bringing the proposed canal system to completion at once. The Schuylkill canal drained the valley of that river and penetrated a region underlaid with coal measures, of the value of which as yet the most prophetic knew little or nothing. But other things remained to be done. The navigation of the Schuylkill river must be joined to that of the Susquehanna, the Juniata and the canals west of the mountains. The Delaware must flow into the Chesapeake. Boats must have a channel from Philadelphia by the Raritan river to New York. The Lehigh valley, whose hills were also filled with coal, must have a canal to lay its riches at the door of Philadelphia. These works must be finished. "Then and not till then," it was said and believed, would "Philadelphia be the mistress of the Continent." 2 The work upon all these projects was now in active progress, and there was promise of bringing it to a successful conclusion speedily. The old Dela ware and Schuylkill Company, which had plans for a canal from Norristown, and the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Company with uncompleted works west of Reading had been combined in 181 1 under the name of the Union Canal Company Money, as we have seen, was received from the lottery, and the route from Read ing along the line of the Tulpehocken, over to the Swatara, and down that stream to Middletown, where it empties into the Susquehanna, was ready for use at the end of 1827. The next spring after the ice melted,3 the line was in working order. The "Fair Trader," Captain Smith, was the first boat to make the trip through. She left Fairmount with a load of fish belonging to Hood Irvin on 1 It is difficult to state the totals for the two cities comparatively. New York's popu lation was made by the census-takers to include the whole island about 15 miles in length; Philadelphia's, only the old city, to which must always be added the neighboring districts, an integral part of the city. This was a rather arbitrary proceeding. It seemed fair in 1820 to deduct 7,000 from the New York total for the country districts and 15,000 from Phila delphia county's total for the townships. By this process Philadelphia was still the larger city. The three cities next below Philadelphia and New York in rank in 1820 were Balti more, 62,627, Boston, 43,893, Charleston, 37,48i.^Carey & Lea, Philadelphia in 1824, p. 31. 2 De Silver's Directory for Philadelphia, 1823. 8 The canal season usually extended from April 15th to some time in November. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 143 March 20th, and three days later she reached Middletown where a large crowd of people were assembled to greet her. Indeed, she was met at some distance from the village, and escorted in, her speed making this attention in no way difficult. The "Dauphin" from Philadelphia, reached Middletown on the fol lowing day. This boat, on its return trip, was the first to come into Philadelphia from the Susquehanna, an event which afforded occasion for a demonstration at this end of the line. The completion of water connections with the west was fraught with changes in the social life and the physical aspects of the city. The wealthy people of Philadelphia from their country places on the hills beside the Schuylkill could look down upon the canal boats, packets and arks by which passengers and freight were conveyed up to the landing near Fairmount. Nearby, a village called Morrisville, which was named in honor of Robert Morris whose home had so long been on the neighboring hill, was projected. The Morrisville Hotel, which dis played the sign of the Fox Chase at 23d and Callowhill streets and the Great Western Hotel on Francis Lane, soon called Coates street, now Fairmount avenue, were opened for the accommodation of passengers. Wharves and warehouses were built on the river bank around the head of Francis Lane, and butter and eggs, coal and wood, lime and lumber, iron and gypsum, wheat and corn, meat and every variety of merchandise were seen in profusion at this place. The business of the Conestoga teamsters in and out the Lancaster Pike was not yet at an end, but their fate, at another turn of the wheel, would be sealed forever. It was planned at first to carry passengers up the Schuylkill at least, if not on to the Susquehanna, by steam. As early as in March, 1821, the steamboat "Norris- town" was launched at Bowers's shipyard. It was intended for the Schuylkill trade. In 1826, Robert A. Parrish built a steamboat, a long narrow craft with its wheel in the stern, and named it the "Schuylkill." It made its first trip from Fairmount in January, 1827, at eleven o'clock in the morning, arriving at Norris- town between two and three, after having stopped an hour on the way. The boat made regular trips during the following summer, but it was unable to com pete at a profit with the now numerous canal packets, and it was taken to the upper Delaware. The passenger boats put into this service were considered to be very elegant The "Planet," the "Independence," the "Swan" and the "Comet" were soon run ning regularly. There were daily departures from the "Upper Ferry" to Read ing in the summer of 1827. The fare on the "Planet" was $2.5o.1 Gentlemen who wished to take their families to the Yellow Springs could now go by boat to Pawhng's Bridge, above Valley Forge. The stage ride from that landing place was comparatively short. The Phoenix and the much older furnaces at Mana- tawny and Warwick were brought into convenient access to the city Market people could leave their wagons at the canal station and proceed with their produce the rest of the way by boat. "Ports" were created and named along the inland line and "shipyards" established. Farms and villages sprang up at the bcks. Blacksmiths were made busy shoeing the animals which drew the boats Every onejseemed on the point of growing suddenly rich. The response to the '¦Pa. Mag., XXXI, p. 508. 144 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA opening of the line west to the Susquehanna was instant, and this connection quite eclipsed the Schuylkill Navigation Company's achievements. Already on May 17th of that year ( 1827) a writer in the United States Gazette said : "From twelve to twenty boats arrive at the Schuylkill wharves daily [both Schuylkill and Union canal boats], laden with the produce of the country. Want of boats only prevents the numbers from being more. Until the number is in creased, we must be content with the arrival of about four thousand barrels of flour and whiskey (or their bulk in other produce) per day from the Susquehanna country." By the end of July, 1828, four months after the Union Canal was opened, there were seventeen boats in the Susquehanna service, one hundred and twenty regis tered to enter it soon, and one hundred more on the stocks and nearly ready to engage in this profitable employment. The completion of the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, in 1829, added an other link to the chain of "inside" waterways which were to enrich and magnify Philadelphia. On the 4th of July, water was admitted into the works over the en tire line in the presence of the officers of the company, the mayor of Philadelphia, an official delegation from Baltimore, and a large concourse of citizens of Pennsyl vania, Maryland and Delaware. Further to mark the occasion, the barge "Chesa peake" passed through the canal from the Elk to the Delaware. There was an other celebration on October 17th, when the canal was declared to be finished. The ceremonies then were attended by several United States senators and repre sentatives, the mayor and recorder of the city, Judge Hopkinson, John Sergeant, Commodore David Porter, Nicholas Biddle, P. S. Duponceau, John K. Kane, James C. Fisher, Admiral Coffin of the British navy, and many other guests of distinction. The Washington Grays were present with a band of music. The The work had been begun on April 15, 1824, under the direction of a committee, the chairman of which was Silas E. Weir, the successful Philadelphia auctioneer. At his death the place had been taken by Robert M. Lewis. Unexpected delays were experienced because of the character of the soil, and the cost was more than $2,000,000. The population pressed and lined the banks from Delaware City on one side to Chesapeake City on the other; the peninsula separating the two bodies of water had been "cleft asunder" at last, as Mr. Lewis said in an address, wherein he recited the difficulties which he and his associates had been obliged to surmount. The canal had been made larger than the first plans required. It had a top width of sixty feet, and a depth of ten feet. The lock chambers measured twenty-two by one hundred feet. It was computed at the time that it would offer a passage "for the largest vessels that usually navigate" the two bays, "as well as for sea vessels of the smaller class." 1 The favorite route of travel to Baltimore now, until the construction of the railroad from New Castle to Frenchtown, led through this canal. Passengers disembarked from their steamboats at Delaware City and boarded a little packet with a pleasant awning-covered deck, and were drawn by four horses to the Chesapeake. In the same year, in July, 1829, the Lehigh Canal was opened between Mauch Chunk and Easton. On Independence Day, according to a happy plan, seven 1 From Mr. Lewis's address. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 145 boats laden with anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk came up to the docks on the Delaware. The boats were eighty-four feet long and seven feet wide. They had a draught, when empty, of only four and a half inches and would hold seventy-five tons of coal each. This canal had a top width of sixty feet, and its minimum depth was five feet. Its length was forty-seven miles. The boats on their way out to the Delaware passed through eight dams and forty-nine locks. On the same day, the Fourth of July, a packet boat began to carry pas sengers up the Lehigh to Mauch Chunk. The all-water route to New York was not opened until 1834. The Delaware and Raritan Canal, which was to be cut from Bordentown to New Brunswick through the country crossed by the stages which had been run between the packet and steamboat landings for so many years, had long been under discus sion, but subscriptions to the stock were difficult to obtain. The project was taken up seriously in 1828, and the work proceeded with more or less speed during the next five years. The company was incorporated by the New Jersey legislature in 1830. Finally in 1834 it was finished, and packets and arks could pass freely between the two cities, though it was usually accounted too slow a service for the passenger trade. As a freight line the canal was of the greatest value. In 1834 the newspapers announced the arrival at New York in forty-eight hours from Philadelphia, of the schooner "Sarah Ann," laden with dry goods. It was a "novel" spectacle, said a Trenton newspaper, to see "masted vessels gliding through the corn fields and woods," between the Delaware and the Raritan.1 With the opening of this waterway, Philadelphia's connections north, south and west were complete, and trade began to grow. In 1825, the first year the Schuylkill Canal was in operation, 6,500 tons of freight, all of it coal, arrived at Fairmount. The following table 2 will indicate how rapidly it increased : Total tonnage. Tons of coal. Total tolls. 1826 32,404 16,767 $43,108.87 l827 65,501 31,360 58,149.74 1828 105463 47,284 87,171.56 I&29 134,524 79,973 120,039.00 l83° 180,755 89,984 148,165.95 1831 196413 81,854 134,005.92 1832 327,92i 209,271 264,829.70 1833 445,849 252,971 325,486.63 1834 395,720 226,692 299,841.05 1835 535,194 339,5o8 433,643-64 1837 •••726,730 523,152 604,189.57 1840 658,544 452,291 468,380.08 1 Hazard's Register, XIV, p. 240. 2 Reports of President and Managers. vol. n— 10 146 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Until 1834 the depth of the canal was only three feet, which would accom modate boats of not more than 25 tons. In that year various improvements were completed. The depth was increased to four feet, sufficient for boats of 50 and 60 tons. There were 33 dams, 27 canals, and 114 locks on the line, which, deepened and extended, represented a cost to the company of $3,700,000. The small boats before 1834 occupied two weeks on a trip from Port Carbon to Philadelphia and back again ; the larger boats now could complete the round trip in eight days. The opening of connections with the Susquehanna by way of Norristown, Reading and Middletown, made boats from a great distance no unfamiliar sight at Fairmount. In 1830 the "Miltonian," from Milton on the west branch of the Susquehanna, came to Philadelphia and returned in a period of about six weeks. In this time it had brought in one thousand bushels of wheat, car ried a load of oats up to Pottsville, and returning to the city, started home with Schuylkill coal and Nova Scotia plaster. Much coal found its way to New York after the opening of the Delaware and Raritan Canal. In 1843, 278 of the 800 boats in the Schuylkill trade were covered. Below Fairmount they were taken in tow by steam tugs and carried up the Delaware to Bordentown, where horses or mules were again attached to them. More than a month was consumed in making the round trip between the mines and New York. The development of the canal system west of the Susquehanna also went forward rapidly. Stirred by what New York had done with its Erie Canal, a convention was called to meet at Harrisburg in August, 1825, when forty-six of the counties which the state had by that time come to possess, were repre sented by delegates. The legislature a few months before had authorized the creation of a board of canal commissioners, and Governor Shulze appointed John Sergeant and Dr. Robert M. Patterson as members from Philadelphia to forward a work, which was held to mean so much to the future economic posi tion of the city and the state. By 1834 the year that the Delaware and Raritan Canal was ready for boats to and from New York, the western line was open from the Susquehanna to Pittsburg— up the Juniata to Hollidaysburgh at the foot of the mountains, over these by a short portage upon which coaches were used at first and then planes and a horse railroad, and down into water drawn from the Conemaugh and other western streams. The way was now clear to the Ohio and the entire Mississippi valley, an achievement which fired the imaginations of men as nothing else had done in the social history of the con tinent. It is true that the rapids near Louisville, until a canal was built around them, usually compelled a transfer of passengers and freights to wagons at this point. But for years the little Pittsburg boats, choosing their times, had ridden them safely, and Mrs. Trollope passed through in a steamboat while on her travels. At high water, she said, they were "not much felt." It was a day to be remembered in 1834, when Jesse Chrisman left his home on the Lackawanna river, a tributary of the north branch of the Susquehanna, on the "Hit or Miss," with his wife, children, poultry, cows, hogs and house hold goods around him, and proceeded to Hollidaysburgh. There, anticipating what was later so constantly done with better arrangements for the work, his INCLINED PLANE AT PETERS' ISLAND, COLUMBIA RAILROAD, 1838 mmwmk l"',SS™'JS''''m'1 "OIWSTOWI. MLV^y „r^«r TRAIN ON GERMANTOWN RAILROAD IN 1832, SHOWING STATION AT NINTH AND GREEN STREETS HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 147 boat was run upon wheels and drawn over the mountains to be put into water again on the other side where he set sail for St. Louis.1 Even before the line was entirely finished, the price of freights fell mate rially. The New York newspapers announced in 1833 that goods could be sent from that city to Cincinnati, presumably by the Erie Canal, for the "trifling sum" of $2.40 per hundred pounds. The next year the Philadelphians an nounced that from their city the price of transportation of goods to Cincinnati was only $1.30 per hundred pounds. In 183 1 flour came to Philadelphia from Harrisburg, 150 miles, for forty cents a barrel; from Lewistown, 211 miles, for sixty-two and a half cents. Gypsum was carried back to Harrisburg as a re turn cargo for $3 a ton. Cotton from Alabama had come up the Mississippi and Ohio, and over the Pennsylvania canals to Philadelphia, "at a less cost than it could be sent via New Orleans" on coastwise vessels. This was almost revolutionary, but still greater changes were in store for Philadelphia. Her only difficulty was that other cities were making similar and even greater efforts to excel in the competitive contest for the meeds and laurels of peaceful life, which was so actively begun after the conclusion of the War of 1812. The coasting and foreign trade of the port was large, but it does not seem to have reached the point at which it had stood prior to that war. In 1822 ships arrived in Philadelphia as follows: Foreign, 494; coastwise, 1,212. In 1828 the totals were: Foreign, 450; coastwise, 1,847. This indicated a very satisfactory growth only in so far as the coasting trade was concerned. In 1827 it was stated that Philadelphia's commerce with ports east of New York amounted to $7,750,000, nearly half of it with Boston. There was a respectable trade with Providence, Hartford, Nantucket, New Bedford, Portsmouth, Port land, Salem, Newburyport, Hingham, Stonington and some other places. Lum ber for many years had come down the Delaware in great rafts. The supply was not yet exhausted on the upper banks of the stream, and in the spring of the year especially, after the breaking up of the ice, it was a familiar sight to see men manipulating upon the surface of the Delaware round and sawed tim ber lashed together, and bringing it into the yards on the water front for con sumption here, or for reshipment. In June, 1829, a Philadelphia newspaper stated that one thousand rafts containing probably fifty thousand feet each, in all fifty million feet of lumber, had been received in Philadelphia ; an unusually large quantity, because of the high water which had set much timber afloat. A great deal of shipping had been lost in past years and was still in danger, in time of storm, because of no suitable harbor at the Capes. The federal gov ernment was appealed to for this improvement, and statistics were prepared making it seem very necessary. It was stated that from 1807 to 1826 193 ves sels (twenty ships, fifty-seven brigs, forty-eight schooners, forty-three sloops and twenty-five vessels of other kinds) had been wrecked or otherwise damaged for lack of a suitable artificial harbor wherein they might take refuge in time of need. In the space of 168 days, in the severe winter of 1826-7, sixty-two vessels containing cargoes of a value of more than $2,000,000, were put in 1 Hazard's Register, XIV, p. 284. 148 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA jeopardy at the Capes through wind and ice. Horace Binney, Joseph Hop- kinson and other leading citizens warmly urged Congress to action ; and in May, 1828, $250,000 was appropriated for the work which was begun under William Strickland's direction. It was soon completed in a creditable manner, and it was officially reported in 1876 that up to that time no less than 246,011 ships had taken refuge there. At sight of a threatening sky, vessels came in from all directions, like birds from the air, and awaited a more favorable time to proceed on their way. In 1825 the city of Philadelphia had 60,000 tons of registered shipping in the foreign trade; in the coastwise trade 25,000 tons, excluding the river boats. The shipyards, which were principally located in Kensington, were still pros perous. In 1828 thirty-seven vessels, averaging a little over four hundred tons each, were launched in Philadelphia. CHAPTER XXIII. THE AGE OF STEAM. The great system of interior communication by water was scarcely complete when steps were taken to supersede it, and render it almost entirely useless. This result was to be effected by the railroad and the locomotive engine, of which much had been thought and said and written for a number of years. Chimerical it seemed to be, but those who scouted Oliver Evans and other pio neers, lived to realize that they must give practical consideration to this new invention which promised further to revolutionize the business of transporta tion. It was not foreseen that the railroad could be more than an adjunct of the canal. The little cars were to be drawn by horses between points which could not well be connected by water. The canals, in any case, would still be of the greatest value in the conveyance of heavy freight, and there are many today who regret very sincerely that the internal waterways, which the people and the state were put to so much expense to construct, were not enlarged as the need arose, and kept in use. No one who is familiar with the subject of transportation on its scientific side, or who has even casually seen the valuable services performed by the canals which cross the continent of Europe, can be reconciled to this great economic blunder on America's part. Again the country is aroused to the need of internal waterways. It is impossible to prove that stone, ores, minerals, timber and heavy material in the shipment of which speed is not a large consideration, might not be better and more cheaply conveyed by water than by rail. In 1814, Oliver Evans, that ingenious man who nine years earlier had run his amphibious engine from Centre Square to the Schuylkill before plunging it into the river, thus establishing the possibility of steam locomotion overland, wrote concerning a number of suggested plans, such as logs with planks set upon them to guide the wheels, and "paths" in "hard substances such as turn pike roads are made of." Samuel Morey had a project for running carriages under a shed to "protect passengers from the injury of the weather." Evans reminded the public that he had advanced plans for steam railroads forty years before, and he stood ready to make all his promises good if he were afforded pecuniary support. He said: "If they [railroads] cannot be brought to a level, yet they may be brought to within two degrees and a half, the deviation allowed by law on turnpikes, and which would do very well. In cases of great ascents, the steam carriage 149 150 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA might be detached [from the train] and ascend by itself, to take a stand and haul the others up by a rope and a cylinder, or by a windlass [the principle of the inclined plane, later very generally adopted]. In other cases the loaded carriage might be let fall astern by veering ropes to them to slack their motion until the steam carriage had reached descending ground. And then the rope might be wound up again. * * * As soon as any of these plans are adopted, after having made the necessary experiments to prove the principle, and having obtained necessary legislative protection and patronage, I am willing to take of the stock five hundred dollars per mile of the distance of fifty or sixty miles, payable in steam carriages or steam engines invented for the purpose forty years ago, and will warrant them to answer the purpose to the satisfaction of the stockholders ; and even to make steam stages to run twelve or fifteen miles an hour, or take back the engines if required." As we have seen, Thomas Leiper had had an experimental wooden track laid down in a tavern yard in the Northern Liberties. Afterwards at his quarry on Crum Creek in Delaware County, he established what is said to have been the first railroad built in the United States. The cars were drawn a distance of three-quarters of a mile by horses. There the subject stood in and about Philadelphia, when that very enterprising man, Josiah White, took steps to build a railway from his coal mines to the Lehigh river at Mauch Chunk, a dis tance of nine miles. This work was begun in the winter of 1826-27, and was finished in about five months. For seven miles the road was laid down on a graded turnpike over which teams were earlier driven, while the rest of the way presented greater difficulties. The sleepers were of oak set four feet apart. On these were placed pine rails faced with strap iron. The gauge was three feet, seven inches. The rise accomplished in the nine miles was 982 feet. Each train was made up of fourteen cars and was allowed to run to the river side by gravity under the control of a brakeman. The empty wagons, some of wood and some of sheet iron, were drawn up by mules. These animals rode down in the cars, eating fodder as they went, to repeat the service after they had reached the foot of the inclined plane. The cost of building this road was about $3,000 a mile.1 The water route to the Susquehanna, around by Reading, was a very long and indirect one, and as soon as the railroad in any way approached the appear ance of being a practical contrivance, plans were suggested for reaching the river by some short east and west line. Harrisburg, while it was the objective point, was too distant. Middletown, the terminus of the canal, was also too far away, when Columbia, farther south on the bank of the river where its course bent toward the east, was at hand. The shortest route to the Susquehanna led to this place, the distance to be traversed being only a little more than eighty miles ; and surveys made it seem an entirely feasible undertaking to form a road bed over which there could be a more or less expeditious propulsion of cars. In 1822 John Stevens of Hoboken, N. J., who for many years had advocated the construction of railroads, proposed the incorporation of a company for building all or part of a line to Pittsburg, and in the next year, on March 31, 1823, the 1Pa. Mag., V, pp. 360-61. PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD DEPOT AND HOTEL AT ELEVENTH AND MARKET STREETS ABOUT 1880 PHILADELPHIA, GERMANTOWN, AND NORRISTOWN RAIL-ROAD. MCOSIOTIVE ENGINB. I^TOTICE.— The Locomotive Engine, (uuilr by 1% M. W. Baldwin, of *his city,) will depart UAtLY, when the weather is fair, with a Thais o? Passesger Cabs, commencing en Monday the26ifo iost. , at the tdlesitiglwura, viz: — FBOM ?HILAl>il.rai4. I IROM GXBHAHTOWn. ¦'. , , At H o'c! -ek, A. M. | At 1 2 o'clock,, ii, iV.- ¦•j«» 1 O'clock, H. M. { " 8 o'clock, P. M.r'r .«. a o'clock, P. M. | " 4 o'clock, P. M^V The Cars drawn by horses, will also depart.*'* usual, from Philadelphia at 9 o'clock, A. M.s awf' from Germantown at 10 o'clock, A. M., and at the above mentioned hours when the weather is not fair. The points of starting, are from the Depot, tt the corner of Green and Ninth street, Philadelphia; and' from the Main street, near the centre of German* town. Whole Cars can be takes. Tickets, 25 cents. nor 24-31 TIMETABLE OF GERMANTOWN RAILROAD BSBBSlBBlxIBSBTIBSS RAILROAD CAR, PIRST OF THE EIGHT-WHEELED TYPE, 1836 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 151 legislature of Pennsylvania granted a charter to "The President, Directors and Company of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company." The incorporators were John Connelly who was elected president, Michael Baker, Horace Binney, Stephen Girard and Samuel Humphreys, all of Philadelphia; Emmor Bradley of Chester County ; Amos Ellmaker of Lancaster city, and John Barbour and William Wright of Columbia. The object of the company was the construction of a railroad between Philadelphia and Columbia which was to be laid out by and according to the plans of John Stevens. But so little was known about the railroad and its possible usefulness that few subscriptions to the stock were received. The public mind was fully occupied with the canal building schemes, and to make head against them was very difficult. The Harrisburg convention in 1825, and the canal commissioners took up the subject, advancing it considerably in the public esteem. Philadelphia would be ruined, said an innkeeper on one of the pikes. "No railroad can carry the freight that the old Conestogas do." "What is a railroad?" asked a correspondent of the Philadelphia Gazette. The editor did not know. He referred the question to his readers. It was concluded that the railroad would be an "iron railroad," and it was believed that it would run west from Hamiltonville, paralleling the Lancaster Pike. Sentiment was made by a number of town meetings in Philadelphia, Lan caster, Columbia and other places which would presumably profit by the com pletion of the projected work. The testimony of William Strickland, who had been sent abroad by the Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements, was plainly in favor of the enterprise. "I state distinctly my full conviction of the utility and decided superiority of railways above every other mode as means of conveyance," he wrote, "and one that ought to command serious attention and adoption by the people of Pennsylvania." The chartering of another company in 1826, "The Lancaster, Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad Company," was still unavailing and it remained for the legis lature itself to locate the work. Major John Wilson was sent out at the head of a considerable body of men to survey the line. Various routes were sug gested, as will always be the case. Various neighborhoods contested, one with another, for the advantages which the completed road would afford. Major Wilson resigned, and Major D. B. Douglass, of the United States Military Acad emy at West Point, took his place before the points in dispute were definitely determined. In the main, however, the line followed that which had been recom mended by Major Wilson. Its eastern terminus was to be the plateau in front of "Belmont," Judge Peters' place on the west bank of the Schuylkill. He had died in 1828, and since the dam was built this, and all of the other Schuylkill seats, were in much less favor as places of summer residence. The level being too high for a crossing of the river, an inclined plane was to be built and the cars raised and lowered by a stationary engine. The east bank was to be reached by a bridge at Peters' Island, which was soon known as the Columbia Bridge (whence the Columbia avenue of our later time), to enter tracks laid in the bed of the canal which ran under the brow of Lemon Hill — a projected section of the old Delaware and Schuylkill canal, dug as long ago as in Robert Morris's day when he had been the proprietor of these lands. Thus the road would reach the 152 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Schuylkill Navigation Company's wharves, and going down what it now Pennsyl vania avenue, it would meet Broad street at Callowhill street in Spring Garden. !Als the charter required the road to enter Philadelphia, the track would be ex tended south on Broad street to Vine street where it would touch the limits of the city. This was all very well for Spring Garden and the Northern Liberties, but it promised little for the city itself, and the mercantile interests concentrated on the Delaware river front. It was specified, therefore, that there should be branch lines. The city of Philadelphia should obligate itself to continue the track laid by the state from Callowhill to Vine on Broad street as far as South street. The connection with the Delaware front would be by way of the Northern Liber ties and Penn Township Railroad, which had been built on Willow street, the name given to the street which had resulted after a culvert was thrown over Pegg's Run. But this lateral extension seemed not to satisfy all the requirements of the case, and an agitation for a line to run between the Schuylkill and the Delaware within the city limits was begun. Some approved and some protested. At length, Market street was selected by councils, in spite of the fact that this highway below Eighth street was filled with market houses. The sheds were re constructed. Slender iron pillars took the places of the heavy brick piers. The overhanging eaves were abolished and a single track was laid close to the build ings on the north side to run down to the warehouses at the foot of Dock street. The work upon the Columbia Railroad and its connections went forward rapidly after 1830. By the spring of 1832 the proprietors of one or more of the Pittsburg stage lines placed a car on the road at the head of the inclined plane at Belmont, to which point they conveyed their passengers from the city, and drew this car by horses as far west as they could to what is nowadays, in rail way building, usually called the railhead. There stages awaited the coming of the passengers and the journey was resumed.1 After the road from Broad street to the Schuylkill was completed and before the construction of the bridge, passengers were carried over the river at Peters' Island in boats. In the summer of 1832, "pleasure cars," which were of course little more than the horse cars familiar for so many years in the streets, were run hourly from Broad and Callow hill streets to Lemon Hill. The fare was twenty-five cents, and the trip was accounted a very novel and agreeable experience. The completion of the Willow street line extended the field of the "pleasure car," and in the summer of 1834 one ran at intervals from Third Street Hall, the name given to a large station at Third and Willow streets, to the Columbia Bridge. It was a beautiful ride along the riverside.2 In September, 1832, the rails had been laid as far as Paoli in Chester County. Meantime, even before there was yet connection with Philadelphia, the people of West Chester incorporated a company and threw out a spur to join the line of the Columbia Railroad. Three miles of the road were finished by the Fourth of July, 1 Tyrone Power was carried west in this way by the "Good Intent" line in March, 1834. Twenty-one miles of the road were then in use. — Impressions, I, p. 176. 2 "It is a fashionable and delightful ride in the cars to the river."— Phila. As It Is, 1833, p. 18. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 153 1832, and a car large enough to hold thirty passengers was put into the service. The road was formally opened in September of that year, and awaited the railhead from Philadelphia. The company, which proposed to use its own cars upon the state road, established a separate station in the city, long known as the West Chester Depot. It was situated on the east side of Broad street south of Race street, and combined hotel with station accommodations for the Chester County people. The first car to pass over the entire line from Broad street, across the bridge, up the plane, out the road to the junction and into West Chester, made the trip on Christmas Day, 1833. In April, 1834, one track to Columbia was ready for use, and a party which included the canal commissioners and many members of the legislature then made a trip over the line. Drawn by the new locomotive, the only one in service on the road, named the "Black Hawk" in honor of the well-known Indian chief, they reached the West Chester Depot in Philadelphia in eight and a half hours from Lancaster, including stops to take on water for the engine and to refresh the passengers. All along the line "the progress of the train was hailed with hearty acclamations by crowds of persons collected to witness the novel spectacle." x The second track was opened in October, when Governor Wolf and his suite were numbered among the passengers. They were received in Lancaster by the militia companies and left that borough for Philadelphia "amid the discharges of cannon and cheers of the people." 2 The governor was received at the Broad street depot by a great crowd and placed in a barouche drawn by four gray horses for conduct to his lodgings at Mrs. Yohe's hotel.3 The completion of the work, therefore, dates from 1834, only about seven years after the opening of the water route over the Union Canal, through Reading and Middletown. The principal engineering features of the line were the stone bridge over the Schuylkill, the inclined planes by which the cars were raised and lowered at Peters' Island and at Columbia, and two timber bridges crossing the Great and Little Con estoga rivers near Lancaster. One of these was 1,400 feet in length resting on ten piers ; the other 1,000 feet in length. The plane at the Schuylkill end of the line was 2,800 feet long and accomplished a rise of 187 feet. The plane at Colum bia, 1,800 feet long, made a change of level of 90 feet. The cars were drawn up and down the tracks on the planes by endless ropes, that one at Belmont being nine inches in circumference and weighing eight tons. The trip was quite safe but many passengers preferred to leave their places, and walk up the slope. At the top of the hill in front of Belmont mansion the "eye was gladdened by one of the most delightful prospects imaginable." It charmed C. A. Murray who wrote of the scene: "The Schuylkill wound gracefully round the base of the eminence on which I stood, his banks fringed with the oak, the poplar and the weeping willow and studded with many white and smiling villas, their creeper-covered arbors and neat lawns reminding me of some of those on the banks of Father Thames ; while stretched on the seaward plain lay the peaceful city of Brotherly Love, its 'Hazard's Register, XIII, p. 297. 2 Ibid., XIV, p. 256. sIbid., XIV, p. 240. 154 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA bright spires glittering above the light hazy smoke which partly hid and partly revealed the humbler dwellings beneath." 1 The pleasures of a journey to Columbia were warmly vaunted. "The country through which the road winds its way," said one writer, "is unsurpassed in interest and beauty. The whole line of the railroad, and the Lancaster turnpike, pursuing the same course and alternately crossing each other, is for many miles richly studded with magnificent and imposing mansions, delightful villas, substantial farmhouses and capacious barns and granaries," which presented to "the enrap tured gaze the appearance of one extensive and continuous village, the abode of health, industry and content, the home of the happy, the virtuous and the frugal." 2 Murray spoke of the country which the railway penetrated in the highest terms. "At this season [May]," he says, "it was one continued waving sea of rye, clover and wheat; the farmhouses were almost all whitewashed with a neat garden in front, and on one or each side stood a large orchard, the trees of which were planted with the utmost regularity and their fragrant boughs teeming with blossoms." 3 Meanwhile the railroad builders in other directions were not idle. There was so much traffic to Germantown that several stages, making frequent departures, had had profitable employment for many years. Impulse was given to the scheme by a visit of Edward H. Bonsall to Josiah White's famous gravity railroad on the Lehigh.4 The little German village of the eighteenth century, famous for its stockings and its wagons, had now become a place of over 4,000 people. They had had a period of interest in Merino sheep which were bred and sold at high prices with a view to securing a superior quality of wool. Later mulberry tree and silk worm culture had claimed the attention of many. In 1839 in the Highfield cocoon ery 1,500,000 silk worms were at one time feeding. Over 400,000 mulberry trees were planted in the grounds of the establishment.5 Buckingham, who visited Germantown in the thirties, said : "The whole aspect of the place is more like an English village than anything I have ever seen in the United States." It was in truth, a residential suburb for merchants and other well-to-do people whose busi ness called them to the city daily. It still consisted "only of one long street," but this was "the longest perhaps in the United States," nearly five miles in extent. Both sides of the way were set with houses of stone with steep, sloping, shingle roofs.6 The need of a railway to connect the town with Philadelphia was obvious. Public meetings were held, and the ultimate destination of the road was set at Norristown. The movement began to assume definite form in 1830. Competent engineers were employed to make the surveys. In 1831 the legislature granted a charter to the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad Company, and the stock was offered for sale. There was a scramble to subscribe, and premiums were soon being paid for the rights. John G. Watmough was the president for 1 Travels, I, p. 155. 2Phila. As It Is, 1833, P- 115. 8 Travels, I, p. 156. i Pa. Mag., VI, p. 386. 5 History of Phila. by Daniel Bowen, p. 183. 'Buckingham, Eastern and Western States, II, p. 75. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 155 the first year. He was succeeded by Mr. Bonsall, earlier the treasurer, and the active promoter of the undertaking. The rails were laid as far as Germantown before June 6, 1832, when there was a formal opening of the line in the presence of councilmen from New York and other guests from a distance. Only a few weeks after the "pleasure cars" were running on the state road from Broad street to Lemon Hill, therefore, Philadelphians could ride in similar vehicles to German- town. The first trip was attended with much excitement. Crowds were present at the point of departure at Green street. A brass band rendered music for their enter tainment. Nine cars built after the pattern of the English mail coach were placed in file along the track. They were brightly painted and each had a name as was at first customary — the Benjamin Franklin, the Robert Morris, the William Penn, the Germantown, the Penn Township, the Madison, the Jefferson, the Philadel phia, and the President. Twenty passengers could be accommodated inside and fifteen or sixteen on the roof. A horse stood in shafts in front of each car ready to draw it out over the green fields through the little villages into the station on the Main street in Germantown. After a dinner at Mrs. Heft's tavern the party returned to the city. A writer tells, in the United States Gazette, of the trip : "During the progress of the cars both ways, but especially returning, they were greeted with the hearty cheers of thousands who were gazing with anxious curi osity at these strangers. Each promontory, elevated point and near window, was occupied with the curious. * * * The hat was flourished, labor swung its spade and mattock, the boys shouted and the girls waved their handkerchiefs in hearty felicitation and good wishes. * * * "We ought to remark, that the horses are attached to the car in such a manner that should they bolt from the track and fall no injury occurs thereby to the car or passengers. * * * "The labors of the animals were much greater yesterday than they will be hereafter. The friction of the axles is now very great, and the pathway is yet rough. These matters will correct themselves shortly." 1 On the following day, June 7th, the cars began to run on a regular schedule There were six cars from Philadelphia daily; the first at seven a. m. and the last at six p. m. Six cars returned; the first at eight a. m., the last at seven p. m. President Bonsall, in his announcement, said: "The cars will start punctually at the hours above mentioned and the company have made arrangements to accommodate a very large number of travelers Parties and families can be supplied with whole cars. Tickets can be had at the depot at the corner of Green and Ninth streets. Fare each way, 25 cents Chil dren under 12 years of age, half price." "The ride is as delightful as it is novel," wrote an observer in 1833, and it con tinued to attract excursionists for several years. The plan of extending the road over the hills by way of White Marsh and Plymouth, to Norristown was upon further consideration abandoned. The legislature passed an act permitting the company to alter its route and it determined to swing its track up the east bank of the Schuylkill. Leaving the Germantown line near Nicetown this road crossed the 1 Haz. Reg., IX, p. 367. 156 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Wissahickon at Robeson's Mill by a marvelous wooden bridge nearly five hundred feet in length — now that the viaduct has been rebuilt in stone, still one of the orna ments of the neighborhood — to the new industrial village of Manayunk, supplied with power for its mills from Flat Rock Dam, to Spring Mill, whose great natural fountain, gushing out of the earth, and whose vineyards, had long attracted at tention, and on to Stony Creek at Norristown. Both the spring and the creek had earlier been looked upon as possible sources for the city's water supply. Norristown, named for the Norris family of Philadelphia, who had extensive interests here, was now a place of something over 1,000 inhabitants, only one- fourth the size of Germantown. It was in sight of the historic hills of Valley Forge. Opposite lay the homes of many prosperous Swedish settlers who had established a pretty church on the river bank. Behind it lay a prosperous, well- inhabited region, early populated by the German sectarians. Norristown was their county town, the capital of the upper end of the old Philadelphia County which had now become Montgomery County. The road was opened as far as Manayunk in October, 1834, about the time the state was completing the western end of its line to Columbia. Four of "the com pany's handsome cars," each drawn by "two fine horses" started from the depot at Ninth and Green streets. In the middle of the bridge spanning the Wissahickon gorge each car was brought to a standstill and the passengers cheered. In Mana yunk the party proceeded to Snyder's Hotel to eat, drink and make merry. There were addresses by S. Nevins, the president of the company, Henry Troth, W. D. Lewis, Thomas Biddle, Major Chew and others.1 The celebration was repeated in Norristown, in August, 1835, when the road, following the sinuosities of the stream and the canal, which was then thickly afloat with boats, reached that place. The cars, which included a fine one built in Phila delphia, called the "Victory," were by this time arranged in trains and they were drawn by locomotives. They were decorated with flags and a band of music ac companied the excursionists. The hill tops and slopes from Manayunk to Norris town were filled with people. It was pronounced with some truth "a road that for beauty and variety of scenery, and absolutely enchanting prospects is not exceeded by any other in America." The company dined under a tent on the banks of the Schuylkill at Norristown. The fare for the trip was fixed at the low rate of thirty-seven and a half cents, and the time used in covering the seventeen miles was about one hour. Those who had plans for a railroad to run upon the opposite bank of the Schuylkill river were not idle. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company was chartered in April, 1833. The line was to extend from the state road at Peters' Island, now Belmont, northwardly fifty-four miles to the city of Reading. Work was started in 1835, and portions of the route were ready for use three years later, in 1848. The Flat Rock tunnel was yet to be completed but early in Decem ber, 1839, a train of 80 cars conveying 60 persons, 1,635 barrels of flour, 73% tons of blooms, 6 tons of coal, 2 hogsheads of whiskey, and some other articles left Reading and by the aid of three locomotives made its way to Philadelphia. The great importance of the road as a coal carrier wherein its wealth has lain, was at- 1 Haz. Reg., XIV, p. 276. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 157 tained by an extension to Pottsville with spurs into the heart of the principal an thracite mining region. Work on the upper section went forward rapidly. On Monday, January 10, 1842, the entire line to Mount Carbon was formally opened. Companies of Schuylkill County militia, many collierymen, railway contractors and citizens with banners and bands of music, gathered up along the way from Pottsville, entered Philadelphia on that day. The occasion was marked by a pro cession in the streets of the Schuylkill valley excursionists and by much congratu lation and merry-making. They returned home in their trains on Thursday. To bring the freight of this rich mining district to tide-water, a branch five miles long was swung over the river by a bridge built near the Falls of Schuyl kill, to Richmond, which in a few years came to be a most important port for the distribution of coal. The route to New York, meanwhile, was not left unconsidered by the rail way builders. The most eligible way seemed to be that suggested by the stage lines to Amboy, and the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company was formed. John Stevens, who had projected the state road to Columbia, also stood sponsor for this undertaking. Major Wilson was again the surveyor. He commenced his labors in the summer of 1830, and by January, 1833, a single track was laid between Bordentown on the Delaware and Amboy on New York Bay.1 By the first day of the year 1834 the new railroad was within eleven miles of Camden, and the entire line was put into regular service in the winter and spring of 1834-35, at about the same time therefore that the first boats were passing over the canal which was built to connect the Delaware and the Raritan. The Camden and Amboy boats to Camden left Chestnut street wharf; and later, after 1838, Walnut street wharf, where J. B. Bloodgood kept a hotel in connec tion with the ticket-office. What became the foundation for the line to New York of this day began as the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad, which was incorporated by the legis lature of Pennsylvania in 1832. It was to run from some point in Kensing ton through Frankford and Bristol to Morrisville. The line was ready for use from end to end in November, 1834. A terminal station was built at the point where Front street crossed the Frankford Road in Kensington, which was long known as the Kensington Depot. The combination hotel and railway station at Third and Willow streets, called Third Street Hall, was meant to be a down town terminal for passengers and freight, a plan which would have been greatly forwarded if the trains on the Trenton railroad could have been brought into it. This was the expectation, but obstacles which reached the point of violence and riot were put in the way of the laying down of the tracks through so populous a section of the city, and the Kensington Depot continued in use. In a short time the company obtained permission to throw a bridge across the Delaware, and its trains entered Trenton, doing away with the ferry trip earlier obligatory on its passengers. Only one more railway enterprise remains to be considered in connection with 1 Tyrone Power passed over the line in September, 1833. The cars were then drawn by horses at the rate of about eight miles an hour. When he again made the trip late in October locomotives were in use. Impressions, I, pp. 51, 85. 158 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the history of transportation in Philadelphia for this period; namely, the south ern road. There must be a line to carry passengers along the route of the Bal timore post road. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company had a little pre ceded the railway builders in Pennsylvania by the construction of a piece of track over which trains were run between Baltimore and EUicott's Mills, a distance of fifteen miles in May, 1830, and was pushing its lines into the west. In 1830 a company began to lay rails across the Delaware and Chesapeake peninsula be tween New Castle and Frenchtown, two or three miles below Elkton. This ren dered a stage ride, or a boat ride on the canal from bay to bay, no longer neces sary to Philadelphia passengers coming from or going in that direction. But the trip down the Delaware was tiresome and slow. Southwark, not to be behind the Northern Liberties with its Willow street line and the city with the Market street line, projected a cross line of its own between the two rivers. The tracks were laid on Prime street, and a spur was built up Broad street to connect with the city railroad which stopped at South street. The line was finished in November, 1834, and thereafter cars could be run from a point on the Delaware just below the Old Swede's Church to Broad street, up that street to the Columbia Railroad, and by the tracks on Pennsyl vania avenue to the bridge at Peters' Island. In 1831 the legislature had chartered the Philadelphia and Delaware County Railroad, to run from Philadelphia to the state line. Progress was slow. In 1836 the name of the road was changed to the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Balti more Railroad, and the next two years witnessed a great deal of activity. Mean time a Delaware company, the Wilmington and Susquehanna, was at work in that state and two companies with Maryland charters, the Baltimore and Port Deposit and the Delaware and Maryland Railroad Companies, were constructing more southern sections of the line. William Strickland, Benjamin H. Latrobe, Jr., and other excellent engineers directed the undertaking. The impulse behind the movement came from the man to whom a monument was placed on the west bank of the river near Gray's Ferry, Matthew Newkirk. Mr. Newkirk came to the city in 1810, a poor Jersey boy. He at first held a humble position in a jobbing house and then, aided by his sister, opened a little dry goods store. From this he passed, in 1821, to a large dry goods business, amassing so large a fortune, that he was able to retire in 1839. He had much money to invest in manufacturing and railway enterprises, and in real estate, and built himself a marble mansion at the corner of Thirteenth and Arch streets, which found use later as the hall of the St. George's Society. As a director of the United States Bank he was able to call upon its aid, and by main strength built and established the Baltimore Railroad. The constituent companies were combined as the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Company under his presidency in 1838.1 The road was opened from Wilmington to Bal timore in 1837, and the next year the trains came to the western bank of the Schuylkill river. The passengers were at first brought into town in omnibuses. 1 Mr. Newkirk died in 1869. He was prominent as a temperance apostle. Once Henry Clay was his guest and the town came to his house to honor the distinguished states man. Nothing stronger than Fairmount water was offered to the company. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 159 Meanwhile steps were taken to find a course for the rails, and in 1837-38 a bridge, with a draw of sufficient size to allow the colliers to pass, called the New kirk Viaduct, was thrown across the Schuylkill below the floating bridge at Gray's Ferry. From this point the rails were extended to meet the Southwark railroad at Broad and Prime streets. A piece of ground 104 feet front on the south side of Market street below Eleventh street, which seems to have adjoined or in cluded the old Mansion House hotel property was purchased, and a passenger and freight station was established at this place. In order that tolls could be collected on the bridge,1 from those who preferred to pass over it in stead of the floating bridge, the locomotives did not cross the river. Between that point and Eleventh and Market streets, about three miles, horses drew the cars at a trot. An English visitor leaving the city station wrote amusingly of this "search for a locomotive." The company made many improvements in railroad management. Mr. Newkirk is credited with introducing the eight instead of the four-wheeled passenger coach, the system of issuing checks for baggage and other reforms.2 Except in the city where the engine was barred the horse had had only a short period of service. The application of steam to this work had been engag ing many engineers' minds in Europe and America, and a locomotive was evolved. Its capacity to draw cars, coupled together in trains, was seen to be so considerable that the building of railroads was given a great impetus. With the horse and mule only in view, so much capital would not have found its way into this industry. Some locomotives were being imported from England for the New Castle and Frenchtown, the Camden and Amboy and other American rail roads, but Philadelphia soon became an important center for their manufacture. Colonel Stephen H. Long, a government engineer, and William Norris a Phila- delphian of a scientific turn of mind, early gave their attention to the work of designing and constructing locomotives. In two or three years Colonel Long withdrew from the partnership, and Mr. Norris continued the business alone. Later the firm was Norris Brothers and still later Richard Norris and Son. The works were at Bush Hill. As early as in 1839 Mr- Norris exported a locomotive to England. Other shipments followed, and upwards of 200 of his engines were soon in use on European roads. Another very prominent firm of manufacturers was that of Eastwick and Harrison (Andrew M. Eastwick and Joseph Harrison, Jr.). They exported locomotives in considerable numbers, and for strong inducements discontinued their business here in order to accept an offer to build and equip government rail ways in Russia. This contract led to the establishment of their fortunes, which they later came home to enjoy.3 1The draw was 57 feet in ..width. It could be opened by two men in less than two minutes. 2 A Memorial of Matthew Newkirk, and early reports of the company. 3 Mr. Eastwick's firm was at first Garrett and Eastwick. He employed as a foreman Joseph Harrison, Jr., who had gained some mechanical knowledge in the Norris shops, and who was admitted to partnership at Mr. Garrett's death in 1837. Mr. Eastwick and Mr. Harrison went to Russia in 1844. Upon their return in a few years Mr. Eastwick pur- 160 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The plant which was destined to attain the largest measure of success, how ever, was that of Matthias W. Baldwin, a young man who about 1817 had come to Philadelphia from New Jersey to learn the jeweler's trade. He later formed a partnership with David H. Mason, a machinist, and they opened a shop in the neighborhood of Fourth and Walnut streets. They at first made bookbinders' tools, rolls for printing calicoes, stationary steam engines and other machinery. The shop was removed in 1827 to Minor street where Mason retired and Bald win continued the business. In 1830 Franklin Peale, who now since his father's death in 1827, conducted the Museum, asked Baldwin to build a model of a loco motive for exhibition purposes. This was of sufficient size to admit of its being attached to two small cars on which visitors were permitted to ride. The object lesson was so impressive that the managers of the Germantown Railroad placed an order with Baldwin for a similar machine to draw the cars over their line. This engine which ran upon four wheels was not inappropriately called "Old Ironsides," the name by which it has been known in the annals of railroading ever since. The engine, on its trial run on November 23, 1832, traveled at the rate of about twenty-eight miles an hour for a distance of six miles. The president of the road, who at first passed back and forth with the locomotive to see that no accident befell it, recalled that on approaching the city the track was flanked on both sides with dense masses of people. At the other end of the line "farmers and others for miles around Germantown came to witness the arrival of the won derful train." x The next day four cars filled with passengers were conveyed to Germantown in twenty-eight minutes, and on the 26th, the engine drew a train of six loaded cars. At first it was not taken out on rainy days, not so much from desire to preserve it from the elements as from belief that its wheels would not clutch the tracks when they were wet. Then horses continued to be used. In April, 1833, a second locomotive, manufactured at the West Point foun dry, was added to the equipment of the road. "Their continual passing and re passing each other with their trains of cars at great speed," said a writer in one of the newspapers, "afford a spectacle at once highly novel and interesting to our citizens." These engines were soon drawing little goods cars as well as passenger coaches, and it was not difficult now to convince the people that animal power on the railroad would before long be a thing of the past. In 1833 two locomotives were propelling trains on the Camden and Amboy Railroad between the Delaware river and New York bay. A third was tried in July of that year, and ran for a distance of thirteen miles between Bordentown and Hightstown in thirty-one minutes. In the next year, 1834, a locomotive called the "Black Hawk," which was built by Long and Norris, was placed upon the Columbia road, being in service, as we have seen, when the first train passed over the line, and from this time forward the development proceeded regularly and rapidly. Mr. Baldwin chased the old Bartram Gardens on the banks of the Schuylkill, and built a handsome house on the estate. Mr. Harrison established himself in a fine home on Eighteenth street below Walnut street where he made an excellent and rather noted collection of pictures. 1 Pa. Mag., VI, p. 387. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 161 secured a number of orders from the state road to Columbia, the first machine being the "Lancaster," which was finished in June, 1834, and the second the "Columbia" in September, 1834. In 1837 he employed 300 men in his shops which had been removed to Broad and Hamilton streets, a portion of the present site. Before 1840 he had built 140 locomotives of which twenty-six were for the Columbia Railroad. His engines were shipped to nearly every state in the Union and to the West Indies. In 1841 the boast was made of a Philadelphia and Reading Railroad locomotive, the "Gowan and Marx," a freight engine which had been built by Eastwick and Harrison and named for a London banking firm, that though it itself weighed but eleven tons it drew from Reading to the Colum bia Bridge 101 loaded cars of a total gross weight of 423 tons. The time oc cupied for the trip, 54^ miles, was 5 hours and 33 minutes. The engine in this time had burned 2x/i tons of coal. It was computed that the cost of the trip was $105.94 or about 40 cents a ton. The freight on the train consisted of 2,002 bar rels of flour, "equal to the estimated consumption of the city for a whole week," 459 kegs of nails, 5 hogsheads of whiskey, 52 barrels of whiskey, 20 hogsheads of corn meal, 7 hogsheads of linseed oil, and 20 tons of band iron. The introduction upon the railroads of these heavy machines, drawing not one car, as the horses did, but trains of cars, called for the improvement of the track. The rails at first were of wood, which had been faced with strap-iron — iron bars flattened out and fastened with spikes. These rails were set upon wooden sills or sleepers, or else upon stone. Frequently the plate iron worked loose and when struck by the wheels the ends, called "snake heads," were driven up through the bottoms of the cars, a common source of dangerous and indeed fatal accidents in the early history of railroading. The progress to the solid iron T rail was not very long delayed, and travel, in one respect at least, became more safe. Changes are made slowly. The first railway car followed the pattern of a stage coach, just as at a later period in our history, the first motor vehicle was made to look like a phaeton or a cab. The rails were laid along the lines of the turnpikes ; water was still to be used except where overland travel seemed to be quite essential to direct passage, and to a fair degree of speed. In another mat ter, the influence of custom was not at once to be overcome. The first railroads were designed to be toll roads, like the turnpikes and the canals. The managers were not themselves to engage in the business of transportation, but to provide the means for others to engage in it upon payment of a price. Travelers were to provide their own horses and cars, just as they provided their own horses and coaches on the turnpike roads, and their own packets and barges on the canals. This was particularly true of the railroad to Columbia. No individual or com pany of individuals could build the road, so the state undertook the work. A time soon came when it was too expensive, as well as inconvenient, for the individual shipper or the separately organized freight carrying or packet company to build and control his or its own cars, and when the locomotive appeared the scheme was nearly at the point of becoming quite impossible. Furthermore, disputes were constantly arising as to the right of way. There were no time-tables to determine departures and arrivals. On the levefls of the portage road over the mountains, which contained many curves, there were fre- 162 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA quent altercations among the drivers. A center post was set half way between the turnouts. If two cars met that one which had passed this point might go on. The horses were lashed and speeded furiously until they reached this post, when they were allowed to proceed at a more leisurely rate. Collisions in which pas sengers were killed by reason of the stubbornness of the drivers were not un known.1 When the locomotive appeared its services for a time were for hire to those who wished steam conveyance for their cars. Horses and locomotives between Philadelphia and Columbia were in use simultaneously at different hours and on different portions of the track, but the system was at length seen to be a make-shift, and a time had come when the owner of the railroad must also own the equipment, direct the arrival and departure of trains and take over the carry ing business until it rested completely in his hands. Upon the conditions which prevailed in Philadelphia before the state line was yet in the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, light is thrown by the letters of Jay Cooke, the financier of the Civil War, who came to Philadelphia in the spring of the year 1838 to assist his brother-in-law, William G. Moorhead, in the management of a western packet line. The impossibility of one man conveying passengers and freight on a railroad, as the Conestoga teamsters, the canal boat men, and the stage drivers had earlier done, led to the creation of packet companies which sold stock, invested in cars and boats, opened booking offices and sought for trade. Just as the West Chester Railroad Company kept up traffic between that town and Philadelphia over the Columbia Railroad, so a multitude of companies which owned no track, paid for similar privileges to Pitts burg and other places. The chief objective point of the day in the western coun try was Pittsburg, where connections were made with the navigation of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The principal line was Leech and Company's, but there were many others, and they all actively contended for trade. Some led very brief and unprofitable lives, and disappeared. Business for so many lacked, and the strife of competition, often of advantage to the public, brought in this case no very particularly large benefits. Cooke was now a boy of sixteen, and his entrance upon life in Philadelphia, after a boyhood spent principally in a small town in Ohio, led to many interesting impressions. His company was called the Washington Packet Line. Its city office was in Chestnut street below Third street, and its cars left a "depot" on Broad street immediately opposite the West Chester House. The owners had about $150,000 invested in, the line and it was computed that their expenses would be about $75,000 annually. The young clerk rose at five o'clock in the morning to make out his waybills and manifests. The competition for passengers was so keen that the company was obliged to call for them at their homes with omnibuses to carry them to the depot. A half dozen hired "runners," and Jay Cooke himself, attended at the wharf when the New York boats came in, in order to secure passengers. Other lines sent their men to the scene, and the din was terrific. Luggage was pulled out of the hands of travelers by the con tending agents who often got into personal altercations leading to their arrest. Cooke wrote home that he himself would "be flying into the Delaware some half iPa. Mag., II, p. 381. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 163 dozen times in the day," but for the fact that several of his men were always at hand to guard him.1 The company protected its men in whatever they might do, and paid their fines philosophically. When a passenger was extricated from the crowd, he and his luggage were directed to a hotel and he was carefully watched until he had purchased a ticket. The lines had various advantages which they loudly cried and generally ad vertised. Much of this had to do with price and speed. Leech had relays of fresh horses every ten or twelve miles on the canals to expedite the passage. He announced that he could carry daily sixty tons of goods; he had two trains of ten cars each. Each car would hold three tons or two boat-loads. Some com panies had boats in which stoves were provided for immigrants desirous of cook ing their own meals as they proceeded on their way. Others used boats of un usually light draft, so that greater speed could be obtained. Facilities for the storage of extra baggage below decks, eight-wheeled cars to "insure safety," and other comforts and conveniences, were heralded from day to day, and from year to year. Some of the boats were built in sections which could be lifted out of the water by stationary engines, set upon the tracks and hauled overland without disturb ing either goods or passengers. When it was necessary to put the sections into the water again they were deftly rejoined. There were also portable boats which could be removed from the water in their entirety. They had the shape of car bodies and were equally adapted to the canal or the railroad. Though a portage railroad had been built over the mountains to take the place of the coaches, the time between the two cities was not brought very much under three and a half, or four days. Freight was twelve days on the way. The best time for freight and passengers by the all-canal route from Philadelphia to Pittsburg via Reading was about twelve days. The through fare on the best lines was $10 or $12. Freights had become so low that nine companies entered into an agreement to raise them to $1.25 per hundred pounds for dry goods; $1.12% for hardware; $2.50 for hats, bonnets, clocks, pianos, looking glasses, aqua fortis and gunpowder; and $3 for carriages and willow baskets. Delays were not unusual. In 1838 the bridge over Valley Creek in Chester County was burned, and passengers and freights must be hauled around it. A little later, the bank of a canal broke, and stages and wagons must be resorted to by the various companies over a distance of twenty-eight miles. After a few months, William G. Moorhead's company failed, leaving Jay Cooke to find his way back to his home in Ohio as best he could. It was forgotten, when Moorhead became the silent partner in the firm of Jay Cooke and Company, which sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bonds for the government of the United States, that it had once not been safe — as Cooke wrote home — for him (Moorhead) or "any one else who was an owner in the concern^ to come into the city." 2 A trip to Pittsburg at this time was a novel experience. There are many descriptions of it. Charles Dickens has left one in his American Notes for the 1 Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 46. 2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 48. 164 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA year 1842. He boarded a boat in Harrisburg on a Friday evening, reached the foot of the plane at Hollidaysburgh on Sunday morning, and came to Pitts burg Monday evening. The line over the mountains was described by Joseph John Gurney, an Eng lish Friend who made the journey in 1837, as "a wondrous railroad, consisting of a series of levels and inclined planes, rising in all about 1,400 feet from the first level. Along the levels," he continues, "we were drawn by horses ; up the inclined planes by ropes and pulleys and steam power; and were let down by similar ropes in the descent." He considered it a "vast triumph of human art and enterprise." To Harriet Martineau it was "the stupendous portage railroad." As a mat ter of fact the work was very remarkable. David Stevenson, an English civil engineer, after seeing it wrote : "America now numbers among its many wonder ful artificial lines of communication a mountain railway which, in boldness of design and difficulty of execution, I can compare to no modern work I have ever seen, excepting perhaps the passes of the Simplon and Mont Cenis in Sardinia." 1 There were in all ten inclined planes, five on the eastern and five on the west ern slope of the mountains. This Allegheny portage railroad was thirty-six miles long, and included a tunnel nearly 1,000 feet in length, the first to be constructed for the use of a railroad anywhere in America. Each station was provided with two steam engines, the second being at hand to serve in case of accident. Four cars, each loaded with 7,000 pounds, could be drawn up, and four of the same burden let down at the same time. A safety car was attached to the train in ascending and descending. This car by the force of the impact of the train upon it, because of a broken rope or for other reason, "grounded its point" and stopped, or at any rate checked the velocity of the runaways. On November 26, 1833, the first car traversed the whole length of the portage road on a single track. Early in 1835 the second track was completed. During its first year in full operation the road carried 50,000 tons of freight and 20,000 passengers. The packet was a traveling hotel, but not a very good one from any present point of view. The deck was filled with baggage which was covered with tarpaulin to keep off the rain, and little room remained for walking, especially when travel was heavy, as it oftentimes was. A cry of "Bridge!" from the man at the helm, caused Dickens to "duck nimbly every five minutes." When he shouted "Low Bridge !" the passengers could prepare "to lie down nearly flat." The boat went on noiselessly but regularly at night, the silence broken only in some of the moun tain fastnesses in the central parts of the state by the shouts of the driver to his mules, or the commotion at some lock or station where the animals were changed, as they were usually at intervals of eight or ten miles. The berths were hammocks and sometimes shelves put up for the night. They looked to Dickens as if they were designed "for volumes of the small octavo size," and narrow they must have been. Washing was done in cold water dipped out of the canal. There were frequent opportunities for the passengers to go ashore and walk upon the tow- path which, if they preferred it, they might traverse in front of or behind the mules for miles at a time. The landscape at places, along the Juniata for instance, 1 Quoted by Swank, Progressive Pa., p. 145. GIRARD COLLEGE, 1838 EASTERN PENITENTIARY (CHERRY HILL) 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 165 was extremely beautiful, as it is at this day, though the railway with its sooty trains has come somewhat to mar the scene. The passes and glens of Switzerland did not exceed it in Dickens' view, though he generally found so little to admire as he passed through America. The meals seem to have been abounding; and, when he traveled, the fare for breakfast, dinner and supper included "tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings [probably scrapple] and sausages." The cooks had a separate cabin in which to perform their duties, and provisions were taken on here and there in the course of the boat's slow advance. Another English traveler, Charles A. Murray, who made the trip in 1837 or 1838, had similar experiences. "The packets or track boats as they are here called are tolerably comfortable," he says, "and their rate of going is about four miles an hour, which I preferred to greater speed, as it enabled me in the evening and morning, when the heat was not intense, to walk many miles in the enjoyment of the fresh hill breeze and the lovely ever-changing scenery." Mr. Murray found the company "very mixed, including every grade from the operative to the highest class in Philadelphia." The hammocks in which the passengers slept were slung "in tiers three deep" in a "close cabin." Many felt great alarm upon entering the car from the boat for the trip over the mountains. Mr. Murray had none, for the rope was "thick and very strong." The passage was "one continued scene of rough, wild woodland," and the whole line in his opinion reflected "the highest credit both on the engineers and on the state." x At one point on the summit of the moun tains it was possible for a passenger "to drink a cup of water from a spring that flowed to the west, and another from a spring that flowed to the east." 2 Harriet Martineau made the trip from Pittsburg to Philadelphia over this line in four days at a cost of $42 for her party which was composed of four persons. This sum did not include meals which, on the line she chose for her journey, were "luxurious." The cry of "Low Bridge !" was heard at average intervals of fifteen minutes. Often it was necessary to lie flat on the deck to clear the overhead struc tures. She forbade books to her party, as she had been told of two young ladies who, while absorbed in reading, had been caught and crushed to death. Another lady traveling in 1835 tells of three members of her party who remained on top of the boat while passing under a bridge. A girl, "notwithstanding she laid down flat,, was so tightly pressed by the beams of the bridge that her arm was scratched and quite sore." A man "escaped with a scratched sleeve; another only saved him self from death by jumping upon the bridge while the boat was passing under it, a very adroit manoeuvre." 3 By Miss Martineau's reckoning there were 192 locks between Pittsburg and Philadelphia. She has vivid descriptions of the beautiful scenery, the cantering of the horses attached to the boat in order to reach a lock ahead of a rival, the crossing of rivers by rope ferries — the Susquehanna by aid of a towing path on the 1 Travels, I, pp. 157-62. 2 Abel C. Thomas's Autobiography, p. 366. 3 Pa. Mag., XXI, p. 415. 166 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA outside of a great covered bridge — the walks upon the bank and the plucking of flowers as the craft glided along through the heart of Pennsylvania.1 With conveyance for $10 in four days in spring, summer and fall, when navi gation was open, to Pittsburg, where was found a daily line of steamboats running to every point on the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri, and stages to Erie and Cleveland on the Lakes, the point at which the business of transportation stood in 1840 — the task of going west seemed very much simplified. As early as in 1834 the time between Philadelphia and New York, which be fore the advent of the railroad had been nine or ten hours, was reduced to four hours and three quarters, and it was soon brought somewhat below this point on especially fortunate trips. In winter when the Delaware was frozen passengers were taken over to Camden on the ice. Often, however, the surface was not suffi ciently hard to make feasible a crossing upon it, while the water was too much obstructed for navigation. In this case the travelers were loaded into a combina tion sled and boat. Runners shod with iron were put under the keel. A ferryman sat at the bow with his feet hanging over, and with a long pike in his hands, he aimed to break a way. If he could not, the boat was lifted up on the ice and pro pelled as a sled, until, the course opening, it was again plunged into the water.2 When Tyrone Power came from New York on January 12, 1834, the river was frozen. The railroad was not yet finished all the way to Camden, aid being sought from the steamers at Bordentown. Now they could not run, and the passengers were packed into "the clumsy looking stage coaches of the country." The cold was "extreme." Power, wrapped in bearskins, sat on the driver's seat behind "four dark bays." The way lay over deeply rutted roads under low-branched for est trees, which compelled him to duck his head constantly. Coming at last to Camden, the party boarded a little steamer which pressed its way through the ice with the greatest difficulty.3 George Combe, who made the journey on December 27, 1838, had to take the outer channel in New York Bay — the shore was so encumbered with ice. He left New York at noon and was landed in Camden by train at 6 :30 under a bright moon. The Delaware was completely frozen over. The party wandered along the icy river, "admiring the city reposing in solemn majesty on the opposite shore, and sending forth gleams of light from its innumerable gas lamps," till eight o'clock. Then they followed a guide one mile north "in a long straggling train, a picturesque group of men, women and children muffled up in every variety of cloak, mantle and costume, that could keep out the cold, which was now intense." The ladies were put in a sled boat which was pushed over the ice. The men walked, each threading his way "according to the dictates of his own sagacity." Cracks and holes were tried with the points of canes and umbrellas. Some fell down on the slippery surface. Reaching the other side, the party and their luggage were loaded into carts and furniture wagons to enter the city by way of . Front street at about ten o'clock.4 Meantime Combe's casts and skulls for his phreno- 1 Society in America, II, pp. 17-19. 2 Sutcliff's Travels, p. 67. 3 Impressions of America, I, p. 112. 4 Notes on the United States of North America, I, p. 175. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 167 logical demonstrations, which he had indiscreetly sent around by water, were frozen up in Delaware Bay. They left New York on a schooner on December 25th and did not come to hand until January 21st. Such experiences were very usual with travelers at this day, even after 1835 when a steam ice boat called the "States Rights" came around from New York and made what probably was the first systematic effort to keep the river open in winter time. Under the best circumstances travel was still very far from a pleasure. Its risks and fatigues were many. In 1835 Samuel Breck observed with amazement that he could leave Boston at nine o'clock, "the sun four hours high," and dine at home in Philadelphia the next day at half past two, having in the interval covered a distance of 340 miles. But it booted nothing to him. The passengers in railway cars sat "cheek by jowl." Two men squeezed Mr. Breck into a corner while the hot sun "drew from their garments a villainous compound of smells made up of salt fish, tar and molasses." Then twelve factory girls crowded in and the men were invited to mount the top of the car to have their brains knocked out by the overhanging bridges. Mr. Breck refused to go; he remained to watch the women "sucking lemons and eating green apples." The terms lady and gentleman had no meaning on a steamboat or a railway car. Master and mistress now ate and slept with their servants, "for the sake of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be done delightfully in eight or ten." As for him he would cling to the "old-fashioned way of five or six miles an hour with one's own horses and car riage, with liberty to dine decently in a decent inn." He would see the country as he passed over it, and be the master of his own movements.1 The locomotives burned wood and threw sparks upon the clothes of the pas sengers. Many a lady had holes burnt in her dress ; 2 many another had her gown ruined by the rivers of tobacco juice, which was well nigh universally spat upon the floors of railway coaches and the decks of steamboats. No foreign traveler that did not remark this disgusting American vulgarity. The ventilation of the cars was abominable. As soon as the coaches were opened the passengers rushed in in order, if possible, to secure seats which were not too near nor yet too far from the stove. When Fanny Kemble and her father came over the completed portion of the Camden and Amboy Railroad in 1832 she found the cars which were still drawn by horses very small. Each carriage had two seats and each seat held four persons. The whole inside was "lined with blazing red leather;" the windows were cur tained with red. In passing to Baltimore by way of the Peninsular Railroad, which ran from New Castle on the Delaware to Frenchtown on the Elk, Miss Kemble met cars which contained twelve persons. The sixteen miles were cov- 1 Recollections, pp. 27$-J7. 2 "The wind ahead and sparks flying as thick as hailstones,'' writes a lady who made a trip on the Columbia road in 1835. "For a time this was frightful from the apprehension that we should take fire, which sometimes did not seem improbable, for with all our activity it was impossible to prevent the sparks from burning our dresses more or less, indeed they were riddled." — Pa. Mag., XXI, p. 414. 168 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ered in fifty minutes or an hour, but the irons must have been laid on a dread ful bed, for she found it "full of knots and dots and jolting and jumping and thumping places." 1 The cars were soon increased in size. When Miss Kemble, now Mrs. Pierce Butler, accompanied her husband to the constitutional convention of 1837 in Harrisburg it was in a car holding 64 persons. An aisle ran down the center to ac commodate noisy venders of fruit, cakes and nuts, and for other purposes. There were so many windows that the structure looked "like a long green house on wheels," yet there was no air to breathe. On the Baltimore road a separate car for women was wisely added to the train, and Mrs. Butler and her children took refuge in it, when a little later she went south to take up her residence on the Georgia plantation.2 The steamboats were better. Miss Kemble found them "large and commo dious." They often had three stories ; the upper one unroofed, the second covered by the upper deck, but open at the sides. Here there were stools, chairs and benches. The lower deck was entirely walled in. On it the cabins were found and the meals were served. The greatest unpleasantness arose from seasick women. Even on voyages on the rivers numbers suffered, as they did, not infre quently also, on railway trains, because of the jolting motion, to the indescribable annoyance of other people. Yet when all had been said it was necessary to admit that the railroad, the canal packet and the steamboat marked a great advancement over the stage coach, in the form in which this vehicle was known in America. Even as late as in 1832 Fanny Kemble found travel by this means unpleasant to the last degree. And her experiences covered the route between New York and Philadelphia, which should have been the best on the continent. She believed that it had not "entered the heart of Englishman to conceive the surpassing clumsiness and wretchedness of these leathern inconveniences." They were shaped "something like boats." The coach had three seats and three persons were squeezed into each seat. The leather side curtains could be drawn up or down. Miss Kemble described that one in which she rode as a "nefarious black hole on wheels." The horses trotted with their front and galloped with their hind legs, "and away we went after them bumping, thumping, jumping, jolting, shaking, tossing and tumbling over the wickedest road, I do think the crudest, hard-heartedest road that ever wheel rumbled upon." Trunks and stumps of trees obstructed the way. The passengers faces when the curtains were raised were brushed by the boughs. The ruts were "absolute abysses." 3 Another traveler at another season found the roads "axle deep" with mud. The car which ran on "iron ledges," then, whatever its faults, Mr. Breck notwith standing, marked a great improvement over the vehicle whose place it had come to fill. 1 Records of a Girlhood. 2 Records of Later Life, pp. 75, 105. 8 Journal, I, p. 131. BL0CKLEY ALMSHOUSE, 1838 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN NINTH STREET, 1839 CHAPTER XXIV. GIRARD'S DEATH. In the midst of this revolution in the methods of transportation and the con duct of trade Stephen Girard died. It was the day after Christmas, December 26, 1831. He had reached the ripe age of eighty-one years, more than sixty of which had been spent in Philadelphia, to his very great advantage. No other had yet reaped any important benefit from his being here, but at his death he was to do for the city that which has caused his name to be remembered and venerated far beyond the deserts of his bigoted and earlier selfish life. It is true that he had nursed the sick during the yellow fever scourge at the end of the century, but his career for the most part reflected little sweetness and light. It may be said that his lot in many ways was hard. He had lost his child ; his wife was long insane. Afflicted from boyhood with one wall eye, the sight of the other at length failed him. But other men have borne as great and greater afflictions more becomingly. He lived his life stubbornly without the warm friendships of man or any very high social ideals, so far as could be outwardly determined. Yet he was one of Amer ica's very wealthy merchants, the last, of a conspicuous position, to come out of the shipping industry in Philadelphia, once the city's principal resource. Robert Morris, the greatest name among the merchants of the eighteenth cen tury, was beloved. He glowed with patriotism and benevolence. He was indeed at the end overborne by his public spirit. Girard's gospel was success, and this he attained by means in which no other person had part or concern, nor for which they could feel peculiar sympathy. While going from his bank to his home in Water street, in February, 1830, crossing the way at the corner of Second and Market streets, he was run down by a Dearborn wagon. The old man's impaired sight prevented him from escaping the vehicle which was being driven along furiously. He was painfully wounded and though he lived for nearly two years after the accident, he did not recover from its consequences. He was born into the Catholic church, but creeds rested lightly upon him.1 He had been married in St. Paul's Episcopal church in Third street. His wife, at her death in 1815, in consideration of a gift which he had made to the Pennsyl vania Hospital, was afforded a place of burial in its grounds. The spot is covered by a building later added to the group. She was one of only two persons who 1 He was a "very undisguised infidel in religion." — Nicholas Biddle's Diary, Pa. Mag., XVIII, p. 355- 169 170 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA were ever buried in this enclosure. Recent family influences may have led to some return of feeling on Girard's part in favor of Catholicism, and he himself was taken to be buried in the grounds of the Catholic church of the Holy Trinity at the corner of Sixth and Spruce streets. The city corporation, the wardens of the port of Philadelphia, the Masons (of whom he was one) and many societies ap peared in the funeral procession. It moved up Water street to Arch, up Arch to Sixth, and down Sixth to the church. A newspaper described it as of "immense extent and most respectable appearance." 1 The streets were "thronged" with people, and it was suggested that as a public "testimony of gratitude and respect" for what it was already known he had done for Philadelphia, "all citizens who are not conscientiously scrupulous" should "close their windows at least from the hours of ten to twelve o'clock." 2 Since the Masons were present, the clergy of the parish did not attend, and it was only under threat of legal proceedings that the burial was allowed to proceed.3 The body was laid away silently, therefore, "after the manner of the Friends." What this very eccentric citizen had done with his fortune, was immediately a matter of public concern. Rumor definitely stated what disposition had been made of the bulk of it before the will was read. Girard was not without kin, as near at least as nephews and nieces, both in America and Europe. His brother, Etienne, in France, had six children. His brother Jean or John, who was once a fortunate shipping merchant, for a period in partnership with his brother Stephen, had died while on a voyage in 1803. John's three daughters, Antoinette, Caroline and Henriette, spent their girlhood at Stephen Girard's home and were always treated, it is said, with kindness and generosity. A fre quent visitor at Girard's house in Water street was Joseph Bonaparte. With him he often brought the Bonapartist gentlemen who were in his train and one of them, Baron Henry Dominick Lallemand, a French artilleryman, in 1817, mar ried Henriette Girard, the youngest of the girls. After his death, she became the wife of Dr. John Y. Clark. The eldest sister, Antoinette, married John Hemp hill; and the third, Caroline, a Mr. Haslam. Though Girard had left ships, stocks, buildings and lands estimated to reach a value of eight millions of dollars, then a fortune of fabulous magnitude, these relatives were barely remembered in the will whose provisions were now published.4 His ship captains who should bring their vessels safely to port were given $1,500 each. His black woman, Hannah, was set free. He made provision for his indentured servants. He had small bequests for various housekeepers and their kin. But relatives, friends and serving people were altogether dis- 1 Daily Chronicle, December 30, 1831. 2 Daily Advertiser, December 30, 1831. 3 Ingram's Life of Stephen Girard, p. 101. 4 For facts regarding the Girards, see Henry A. Ingram's Lives of Stephen and lohn Girard, two small volumes written from the point of view of the family. Stephen Simpson's biography, which came out soon after Girard's death, is another authority. Mr. Ingram dis credits its assertions, and declares the spirit of the work to be libellous and false. It is to be hoped that at least some of Simpson's statements are incorrect, for the sake of a man whose disposition of his fortune has led to public desire for a certain canonization of his name. Even Mr. Ingram's studies should attest at least to his kinsman's many eccentricities. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 171 missed for $140,000 in outright gifts, and $65,000 more in annuities to be paid out of the principal sum. All the rest of his fortune was designed for public uses. One hundred and sixteen thousand dollars were devised to various institu tions in Philadelphia, including the Pennsylvania Hospital, the Pennsylvania In stitution for the Deaf and Dumb, the Orphan Asylum and the Society for the Relief of Distressed Mariners. For many years, as we have seen, the Delaware front which Girard overlooked from his home in Water street, had been fenced in by the abutting owners. It was a common desire to clear the ground for traf fic, and the old "mariner and merchant," as he describes himself in his will, left the income of $500,000 for the purpose of creating a street to extend from Vine to South streets and to be called Delaware avenue ; for the paving, widening and improvement of Water street, as he had improved the space lying between his dwelling on the east and his stores on the west side of the street; and the pull ing down of all wooden or frame buildings filled in with bricks in Philadelphia city, with a view to restricting the ravages of fire. He gave $300,000 to the state of Pennsylvania to aid it in the great work it then had in hand in connection with the "internal improvement" policy, but he shrewdly withheld the gift until the assembly should enact the legislation in reference to the projects which were dearer to him: namely, regarding Delaware avenue, Water street, and the re moval and the prohibition of wooden buildings in Philadelphia. The residue of the estate was bestowed upon the city corporations of New Orleans and Phila delphia as trustees. The first secured the proceeds of a plantation of 208,000 acres and some unimproved land in Louisiana, with slaves and other appurten ances, to be devoted eventually "to such uses and purposes as they shall consider most likely to promote the health and general prosperity of the inhabitants of the city of New Orleans." The "mayor, aldermen and citizens of Philadelphia, their successors and as signs" were endowed with all that remained, that they might establish a college for orphan boys at a cost of $2,000,000, and maintain it properly forever. If there were money remaining, it might be used for establishing a "competent "police" system and the improvement of "the city property and the general ap pearance of the city itself," with a view to diminishing the "burden of taxation." Girard intended that his college should be erected on the block of land which he owned between Eleventh and Twelfth and High and Chestnut streets, opposite the present Reading Terminal station. He prescribed how the work should be carried out to the last detail. The dimensions of the doors and windows, and even of the steps of the stairways, were specified. He determined the thickness of the masonry. When the college was built, the square was to be enclosed "with a solid wall at least fourteen inches thick and ten feet high, capped with marble and guarded with irons on the top, so as to prevent persons from getting over." "As many poor white male orphans, between the age of six and ten years," as the income was "adequate to maintain" were to be "introduced into the college as soon as possible." Preference was to be given first to applicants "born in the city of Philadelphia;" second, to those born "in any other part of Pennsylvania;" third, to natives of the city of New York, "that being the first 172 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA port on the continent of North America," said Girard, "at which I arrived;" and lastly, to natives of New Orleans, to which he was drawn, he said, because it was "the first port on the said continent at which I first traded, in the first instance as first officer and subsequently as master and part owner of a vessel and cargo." The scholars were to be provided with "plain but wholesome food," and "plain but decent apparel." They were to be "instructed in the various branches of a sound education," which he thought should not be made to include Greek or Latin. He would have them "taught facts and things rather than words or signs." Especially did he wish " a pure attachment to our republican institutions and to the sacred rights of conscience as guaranteed by our happy constitution" to be "formed and fostered in the minds of the scholars." The boys were to remain until they were from fourteen to eighteen years of age, when they were to be "bound out" to "suitable occupations, as those of agri culture, navigation, arts, mechanical trades and manufactures." The founder of the college made a restriction which to this day is a monument to his eccentricity and must remain so, that "no ecclesiastic, missionary or minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in said college ; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated for the purposes of the said college." He meant, he explained, to cast no reflection upon any sect, but "as there is such a multitude of sects," he added, "and such diversity of opinion amongst them, I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans who are to derive advantage from this bequest, free from the excitement which clashing doctrines and sec tarian controversy are so apt to produce." All the instructors and teachers in the college were to "take pains to instill into the minds of the scholars the purest principles of morality so that on their entrance into active life they may from inclination and habit evince benevolence towards their fellow creatures, and a love of truth, sobriety and industry." The will is dated February 16, 1830, very shortly after Girard was run down by the wagon. Later purchasing the property, consisting of a mansion house known as "Peel Hall" and forty-five acres of land on the Ridge Road, in Penn Township 1 at a cost of $35,000, Girard determined to place his college there, and signed a codicil on June 20, 1831, to that effect. He named as his executors Tim othy Paxson, Thomas P. Cope, Joseph Roberts, William J. Duane and John A. Barclay, all men prominently identified with shipping and other business inter ests in the city, as Girard himself had been. Legal contests were foreseen. New Orleans did not secure the legacy which was meant for her through a decision of the supreme court of the United States. The city of Philadelphia kept up a long contest with the heirs, who at times had in their employ some of the ablest legal talent in the country. They did not believe that the will was the uninfluenced expression of Girard's intentions towards them, but that it represented instead, as Mr. Ingram states the case, "an 1 "Peel Hall" was built by Oswald Peel in 1742. The mansion had a series of owners afterward. It was the property of Richard Penn in the early years of the Revolution and was burnt during the British occupation. In 1779 it was purchased by Owen Biddle, the Free Quaker. — A Sketch of Owen Biddle, pp. 22-23. > -: ¦Aa X HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 173 adverse ascendancy gained, after his intellect had been seriously weakened, by certain individuals, who from this time forward attended him, both in and out of season, with the most unwearying and pertinacious assiduity." However this may have been, the suits were all of no avail, though they dragged on for twenty or thirty years. The heirs did obtain a few houses and some coal lands, the lat ter "the only material portion," says Ingram, "of Girard's immense estate of which they ever succeeded in divesting the city of Philadelphia." x The city appointed a board of trustees, of which Nicholas Biddle, president of the Bank of the United States, was the chairman, to carry out the provi sions of the will with reference to the college. The beautiful building which was erected on the "Peel Hall" estate was a reflection of his excellent taste. The architect was Thomas U. Walter, a native of Philadelphia. He was the son of a bricklayer and had at first worked at his father's trade. He took up the study of architecture with William Strickland. Later he was very creditably connected with extensions of the Capitol at Washington, but he was yet under thirty years of age and had much to learn. Councils were composed of a body of politicians with out artistic taste, and they gave the prize for the drawing to young Walter who had designed "a large showy building." Nicholas Biddle, as president of the board of trustees, was intent upon other things, and he so arranged the commit tees that the men were weaned from their plan and were brought to favor "a perfect chaste specimen of Grecian art." Walter, who had known Mr. Biddle during the construction of the United States Bank, adopted these views, and the result was what has been called "one of the noblest architectural monuments of modern times." 2 The corner-stone of the main structure was laid on July 4, 1833, when Mr. Biddle delivered an oration. Because of the law-suits and on other accounts, the buildings were not finished until November, 1847, fourteen years after they were begun. The marble in the college was principally obtained from quarries in Chester and Montgomery counties. Two "out-buildings" on each side of the college, and other auxiliary buildings find places in the group, and the whole is surrounded, as Girard intended, by a great wall so that public enjoy ment of the prospect is difficult. Alexander Dallas Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was elected to be the first president of the institution. The college was opened with one hundred pupils on January 1, 1848. The number enjoying its advantages now exceeds fifteen hundred. Girard's body lay in the little Catholic churchyard at Sixth and Spruce streets for twenty years. Upon the completion of the college it was designed to place the remains in a marble sarcophagus in its vestibule. Some of the heirs made objection, but on September 30, 185 1, the old mariner was given a second fun eral. The ceremonies were entirely Masonic, more than fifteen hundred "breth ren" appearing in the street parade. So unexpectedly valuable has the residuary estate, designed for the mainte nance of the college, come to be that the income must be invested constantly. It has grown until today it stands at more than $25,000,000, nearly four times 1 Ingram's Life of Girard, p. 94. 2 Extracts from Nicholas Biddle's Diary, Pa. Mag., XVIII, p. 354. 174 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA what the entire fortune was supposed to amount to at Girard's death. The en hancement in the value of his real estate within the city, the proceeds of his Schuylkill coal lands and the income from houses, office buildings, bonds and mortgages, safely and regularly profitable, have brought about this fortunate result. The gross income is nearly $2,000,000 annually. The affairs of the col lege and the entire Girard estate are administered by a committee of citizens who, with the mayor and the presidents of select and common councils, constitute the board of directors of city trusts, the same board which exercises a control over the Benjamin Franklin legacy and other funds committed to public care. Another bequest to the city was that of James Wills, Jr., for the establish ment of a hospital "for the relief of the indigent blind and lame." Wills was the son of a man of the same name who had driven a coach for Anthony Benezet. Father and son afterward engaged in business as grocers and accumulated a small fortune. James Wills, Jr., who was a bachelor, died in 1825 leaving his money to several existing city charities, and a residue in excess of $100,000 for this special purpose. Some collateral heirs contested the will, but the supreme court in 183 1 decided against them and the city found a site for the institution at Eighteenth and Race streets. This tract has so much increased in value that the Wills buildings, grounds and investments are now worth nearly $600,000. The hospital was opened in 1834. The year before Julius R. Friedlander and others had established near by the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind. Here interesting experiments in the education of children deprived of the power of sight were carried on, and the school was generally visited and commended by foreign travelers sojourning in the city in the middle of the century. In 1821, the assembly authorized the construction of a state penitentiary in Philadelphia. One had already been erected in Pittsburg. Commissioners were appointed with power to select a site for a building and to see that the work upon it went forward at once. A farm on the north side of what is now Fairmount avenue, and west of the Ridge Road, called "Cherry Hill," was purchased, and John Haviland drew the plans for a structure to contain some 250 cells. The building was unlike any that had yet been seen in the city and, with its towers, parapets, embrasures and a massive wrought iron portcullis in front of the double oaken gates, its very appearance should have terrified the evil-doer. It was completed and received its first prisoners in 1829. Penology now underwent another revolution. The authorities on this sub ject were advocating solitary confinement with labor, and the opportunity for testing the advantages of the new system were at hand behind these bastioned walls. "Cherry Hill" was inspected by all the city's distinguished guests, — Charles Dickens, Fredrika Bremer, de Tocqueville, Harriet Martineau and the rest. George Combe minutely described the treatment accorded the prisoners while he was here in 1839. The convict was first taken to the "preparing room." Here his hair was cropped, and he was washed and clothed in the prison uni form. Then his eyes were bandaged and he was conducted to his cell. He was kept in solitary confinement, without labor, until in despair he asked for it. It was then given to him as a favor. A loom or other tools and implements were brought in, and he was set to work. The disposition of the cells and the man- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 175 agement of the prisoners were such that no inmate could see any other. Simple food, such as boiled beef or pork, soup, potatoes, rice and coffee were served. Each cell had its water spigot and its drainage system. It was heated by hot water pipes. Moral discipline and repentance would come, it was supposed, from absolute segregation. Punishment for unruliness consisted of low diet, depriva tion of exercise and transfer to a dark room.1 Indeed the "separate system" came to be known as the Pennsylvania System, so characteristic was it for a long time. "We left the Philadelphia penitentiary with a conviction," says Bucking ham, the English temperance apostle, "that it exhibits one of the most success ful experiments that the world has yet seen for adequately punishing, and at the same time reforming and improving the criminals committed to its care." 2 The Eastern Penitentiary provided for the state's convicts. Now there must be a new county prison. The Arch Street prison enterprise had miscarried, and was not adapted to its purposes. No attempt was made to use it except for debtors, vagrants and persons convicted of minor offenses. The Walnut Street prison was entirely antiquated. A site for a new county prison was secured on Passyunk Road near Tenth street. On April 2, 1832, the corner-stone was laid, and a massive edifice of the English Gothic castle pattern, designed by T. U. Walter, was erected. Provision for debtors was made in a red-stone building of the Egyptian style reared on an adjoining site. Moyamensing Prison, as it was called, was completed in 1835. The Arch and Walnut Street prisons were abandoned and soon torn away.3 At "Moyamensing" as in the Eastern Penitentiary the "separate system" was employed. Men and women were put to work in their individual cells. In 1839 the average weekly outturn of cotton fabrics was 5,000 yards. "Tens of thou sands of the peasantry and artisans of Britain," said Buckingham, the temperance lecturer, after an inspection of the building "lived in far inferior apartments." Except the "solitude" he found nothing which had "the air of a prison about it." In 1837 the total number of persons committed to "Moyamensing," for longer or shorter terms of sentence, was 4,279.* In 1826 a meeting called under the auspices of the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, was held at the court house. The object was to estab lish a house of refuge for the treatment of young moral delinquents. Chief Justice Tilghman presided, Roberts Vaux delivered an address, and John Sergeant moved the adoption of the resolutions. Many young prisoners in the Walnut street jail, it was stated, were subjected to immoral association with men hardened to crime, and they should be given separate quarters with a view to accomplishing their re form. The legislature passed a law creating the institution, and the managers obtained a piece of ground on the Ridge Road which had been in use earlier as a 1 Notes, I, p. 218. 2 The comparative value of the system is well discussed by this writer in his America, II, pp. 167-89. 3 The Arch Street prison was sold to Charles Godfrey Leland's father. The humorist passed through its cells many times. He described it as "a vast gloomy pile like four dead walls, a building nearly 400 feet square." A "block of handsome dwelling houses," took its place. — Leland's Memoirs, p. 67. 4 Buckingham's America, II, pp. 50-60. 176 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA botanical garden. It was situated at the northwest corner of the intersection o the road with Francis Lane, later Coates street, and now Fairmount Avenue. 1 he corner-stone of the building was laid in 1827, and the institution was opened late in the following year. The boys were employed in making shoes, jackets and pantaloons, covering demijohns with wickerwork, and binding spelling-books; while the girls were occupied with various kinds of needlework. This property in the course of twenty years became too valuable for such a use, and it was sold. The institution then went to a large lot of ground at Twenty-second and Parrish streets, where a Colored House of Refuge had been erected. The eastern side of the space was chosen as a site for a building for the white children. The direction of the migration of institutions which had been to the neighbor hood of Bush Hill and Francisville, where now were the Penitentiary, the House of Refuge, Girard College, the Orphans' Asylum and the "Small Pox Hospital," was varied when the Almshouse was removed across the Schuylkill to an estate adjoining the "Woodlands" in Blockley township. The question of taking the poor away from the square bounded by Ninth and Tenth and Spruce and Pine streets, which was now becoming a residential district, had been agitated for many years. The "Bettering House," as it had so long been called, when Anne Royall visited it near the end of its career, contained 1,027 paupers. To maintain them it had cost during the previous year $46,836.44, or about seventy-two cents a week for each person. As a means of disciplining offenders a stepping mill had been set up in the grounds about 1820. It was a wheel three of four feet in circumference, and twenty feet long. It had treads or steps for ten or twelve men, who holding to a rope overhead and stepping in concert, ground wheat or corn. The offenders were required to remain upon the wheel for twenty minutes, a severe punishment, like walking up stairs for that length of time.1 The house was greatly crowded; it was "not very neat," and the paupers "looked ill." Larger quarters were indis pensable. The professors in the medical colleges used their influences to prevent a re moval, since the clinical instruction given to their students in the institution was accounted valuable, and they had no wish to cross the river for this purpose. In 1828 the legislature passed an act incorporating a board to procure a site within two miles of Broad and Market streets, and to remove the Almshouse thence. The result of this movement was the purchase of 158 acres at $275 an acre, belonging to the Hamilton estate and lying south of Hamilton village.2 A poorhouse capable of holding about 1,250 persons, a house of employment, a hospital large enough for 600 patients, a children's asylum which had earlier been accommodated at "Walnut Grove," the old Wharton mansion in Southwark, and other buildings were planned and erected. The transfer was effected in the early thirties, thus giving an impetus to the development of West Philadelphia. William Strickland, whose plans and estimates were preferred over others, produced a handsome architectual effect. George Combe, while here in 1838, said that the fame of the house stood so high as a comfortable home for the destitute 1Anne Royall, The Black Book, I, p. 136; Carey and Hart's Phila. in 1824, p. 63. 2 Hist, of Phila. Almshouses and Hospitals, p. 80. UNITED STATES MINT AT CHESTNITT AND JUNIPER STREETS UNITED STATES NAVAL ASYLUM, GRAY'S FERRY ROAD, 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 177 that some walked 250 miles to reach it. "Although only the poor of the city and suburbs have a legal right to enter it these distant strangers throw themselves down at the door during the night and refuse to rise or go away, stating their resolution to make good their quarters after such a toilsome march." x Harriet Martineau called it the "great pauper palace." To her the house seemed to put a premium upon poverty, since it yielded "more comforts to the inmates than the laborer could secure at home by any degree of industry and prudence." She had heard of an Irish woman, who after walking around the building and admiring its beauties, said she would write home and bring over all her relations.2 The old mansion house which Pennsylvania had constructed for the president of the United States, and which had been used with more or less inconvenience for many years by the University of Pennsylvania, was now to be torn down. A hall for the medical school had been erected south of this building and served its pur pose well. The college, however, was not properly accommodated and in 1829 the corner-stone of a new structure was laid. William Strickland was the architect, as he was of another building whose corner-stone was set in place in the same year, the new mint of the United States at Juniper and Chestnut streets which continued to occupy this site until a few years ago. The old mint building in Seventh street had been outgrown, and the new one, with its impressive pillars, which the federal government placed on Chestnut street near what was then the western edge of the city, was accounted very ornamental. The federal government had established another arsenal in Philadelphia ter ritory. That one on the Gray's Ferry Road — later usually called the Schuylkill Arsenal — did not suffice. In 1816 twenty acres were purchased on the New York Road, north of the city, for the Frankford, or Bridesburg Arsenal. Several build ings were erected on the grounds, which were extended by later purchases. In 1826, the United States government purchased the old Pemberton "Planta tion," a colonial Quaker country seat on the Gray's Ferry Road above the Arsenal, for a naval asylum and naval school. There were twenty-three acres in the tract, which cost $i7,ooo.3 Strickland designed the buildings. The main edifice, which is of marble with a columnar portico, was at one time considered a principal arch itectural ornament of the city. It was occupied, though still unfinished, late in 1833, and it has since been a pleasant home for old sailors, of whom it will accom modate some three hundred. The principal school for midshipmen was found here in connection with the naval asylum, and at this place many American naval offi cers heard lectures and were examined as to their proficiency for the service until 1845, when George Bancroft, who was then secretary of the navy, established the academy at Annapolis.4 It had been the ambition of the Philadelphia merchants, long before the Revolu tion, to erect an exchange building. The London Coffee House on High street, and afterward the Merchants' Coffee House on Second street, near Walnut, served this use. But need was felt for more. Several mayors in the colonial period had 1 Notes on the U. S., I, p. 241. 2 Society in America, I, p. 341. 3 Pa. Mag., VII, p. 117. 4 J. R. Soley, Historical Sketch of the U. S. Naval Academy. Vol. n— 12 178 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA left money for the purpose of raising a suitable structure, but nothing at all re sulted until after the War of 1812 when the subject was again agitated. The num ber and individual wealth of the merchants of the city were now such that the plans for a building were prepared, in 182 1. It was generally agreed that it should be placed on the triangular space which was bounded by Walnut, Dock and Third streets. The project lingered for ten years more, when a company was formed. Stephen Girard, Robert Ralston, Josept P. Norris, James C. Fisher and Joshua Longstreth were appointed trustees. Strickland designed a tasteful structure of Pennsylvania marble. For twenty or thirty years, or until the Corn Exchange arose to take its place, its second-story hall was the center for the activities of the city's principal merchants. Here shipping and commercial news was posted ; here stocks and produce were bought and sold. The other rooms were occupied by the post- office and by brokers and insurance companies. It was a point from which the business life of the city radiated. Stock-jobbers, note-shavers and speculators of all kinds congregated on Third street up as far as Market street, and the neighbor hood was familiarly known as the "Coast of Algiers." 1 The manufacturing industries of the city, which later became so important a source of its strength, were undergoing a very satisfactory development. In 1823 it was stated that there were 33 cotton and woolen factories in Philadelphia and its vicinity. Twenty of them had 28,750 spindles. The Globe Mill of the Craiges on the Germantown Road employed 300 hands and used up eighteen bales of cotton weekly. In 1830 there were 29 brush manufacturers in Philadelphia, and it was rather triumphantly announced that there was no longer need to import "tooth, head or clothes brushes." There were two or three glass works, notably the fac tory of Dr. T. W. Dyott at Kensington, surrounded by dwelling houses for the workmen, an interesting experiment in industrial reform. It was thought that the people of the United States in 1830 used 1,500 umbrellas a day. One factory in Philadelphia had a capacity of 300 daily, and could have made 600 but for a tariff difficulty on the subject of silk. Howells at Spruce and Schuylkill Fourth street had what was declared to be the "largest paper hangings factory in the world." Fire engine shops, porcelain potteries, iron, brass and bell foundries, white lead, paint, oil, drug and dye stuff manufactories were also found in the city. It was estimated in 1845 that not less than $20,000,000 were invested in manufacturing in Philadelphia and its vicinity. These important interests were exerting an influence upon politics. Federalist and soon to be strongly Whig, the city should have been steeled against Andrew Jackson, but he deeply affected the country in all its parts, and Philadelphia did not escape. Social as well as political ideals were strangely changed. Just as Jeffer son's overthrow of the Federalist party had brought forward and set up new stand ards for democrats, so the advent of Jackson overthrew the ideals of the Virgin ians who had been in uninterrupted control of the presidency for twenty-four years. Jefferson had seen Jackson in Philadelphia while he was for a short time a senator from the new state of Tennessee, before the capital had yet been removed to Washington. He would "choke with rage" when he got up to speak. The 1 Arcade Hotel Guide, 1856, p. 12. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 179 great Virginian, therefore, considered the man quite unfit for political office. James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and all the other leaders of the day coincided in this view. Jackson triumphed, in spite of them all. He was kept out of the presidency in 1825 by Clay turning his strength to John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives, into which the election had been thrown, but at the end of Adams's term of four years, the people would have Andrew Jackson, and nobody else. Had he not defeated the English in 181 5 on the never-to-be-forgotten field at New Orleans ? Had he not been cheated out of his portion by Clay and Adams by a "corrupt bargain," Clay giving his vote to Adams in return for an appointment as secretary of state, in 1825 ? He was the military chieftain without fear and without reproach, and his name and figure had taken hold of the fancies of the people in a miraculous way. In vain did Adams oppose his front to Jackson in the election of 1828. In vain did Clay contest the ground with Jackson in 1832. All were as overwhelmingly beaten as though they had been British generals at New Orleans, or recalcitrant Seminoles in Florida where "Old Hickory" had later found vent for his wrath. That his zeal had exceeded his authority in Florida was a matter for which the people had no concern. That he was inexperienced in civil affairs was an argu ment which did not in the least avail. That he now violated all the traditions of the federal service by turning trusted public officers out of their places to make room for his friends, oftentimes very ignorant and unsuitable men, alienated none of his enthusiastic advocates. Precedents and constitutions were little to him when it was a question of executing his own will, and the popular endorsement followed him in whatever course he chose. In Clay, Webster, and Calhoun in the Senate, he had the most powerful opposition which the history of parliamentary life in America has been able to provide, but he swept on in spite of them, and at the end of his second term in 1836 named his own successor. Martin Van Buren's administration was but a continuation of what had gone before. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania followed Jackson headlong. The Federalist party had retained its hold upon the city corporation, and often elected its candi dates for the legislature and for Congress, but the state had been lost irrevocably years before. In 1824 Pennsylvania gave General Jackson a large majority for president, casting an undivided electoral vote. In the House all of the state's congressmen supported him, except Samuel Breck, who was an Adams man, but his vote did not count because the poll was taken by states.1 It was the Columbian Observer of Philadelphia which published the charge of bargain and corruption, through George Kremer, a quite ridiculous congressman in a leopard-skin overcoat who represented an interior district. Clay challenged him to a duel, but withdrew from the affair, when he discovered the identity of the man whom the Jackson leaders had chosen to launch the lie, which strode through the country's politics for the next twenty years. Shulze was re-elected governor in 1826 practically without opposition. Wherever there was a contest between the parties the Jackson men made large gains. The campaigns became picturesque and in many instances riotous. The hickory tree was made the emblem of the Democrats. It was erected at taverns 1 Recollections, p. 122. 180 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA on the outskirts of the city, and in cross-roads towns everywhere, sometimes sur mounted by a liberty cap to instil into Jackson's supporters some of that firmness, which he himself was known to possess. As early as in 1824, Philadelphia had its Hickory Clubs of Democratic young men. Newspapers kept pictures of hickory trees at the head of their editorial columns, often with lines like these under neath : "Freemen, cheer the hickory tree, Its boughs have ofttimes sheltered ye; O'er freedom's land its branches wave, To guard the free, and shield the brave." At the October state and city elections in 1828, the Jackson men carried all three of the congressional districts into which the city and county were divided ; the first and third, the county districts, where Joel B. Sutherland and Daniel L. Miller were the candidates, by overwhelming majorities. At the presidential election in November, the result was still more impressive. In the city and county the vote for Jackson was 12,017; for Adams, 6,200. In the state, Jackson's ma jority was over 50,000. The administration carried only five counties, and these by very small majorities: Delaware, Bucks, Adams, Beaver and Erie. In Philadelphia, as elsewhere, those who had not supported Jackson at this election were at once proscribed as soon as he entered office in 1829, which seemingly served only to increase the attachment of the people to the rugged hero of their fancies. For a long time there had been ill-concealed suspicion as to Jack son's attitude concerning the renewal of the charter of the United States Bank, which would expire during his administration, if he should be given a second term. This subject was of great interest to the entire country; it had peculiar concern for Philadelphia which was the home of the institution. As we have seen, the second Bank of the United States opened its doors in Carpenters' Hall in 1817, and two years later removed to its new building on Chestnut street above Fourth street (the present custom house). William Jones, a former secretary of the navy, was followed in that office by Langdon Cheves of South Carolina, and then in 1823 by Nicholas Biddle. The service of the bank in giving order and stability to the finances of the country under his able management, had been conspicuous. It completely satisfied every one whose judgment was worthy of attention. It was well understood that Clay would lead the opposition to Jack son in 1832, and, if the president were in a mood to overthrow the institution, he desired that the fact be brought to popular knowledge at once. By arrange ment with Nicholas Biddle, the memorial for the re-charter of the bank was sent to Congress by its directors. The bill was passed by both houses in the summer of 1832, in time for the anti-Jackson men to enjoy the advantage of the issue during the campaign, though the bank's lease of life had more than four years yet to run. On July 10th the president's veto arrived, and the issue was joined. That it would be very beneficial to Jackson's opponents, they firmly believed. John Sergeant of Philadelphia, was chosen at the convention in Baltimore to be Clay's associate on the ticket, as the candidate for vice-president. The campaign was HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 181 marked by much scurrility and rowdyism, and Philadelphia, regaining its equili brium, returned to its old idols, distinctly condemning the president and his reso- luton to put an end to the bank. The October elections at the State House were marked by great excitement. Poulson's American Advertiser published an editorial on the morning of Tues day, October 9, 1832, which serves to define the position of the an ti- Jackson men in this memorable contest in Philadelphia. Some of the essential passages follow : "THIS IS THE DAY upon which depends results more important to your political liberties and your moral condition, fellow-citizens, than any day you have yet seen. "The Fourth of July, 1776, sealed in this fair city the charter of your inde pendence ; but Jackson's misrule and madness has tried to break the seal and tear the glorious parchment; go forward then, fellow-citizens, THIS DAY and re- seal and restore the precious instrument. "Tell, by your votes, the followers of Andrew Jackson what your fathers told the ministers of George the Third. Kings and their like may be 'born to command,' but Americans are not born to obey. "Do you value the constitution of your country, do you believe it the fixed and supreme law of the land, and not a MERE NOTION to be interpreted as 'General Jackson understands it' and ay he pleases — vote this day the whole anti- Jackson ticket. "Friends of a sound currency, of good paper and silver dollars, rather than swarms of rags and counterfeit six-cent notes, — friends of the farmer, the mer chant, the mechanic, the manufacturer, the shuttle and the loom, and the virtue and independence that honest manual labor begets * * * friends of good order and peaceable government, and enemies of the reign of pistols, dirks and bludgeons — of Benton and Jackson and Heard and Houston, — come forward this day in rain or in shine, and vote the whole anti-General Jackson ticket * * * "For every vote you give you knock down a prop from the fabric of imperial tyranny and military ferocity that Andrew Jackson is fast erecting in this favored land. "Pennsylvanians ! The eyes of the nation are on your doings of this day ! Prostrate Andrew Jackson's name and party in this city, and your sister states will follow your glorious example !" During the day a mob attacked an inn in Chestnut street, near the State House, William Cards' Bolivar House, the anti- Jackson headquarters. It was situated above Sixth street, just west of the theatre, the ground being occupied since 1859 by the Commonwealth Building. Here a transparency offensive to the Jackson men was exhibited. They tore down the painting, broke the windows and demolished some of the publican's furniture. The evening, too, — before the polls closed (at ten o'clock,) and afterward — , was marked by the wildest scenes in the streets. The majority in the city for Joseph Ritner, the anti- Jack son candidate for governor, was about 1,400. The city and county had by this time come to have four representatives in Congress. Only one Jackson can didate, Joel B. Sutherland, who sat for the First District, which included the 182 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA territory lying south and west of the city, together with Germantown, Rox borough and Penn Township in the north, was successful. His majority was less than five hundred. At the presidential election in November, the majority against Jackson in the fifteen city wards was 2,209, out of a total vote of 8,745. The scenes in the streets in October were now repeated. Fanny Kemble and her father came to the city during the excitement. On Friday, November 2d, she writes, "the streets were full of rabblement, the air full of huzzaing and the sky obscured with star spangled banners and villainous transparencies of 'Old Hickory' hung out in all directions." In the evening she could not get from the Mansion House to the theatre except by "all manner of roundabouts," because of the crowds which choked the streets. To awe them as they passed along she brandished her fath er's sword out of the coach window. Returning home they met "a procession of electioneerers carrying triangular paper lanthorns upon poles with 'sentiments' political scribbled thereon." x When the county vote came in it was found to favor Jackson by a majority of about 300 gained in Southwark and in Kensington, which was rapidly becom ing an industrial centre, especially for textile manufacturing. The workmen, many of whom were aliens, settled in the neighborhood, and determined its social and political life. In the state at large, as in the rest of the country, Jackson swept everything before him. His majority in Pennsylvania was 25,000. Clay carried only four states. Contrary to all the expectations of Jackson's foes, his announced enmity for the bank greatly increased the favor in which he was held by the masses. The picture of him in single combat with the institution which, in their view, stood as the representative of riches and monopoly, inspired them to greater devotion ; and opposition to him and to his policies was a useless waste of effort as Henry Clay, Nicholas Biddle and many another man discov ered to his sorrow. In Jackson's overwhelming victory in 1832 was written the doom of the bank; it was well understood that business must now adjust itself to other conditions and go on without it. For a time this would be done reluctantly and uncertainly. Troubles of all kinds lay just before, and the distress resulting from the dis turbances in finance and trade which Jackson's policy inevitably invited, were soon full upon all classes of the people. First, in so far as Philadelphia was concerned, there was to be a fatal visi tation of the Asiatic cholera. While this scourge did not reach the malignity of the yellow fever, which swept the city in 1793 and 1798, death and destruction ruled everywhere. Just how the disease came, seems to be a mystery. It had done dreadful havoc for years in Calcutta, Bombay and many cities of Asia. It appeared in southern Europe in 1830, and advanced to Paris, London and Edin burgh in 183 1 and 1832. The first American cases were reported at Quebec and Montreal in June, 1832. It seemed- to be taken for granted that the disease would come to Philadelphia, sooner or later, especially after the epidemic appeared in New York. Councils urged the cleansing of the city, and appointed a sanitary board on June 22d, which invited Samuel Jackson, Charles D. Meigs and Rich- 1 Journal, I, pp. 140, 187, 189. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 183 ard Harlan to proceed to Canada to discover, if they could, the means of coping with it. They came back recommending temperance in the use of food and drink. Cucumbers and summer fruits, especially the watermelon, were put under a ban. The people were told to eat meat sparingly. Exposure to the night air and "moral excitement" such as fear and anger were to be avoided. Quack remedies of all kinds were recommended and applied. Although the summer was one of the hottest, the people bravely wore flannel next to their skins day and night. Camphor, suspended in bags from the neck to rest upon the breast, Burgundy- pitch plasters on the breast or back, medicated hair-skin pads, and other con trivances indicated little progress in the science of sanitation and medicine since the yellow-fever years. Camphor, mustard and cayenne pepper were kept at hand in every household. Chloride of lime was thrown about the city, and the gutter stones in many places were whitewashed. The people were not unprepared when the first case was announced on July 5th. The man lived in a cellar in Schuylkill Fifth street, and he died three days after his seizure by the malady. A number of special hospitals were equipped in the city and the county. Several school houses were fitted up for the reception of patients. There were separate hospitals for the negroes. But with all these precautions the infection spread and claimed a terrible toll of death. Even the physicians were mystified, since the cases appeared at isolated places. The spo radic character of the disease continued to be remarked until the end of July, when it passed its early phases and became a deadly contagion. On July 30th it appeared among the debtors and petty criminals confined in the Arch Street prison. "The cries, shrieks and groans of the sick and dying, and the frantic desperation and agony of those who were eager to escape, were terrible," said a committee of the legislature appointed to investigate the case.1 Seventy or eighty died in one day before physicians could be found. Then the jail was cleared, the inmates being released, except in the case of a small number of the more desperate characters who were placed in confinement elsewhere. The build ing was thoroughly cleansed and fumigated before the prisoners were returned to it. Just as during the yellow fever epidemics, the poor expressed a marked aver sion to the hospitals, and it was not until the self-sacrificing physicians who were in charge threatened to abandon the service, if they were not given pub lic support, that popular superstition was put to flight. Thursday, August 9th, was appointed and observed as a day of fasting and prayer. An asylum for children whose parents had died, and places of shelter for the poor were estab lished. Before the disease had run its course, which it did early in October, 2,329 cases were reported, 754 of which had proven to be fatal. The progress of the epidemic was officially announced each day at twelve o'clock from the high wooden steps of the office of the board of health, adjoining the Philadelphia Dispensary in Fifth street. Crowds assembled here to listen in silence to the melancholy news, then to carry it to all parts of the city. Vast numbers of the inhabitants had fled, of course, to more salubrious places in the country, and did not venture to return until they were assured of the complete abatement of the 1 Haz. Reg., XI, p. 187. 184 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA epidemic. A number of Catholic sisters generously and devotedly gave their serv ices to the sick. As their vows forbade them receiving anything individually in testimony of their work, councils appropriated a sum of money to two or three institutions under the care of their church. Silver pitchers were presented in March, 1833, to thirteen physicians who had taken conspicuous parts in treating the sick as chief officers of the various hospitals. These were as follows : John K. Mitchell, Nathaniel Chapman, Joseph Parrish, John C. Otto, Thomas Harris, Samuel Jackson, Charles Lukens, William E. Horner, Charles D. Meigs, Hugh L. Hodge, Richard Harlan, Oliver H. Taylor and G. Emerson. The mayor of the city, John Swift, was presented with "a splendid service of plate." 1 The full force of Jackson's policy regarding the bank was not felt until he executed his resolve to remove the deposits of the government. This meant its instant destruction. Unlike the first Bank of the United States, its shares were largely owned in this country, chiefly in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Maryland. Almost none were held west of the Alleghany mountains, and it was the spirit of the frontier which possessed President Jack son. The total liabilities of the bank and its twenty-five branches in all parts of the Union were $19,000,000. It had $23,000,000 worth of notes in circulation. At first it had paid a dividend of five per cent, annually; more recently, seven and a half per cent. It was stated that Jackson's enmity had originated in pique because a branch in New England had refused to meet the views of a borrower who was numbered among his friends. He determined, therefore, to proscribe and destroy the entire institution and to place the money of the government in the state banks. The number of these increased; the hope of receiving public money upon deposit through political influence, was an additional spur to their organization. In 1825 a bank was established in Southwark. There was such a pressure to subscribe when the books were opened at the commissioners' hall, in April, that very disorderly scenes were enacted. Porters and draymen were hired by those who did not care to enter the throng in person. The stronger literally walked over the heads and shoulders of the weak in order to get up to the windows ; and the clothing was torn off of men's backs in the melee. Samuel Humphries became the president of the institution, which opened its doors in Second street below South, just outside the city limits. In 1826 the Kensington Bank was incorporated to serve the local purposes of that thriving industrial neighborhood ; and the Bank of Penn Township was created in the same year to stand in the same relation to the District of Spring Garden. It was located at Sixth and Callowhill streets. In 1832 four more banks were established in Philadelphia or its immediate suburbs. At Girard's death his bank was incorporated. The Western Bank opened its doors on Mar ket street between Ninth and Tenth streets ; the Manufacturers and Mechanics' at Second and Green streets, and the Moyamensing at the corner of Fifth and South streets. 1 There was a serious recurrence of the disease in the summer of 1849. There were re ported to the board of health in this year 2,141 cases, 747 of which proved fatal. The scourge raged with great fury in the almshouse; more than two hundred of the inmates died. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 185 The banks of Philadelphia were now as follows: Chartered. Capital. Amt. paid in. United States l 1816 $ 7,000,000 $ 7,000,000 North America 1781 1,000,000 1,000,000 Pennsylvania 1793 2,500,000 2,500,000 Philadelphia 1803 2,000,000 1,800,000 Farmers' and Mechanics' 1806 1,250,000 1,250,000 Commercial 1814 1,000,000 1,000,000 Schuylkill 1814 1,000,000 700,000 Mechanics' 1814 1,000,000 700,000 Northern Liberties 1814 500,000 200,000 Southwark 1825 250,000 250,000 Kensington , 1826 250,000 175,000 Penn Township 1826 200,000 200,000 Girard 1832 1,500,000 1,500,000 Western 1832 500,000 400,000 Manufacturers and Mechanics' 1832 300,000 210,000 Moyamensing 1832 250,000 50,000 Total $20,500,000 $18,935,000 2 Jackson visited Philadelphia in June 1833, while on a tour of the northern states. He came up the river on a steamboat over the New Castle route from Baltimore, and was landed at the Navy Yard. There he received the federal salute of twenty-one guns, and was put into a barouche, drawn by four horses, to be escorted by the First City Troop and some other local military companies, together with a considerable cavalcade of citizens, to the City Hotel in Third near Arch street. On the next day, which was Sunday, he heard the Rev. Albert Barnes preach at the First Presbyterian church. The Jackson men had wrested the control of the city from the Federalists, who had always held it, in 1828 when they elected George M. Dallas mayor. Benjamin W. Richards, who succeeded Mr. Dallas, was also a Democrat, but in 1832 John Swift, a popular Clay leader, came into the office to hold it for several years. He was a grandson of John Swift, the young Englishman who had founded the dancing assemblies, and who had been a customs officer under the crown before the Revolution. He was admitted to the bar in 181 1 and became a colonel of the "crack" Washington Guards during the war of 1812. He married a daughter of Commodore Truxtun, and his home was visited by Clay and other noted men. Mayor Swift subdued his own sympathies and with several officers of the city appeared at the State House at a reception which was tendered to Jackson. He was afterward mounted on a fine white horse provided by "Admiral" Reeside,3 who 1 The capital of the Bank of the United States was $35,000,000. The $7,000,000 repre sents the 70,000 shares held by the government of the United States. 2 From De Silver's Directory and Gray's Phila. As It Is, 1833. 3 The Admiral or Jim Reeside, as he was called by every one, was the principal mail contractor of the day, his office being in a little two-story building on the west side of Third Street above Chestnut Street. From this point his stages ran in all directions. He was a 186 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA acted as cicerone during the visit, and escorted by military and civic bodies, through the streets, over a long route, from Southwark to Kensington. He was dressed in black and held a large white hat in his hand, as he bowed continuously to right and left to the crowds assembled along the way.1 But it was complained by Jackson's friends that the city gave him scant atten tion. Black Hawk and a party of Indians who were visitors at the same time, it was said, were offered greater consideration. Clearly the city which was the home of the United States Bank, had few favors to bestow upon the man who was ready to destroy it. The fact was emphasized in the following November, 1833, when Clay came. The warmth of the greeting received by him from Mayor Swift and from the men of light and leading in the city, was a distinct reproof to Tacksonism, and the beginning of a series of manifestations of attachment and love for the remarkable Kentuckian, which distinguished Philadelphia until his death. When Jackson resolved upon the removal of the deposits, he assumed a spirit of loyalty and obedience on the part of his secretary of the treasury which lacked. Fearing such a situation, he had transferred Louis McLane, son of the Revolu tionary raider, Allen McLane, earlier a United States senator from Delaware, and from 1829 to 1831 minister to England, from the treasury to the state depart ment. For the vacant post he named William J. Duane, son of William Duane of the Aurora, an editor like his father, (and more lately a lawyer) in Philadelphia. His democracy might be expected to be unquestioned. It would be shrewd to destroy a Philadelphia institution through the agency of a Philadelphian. But Duane, when the order came to him to remove the deposits, refused to do the bidding of the president. He also refused to resign. He was, therefore, re moved from his office on September 23, 1833, after occupying it for not quite four months. The president now placed Roger B. Taney, of Maryland, his attorney-general, later the author of the Dred Scott decision, in the vacant secretaryship, and the cherished design was carried out at once. The amount of government money in the bank at this time was about $10,000,000. When this sum was withdrawn, loans were necessarily called, private deposits were claimed in alarm, the stock of the bank fell in value, and a panic was at hand. Business was none too good for Philadelphia and its neighboring manufacturing communities at best. The tariff of 1832 which was satisfactory to the protectionists, was the cause of some thing like rebellion in South Carolina. Under the lead of Calhoun, steps were taken to nullify the law by a right which was held to be reserved to the states under the constitution, and to avoid civil rupture Clay, after consultation with the manufacturers, whose advocate he now was and long continued to be, had agreed to a compromise. The duties prescribed by this measure were accounted too low, and through this cause alone the times would have been sensibly dis- devoted admirer of Jackson. "He was a very large man," says Casper Souder "and he boasted the finest looking wife, the finest gray horses and the biggest dog of any man in town. The big dog used to stretch himself out at full length across the sidewalk near his master s office for a nap and passers-by were usually content to walk around in preference to disturbing so formidable looking an animal."— History of Chestnut Street Ch 12 1 Durang, Ch. 29, 2nd Series. EDWIN FORREST AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 187 turbed. Business, however, survived the first shock of the disaster, and the storm did not descend with its full force until after Andrew Jackson left office. He had sowed the wind ; his self-appointed successor, Martin Van Buren, reaped the whirlwind. When the charter of the National Bank expired in 1836, Nicholas Biddle and his friends secured the passage of an act of incorporation by the state legislature. It became the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania; and its capital was $35,000,000, what it had been under the national charter. But its credit was broken. It had been obliged to pay the state a great price in bonuses for its privileges, and its days, as well as those of many other financial institutions in this time of disturbance, were numbered. The pressure of disorder and ruin reached its greatest severity in 1837. The money of the government which had been on deposit in the United States Bank in Philadelphia, where it was conservatively employed to invigorate and support the entire fabric of finance, was now scattered about in the "pet banks," — state banks favored for political reasons in all parts of the country. The notes of these state banks were in circulation everywhere. This currency enjoyed little regulation. It was issued, in many cases, upon insufficient security. It passed from the issue bank and often circulated, after the institution whose name it bore had ceased to be in existence. Counterfeiters plied their arts skilfully and a mass of spurious and depreciated notes were in use, confusing the minds, cor rupting the morals, and preparing the way for the general economic disturbance which was now at hand. Jackson, to add fuel to the flames he had kindled, issued his "Specie Cir cular," which required buyers to pay for the public lands in specie instead of in bank notes of questionable worth. This was, of course, a wise determination, but it came at a time when gold and silver were going into hiding anyhow, and this sudden new demand led to a suspension of specie payments on May 11, 1837. The severest troubles followed instantly. There were "runs" upon many of the financial institutions of the city, and a general closing of their doors seemed near. Such factories as were still open, ceased operations. Work was difficult to obtain, and wages fell. Capital was withdrawn from use wherever it could be. Banks and individuals called old, and refused new loans. Busi ness houses failed in great numbers. Commerce and industry came nearly to a standstill. The panic of 1837 was at hand. On May 9, 1838, the banks of Philadelphia began a partial resumption of specie payments, which they attempted to make full on August 13, but under the lead of the Bank of the United States they again broke down in October. In December, 1838, it was discovered that the cashier of the Schuylkill Bank, Hosea J. Levis, was a defaulter for a large amount and that he had fled to Europe. Great unsettlement prevailed on every hand. No further efforts in the direction of resumption were put forth until the legislature, reminding the banks of the provisions in their charters which forbade a suspension under penalty of a forfeiture of those charters, passed a law to compel them to pay out specie again on and after January 15, 1841. The Bank of the United States closed its doors on February 4, its affairs hopelessly entangled, though it had been lent $5,000,000 by the other banks of the city to tide it over its difficulties. 188 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The value of its assets had shrunk, as had that of everything of whatever kind in this time of stress, and its entire capital was proven to have been sunk. Biddle had resigned the presidency in 1839. Prosecutions were begun against him and his associates, all of which failed. There was no proof what ever of any dishonorable action amid the storm of calumny, largely political and of Jackson's own instigation, which broke over his head ; and he died at "Anda lusia," his beautiful estate on the banks of the Delaware, in 1844, a distinguished victim of a train of tragic circumstances. The state of Pennsylvania was unable any longer to pay the interest on its bonds, and there were fears that the principal of the debt would be repudiated. The name of the commonwealth was execrated in England where many of its securities were held; but, as a fair observer like Sir Charles Lyell who was here at the time, wrote, the blow was quite as severely felt at home.1 Men stricken in years were left destitute; widows and children, many of them of the poorer classes, were deprived of their savings. The construction of rail roads and canals by the state, and overtrading and very extravagant and ill- advised schemes of money-making by everyone, together with much chicanery in public and private places, had brought affairs to a grave pass. The "wild cat" state bank money was not the worst of it. In the confusion cities, counties, districts and firms issued their own currency. Business was conducted by the use of scrip and a harvest time for the money-changers was at hand. Lyell in 1842 could not offer a note in a shop without the girl at the counter taking down the "detector," a book "containing an interminable list of banks in all parts of the Union with information as to their present condition, whether solvent or not and whether paying in specie, and adding a description of 'spurious notes.' " Often dealers would refuse to part with their goods ex cept for specie. They told Lyell that the coin which they gave him in change might in a few days be worth more than his paper money. Before he set out on his travels his friends persuaded him to convert all his notes into gold at a discount of eight per cent.2 Everywhere there were brokers to determine the value of paper, and to exchange it for specie or notes of known value in the neighborhood. Premiums, discounts and commissions were so large, and there was so much opportunity for gainful speculation in the business that there were many to engage in it.3 Francis M. Drexel, a wandering portrait-painter who emigrated to this coun try from Switzerland, saw his chance to profit more largely as a shrewd money changer than as an indifferent artist. As he passed from place to place, he acquainted himself with the value of bank notes. What were for sale cheap in one town, he carried to some other where they were more highly thought of, and he soon had enough capital and experience to open a shop in Philadel phia for the regular conduct of this business, the beginnings of an international banking house whose strength has long been acknowledged all over the world. 1 Travels, Vol. I, p. 173. 2 Ibid., pp. 171-72. 8 How recent a development the brokerage business was may be inferred from Combe's Notes in the United States of North America, I, p. 204. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 189 Jay Cooke, finishing his term as clerk of a packet company, came on in the following year, April 3, 1839, to take a place in the house of E. W. Clark and Company, formed a little while before to carry on a private banking business, which at first consisted largely of speculation in state bank notes. Enoch White Clark was born in Massachusetts in 1802. He had had some experience as a banker in New England, a good deal of it unfortunate, and came to Philadelphia to begin life anew. With his brother-in-law, Edward Dodge, he established the firm of E. W. Clark and Company in 1837. While Cooke had been in the city in 1838, after the packet company had failed, he was employed for a time in keeping the books of the proprietor of Congress Hall, a man named Sturdi- vant. This hotel was the old Judd's Hotel of Third street, with an L-like extension from its rear to Chestnut street. It had entrances now on both streets, the corner building (the northeast corner of Third and Chestnut) being occupied for other purposes. Here Mr. Clark and Mr. Dodge saw young Cooke, and the next year offered him a post at $300 per annum in their bank, which was situated nearby. How profitable money-changing was, even in a time of great retrenchment and distress in all branches of business, appears from his correspondence. In November, 1839, he wrote to his brother Pitt that his firm was making $40,000 or $50,000 in a year. The young financier had much to tell his family at home in Ohio of their "smashing profits." They would fre quently "pocket five hundred dollars in a day !" 1 Cooke, like many other men, gained great facility in distinguishing counterfeit from good bills, and in computing the value of state bank notes. The busiest time was just before the hour for the banks to close. They would not take the "wild cat" money on deposit, and when merchants received it in payment of their bills they must carry it to the money-changers. One who had recollections of Cooke at that time wrote: "Two hours before the banks closed their doors a long row of hurrying boys and young men, with those older in years also, were ranged before the counters of the principal brokers, with their varying piles of depreciated money. . . . Cooke, as he stood exchanging 'wild cat' for 'par' was the personi fication of affability and business rapidity. He was the admiration of the patrons of E. W. Clark and Company.2 The lack of telegraphic, or even good postal facilities, caused one neigh borhood to be ignorant of the movements in another. Thus, values were very different in different parts of the country, and the early bankers, like the early merchants were enabled by a little knowledge gained from trustworthy agents to make large profits. The brokers were also entrusted with much other busi ness now usually attended to by banks, such as the collection of out-of-town bills, transactions in foreign exchange and the discount of business paper, often at rates which would now be denounced as nothing short of usury. "It was a grand time for brokers and private banking," Jay Cooke once wrote in recalling this period of his life. It was very far from a "grand time" for men whose business required them to venture into other fields. 'Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 57. 2 Ibid., p. 71. CHAPTER XXV. THEATRES, BOOKS, MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS. When William B. Wood retired from his association with Mr. Warren at the Chestnut Street Theatre, it was the end of an era in the history of the drama in Philadelphia. His old partner had put himself into the hands of "amateurs," to use Mr. Wood's phrase, and the complete downfall of the good name and the fair fame of the organization which had become an institution of the city was not long delayed. Just what were the influences which gained control over Mr. Warren it is not important to know.1 The fact seems to be that when Mr. Wood's firmer hand was withdrawn from the management, the theatre was quite unable to show a profit, a condition to which the too rapid multiplication of places of amusement contributed something also. A number of Philadelphians had formed a company to erect a theatre in Arch street which later became a very famous house. It was believed at the time that the Walnut Street Theatre, which had never been a largely success ful undertaking — in the view of many because the building was unadapted to the use — would be pulled down, but it met no such fate. The separation of the Chestnut Street Theatre partners occurred in 1826. At Mr. Warren's request, Mr. Wood and his wife remained in the company for a little while, but Wood was soon importuned to become the lessee of the new Arch Street Theatre. Al though it meant a competition which could scarcely be regarded as friendly, he — in view of all the facts, not the least of which was the understanding that the Walnut Street Theatre had reached the end of its career — embraced the opportunity. The new theatre opened its doors on October 1, 1828. The star was now in complete control of the situation, and the existence of three theatres led to an active competition among the managers. Mr. Wood principally relied upon James Wallack to whom he was obliged to pay $200 a night. Edwin Forrest, who was entering upon great popularity, was desired as a counter attraction at the Chestnut. He asked $200 nightly for his services, and actually succeeded in making those terms at the Walnut Street Theatre.2 At this time Cooper was getting $50 a night at the Chestnut, alhough in earlier years $100 a week was considered a high price for him, for Hodgkinson or for Mrs. Merry. Wemyss, an average member of the old stock company, was brought over from England for six guineas a week, and the usual benefit per- 1 A perusal of Wemyss' Theatrical Biography may reveal at least one of them. 2 Wemyss, p. 140. 190 ARCADE IX CHESTNUT STREET COMMISSIONERS' HALL, SOUTHWARK - 0$. ft I : -i W ¦ ¦'-•»' ^i ¦ pi : : . _~Ul $T *» COMMISSIONERS' HALL IX RICHMOND HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 191 formances. Many a good actor received only $15 or $20 a week. The man agers of the two older houses set out to close the Arch Street Theatre, and in three months succeeded in doing so, to the great disappointment of Mr. Wood and the stockholders. The Chestnut Street Theatre was closed a little later. Warren made over the house to Wemyss and dramatic affairs in the city were in a state of complete ruin. Fate soon again threw Warren and Wood together as members of a com pany which played at the Walnut Street Theatre, but their money and much of their courage was gone, and neither man could reestablish himself as a man ager. Warren died at Baltimore on October 19, 1832. Mr. Wood, on the other hand, continued to appear upon the stage quite regularly until 1846, when he was given a notable farewell benefit at the Walnut. He lived until 1861, al ways highly respected in the city which had come to be his home. In 1832 Joseph Jefferson died. He, too, had been caught in the wreck of the Chestnut Street company which he had done so much to adorn. He was "a very principal personage," said Wood, "in everything that we did;" "the reigning favorite of the Philadelphia Theatre," said Wemyss in his Auto biography, "for a longer period than any other actor ever attached to the city." Like Warren, unable to look at the ruin, he left the city and wandered about upon the "road." He died in Harrisburg, then a straggling village, though it was the capital of the state, and there he was buried. A marble slab was placed upon his grave through the exertions of Chief Justice John Bannister Gibson, who was so intelligent a patron of art and literature. Upon the stone Jefferson was described as "An actor whose unrivaled powers took in the whole range of comic character, from pathos to soul-shaking mirth. His coloring of the part was that of nature, warm, pure and fresh; but of nature enriched with the finest conceptions of genius. He was a member of the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, in its most high and palmy days; and the compeer of Cooper, Wood, Warren, Francis, and a long list of worthies who, like himself, are re membered with admiration and praise." In him were represented "the best traditions of comedy acting on the Eng lish stage." All who knew him — "actors like Hodgkinson, Cooper, Kean and Forrest — heartily and of one accord pronounced him the finest comedian of the age in which he lived." x He had nine children, all but two of whom adopted the stage as a career. The ablest of the number was John Jefferson. His death at Lancaster, Pa., just preceded that of his father who had hoped and believed that upon this favorite child his own mantle might fall. The family resided for many years in the house which is now .510 De Lancey, earlier Powell street. The son, Joseph Jefferson, also at times seen upon the stage, was the father of the greatest of the name, the Joseph Jefferson of our own day, who was born in a house still standing at the southwest corner of Sixth and Spruce streets ; and his mother, who before marrying his father was the well known Mrs. Burke, lies in a graveyard at the corner of Ninth and Bainbridge streets. The disappearance of Warren, Wood, Jefferson and their associates from the direction of dramatic affairs in the city, either by death or by misfortune, 1 Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson, by William Winter, p. 123. 192 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA gave these affairs — as has been remarked — a very different aspect. The three theatres which were now at hand to make their appeal to amusement lovers kept their doors open, even for short seasons, with the greatest difficulty. Many managers essayed the task, and one was not much more successful than an other. Among them were Wemyss, "Barney Weems," as he was familiarly called; Lewis T. Pratt, William Rufus Blake, Aaron J. Phillips, Samuel Chap man who married Joseph Jefferson's daughter Elizabeth; Robert C. Maywood, Thomas Archer, William Forrest, a brother of Edwin Forrest; William Duffy, William Jones, Charlotte Cushman, William E. Burton, W. R. Dinneford, E. A. Marshall, Joseph Cowell, John H. Oxley, and H. H. Rowbotham. These men and others passed from theatre to theatre from season to season. Sometimes two houses, the Chestnut and the Arch, or the Chestnut and the Walnut, en joyed the same management. Finishing after a few weeks at one theatre, the company would be transferred to the other. It was a time, says Mr. Wood, of "wild expenditure for stars, pageantry and opera." The day of the legitimate drama in the hands of the stock com pany had passed, at least for a time; and to a man like Wood, grounded in other traditions, the course of affairs was very disquieting. After Edmund Kean, Booth and Macready came such stars as Mrs. Sloman, an English tragic actress; Clara Fisher, an "infant prodigy" from London; Celeste, the damseuse who filled repeated engagements in Philadelphia, arriving first in March, 1828, when she was scarcely eighteen years of age;1 Madame Fearon, the English singer; Charles Kemble and his daughter Fanny in 1832 at the Chestnut; Edwin Forrest again and again; the Ravel family of ten per sons, gymnasts and rope dancers; Thomas D. Rice, negro impersonator, who made his first appearance in Philadelphia as "Jim Crow" 2 at the Walnut in 1832 ; Charles Kean, son of Edmund Kean ; Tyrone Power, the inimitable Irish come dian; Mr. and Mrs. Wood, the singers; James Sheridan Knowles, the author, who sometimes attempted to act; W. T. Brough, the singer; James E. Mur doch, a local star like Forrest ; Ellen Tree, later Mrs. Charles Kean ; the beauti ful Madame Vestris, later Mrs. Charles Matthews, Jr., the French dancer; Fanny Ellsler, the graceful Viennese dancer who came in June, 1840, to pack 1 Celeste's "last appearances" became a by-word like Miss Cushman's, and some of which we have heard at a later day. As much and as long as she danced here, marrying as she did an American, Henry Elliott of Baltimore, she always spoke English very imperfectly. Her farewell speeches ran something like this : "Lady and Gentilhommes-ma bon pooblic — me now do myself the honor to present myself before you to tank you for your great expression of too much applause. Ah ! the smiles of America (a meme) to me do me beaucoup honor — too mush that make my leetle heart go battement [placing her hand upon her heart] wis joy for your love. American free hearts has made for poor Celeste one grand pyramid to repose on, to the world's admiration to see. I go now [a graceful curtsey] farewell. It is hard to say farewell, but it will fly from my heart to my lips. To this grand ensemble of lady and gentilhommes me announce my adieu, adieu ! to you with toute l'ardeur de mon coeur [laying her hand on her heart] I will always be je suis toujours in your memories. Dear pooblic, adieu [Exit]. 2 The popularity of "Jim Crow" has "perhaps never been surpassed by any song in the world," said a writer in 1842.— (Buckingham, Eastern and Western States, II, p. 27.) "Old Zipcoon," "Old Virginny Nebber Tire," "The Lubly Rose" and other favorite Ethiopian serenades were soon distanced by Rice's song. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 193 the theatres and become the rage of the day ; 1 Charlotte Cushman, a singer of New England, who lost her voice for opera and passed to the drama, making herself by hard work "a queen of tragedy" ; Susan Cushman, her sister ; Ole Bull, Vieux Temps, and many others. The stage was entirely given up to these and other costly stars. Expensive and elaborate melodramas, "horse pieces," fairy spectacles, English, French and Italian opera, the corps de ballet, fancy dress balls, singing, dancing, tight rope performances, and any sensation whatsoever seemed to be preferred to the regu lar and orderly progress of the drama. The starring system which dates from about 1818, says Durang, "drained thousands of dollars from our people to line the purses of transient exotics." It "ruined the drama and impoverished the actors here." 2 "Until this [star] system be reformed," said Wemyss, "adieu to any well- conducted theatre. If the public will be content to see one part preeminently acted, they will continue to patronize the stars ; but if they wish for the rational amusement of a well-acted play, they will desert the stars, no matter how bril liant, to support the manager who will secure to them such a stock company as used to grace the boards of the Chestnut Street Theatre." 3 "The regular actors," said Wood, no longer formed "a joint stock company," but were "reduced to the condition of mere ministers or servants upon some principal performer whose attractions" it became their "sole and chief duty to increase, illustrate, or set off." The star system, he continued, always had led, as it always would lead, to "the bankruptcy of the manager and the degradation of the stage." The breaking up of the Chestnut Street Theatre company and the multipli cation of houses left to eke out an existence by appeals to the people through all kinds of sensations, carried the dramatic profession to its lowest estate. "Lucky was the actor who could realize a few dollars from his benefit," said Wemyss; "as to salary, it was insanity to look for such a thing." He himself turned to the sale of lottery tickets, and afterward kept a stand at which he sold pills, cigars and periodicals. The situation was made the worse by the theatrical emigration to America from England, which was at its height at about the time of the breaking up of the Warren and Wood partnership. Man agers sent their agents abroad to collect companies of actors and actresses. It developed into a mania and many came only to find themselves face to face with poverty.4 In a few years conditions underwent some improvement, but about the time of the panic of 1837 trouble returned. The disturbed financial conditions dur ing Jackson's and Van Buren's administrations were as little conducive to the prosperity of the theatrical managers as of any other men, and the battle of the stars and of advertised sensations continued at the three theatres. "Old Drury," as the Chestnut was commonly called, received its share of public favor, but it, 1She produced a "perfect mania for dancing" in all parts of the country; her price was $500 a night. 2 Chapter 56. 3 p. 151. 4 Hermit of Phila., First Series, p. 229. vol. n— 13 194 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA like the others, must make many odd bids for audiences. The Walnut Street Theatre, for a time called the American Theatre, became especially noted for its elaborate pageants and melodramas, but all actively entered the competition for profits from this source. The Naiad Queen, in which Charlotte Cushman led a large body of plump Amazons, was one showy spectacle. Another was that of Carter, "the Lion King." Young Jay Cooke, in Philadelphia in the summer of 1839, wrote home that this was "one of the most thrilling and beautiful pieces" that he had ever seen. In describing it he said: "Tigers, lions, leopards, etc., are introduced in many of the acts. In one of the scenes a large tiger darts upon a sleeping captain of banditti from a den in a ledge of rocks nearby, and after a fierce conflict the animal is overcome by the sturdy robber. In another scene the 'lion king' drives a large fierce lion, harnessed to a car, up a hill in full view of the audience. The play is intermixed with songs, dances, battles, and the usual quantity of love." To Edwin Forrest's ability to interpret and to gratify the public taste, at a time when sensationalism brought its rewards to the actor, was due much of his great success in the tragedies and melodramas which he set before the people during this period. Forrest, as we have seen, was brought out by Warren and Wood at the Walnut Street Theatre in 1820. By 1829, though he had first gen erously paid some of his father's debts, he had laid by a small fortune. His business acumen proved to be very considerable and, as great as were his tal ents, this quality sometimes dominated the situation, putting his art into the background. One of his plans, which seemed commendable enough, was to en courage American dramatists by offering prizes for their plays. It was stated by the authors who wrote for him, however, that the scheme was a characteristic one on Forrest's part. In many instances he paid them almost nothing for what yielded him princely returns. He would appoint committees of leading literary men as judges of his contests. William Cullen Bryant, Fitz-Greene Halleek, and others accepted such places at Forrest's request. One of his prize plays was the very popular Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags. This yielded him an enormous sum, but the poor author, John Augustus Stone, an actor in Philadelphia, flung himself in despair into the Schuylkill at Spruce street wharf.1 The suicide was buried in Machpelah cemetery at Tenth and Prime streets, where a stone was placed with this inscription upon it : "In mem ory of the author of Metamora, by his friend Forrest." Metamora was first put upon the stage at the Arch Street Theatre on Jan uary 22, 1830, and it became the most successful American play which had yet been produced. It fitted Forrest well, and it was given by him in all parts of the country with unfailing success. He appeared as the red Indian who died at the head of his tribe, a literary prototype of King Philip. Not before had the American aborigine been made the subject of a good play. To the fathers 1 Stone's suicide occurred in 1834. He was buried from his Walnut Street boarding house. The sermon was preached by the Universalist minister, Abel C. Thomas, Forrest who arranged the ceremonies having been unable to obtain a clergyman from an evangelical church, a usual experience of the friends of suicides at the day. "The noble form of Mr. Forrest with folded arms" was "prominent in the group" of mourners.— Thomas's Auto biography, p. 166. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 195 and grandfathers of most white men in this country at that time, the Indian would not have been regarded with any degree of interest. Now that he stood in the fading lights, he could be successfully surrounded with romance. The popular curiosity and awe with which he could be beheld were put to Forrest's use to the full. He studied the Indians in their haunts and made friends of them. Delegations came to see him in this play, and once in Boston a party grew so excited by the realistic spectacle that, at the chief's death, they stood up and chanted a dirge. Other playwrights who competed for Forrest's prizes and wrote pieces which met his favor were Richard Penn Smith, Robert T. Conrad and Robert Mont gomery Bird. Smith (1779-1854) was a most prolific writer. Though he at one time seemed to be a quite important literary character, his name is recognized to-day only by the local antiquarian. He was a grandson of Provost William Smith, and was a lawyer and a journalist. He wrote short stories and novels as well as plays, though it was to the dramatic field that his interests were prin cipally inclined. He confined himself to pieces of no one variety. He produced farces, comedies, historical dramas, melodramas and tragedies with equal fa cility, and if the truth were said, with about equal success. No one of his achievements can be asserted to have been conspicuous. Several of his plays were given at the Chestnut Street Theatre when Mr. and Mrs. Rowbotham, after Warren's failure, tried to reinstate the house in popular favor. In 1829 he wrote at request a play to commemorate the battle of New Orleans, called The Eighth of January. General Jackson was introduced and impersonated — a daring venture which met with little favor. As an example of the speed with which Smith worked, it is related that he sent this play to the theatre piece-meal, to be copied there at once for the use of the company, who were waiting for it in order to study their parts. Such methods were fatal to any large literary triumph, and in this characteristic, at least, some of the causes for Smith's failure may be found. He wrote The Venetians, and a Roman tragedy, Caius Marius, for Forrest, but neither play was accounted a great suc cess. The entire list of Smith's dramatic writings, printed and unprinted, per formed and unperformed, would be a very long one. Robert T. Conrad was a son of a member of the prominent publishing firm of Philadelphia, which early in the century had brought out Charles Brockden Brown's review, Joel Barlow's Columbiad and many other books. He studied law, contributed to newspapers and magazines, held a minor judicial office which caused him to be known as "Judge" Conrad, and served a term as mayor of the city. He wrote some verse of a fair degree of worth. His connection with the drama was principally confined to one play which enjoyed great popu larity, and was very often presented to Forrest's audiences. This was Aylmere} or the Bondman of Kent, founded upon the incidents of the English insurrection of 1850, which was led by Jack Cade. That outlaw, under Conrad's hand, was treated with much sympathy and became a hero who strove against great odds to right the people's wrongs. The work is full of bold and rugged measures which mark it as a poetic tragedy of considerable merit. 196 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Like Metamora, it held spellbound the crowds who came to see Forrest. In the part, says Alger, his biographer, he was "a sort of dramatic Demosthenes, rousing the cowardly and slumbering hosts of mankind to redeem themselves with their own right hands." Dr. Robert Montgomery Bird was the leading playwright of the day, and a literary figure of greater stature than any in the group. He came from the well-known Delaware family of this name. He studied medicine but soon aban doned it to devote himself to literature. He was the author of a story for boys, Nick of the Woods, which is still read; Calavar, a Mexican historical novel set in the time following the conquest, and other works of fiction. From him Forrest received three very valuable plays: Oraloosa, dealing with the tragic fate of the Incas of Peru ; The Gladiator, a Roman tragedy ; and The Broker of Bogota, a subtle study of domestic life in South America. Oraloosa enjoyed little vogue, but The Gladiator literally leaped into favor. As Spartacus, Forrest was the idol of his audiences. In naked fighting trim, the muscles of his great frame polished and hard, he used "to stand and receive the long tumultuous cheering that greeted him" when he appeared upon the stage, "as immovable as a planted statue of Hercules." That it was a work with some vital quality, apart from that which Forrest by his personality was enabled to put into it, is proven by the fact that it is still given from time to time by tragedians. The Broker of Bogota was a tragedy of slower movement, and it was less often produced by Forrest, but it remained a favorite with him until his death. Dr. Bird received little from these works which brought the actor so much fortune, and felt the greatest dissatisfaction in the relationship.1 It is true, of course, that the great tragedian's authors were under some obligations to him, as Judge Conrad, for instance, generously owned. Through him they found audiences for their work. The plays were often very much re-written in order to meet Forrest's views, and that he himself was largely responsible for their success is attested by the fact that, barring The Gladiator, they have had no favor in the hands of others. Whatever he really was as an actor, in his desire to give the people what they seemed to like, Forrest without doubt went to very great excess in his representations; "striding, screeching, howling, tearing passions to tatters, disregarding the sacred bounds of propriety," Alger says, was always1 the refrain in the cry of his critics. The soberest dramatic study was converted into loud melodrama. Forrest was "constantly breaking into colossal attitudes and gestures, lightnings of expression and thunder-bolts of speech," and the highest demands of art were forgotten. But this his audiences liked and paid him for so handsomely that he was enabled to keep up a castle on the Hudson river, a fine home at Broad and Master streets, Philadelphia (now the School of Design for Women), and a country estate, "Spring Brook," near Frankford, converted into a retreat for aged actors and actresses,— a memorial which most 1 His son, the late Frederick M. Bird, of Bethlehem, wrote me while I was preparing my Literary History of Philadelphia, and described at some length the injustices which his father had been obliged to suffer at Forrest's hands. jQDP fcJU-, :np': .. -Ji* -".4 -I'-.-'l—g l, jbOTI^otPkkJV.: - *,R 1 . . :Hf2. ^%tfe%Sft^^!i.^P^L|!l1=ft^ !-.t.f.C'?- f ^^nr'"3CT J C'CLl!:S[ril£ELIiLLUXlifcLSLll||fe„,'iLiF- , ; MAP OF PHILADELPHIA ABOUT 1840 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 197 worthily perpetuates his name in circles wider than those of his native city. Most of Forrest's plays were tried at the Arch Street Theatre,, of which his brother William was for a time one of the managers. Still another theatre was opened in 1840 to enter the struggle for audiences in Philadelphia, the National Theatre which William E. Burton fitted up ex pensively at Ninth and Chestnut streets. It was an honest effort to turn the people from "the ballet dancers, model artists, Hollick lectures, negro singers and such like entertainments," to use Mr. Wood's words, which had come to possess the Philadelphia stage. Burton was an Englishman, having been born in London in 1804. He was the son of a writer and printer, and essayed the task of making a name for himself in literature, both at home and after his removal to this country. "Thoughtful and saturnine" though he appeared to be, he was "one of the funniest creatures that ever lived," and nothing could prevent him from gain ing distinction as a comedian. Joseph Jefferson, in his Autobiography 1 says : "As an actor of the old broad farce-comedy Mr. Burton certainly had no equal in his day. . . . Captain Cuttle and Micawber were his great achievements; his face was a huge map on which was written every emotion that he felt." He came to America in 1834, and made his first appearance at the Arch Street Theatre on September 3d of that year as Ollapod in The Poor Gentleman, and Wormwood in The Lottery Ticket. He was a member of various companies in the city and won a great deal of favor during the next few years. In 1837 Cooke, an English equestrian, had built a circus at the corner of Ninth and Chestnut streets on the site of the present Continental Hotel.2 A few months later his horses, his wardrobe and all his effects were burned in Baltimore. The showman could not recover from his loss, which was not short of $80,000. The house, after being used for a time as a menagerie and for other purposes, stood vacant, and Burton leased it. Essential and expensive changes were made under the direction of John Haviland, the architect, and the new manager was soon able to open the building as the National Theatre. It is declared to have been "the most splendid and commodious theatre" seen in the city prior to the erection of the Academy of Music.3 By another account the house had "the most elegant theatrical interior of its time." 4 The auditorium was lighted by handsome cut glass chandeliers, and the opening night "presented a scene of splendor never witnessed in America." 5 The first production was given on August 31, 1840, The Rivals and A Roland for an Oliver being chosen for the occasion. An excellent company had been assembled by Mr. Burton, and the completion of his arrangements marked a return to the old "stock" days. "To restore and preserve good stock com panies was his idea," says Durang. "He desired to throw off those feudal xp. 100. 2 The house was distinguished by "a massive gold candelabra, the largest in the world, emitting hundreds of illuminated jets," which was suspended from the ceiling and other "elegant decorations perfectly novel to this country." 8 Durang, chap. 36, New Series. * Souder's History of Chestnut Street, chap. 76. 5 Wemyss, p. 267. 198 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA trammels of the starring system which had destroyed the dignity and operated against the true interests of the stock actors." x In the company on the open ing night were Charlotte and Susan Cushman, John R. Scott, James Thorne, Charles S. Porter, J. Placide, Mr. Richings, Mr. Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert and others. Costumes, scenery, properties, music were all of great excellence, and Mr. Burton deserved a better fate. But jealousy of rival managers led him soon to desert his stock company standards and to enter into their wild com petition for stars. He leased the National Theatre in New Y.ork planning to operate it in con junction with his Philadelphia house. It took fire in May, 1841, and much of his valuable theatrical property was burned. He was able to open in Philadelphia again in August, 1841, but it was with indifferent success. The United States Bank failed ; those who had lent him the money for his undertaking were soon in possession of the house. It closed on January 29, 1842, though not before he. or some one acting for him, had destroyed all the beautiful scenery, seemingly with the object of preventing it from falling into rival hands. Burton was now ready to return for wages to the Chestnut Street company. In June, 1844, he began a successful period of management at the Arch Street Theatre, and later, at the Chambers Street Theatre in New York, which came to be known as "the home of comedy in America," he completely retrieved his fortunes, so that at his death, in i860, he was a rich man. Here in the empty National Theatre was another candidate for the favor of managers and play-goers in a city which seemed already to be over-supplied with places of amusement. Directly behind Burton's National Theatre, at Ninth and George (now San- som) streets stood the Philadelphia Museum building. Peter A. Browne was an ingenious and enterprising man of the day. He had studied law. He had helped to organize the State Fencibles during the War of 1812. He was a promi nent Whig, and, unarmed, had leaped at the ringleader of the Democratic mob which attacked the Bolivar House in 1832. He was closely identified with the Franklin Institute, and wrote and lectured frequently on scientific subjects. He projected and built a Chinese pagoda in July, 1828, on a hill northeast of Fair- mount, on the south side of Coates street, within a few steps of the house to which Poe later came to live. This curious structure stood in a labyrinthine pleasure garden, which contained a pavilion, also fitted up in the Chinese style. It was one hundred feet high, and it was mounted by a winding staircase. From the top there was a good view of the Schuylkill. But the situation was so re mote, and the roads leading to the resort were usually so bad, that the undertak ing was doomed to failure. In conjunction with others, he planned an arcade, patterned after the Burling ton Arcade in London and similar experiments elsewhere. It was the first build ing of that kind to be constructed in Philadelphia, and it is a type which has been very little imitated since. The old Carpenter mansion on the north side of Chestnut street, above the theatre, after a distinguished series of tenants which had included the French Minister Luzerne, had become the home of 1 Chap. 58, New Series. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 199 Chief Justice Tilghman. He sold it to the Arcade Company for about $50,000, and the historic dwelling was torn down to make way for this novel structure. It was at first intended that the building should be but two stories in height, but Peak's Museum which had been incorporated as a stock company several years before the old artist's death, in order to keep it intact, required new quar ters and a third story was added for its use by Mr. Haviland, the architect. The front of the Arcade revealed four large high arches of Pennsylvania marble, and it was entered by two broad avenues which were well lighted. A large number of offices, which it was hoped could be rented profitably, opened from the corri dors and balconies. A restaurant was established in the cellar. At first the enterprise promised to be successful but the building fell into disfavor, and, with his two failures in mind, P. A. Browne came to be called Pagoda Arcade Browne.1 The museum, after Charles Willson Peak's death came under the manage ment of two or three of his sons. The enterprise continued to be so profitable that the company in 1835 increased its capital stock from $100,000 to $400,000 and erected a new building, at the corner of Ninth and George streets, adjoin ing Cooke's Circus, to which the collections were removed. The first floor was leased to Nathan Dunn for his Chinese Museum, a name which was at once at tached to the building.2 The collection was opened on Saturday evening, Decem ber 22, 1838, in the presence of more than a hundred prominent Philadelphians whom Dunn had invited to a private view. It was advertised as "China in minia ture," and contained wax figures of Chinamen in their native costume, articles of household convenience, examples of Chinese art, objects of natural history and much similar material. Lanterns of various kinds were suspended from the lofty ceiling. The Chinese nation was just beginning to attract the attention of the world and its people, and their customs were viewed with the greatest curiosity. Jay Cooke who visited this novel collection in 1839 wrote: "I never was so much interested in anything in my life. It was indeed a splendid exhibition. I learned more of the Chinese nation in that visit than I ever knew before, or should ever have been likely to know." Visitors from a distance considered the museum one of the principal sights of the city. George Combe, while here in 1839, said that the exhibition was "unique both in Europe and America." A survey of it approached "closely to a visit to China." 3 J. S. Buckingham, another English guest at this period, considered the museum "the most beautiful and perfect of its kind perhaps that exists in the world. I was so charmed with this and visited it so often," he continues, "that there was some apprehension of my becoming tired of it; but 1 In 1856 the upper stories were in use as a hotel called the Arcade Hotel. The build ing was sold at length to David Jayne, a successful manufacturer of patent medicines who in i860 built upon the site a row of marble stores which are still standing. 2 Mr. Dunn was a Quaker, a native of New Jersey who had been engaged in trade to his profit for many years at Canton, China. While there he conceived the idea of making a collection of material for a museum. 3 Vol. I, pp. 189-90. 200 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA it gave me increased pleasure at every successive visit, and I confess that I felt a longing desire to have it transferred to London." 1 The collection, it is said, cost Mr. Dunn $50,000 in Chita. As much more may have been expended in conveying it to Philadelphia and putting it in place. Louis Philippe made an offer of $100,000 for the material, if it could be trans ported to Paris, but the owner did not wish to part with it. His wealth did not make this step necessary. His "splendid mansion" in Spruce 'street was the scene of a "weekly soiree to the most respectable and intelligent of his fellow- citizens," which bore some resemblance to a Wistar Party.2 But the enterprise came to grief in the ruinous times which soon followed, and Dunn was obliged to remove his collections to London where they were in a few years dispersed. He died in Switzerland, and, if it had not been for some later financial reverses, it is said that he would have bequeathed his museum to the city of Philadelphia.3 Deprived of a profitable tenant the Philadelphia Museum Company's ruin ensued. It fell in 1841 with the United States Bank, which held its mortgage. The receivers foreclosed, but allowed the company to rent and remain in the building for a few years. Final dissolution came in 1846. The collections were put up at auction and scattered in all directions. The natural history specimens were kept together for a time at the Masonic Hall, but in 1850 they were sold by the sheriff to Phineas T. Barnum who, by his new and original methods was driving all rivals from a business in which Charles Willson Peale had been a pioneer. About 1845 this enterprising showman added Philadelphia to the chain of cities in which he maintained his museums. He hired a large hall in a build ing on the southeast corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets, but it was destroyed by fire in 185 1 and a part of Peak's specimens were burned at this time. Others met the same fate in New York. Little which can be identified remains of the Peale material, once valued so highly, except about 1300 specimens which Barnum removed to Boston, and which are now included in the collections of the Boston Society of Natural History.4 Two hundred and sixty-nine of the portraits and historical paintings, many of them from Peak's own hand, were sold to nearly as many separate purchas ers by M. Thomas and Sons, the auctioneers, on October 6, 1854. The various items yielded from fifty cents to $360 each, the latter for Peak's Washington "with the prisoners and trophies taken at Princeton," said to be "the chief orna ment" of his gallery and for his Benjamin Franklin, "a remarkably fine and valuable picture." Both were purchased by Edward Ingersoll. L. H. New- bold gave $175 for a Martha Washington painted as a result of the artist's 1 Here is to be found a very complete description of the museum. Indeed an entire chapter of Mr. Buckingham's work is devoted to the Dunn collection.— The Eastern and Western States of America, II, p. 42. 2 Buckingham, I, p. 468. s As it was he seems to have left an estate of $150,000.— Memoirs of Some of the Wealthy Citizens of Phila., 1846, p. 20. There was another Chinese Museum in the city in 1847. It was probably an itinerant collection which did not remain long. It was advertised in the newspapers, e. g., Public Ledger, June 23, 1847. * H. S. Colton in Popular Science Monthly, September, 1909. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 201 meeting General Washington in the market in Philadelphia in 1795. He paid the same sum for "a very fine full length portrait of the founder of the museum drawn by himself in the eighty-second year of his age" ; the same for a portrait of Baron Cuvier; for a portrait of Mozart; for a picture of the battle between the "Bonhomme Richard" and the "Serapis"; for a portrait of Washington as he appeared as a colonel prior to the Revolution; and for the staircase picture of Peak's sons, Titian and Raphael, life size. Of the latter it was said that in the gallery "it was not unusual for persons to approach it and place one foot on the first step which was a real one [made to foster the deceit]," while dogs had been known "to run against it in the attempt to ascend." 1 The "Chinese Museum" was used for many years for balls, concerts, lec tures and exhibitions. Even while the building was occupied by the collections, portions of it could be hired for these purposes. When George Combe, the phrenologist, was trying to lecture to 500 people on the first floor in 1839, 2,000 or 3,000 people upstairs were, to his great annoyance, listening to Frank John son's famous negro brass band.2 Signor Blitz mystified Philadelphians inside these walls, while interest in him raged. The edifice was burned on the night of July 5, 1854, in a furious fire which broke out in the National Theatre. Both buildings were soon a mass of ruins, and the space remained vacant until it was purchased a few years afterward as a site for the Continental Hotel, which was ready to open its doors at the outbreak of the Civil War. If supremacy in the business of managing theatres and museums seemed to be passing to New York,3 there was yet a very creditable activity in Philadel phia in the publishing trades. The city was still, as it had been, the literary center of the country. Through the enterprising and intelligent direction of a few men, chief among them Mathew Carey and his sons, Henry C. and Edward L. Carey, and his son-in-law, Isaac Lea, George R. Graham, Louis A. Godey and John Sartain, Philadelphia was to enjoy a few years of really brilliant literary history. No other community approached its position during this period. Boston had not yet made its mark as a center for either authors or publishers, though it had a few young writers who were coming to Philadelphia to find a market for their work; and New York as a literary competitor had even less to offer. 1 From catalogue with notes of the prices and the names of the purchasers in posses sion of the Hist. Soc. of Pa. Some or all of Mr. Newbold's purchases were for the ac count of Joseph Harrison. 2 On several occasions the doors must be closed long before the performance began, so great was the pressure of the crowd to hear the black musicians. Added to the noise of the horns and drums was the acclamation of the audience expressed by a violent stamping upon the floor. — Combe, I, p. 195. 3 This supremacy did not pass rapidly. Writing in 1848 Wemyss said : "The managers there [New York] have a foolish habit of announcing pieces for representation for the first time in America which have frequently been played in Philadelphia, deceiving only them selves by this miserable trick, and provoking comparisons by no means favorable to their managerial enterprise. As thus a Philadelphian visits New York, inquires for a play-bill, sees a piece thus announced and naturally enough says, 'Why, have you not seen that yet? Your managers must have been asleep ; it has been acted in our city six months ago.' "— Theatrical Biography, p. 121. 202 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA That indomitable man, Mathew Carey, and his children gave much impulse to the city. For many years their house was preeminent. The history of the Carey firm, from the Revolution to the Civil War, is the history of the book on its business side in this country. In 1885 it celebrated its centennial, and it is today therefore one hundred and twenty-five years old. In 1814 Mathew Carey made his son, Henry Charles Carey, a partner in the business. A few years later, Isaac Lea, who had married one of Mr. Carey's daughters, joined the firm. In 1824 its founder retired from active part in the direction of the busi ness, and afterward the firm was known as Carey and Lea. When a younger son, Edward L. Carey, attained his majority, the name became Carey, Lea and Carey. Henry C. Carey was a valuable factor in the conduct of the business. While he became much more famous as an economist than as a publisher, being the founder of a new scheme of social philosophy which had for its primal idea the upbuilding of a country's industries through a protective tariff, his literary judg ment was said to be excellent and his knowledge of the trade intimate. Mathew Carey's was the gospel of labor, and his sons were put to work at an early age. Henry, the eldest, born in 1793, was sent to Baltimore when twelve years of age, to superintend a branch of his father's business there. In 1819 he mar ried a sister of Charles R. Leslie, the artist, and Eliza Leslie, a very well- known writer of the middle of the century in Philadelphia. For twenty-one years, or until 1835, when he retired from mercantile life to cultivate his in terest in literature and philosophy, he was an active spirit in the publishing trade — reading manuscripts and books and gauging the literary market, in which service he was ruled by standards invariably high. From 1835 until his death in 1879, nearly forty-five years, Henry C. Carey was a retired gentleman, a writer and a publicist whose opinions were heard, when they were not heeded, throughout the world. Mathew Carey had been instrumental in 1802 in launching the American Lit erary Fair, modeled upon the lines of the European book fairs. This institu tion did not long survive, but its auction feature was revived in 1824 by Henry C. Carey, when he instituted the Book Trade Sales, which later for many years were in charge of Moses Thomas, the old publisher of the Analectic Magazine, and the friend of Washington Irving. His sales attracted booksellers from all parts of the Union, and were for a long time conducted in rooms in a building which stood on the site of the present Bullitt building in South Fourth street. Isaac Lea was of Quaker descent and a native of Wilmington, Del. He be came a publisher of acumen, and a naturalist of wide repute. His leisure while he was a publisher, and all his time after his retirement from business until his death, in 1886, when he was nearly ninety-five years of age, was devoted to scientific study. Henry C. Carey's brother, Edward L. Carey, did not long remain with the firm. A division was effected in 1829, Carey and Lea taking the publishing busi ness, while the retail trade was given to Edward Carey, who established a part nership with Abraham Hart, a young Jew. Hart, at ten years of age, upon his father's death, was compelled to enter a counting house. He at length made enough money to enable his mother to open a fancy goods shop in Third street, HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 203 opposite the Girard Bank. Books were added to the meagre stock, and it was the beginning of a business which attracted the attention of the Careys, and led Edward Carey to form a partnership with the young man under the name of Carey and Hart. This firm was long and favorably known, not only as book sellers, but also as publishers of much of the best literature of the time. At one period they surpassed the parent house in the brilliancy of their list of authors. Their publications were of that class which at a later day gravitated to Boston, to Ticknor and Fields. Their specialty was belles kttres, and many of the young New England writers came to them with their manuscripts. The printing and illustration of their books were excellent; the best artists and the best engravers were in their service. A favorite publication of this period was a Christmas souvenir book. It had various names : "The Wreath," "The Souve nir," "Forget-Me-Not," "The Evergreen," "Caskets of Brilliant Gems." Carey and Hart's "Annual" was called "The Gift." It was a very superior issue and always contained poems, sketches and stories by writers of national distinction. Its illustrations, too, were such as to cause it to be prized not only throughout the year whose date it bore, but for many years. Edward Carey was deeply interested in the fine arts, as well as in literature. His home was a veritable picture gallery. He died, after years of acute suffer ing, in 1845. The parent house, upon Henry C. Carey's retirement from it in 1835, be came Lea and Blanchard, an employee of the house for more than twenty years, William A. Blanchard, having then been admitted to the firm. Thus it re mained for many years, or until 1851, when Isaac Lea's son, Henry Charles Lea, later so eminent as a historian, took his father's place in the business. As Lea and Blanchard, some of the proudest successes of the house were achieved. At one time it regularly published two novels a week in addition to many sub stantial works, such as encyclopedias, biographies, poems and essays. Among native authors, it had James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, William Gilmore Simms, John P. Kennedy and Robert Montgomery Bird. It republished in the United States the works of Dickens, Scott, and several other English authors of the day. The Careys were the first to reprint the Pickwick Papers in this country, and many of the "Waverky Novels," Scott's Life of Bonaparte and Lockhart's Life of Scott. International copyright there was none, but in order to obtain the advance sheets of a book ahead of a rival it was customary for a publisher to pay an English author a slight douceur. Thus, seventy-five pounds would be given for a "Waverky" and three hundred pounds for Lockhart's Life. Even then there was no certainty that some other house would not go to market first with the book. The packet service was so unreliable that a ship which made its departure a month after some other vessel had cleared the English coast, might earlier reach its destination. To protect themselves against this and other accidents, there was much activity on the part of the publishers as soon as the sheets were received. Compositors worked with the greatest speed to put the book in type, and it was printed and bound with a like rapidity. Mr. Blanchard used to relate how, when a young man, he was sent away with a wagon load of copies of a new "Waverky," sitting high on 201 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the bundles and traveling night and day across New Jersey in order to deliver them at the earliest possible hour to the booksellers in New York. In 1842, when Charles Dickens made his first visit to this country (he came again in 1867), he had letters of introduction to Henry C. Carey and other members of the family, but his impressions of this city were not much more favorable than those of the country at large,, if they are correctly reflected in his American Notes. His disgust was complete when his efforts to obtain in ternational copyright arrangements failed. Thereafter neither Lea and Blanch ard nor any other house could secure advance' sheets of his novels at any price, and their republication here was open piracy. In those years in which the Careys were so actively encouraging literature by their attention to the publishing of books, the city also became a famous center for the trade in periodicals. The enterprising competition of the editors for material to fill their pages developed a number of popular writers in Philadel phia, and brought many hither from other parts of the country, that they might be near the market place. Earlier, the American magazines had been principally collections of excerpts from the English periodicals. Now a demand arose for something native to the soil, an outgrowth doubtless of that national feeling which came to dominate the people in all things after the War of 1812. They then began to understand that they were no longer appendages of England or France, and that they had a life of their own to lead. The pioneer in this independent national movement was the Saturday Even ing Post, which Atkinson and Alexander had established in 1821 upon the ruins of Franklin's old Pennsylvania Gazette. Shortly, the Bee, a paper founded by Robert S. Coffin, of West Chester, who wrote some verses signed the "Boston Bard," failed, and it was merged with the Post, which soon came under the editorship of Thomas Cottrell Clarke, a name identified with magazine pub-; lishing in Philadelphia for many years. In the course of time several other periodicals which endeavored to rival it, were absorbed by the Post. Clarke ceased to be its editor in 1828, and he was followed by a number of men well known in the literary annals of the city, among them: Charles J. Peterson, his cousin, Henry Peterson, remembered as the author of that successful Revolu tionary novel, Pemberton; Rufus W. Griswold, Morton McMichael, Colonel Samuel D. Patterson, George R. Graham and Horatio Hastings Weld. It had many publishers and was issued from many offices. In 1827 its owners boasted that its circulation was "rising seven thousand papers every week," and a time came when this number, large as it then seemed to be, was far surpassed, and it could be said quite truthfully that there was no part of the United States which the Post did not penetrate. The leading English writers of fiction sent their stories to the editor, as did many native writers. Its vogue at length passed, with that of other magazines which were its contemporaries in Philadelphia, and it remained for a much later owner, Cyrus Curtis, to raise it to the popularity which it now enjoys, and a circulation far beyond the bounds of the imagination of the magazine proprietors of three-quarters of a century ago. When Clarke left the Evening Post, he established The Album and Ladies' Gazette, and there were also The Ladies' Literary Portfolio, The Casket, or Flow- EDGAR ALLAN POE HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 205 ers of Literature, Wit and Sentiment, The Ladies' Garland, and a variety of periodicals similar in name and purpose, not all of which had lives of equal length or achievement. Louis A. Godey was the first great prince in the making of lady books. He soon put upon the market a magazine which outstripped the Saturday Evening Post in the race for popular favor. Born humbly in New York in 1804, he was employed for a time in a broker's office in that city. Having literary aspirations, he, in 1828, came to Philadelphia, where there was the hope of gratifying them.. He saw the opportunity to purchase some old plates of a publisher, and in 1830 issued the initial number of Godey's Lady's Book. Its articles at first were mostly filched from British papers, but he pressed forward with the undertak ing, not without meeting difficulties which would have discouraged other men, and in 1837 arranged a merger with the Ladies' Magazine of Boston, the oldest periodical of the kind in the country. With that magazine Godey obtained the services of Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, whose name came to be identifieed with the Lady's Book as closely as his own. Her husband had been a lawyer in New Hampshire but he had died, leaving her with several young children to support, and she turned to literary pursuits. As early as in 1827 she published in Boston a two- volume novel called Northwood, and in 1830 she wrote the immortal "Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow". For a time she edited Godey's from Boston, but came on to Philadelphia in 1841, continuing at her post here until 1877. She was then nearly ninety years old. In that long time she had not only edited the Lady's Book, month by month, but she had also done much literary work of an original and creative character, and of great variety. Through her persevering efforts, Thanksgiv ing Day was made a national occasion. She had been the moving spirit in a great fair at which the money was obtained to complete the Bunker Hill Monu ment, and the instigator or patron of many philanthropic movements designed to benefit her sex and man and womankind generally. From 1840 to 1850 the magazine was at the height of its popularity. Godey published the names of his writers. The mystery in which literary work had earlier been enveloped was done away with, and many who wrote acceptably to his readers were helped into reputations by this enterprising man. He also paid his authors. "We were the first," he wrote, in 1840, "to introduce the system of calling forth the slumbering talent of our country by offering an equivalent for the efforts of genius." The demand was principally for trivial and sentimental stories and sketches, and little bits of pleasing verse. These were supplied by many writers :— Eliza Leslie, T. S. Arthur, Miss Sedgwick, "Grace Greenwood" (Mrs. Sara J. Lippincott), Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, for a time Mrs. Hale's assistant in the editor's chair; Miss Buchanan, afterward Mrs. Annan; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice Neal, the young widow of Joseph C. Neal, author of the Charcoal Sketches; Mrs. E. F. Ellet, who wrote his torical stories and sketches; and many more. But no American writer was too proud to disdain a place in Godey's pages or to despise the remuneration which came from writing for it. Edgar Allan Poe sent many stories, reviews and criticisms, while the names of Washington 206 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Gilmore Simms, James K. Paulding, Park Benjamin, Thomas Dunn English, N. P. Willis, who was heralded for a time as a regular contributor; and three younger Pennsylvania writers — Bayard Taylor, T. Buchanan Read and Charles Godfrey Leland, of whom more was soon to be heard, were frequently seen in the magazine. Indeed, at one period in the history of Godey's, not a month passed without a "table of contents" in which were found poems, stories and articles by writers whose names now have an established place in American literature. Godey was a skillful advertiser, and he declared with truth that he expended more money upon his magazine than any other lady-book maker of the time. With each issue he gave his subscribers a number of excellent steel engravings, colored fashion plates, models of cottages and furniture for household decora tion, patterns for the use of needlewomen. Indeed, he sent artists abroad to picture and describe the fashions in dress in England and France, and his maga zine became an undeniably great influence in molding the manners and govern ing the appearance of the American woman in all parts of the country prior to the Civil War. In 1850 Godey's had a circulation of about 80,000, which was considered to be an enormous achievement, and in the year before the Civil War the total had risen to 98,500 copies. The owner could announce exultantly that his Book in 1859 had cost him $105,200, the coloring of his fashion plates alone repre senting an expenditure of $8,000. "Hundreds of magazines have been started, and after a short life have de parted," wrote Mr. Godey in 1853, "while the Lady's Book alone stands tri umphant, a proud monument reared by the ladies of America as a testimony of their own worth." He made a large fortune, as fortunes ran at his day, from his magazine. Whittier, angered at the course he took to hold his southern readers while the anti-slavery discussion raged so bitterly before the Civil War, could write of his "Moony breadth of virgin face By thought unviolated;" and denounce his "Patriot zeal and peddler thrift For country and for pocket." But more than a successful publisher he did not pretend to be. Neither Aboli tion nor any other public question sensibly moved him, though he was a gen erous and kindly gentleman who enjoyed and was entitled to the respect of his friends. He lived very comfortably and well at 15 17 Chestnut street. The magazine lost its influence during and after the Civil War. In 1877 Godey sold it to a stock company. He died in 1878, Mrs. Hale in 1879, and the Book itself gradually made its disappearance after a famous career covering a half century. Next to Mr. Godey, the Petersons were doubtless the leading influences to put a feminine stamp upon magazine literature in Philadelphia. Charles J. Peterson was one of several brothers, descended from a Swede who early settled upon the Delaware. He was educated for the law, but became a writer an editor and a publisher, though without notable result in any of these fields. In HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 207 1840 he began to issue Peterson's Magazine, called at first The Ladies' National Magazine. Some of Godey's writers were secured for it, but it was an inferior publication in nearly all respects, and after appearing for. a number of years ceased its visits to those households in which it had long been seen. Henry Peterson, a cousin of Charles J. Peterson, and the latter's brothers, among them T. B. Peterson, also wrote, edited and published for women. Henry Peterson's wife, Sarah Webb Peterson, was the editor of The Lady's Friend, another lady book which for several years sought to divide Godey's profitable field. Far more deserving than Godey's, and set at a higher literary pitch, was Graham's Magazine. This was the most famous and the most truly national periodical in America after the Port Folio. George Rex Graham was the son of a shipping merchant who had been ruined in a panic. As a lad he was placed in the home of an uncle for whom he had been named, George Rex, a farmer in Montgomery County. He came to the city to be apprenticed to the cabinet maker's trade, but by dint of hard work, he was enabled at the same time to study law. The love of literature early asserted itself, and by the time he was ready to be admitted to the bar he had an editorial position on the Saturday Evening Post. He soon came to have a proprietary interest in that paper and in Atkinson's Casket, and was ready for the venture for which his name will always be gratefully remembered by the historian of literature in America. William E. Burton, the comedian, saw the opportunity in 1837 to gratify a love for magazine editing which he had brought with him from England. He began to publish the Gentleman's Magazine, named for the famous periodical of the same name in London. If ladies were to have magazines and papers of their own, he conceived that it would be but just to consider the needs of gentlemen also. It was his intention, he said, as he launched his undertaking, to produce a book which would prove to be worthy of a place "upon the parlor table of every gentleman in the United States." He succeeded very well. He relied largely upon Philadelphia writers, then a goodly and a quite distinguished company. At first his own editor, in a few months he engaged Edgar Allan Poe to assist him. Poe had brought his con nection with the Southern Literary Messenger, at Richmond, to an end in 1837, and came to Philadelphia. He did not remain here long, but passed on to New York. The next summer he returned to this city, intending to make it his home. He was possessed of an idea that he would like to establish a magazine of his own, and he could not rid himself of the ambition so long as he lived. Phila delphia was then so active a publishing center that he was justified in believing he could realize his cherished ideal in this city. While his project was fructify ing, he must have lucrative employment of some kind, and Burton's experiment inviting him, he in July, 1839, was offered a post upon that periodical at fifty dollars a month. Poe as yet was a little known man, except within narrow bounds. Indeed he starved and died before any one seemed to realize how great his genius really was. He was glad enough to sell a poem or a story which the world today holds in the highest regard, to a ladies' paper, a newspaper, or to any one who had a few dollars to pay him for it. He had lately offered a collection of stories, his Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, to Lea and Blanchard, and 208 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA they had published the book, though on very unfavorable terms. They took all the gains, allowing him twenty copies for distribution among his friends. Even then they were so discouraged by the experience that when he asked them to publish another volume they flatly refused to do so. Poe welcomed Burton's offer. Their names were to appear together upon the title page as the editors of the Gentleman's Magazine, but the two men were soon on such relations that it is difficult to see how they continued to work to gether, even for the few months during which the attempt was made. Burton found the magazine unprofitable, and he was busily formulating his~ plans for opening the National Theatre at Ninth and Chestnut streets. He saw the oppor tunity, late in 1840, to sell the periodical to George R. Graham, and that young publisher at once combined it with the Casket, forming — to give it all its titles — 'Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine (The Casket and Gentleman's united), embracing every department of literature; embellished with engravings, fashions and music arranged for the piano-forte, harp and guitar." Some of this superfluous verbiage was later omitted, but whatever its official name, to the public, which loved it, it was always Graham's. Poe soon joined the staff. He was very valuable, as he had been to the Gentleman's, in obtaining contributions from noted authors and in writing crit ical articles. He was unyielding in his insistence upon high literary standards, being in unconcealed hostility to the lady-book kind of writing, though he was himself perforce often a contributor to Godey's pages. In the office of Graham's Magazine, too, he had his quarrels. Whether the difficulty arose with Charles J. Peterson, according to one story, or with Rufus W. Griswold, according to another, Poe retired early in 1842. He wrote his friend Thomas about this time : "My reason for resigning was disgust with the namby-pamby character of the magazine, a character which it was impossible to eradicate. I allude to the contemptible pictures, fashion plates, music and love tales." Though Graham himself afterward assured the public of his own entire friendliness with Poe, he seems to have favored the separation at the time, else it could not well have been brought about. "The connection of E. A. Poe, Esq., with this work," Graham announced in 1842, "ceased with the May number. Mr. Poe bears with him our warmest wishes for success in whatever he may undertake." Griswold remained for only a short time, until October, 1843. In 1848 Graham was assisted for a few months by Judge Conrad, and later for a while he had for his associates Joseph R. Chandler and Bayard Taylor, now writing constantly as J. B. or J. Bayard Taylor. At all times, however, Graham was his own editor, and he conducted his magazine with very marked ability. Like Godey and Burton, he took what he could find in Philadelphia, but before Bayard Taylor, T. Buchanan Read, George H. Boker and Charles Godfrey Le- land came forward, Pennsylvania did not hold many writers of the first rank. The number included Robert Montgomery Bird who, however, wrote seldom if ever for the magazines; Henry B. Hirst, a quite remarkable poet, thought by some to have been a borrower from— by others, a lender to— Poe; Judge Conrad, Richard Penn Smith, Willis Gaylord Clark, Robert Morris, Joseph C. Neal and Mrs. Neal, Thomas Dunn English, Dr. Reynell Coates, Dr. John K. Mitchell Morton McMichael, Charles J. Peterson, John Frost, Professor of Literature HOUSE IN WHICH POE LIVED IN BRANDYWINE STREET ABOVE SEVENTH STREET NICHOLAS BIDDLE HALL OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN STATE HOUSE YARD As it appeared prior to alterations HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 209 in the Philadelphia High School and a compiler of many histories and biographies ; Catharine H. Waterman, afterward Mrs. Esling, Fanny Kemble, lately married to Pierce Butler, and Joseph R. Chandler. These did not suffice, writers were sought in all parts of the Union. Long fellow, whose poems were being published by Carey and Hart, was a constant contributor. There are enough of his poems in the bound files of Graham's to make up a volume of goodly size. The collection would include "The Spanish Student," "The Belfry of Bruges," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "The Build ers" and "Nuremberg." Lowell also wrote for the magazine frequently, coming on to Philadelphia soon after his marriage to reside for a time in Arch street; while among the other contributors of poetry at one time or another were Bryant, N. P. Willis, Richard H. Dana, Park Benjamin, George P. Morris, Fitz-Greene Halleek, C. P. Cranch, John G. Saxe, E. P. Whipple, George D. Prentice and Alice and Phoebe Cary. Among the prose writers were James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James K. Paulding, Washington Allston, Mayne Reid, "Ik Marvel," Charles Fenno Hoffman,1 William Gilmore Simms, T. S. Arthur, Seba Smith ("Major Jack Downing"), Horace Greeley, Francis P. Blair, John W. Forney, W. W. Story and Henry H. Tuckerman. Graham also patronized the pens of many of the female magazine writers, such as Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Ellet, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. Embury, Frances Sargent Osgood, Ann S. Stephens, Mrs. A. M. F. Annan and "Mary Clavers." Indeed there were few if any American writers worth his while to have who did not at some time figure in Graham's pages, barring Washington Irving who was too busily occupied with the Knickerbocker Magazine to divide his favors with Philadelphia. On its art side, the magazine was not less well served. While a fashion plate in colors was usually introduced, against Poe's protests, as he tells us, to suggest a rivalry with Mr. Godey, resort was principally had to mezzotint and steel engravings. Some of these were very beautiful. In the files of the magazine are to be found many handsome plates by John Sartain. Sadd, Tucker, Dick, Smillie and the firm of Rawdon, Wright and Hatch were also employed to embellish Graham's with results that are not to be dismissed with a superior air, even when we contrast the magazine with the more showy periodicals of this day. To receive it was a delightful experience, a happy anticipation before the numbers arrived, followed by as much surprise as we feel today in turning over the pages of the bound volumes, there to find work which has since become part of the warp and woof of American literature.2 The result was not obtained without the lavish use of money. Poe was ill paid, like all writers whose necessities compel them to seek a market. He had much to sell, and his needs were everywhere known. Mr. Graham paid him only $4 a page for his critical articles and little more for his tales. Longfellow 1 This prolific writer worked under many disadvantages and came to a pitiable end. In 1817 his leg was crushed between a ferry boat and a wharf necessitating amputation. About 1849 he became insane, and he was taken to the Harrisburg asylum where he was confined for 35 years or until his death in 1884. 2 Oberholtzer's Literary History of Philadelphia; see also Prof. Harrison's Life and Letters of E. A. Poe. vol. n— 14 210 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA seems to have received about $50 for a short poem, and George P. Morris could obtain that sum for anything he would offer before he had yet put his pen to paper, so much liked were his songs. Cooper and Hawthorne were the best paid writers as Washington Irving, then the "supreme pontiff" of American letters, would also have been, if Graham could have succeeded in tempting him to join the list of contributors to the magazine. To Cooper $1,800 were paid for The Islets of the Gulf, a short serial afterward made up into a book under the name of Jack Tier, or the Florida Reefs. Graham went to England for few of his writers, though he once paid G. P. R. James $1,200 for a short novel, and published several poems of Elizabeth B. Barrett, afterward Mrs. Browning. Many numbers (said Graham in later life, in harking back to the days of his prosperity) had cost him $1,500 each for authorship alone ! For years the lowest monthly outlay for this item was $800. In 1852 the editor boasted that in the ten years past he had paid between $80,000 and $90,000 to American writers. The engravings meant even greater cost. An artist received from $100 to $200 for a plate, while the reproduction brought up the cost to about $500. A number of the magazine often represented an outlay of $2,000 for decorations. It was a time when all classes of the people seemed to have gone into the business of rhyming and story writing. School girls, housewives, when they sat down after making the pies, young men chafing under the demands of medicine and law, clerks in dry-goods shops — were all writing and sending their rubbish to the editors of the magazines. Most of it reached Philadelphia, and much of it was printed in the various periodicals of that type of which Godey's was the best. It was Graham's purpose, while being not too good for his business or his time, to do a more serious service. Early in the history of the magazine he wrote: "As we have introduced a new era into magazine history, we shall not pause until the revolution is complete. We shall not follow the namby-pamby style of periodical literature, but aim at a loftier and more extended flight." This literature was to be "purged from the sickly sentimentality which degrades public taste" by such influences as Blackwood's and Frazer's in England, and the Knickerbocker and Graham's in the United States. Graham began in De cember, 1840, with an issue of 5,500 copies. At the end of a year the circula tion rose to 25,000 copies and seems to have stood around 40,000 copies, until in 1848, by speculation in copper mines and other business outside his proper sphere, the editor was obliged to sell his magazine to Colonel Samuel Dewees Patterson. Patterson was a native of Montgomery County. He was born near Norris town, where he learned the printing business. He dabbled in verse, and now for several years had been the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post. He wisely retained Graham as the editor of the magazine. He seems, indeed, merely to have lent the money necessary to continue the publication ; the old editor would resume possession of the property as soon as he was able to do so. Graham took his readers into his confidence. He had shown "what folly can do when business is forgotten, but," he continued, "I can yet show the world that he who started as a poor boy with but eight dollars in his pocket and has run such a career as mine, is hard to be put down by the calumnies or ingratitude HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 211 of any." Much sympathy was expressed for the famous editor, and he was soon on the way of regaining his feet, though not before an active rival had appeared in the shape of Sartain' s Magazine. John Sartain, a young English engraver, had come to Philadelphia in 1830 upon the advice of Thomas Sully, the painter, and was at this time very busily employed in the adornment of the Philadelphia magazines. His work contributed in a large way to the success of Graham's, and his reputation was already so extended, it was believed, that his name would carry a rival publication to prosperity. A man named Sloanaker, earlier Graham's business manager, made the proposal to the artist who, thinking that the old magazine's course had been run, embraced the offer. He himself often said afterward that he never would have entered into the arrangement if he had known that Graham's position was not worse than it proved to be. The artist and his partner purchased for $5,000 the Union Magazine of New York, which was edited by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirk land. It was transferred to Philadelphia and rechristened Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art. Mrs. Kirkland continued to edit the periodical with the assistance of Professor John S. Hart, the principal of the Philadelphia High School. Money was freely used to obtain Graham's writers and many others who, it was believed, would attract the attention of America to the undertaking. A series of papers by Harriet Martineau, and novels by Fredrika Bremer — a Swedish authoress then popular in this country — were engaged. William and Mary Howitt, and several other foreign writers were numbered among the mag azine's contributors. Longfellow sent his translation of "The Blind Girl of Castel Cuille" and "Resignation;" Poe, "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee," which was in hand at his death, though it could not be published since the author, pursued by poverty and despair, had sold it to another buyer who preceded Sartain in its use. Charles Godfrey Leland wrote regularly for the magazine, and its contributors were a distinguished body of men and women. The undertaking at first seemed to promise financial success. The circulation of the magazine after a year was said to be nearly 30,000 copies, but it found itself in close quarters with Godey's and Graham's, the latter again a very active bidder for public favor. Graham's, in every intellectual sense, was on a plane above Godey's, while Sartain's professed to be, and probably was moving in a still higher atmosphere. Though the editors did not dare to bar the accounts of the fashions in feminine dress, they boasted that they had "sedulously excluded from its pages the whole brood of half-fledged witlings with fancy names — the Lilies and the Lizzies — the sighing swains and rhyming milkmaids of literature." They were convinced that the public had exhibited "unequivocal symptoms of disgust" with such writing. Nevertheless, the magazine was doomed to an early failure. Professor Hart and Mrs. Kirkland, as editors, were followed by Dr. Reynell Coates who, for economy's sake, gave way to Mr. Sartain himself. Do all he could with his embellishments and in other directions to establish the magazine in a profitable position, the enterprise must be given up. The first number had been issued 212 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA in January, 1849; the last, in 1852. It was more than seven years before Mr. Sartain could discharge the debts in which he had become involved by this un happy adventure.1 Graham, meantime, in 1850 regained the ownership of his magazine. He told his readers of his joys. "That we feel proud of our reinstation in this magazine— the child of our happier days," said this direct and single-hearted man, "we shall not deny. The gold that bought it for us, if estimated by the happiness it has diffused, must have dropped from heaven, baptized for good." The light for him was leaping "over the mountain tops." Of one issue, late in 185 1, he printed 80,000 copies. But his day seemed to be done. He found it not difficult to survive the competition of the Knickerbocker, but he now had to face the rivalry of Harper's, and in a little while Putnam's in New York, as well as other magazines with large resources which seemed better able to gauge the changing public tastes. He ascribed the change of the tide to the tendency which was revived of making magazines from material abstracted from foreign publications. "Will there never be pride enough in the American people," he asked, "to stand by those who support a national literature? Or to urge upon Congress an international copyright law?" Graham finally parted with his magazine in 1853 or 1854, and it rapidly declined. In 1857 Charles Godfrey Leland made an effort to revive its vogue, but it was vain. In 1859 its name was changed, and it shortly disappeared, after one of the most honorable careers in the history of magazine literature in America. Graham may never have been so wealthy as Godey, but he was the possessor at one time of a very considerable fortune. He had his team of horses, and he wore the appearance of prosperity in the life which he led. When James Russell Lowell visited him in 1845 he nad "grown fat, an evidence of success." The magazine was issued at the southwest corner of Third and Chestnut streets, then a center for publishing offices; the editor lived in "one of the finest houses on Arch street." This home adjoined that of Elijah Van Syckel, a wine mer chant, and the two families were so intimate that a door was broken in the par tition wall of the second story, so that they might pass back and forth at any hour. An abounding table upon which the finest of viands and liquors appeared was set in Graham's house, and for his many friends it was the seat of an en tertainment always hospitable and free. His beautiful wife, earlier Miss Eliza beth Fry, of whom there is a portrait painted by Sully, presided gracefully over the mansion. N. P. Willis, Dr. Bird, Judge Conrad, Poe, Neal the humorist, Fanny Fern, Mrs. Hale, Grace Greenwood, etc., came and went frequently.2 Poe found Graham "really a very gentlemanly, although an exceedingly weak man." Yet, with all this, in view of his shining successes at one period of his life, it is difficult without knowing of the intemperate habits which grew upon him, to see why the rest of his days should have been led in the most humiliating poverty. He was for a while employed in some subordinate posts 1 Mr. Sartain lived until 1897, publishing just before his death an interesting volume of memoirs, The Reminiscences of u, Very Old Man. 2 Mrs. Burgin's Recollections in conversation with the writer. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 213 on newspapers in New York, and afterward lost his hold upon everything. In Jay Cooke's prosperity, after the war, Graham wrote to the banker asking him for assistance. Cooke, as a boy, had read the magazine with delight, and in structed one of his agents to discover, if he could, what Graham's difficulties seemed to be. The report was that he had no vices, so far as appeared at that time; he was simply broken in spirit and entirely unable to resume his place in the world.1 He lived until 1894, much of the time in a hospital in Orange, N. J., at the expense of George W. Childs. But he survived his benefactor, and then, it is said, Prof. Albert H. Smyth, of the Philadelphia High School, was instrumental in collecting money for his support. Both Professor Smyth and Howard M. Jenkins went to Graham for recollections 2 of the palmy days in which he was the friend and companion of America's leading literary men and women ; and he was always ready to oblige a visitor or a correspondent with the history of his great magazine. He was brought to Philadelphia to be buried, but the city which he had once done so much to honor did not awaken to any recognition of him. Not a newspaper contained a line con cerning the simple funeral ceremonies, nor did his death suggest an historical article dealing with his past. Forty years of personal adversity had obliterated the name of Graham and his magazine from the public mind. Of the group of writers who were natives or residents of Philadelphia for a longer or shorter time during this brilliant period in its literary history, Poe easily leads. The city was his home from 1838 to 1844. After he gave up his position as a sub-editor of Graham's, he concerned himself with the plans for his own magazine, and the possibility of securing a clerkship in the custom house through President Tyler. He continued to contribute to Graham's and the other periodicals as he could find the courage for the work, and the oppor tunity for the sale of his writings. Two of the houses in which he dwelt while here, are still standing, and one is easily identified. Where else, if anywhere, he resided during his five or six years here, we do not know.3 He is only twice mentioned in the Philadelphia di rectories during this period; in 1843 as "Poe, E. A., editor, Coates, n. F. M."; and in 1844, "Poe, E. A., editor, 7th, ab. S. Garden." The first of these addresses is a house which is now numbered 2502 Fairmount avenue, then Coates street. Three or four brick dwellings had just been built here on a triangular piece of ground. At their back ran a wide street in the middle of which were laid the new tracks of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad on its way from Broad street up the bed of the old Union Canal to the inclined plane at Peters' Island. At the point of the triangle, facing west, was the Great Western Hotel, a tavern at which passengers might stop on their way north and west by the packets of the Schuylkill or Union Canal Companies. Their wharves were nearby, and the Fairmount water works, and the basin above them on the hill, were scarcely a stone's throw away. In front stretched the old Robert Morris estate, the hill *It is known, however, through members of Graham's family, that his trouble was drink. 2 See Smyth's Philadelphia Magazines and Jenkins' Memorial History. 3 Sartain, in his Reminiscences, speaks of Poe residing for a time in Sixteenth street near Locust, but this was probably a boarding house. 214 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA now surmounted by Henry Pratt's house called "Lemon Hill." Still nearer, on a portion of the tract was a large house occupied by the Wagner family. The City Hospital (usually called the Small Pox Hospital) and the Cherry Hill Penitentiary lay farther east. Between Poe's home and the city there was little except the locomotive works of William Norris and Matthias W. Baldwin, not much more than small foundries. They stood on or near the grounds of the old Hamilton place at Bush Hill.1 The other Poe house stood on North Seventh street, in the district of Spring Garden; it is identified today as the back building of a house numbered 530, at the corner of Brandywine street. On May 25, 1842, Poe wrote to his friend F. W. Thomas, "I have moved from the old place," presumably the house on Coates street. To James T. Fields he wrote on June 20, 1843, tnat nis address was 234 North Seventh street, changed since by process of renumbering. Brandy wine is a small street lying between Green and Spring Garden streets. The house was owned by William B. Alburger, a plumber, who resided in the neigh borhood. It was set against the wall of a much larger house and had a garden around it which was entered by a walk from Seventh street. Lydia Hart Gar- rigues, of this city, whose father lived on Seventh street below Spring Garden, and whose aunt, Lydia Hart, lived nearer Green street on Seventh street, next door but one to the Poe cottage, remembers to have seen Poe very often pass her door. He wore a Spanish mantle which was a favorite garment of the day, and his thoughtful face was the object of remark in the neighborhood. Mayne Reid, the young English adventurer, later a quite famous writer of boys' books, was in Philadelphia for a considerable period during Poe's residence here. He and others who visited the Seventh street home, speak of the roses in the garden. Some of the vines and plants were carried inside in winter to blossom behind the glass. Virginia had her harp; and it was in this house, in all probability, that she ruptured a blood-vessel while singing, the accident which nearly ended her life at once. Though she lived on for three or four years, it was under suffering which reflected great distraction and unsettlement in Poe. In the spring of 1844 they departed for New York, in the hope that better op portunities for his employment would be found in that city. While Mr. Al burger was not hard with his tenant, whose position he greatly pitied, the rent account was much in arrears. Poe was quite unable to pay; and upon leaving he or Mrs. Clemm gave the landlord a large sofa, and some chairs and carpets in lieu of a better settlement.2 After meeting the expenses of the trip to New York, the poet had only four dollars and a half with which to begin his life in a new city, where poverty was more cruel than it had ever been in Philadelphia. James Russell Lowell came soon after Poe left. It would have been agree able for both — for correspondence had made them excellent friends — if their 1 This house is identified by John S. Detwiler, of this city, whose father resided next door but one to Poe. He was a flour miller, who found great satisfaction in the poet's company. Mr. Detwiler as a boy was one day taken by Poe on a gunning trip in a boat among the reeds on the Schuylkill river, south of Gray's Ferry. He has distinct recollec tions of the experience. 2 Two of these chairs are still in possession of Mr. Alburger's daughter, Mrs. Anna Walker of Germantown. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 215 residence here could have covered the same period. Lowell married Maria White near the end of 1844. She had earlier spent a number of months in the city, and had "talked so much to James" of it that he was inspired "with the desire to try its virtues." They came on New Year's Day, 1845, and found lodgings with a Quakeress at what was then 127 Arch street, identified by Pro fessor Smyth as the house still standing at the northeast corner of Fourth and Arch streets. It was a happy honeymoon. But they remained only until May, after having been here but four or five months. Those men of literary interests who saw most of Poe while he resided in Philadelphia — aside from Godey, Graham, Burton and Sartain — were probably Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Henry B. Hirst, Thomas Dunn English, Thomas Cott- rell Clarke and F. O. C. Darley. Clarke, who was a partner in one of his maga zine schemes, was the editor of the Saturday Evening Post for a number of, years, and later of other Philadelphia periodicals. Darley (1822-1888) was also an associate in this proposed editorial undertaking. He was a son of John Dar ley, an actor in the old Chestnut Street company, and he became a well known and greatly admired artist, especially in the illustration of books. Griswold was a Baptist preacher who turned to letters. He was a native of Vermont. A good deal of a bigot and a lover of contention, he was yet a care ful student of the history of American literature about which he wrote indus triously. He had taken Poe's desk at the office of Graham's Magazine, and held other editorial posts while he resided in the city. A number of his books were published by Carey and Hart, and his name was well known in American literary circles in this brilliant and prolific era. His censures upon Poe, which were uttered in his role as a biographer, soon after the poet's death, created a great pother. They were malignant and unmerited, in the belief of very many. They certainly indicated no appreciative understanding of such a genius as Poe's, and his friends at once came to his defense. "The Rev. Mr. Griswold is an ass, and what's more, a knave," said Lowell; while Graham declared in his magazine, in his open letter to N. P. Willis, that this post-mortem assault was "dastardly" as well as "false." The echoes of the dispute concerning Poe's private character are heard to this day. Thomas Dunn English also involved himself in an unhappy controversy on the subject of Poe, with whom he had been rather closely associated in Phila delphia. He, however, had the merit of carrying on the discussion while his victim lived. English was born in Philadelphia in 1819. He was destined for the bar but turned to medicine, and was graduated from the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. He wrote verses for most of the Philadelphia magazines — his most striking popular success being his ballad, "Ben Bolt," beginning, "Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt, Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile And trembled with fear at your frown." English removed to New York at about the same time as Poe, and was ready for a grilling at the hand of the latter in a serial critique of New York's literati in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846. In English's later life (he lived until 1902), 216 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA he drew quite away from literature, in favor of journalism and politics with whose stick he came to be coarsely grimed. Henry B. Hirst was the most graceful and talented poet in Philadelphia after Poe was gone. Indeed, he was quite obviously influenced by his master, though there are some to say that Poe himself was the beneficiary by the association and communion. His Endymion was his longest work, and it contains much that is of striking beauty and charm. All of Hirst's volumes were published in Boston before 1850. He had studied for and was admitted to the bar, but with dissipated habits and an undue portion of self-esteem, which before long developed into insanity, he was spoiled for either law or literature. His life came to a miserable end in 1874. George P. Morris was a native of Philadelphia, although he early removed to New York where he founded the Mirror. He became the song writer of America par excellence, known everywhere for his "Woodman, Spare that Tree," "My Mother's Bible," "I Love the Night" and other musical verse. "He is just what poets would be if they sang like birds without criticism," said his friend Willis. Other Philadelphia poets of this time were Willis Gaylord Clark, Robert Morris, Dr. John K. Mitchell, Catharine H. Waterman, Walter Colton and Frances Kemble Butler. Clark was a brother of Lewis Gaylord Clark, long the editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine. He died here of consumption when little past thirty years of age. Robert Morris, who after Clark's death, Poe de clared to be "the best of the Philadelphia poets" was not a descendant of the financier of the Revolution as his name would indicate, but of a Welsh sea cap tain. He was on the editorial staff of one of the city newspapers for many years. While his contributions were frequently seen in the magazines of the day, no published collection of his poems has ever been made. Dr. John Kearsky Mitchell, who has been spoken of as a leading physician of the city and a professor in the Jefferson Medical College, wrote much grace ful verse. A volume called Indecision, and other Poems was published in 1839, and ne was frequently a contributor to the magazines. Some of his lyrics were set to music and enjoyed a wide popularity.1 Walter Colton was a naval chaplain, stationed for a time in Philadelphia. He was the author of poems and articles on travel in the magazines. Catharine H. Waterman, who, in 1840, married C. H. W. Esling, wrote verse which was graceful but not very important, for the periodicals. Her name was often seen in Burton's, Graham's and Godey's Magazines. 1 Dr. John Kearsley Mitchell was the grandson of Judge John Kearsley of Shepherds- town, Virginia. His second child, Elizabeth Kearsley, married Dr. Alexander Mitchell of Ayrshire, Scotland, who came to America about 1785. Their only child, his namesake, John Kearsley Mitchell (1792-1858), was a favorite of his grandfather who lived long, died and is buried in the city. Dr. J. K. Mitchell in 1822 married Sarah Matilda, daughter of Alex ander Henry of Philadelphia. They had nine children, of whom six were sons. The third child is S. Weir Mitchell, the eminent physician, novelist and poet of our day. The name suggests a relationship with Dr. John Kearsley, of Colonial times in Philadelphia,— the archi tect of Christ Church— and his Tory nephew, also Dr. John Kearsley; but the connection was remote. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 217 Fanny Kemble, who came with her father, Charles Kemble, in 1832, upon a most successful tour of the American theatres, was sought in marriage by young Pierce Butler. She yielded to his entreaties, and was added to Philadelphia's intellectual colony, which she was in every way well calculated to adorn. Her husband was the grandson, in the maternal line, of Major Pierce Butler, who had been a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and a senator of the United States from South Carolina. He became attached to the city while in Congress, and continued to reside here with some regularity afterward. His estate, "Butler Place," was situated on the Old York Road near Branchtown. A daughter married Dr. James Mease. Their son changed his name and was the Pierce Butler of this day. Mrs. Butler was early taken to the Butler plan tations on the islands of the Altamaha river on the coast of Georgia. Slavery wounded her to the soul, and she wrote a journal of her residence there, the publication of which was withheld until during the war, else it would have be come a powerful document for the Abolitionists. Her life was marred by an unfortunate disagreement with and a separation from her husband. She wrote much verse and prose for the magazines. Her journals, begun during her visit to the city with her father, were continued to the time of her death in 1893, and are invaluable records of the social history of Philadelphia for the long period which they comprehend. Of other Philadelphia writers of the period, seen more often in Godey's and the minor magazines than in Graham's, one could name T. S. Arthur, Eliza Les lie, "Grace Greenwood," Joseph C. Neal and Alice Neal. Mr. Arthur was a native of New York state. He came to Philadelphia when he was about thirty years of age, and resided here for nearly fifty years, or until his death in 1885. He was a most prolific writer of stories set to the stand ards of taste of the general masses of the people. The titles of his volumes num ber more than one hundred, including his Ten Nights in a Bar Room, which became a tract in the great temperance agitation that swept the country, with the aid of the village lyceum, during this period. In 1852 Mr. Arthur started a periodical called Arthur's Home Magazine, which was published successfully for many years. Eliza Leslie, known to every one as Miss Leslie, whom Godey once described in his magazine as "a true daughter of Philadelphia," was a typical lady-book writer. Her stories, her cook books, and her magazine, Miss Leslie's Magazine, were known in every American home. "Grace Greenwood" was the pen name of Sara Jane Clarke, who married Leander K. Lippincott, a publisher in Philadelphia. She wrote in a manner which was very acceptable to the readers of the magazines. Joseph Clay Neal was a humorist, the first of note to appear in Philadelphia. He was born in poverty and went in search of fortune with the crowd that swarmed the Schuylkill coal regions after the discovery of the value of the mines there. Upon his return to Philadelphia he became a newspaper writer. His Charcoal Sketches which were printed in the journals, were gathered to gether in books to be admired by no less an authority than Charles Dickens. The humor is essentially Pickwickian. In 1841 Neal established the Saturday Gazette, usually called Neal's Gazette. In his capacity as the editor of this paper his 218 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA attention was attracted by a number of manuscripts, from a lady who signed herself Alice G. Lee. Her real name was Emily Bradley. He married her and_ brought her to Philadelphia. At his desire, she continued to use the name Alice, and as Alice Neal, or "Cousin Alice" she came to be known to all readers of the popular periodicals. A few months after his marriage, Mr. Neal died and his wife, still but nineteen years of age, continued the Gazette successfully. In 1853 she remarried, and subsequently she was known as Alice Bradley Haven. A man who could not have written for the worst of all the magazines which have been mentioned was yet one who wrote more, perhaps, than any other Phila- delphian of his day. This was George Lippard. He was a combination of the socialist, the local antiquarian and the dime novelist. His interests sometimes led him to the correction of social and economic asperities and wrongs; some times to the myth, legend and romance of Philadelphia history; always to a tense, dramatic and exaggerated style suited to a very low order of human taste. He is entitled to no literary place and has never been in risk of receiving any. Lippard seems to have been of Pennsylvania German extraction. He was born in the northern part of Chester County, but was early brought to Germantown. Nearly every conceivable misfortune befell him and his family; he was himself marked for consumption. Poverty almost drove the spirit out of his frame. For months he was literally a starveling of the streets, wandering by day to the Wissahickon, whither his fancy always inclined him in an un controllable way, and sleeping by night in an abandoned house on Franklin Square. Throughout this time he seems to have been greatly influenced by read ing Charles Brockden Brown, whom he acknowledged to be his master in fiction writing. He obtained a position on a newspaper and from 1842 onward produced a series of tales, mostly founded upon the incidents of the American Revolution in and around Philadelphia. His output was prodigious. He wrote five novels in three years, two of them of great length. In 1844 appeared The Quaker City, a sensational attack upon the political and social morals of Philadelphia, which produced an immense sensation. In five years it attained its twenty-seventh edition. When it was dramatized and ready to be put upon the stage at the Chestnut Street Theatre, such a mob assembled that the mayor came to the author, who was in the crowd, and begged him to let the announcement be made over his name that the play would not be produced. Thus only, it is believed, was a dangerous riot averted. So much local notoriety came to Lippard by this adventure that the author founded a magazine called The Quaker City. In it many of his wild tales ap peared. Shortly before his death, he established a secret society, called the Brotherhood of the Union, which under another name still maintains an organi zation. It continues to celebrate his birthday, and has a care over his grave in the Odd Fellow's cemetery at Twenty-third and Diamond streets, where he was buried at his death in 1854. Some student of the history of socialism and communism in this country would find him an interesting subject for an essay. This side of his life deserves much more attention than it has yet received. His knowledge of history was nearly nil. He originated or perpetuated a great deal of myth. The story of the little boy calling out, "Ring, grandpa, ring " HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 219 to the bellman in the State House tower, after the Declaration of Independence had been signed, was his. It was a pure fabrication, yet it goes on finding be lief to this day. Not in literature, nor as a social reformer, nor in the inculcation of patriotic lessons by the romantic treatment .of history, can this pitiful and strange life be accounted to have been lived fruitfully. The publication and editing of newspapers in the middle of the century in Philadelphia underwent material change. The conditions under which this busi ness was conducted became very different. Those journals which had come down from the eighteenth century found themselves unable to adopt the pace set for them by more enterprising men. Some went out of existence entirely, while others were absorbed by strong new papers, better fitted to survive. In the decade from 1830 to 1840, three ably and vigorously managed journals appeared in Philadelphia, the North American, the Inquirer and the Public Ledger. The first copy of the, North American was printed on March 26, 1839, at an office in Dock near Third street, by S. C. Brace and T. R. Newbold. They represented a number of gentlemen who wished to establish a newspaper which would devote some attention to religious and charitable subjects, of personal interest to them. Their plans were not very practicable, and the journal soon came to be owned by William Welsh. Its first impulse to prosperity was gained by its absorption in December, 1839, of Poulson's American Daily Advertiser. To this fine old paper it became the legitimate successor in everything but in name, and its history could be run back continuously through Poulson to Clay- poole and to John Dunlap and the paper which he established as the Pennsyl vania Packet and the General Advertiser, in 1771. This merger was brought about by Mr. Poulson's wish to retire from busi ness. He had purchased the paper from David C. Claypook in 1800, and for thirty-nine years continued to publish it at 106 Chestnut street, opposite the Bank of North America. Respectable but not brilliant, in a way it very correctly reflected the older race of Philadelphians to whose homes it was a regular visitor. "It is," said Watson, in writing of it in his Annals, "more properly municipal and domestic than any other [newspaper] which we know. It seems composed to suit the family hearth and fireside comforts of good and sober citizens, never flaunting in the gaudy glare of party allurements; never stained with the ribaldry and virulence of party recrimination. It is patriarchal — looking alike to the wants and benefits of all our citizens as common children of the same city family." In short, it held that place which the Public Ledger under George W. Childs's management came to occupy in the estimation of the people after the Civil War. The paper was always Federalist and Whig, and therefore politically, as well as in other particulars made itself acceptable to the old families of the city. Mr. Poulson in 1839 was seventy-eight years of age. His son, John Poulson, had no wish to succeed his father in the control of the paper, and it passed to Mr. Welsh of the North American. The properties were at once combined to be sold in 1845 to George R. Graham, the magazine owner, and Alexander Cummings. Robert T. Conrad, the poet and playwright, became its 220 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA editor. Cummings opposing while Graham supported Conrad's policies, Graham soon bought out his partner's interests and was the sole proprietor of the paper until he was joined by Morton McMichael on January i, 1847. A few months later, the North American absorbed another famous old Phila delphia journal, the United States Gazette and more money being needed, Dr. Robert Montgomery Bird, the novelist and dramatist, joined the partnership. The Gazette was Fenno's old paper which had done such loyal service in the Federalist cause during the Washington administration. It had had its reverses, losing much of its prestige early in the century, but it was reinstated to place in the public estimation after Joseph R. Chandler obtained an interest in the property in 1826. In 1829 he became the sole owner, and for the next eighteen years it was a power in the community. Its affiliations were Whig, and it ex erted an excellent influence upon popular thought. Mr. Chandler was a native of Massachusetts, and after coming to Phila delphia in 1815 was for a time the teacher of a school. He spoke well, and wrote gracefully and trenchantly. His personal qualities made him very at tractive socially, and the leading gentlemen of the city were his companions and his friends. Long editorial service had been a severe strain upon him, and when the opportunity came to dispose of the paper in 1847 he was recom mended by his associates to accept the offer. It is certain that no man who ever edited a paper in Philadelphia brought greater honor to the journalist's vocation and his retirement led to expressions of honest regret.1 By the union with this good old newspaper the North American was further strengthened; and with Graham, McMichael and Bird as its owners, directors and writers, aided by a staff of editors composed of Judge Conrad, G. G. Foster — usually known as "Gaslight" Foster — and others, it was the leading news paper of its day. Much of the impulse to its prosperity had come, without doubt, from Graham's acumen as a publisher, but he must now retire because of the financial misfortunes which caused him to part with his magazine. After 1848, McMichael and Bird were obliged to carry on the enterprise alone, and upon Bird's death, in 1854, McMichael became the sole owner of the paper. The publication office, in 1848, was removed to 132 South Third street where it remained for thirty years. Mr. McMichael's name became inseparably connected with this journal. Born in 1807 in Burlington County, New Jersey, he came to Philadelphia at a very early age. He was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, and was ad mitted to the bar in 1827, after a course of study in the office of David Paul Brown. But literary pursuits were more to his liking. He was connected suc cessively with the Saturday Evening Post, the Saturday News and Neal's Gazette. But these literary and semi-literary employments did not fit him so well as journalism. In his capacity as editor of the North American, almost until his death in 1879, he identified himself in the most prominent and honorable ways with the history of the city. He had the ability to speak, as well as to write 1880. 1 Mr. Chandler afterward sat in Congress for several terms, as a Whig. He died in NEW "WIRE BRIDGE" AT FAIRMOUNT IN 1841 THE STATE HOUSE A Winter Scene, 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 221 forcefully, and a courage without which a journalist may be successful though he will never be either influential or admirable. His zeal in the public interest on the useful side of questions raised him very high in the esteem of the people of the city. The Pennsylvania Inquirer, or Enquirer as it was at first known, began to appear on June 29, 1829. It was established by some men connected with Duane's Aurora, which disappeared from the scene about this time. In a few months it passed into the hands of Jesper Harding, born in Philadelphia in 1799, who had learned the printing business in the office of the United States Gazette. He had come to have a printing shop of his own, and was largely concerned in the manufacture and sale of Bibles. In 1829 the Inquirer absorbed John Binns's Democratic Press, which had ruined itself by its opposition to General Jackson. In 1834 came a union with the Daily Courier. After a brief experience with the Pennsylvanian, James Gordon Bennett purchased the Daily Chronicle, which had been founded in 1828, changed its name to the Daily Courier, and sought to bring it into popular favor. He was soon discouraged with the pros pect, turned over the property to Mr. Harding, and went to New York to found the Herald. Again in 1842, the Jjiquijef absorbed the National Gazette, which William Fry and Robert Walsh had established during the Missouri Compromise dis cussion in 1820, and by the. transfer to Mr. Harding of one of the minor liter ary periodicals of the day, it procured the editorial services of Robert Morris, the poet, who has been spoken of before. His writings upon literary topics were long an admired, feature of the journal. Its affiliations, at first Jackson- ian, soon turned Whig, an occasion being found for the change at the time of "Old Hickory's" assault, so unpopular in Philadelphia, on the United States Bank. It was designed to make the Inquirer a "family paper." It did not win very much attention, however, until during the Civil War, when its reports from the field were so early, and its accounts and maps so illuminating, that its popu larity increased at a rapid rate. The public ¦Ledger marked a departure in journalism in that it was a penny paper, the first prominent example of an American newspaper published at one cent a copy. A newspaper called The Cent, and sold at that price began to come out about 1830, but only a few numbers were issued. The Daily Transcript which was soon merged with the Ledger to be named in a sub-title on the latter's editorial page until its last change of ownership, was also a one-cent newspaper. The Public Ledger first appeared on March 25, 1836, from an office in the Arcade. Three young men-William M. Swain, A. S. Abell and A. H. Simmons -formed a partnership, at a time just preceding the panic of 1837 when busi ness prospects were far from assuring. Their experiment had a profound in fluence upon the later history of journalism in other cities, as well as in Phila delphia. A year later, on May 17, 1837, they established a paper in Baltimore the Sun, and the two journals were edited in close conjunction for many years' They bore a marked physical resemblance to each other, exchanged their news' and were long associated in the public mind. ' Mr Swain had immediate control of the Public Ledger, while Mr Abell directed the affairs of the Baltimore Sun. Mr. Simmon's, who had gone to 222 .HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Baltimore with Mr. Abell, returned to Philadelphia in 1843, after the firm had established the Dollar Newspaper, and gave this undertaking his personal care. It was published once a week and was sold, as its name indicated, at one dollar annually — a development in the direction of cheapness in a semi-magazine field, of what the firm was doing as newspaper publishers. It was in the early num bers of this paper that Poe's tale, "The Gold Bug," appeared. He had sold it to Graham for $52, but when the Dollar Newspaper was started, it announced a prize story competition, and Poe asked to enter his manuscript. Graham ac ceded; it won the prize of $100, and was lost to his magazine. The Swain, Abell and Simmons enterprises proved to be very successful. The firm effected many revolutions in journalism. President Jackson's mes sage of December, 1838, was printed in Baltimore the same day that it was read in Congress, and it was hurried on by private couriers to Philadelphia. The editors who had relied upon the mails were soon left far behind in the race to give the people the news. "Pony expresses" were organized by Mr. Abell, alone or in combination with newspaper publishers in other cities. Aided by such a service, he was the first to announce the death of President Harrison in 1841, and Tyler's veto of the bank bill which soon followed — an event of the greatest public interest. The news from Europe came too slowly and a relay service was established between Halifax and Portland, Maine. The time from Halifax to Philadelphia by pony and railroad train was reduced to fifty hours, and the New York packets were beaten by several days. This was at a period when there was great ex citement over the issue of the dispute with England in regard to the Oregon boundary, and the papers actively competed for the honors and profits which would come from being the first to publish the news. The Ledger and the Sun were members of that group of journals which sent a pilot boat to Liverpool for news in 1846. It came back several days ahead of the packets. During the Mexican War an overland pony express was organized between Philadelphia and New Orleans. Sixty "blooded horses" were put on the line, and they beat the "Great Southern Mail" by sixty hours. The distance was covered in six days, and the cost of the service is said to have been upward of $1,000 a month. The government at Washington was kept informed of the progress of the war by the enterprising proprietors of the Ledger and the Sun. As a means of getting the news from incoming steamers, as well as in communi cation overland, Mr. Abell employed between four and five hundred carrier pigeons. His is said to have been the first "pigeon express" in this country. When the magnetic telegraph came into use, Mr. Abell and Mr. Swain were its earliest patrons, and their support materially aided the development of this new agency for the transmission of information. In October, 1840, the Public Ledger, which had been published hitherto in the Arcade, was removed to the southwest corner of Third and Chestnut streets, to a building in which Graham's Magazine also had its publication offices. An evening paper which was destined to enjoy a long career of influence, appeared on April 12, 1847. It was established by Alexander Cummings, earlier of the North American, who continued to be identified with it for many years. As Cummings's Evening Telegraphic Bulletin, the ancestor of the present Even- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 223 ing -Bulletin, it inaugurated many excellent reforms in evening journalism in Philadelphia. The honorable history of this paper belongs in the main to a later time. Two other papers appeared during this period. Both were Democratic, and combatted the prevailing Whig sentiment of the community. These were The. {Spirit of the Times and The Pennsylvania^,. The Spirit of the Times was es tablished in 1837 by John S. Du Solle, later a private secretary to Barnum, the showman. He was a wild spirit. The motto of his paper was "God and the People." George Lippard found employment on its staff for a time. It was published for about twelve years; according to its own claims, attaining a very large circulation. Its principal rival in the Democratic interest was The Pennsylvanian. This newspaper, whose influence was great until the Civil War, was founded in 1832. James Gordon Bennett, as has been indicated, Joseph C. Neal the humorist, and John W. Forney were men of distinction who were connected with the property at one time or another in the course of its history. Forney came to the city from Lancaster in 1845, when he was appointed deputy surveyor of the port for some political service by which Polk had been enabled to carry the state by a small majority against Henry Clay in the previous year. He continued to edit the paper until 1853. Just prior to the Civil War, the journal's course was such that its owners were compelled to cease its publica tion. Forney, at this period of his career, was a Democrat, and he was as able a figure on this side as on that to which he moved in later years. With Joseph R. Chandler, Robert T. Conrad, Morton McMichael and John W. Forney in the service, journalism in Philadelphia before the war was most honorably served. They were writers very near to the rank of publicists, and their names will always hold a creditable place in the history of our newspaper press. RoJaert^Walsh, of the National Gazette; Dr. Robert M. Bird, of the North American; Robert Morris, of the Inquirer, were superior for the literary quality of their writing, but they did not exert that influence upon the side of journalism which so nearly allies it to politics, and makes it a factor in directing our public life. The time when newspapers could be published at a profit with a circulation- of five hundred copies was passing by. The Public Ledger in 1840 is thought to have printed an edition of 15,000 copies a day. The old journal had its sub scribers who paid by the year. If the bill was overlooked, the account ran on until it often reached a formidable sum. Collections, both for subscriptions and advertisements, were made with difficulty, and the publisher not infrequently re ceived what his customer owed him in produce. Charles Heber Clark — the in imitable Max Adeler — at one time after the war a part owner of the Evening Bulletin, recalls that his share of the profits, even at that late day, came to him in forms which — to him, at least — were quite useless. The one-cent paper, or other influences, changed the terms of subscription. The journal was now sold by the week, and the sum was collected, as a rule, by the boys who carried it around to the subscribers in their homes. Before the Mexican War, it is believed that single copies were almost never sold in the 224 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA streets. Then the Public Ledger and perhaps some other papers issued "extras" which were shouted in the principal thoroughfares of the city. In 1843 there were three penny papers in Philadelphia: the Public Ledger, The Spirit of the Times, and the Daily Chronicle — not to be confused with the paper whose name was changed to the Courier, and in 1834 was merged with the Pennsylvania Inquirer. There were both morning and afternoon issues, but those which appeared in the morning were the stronger and more influential — as indeed they have been, with rare exceptions, ever since. There were no editions on Sunday. That was a dies non until papers were especially founded for publication upon that day only. These were not very cor dially welcomed in a city which had rigorous principles on the subject of Sab bath observance. Two or three experiments of this kind in the '30s and '40s failed after the issue of a few numbers. However, it was only a little way from the Saturday weekly paper to the Sunday weekly paper. In 1848 the first of a number of publications which held the field until the week-day journals began their Sunday issues, made its appearance in the shape of the Sunday Dis patch. It met with the greatest opposition at the hands of various religious elements in the city; but it persisted week after week, and at length gained a secure place. Many of the daily newspapers had weekly, bi-weekly or tri-weekly issues intended for their country subscribers who could not be reached so often as once a day. The scope of the newspaper's interest widened. The editorial article became a settled feature. It was often an able piece of writing, and it exerted an in fluence upon the community. Space was found for the proceedings of Congress and other legislative bodies. The speeches of Clay, Webster and the great ora tors of the age were carefully printed and eagerly read. Books, plays, and musical productions were intelligently noticed; commercial news was collected, and economic questions discussed. Beginning about 1840, a money article appeared in many, if not in most of the newspapers. Jay Cooke always believed that he had made this innovation in Philadelphia journalism. Early in 1840, while he was a clerk in the banking house of E. W. Clark and Company, Colonel Alexander — who had just estab lished the second Daily Chronicle — asked the young financier to write an article on the money markets for that journal. He did so daily, until in a few months he was taken ill as a result of his various labors.1 On July 1 of the same year, Joseph Sailer began to write his financial articles for the Public Ledger, a serv ice which he continued for over forty years.2 In many ways the journal was linking itself indispensably with the multiply ing and various interests of the people. It was reaching up to a level of in fluence which it had never attained before; and, unless signs fail, which it has often and perhaps generally not enjoyed since. 1 Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 62. 2 He finally lost his eyesight, and about two weeks after laying down his pen he died. "He practically labored until his death, a most powerful man in his day." — Joel Cook, his assistant and successor in a letter to the author. CHAPTER XXVI. FURTHER MATERIAL ADVANCEMENT. The important changes effected in the people's material condition in the first half of the eighteenth century came, in 1836, to include the lighting of the city by gas. As has been noted on earlier pages, there were small private gas manu factories in connection with the old Masonic Hall, burned in 1819, and in the new building erected in its place. Peak's Museum in the State House had a plant in operation. The first Chestnut Street Theatre was illuminated from a manufactory installed on the premises. Various efforts had been made by some of these and by other manufacturers to obtain the right to lay pipes in the streets, and sell the gas to householders and shopkeepers. Councils uniformly refused to grant the privilege. The new Chestnut Street Theatre was not equipped as the old one had been, and for many years the Masonic Hall was the only public building in Philadelphia which was lighted in this manner. Com panies which were formed to make and sell gas were unable to proceed with their plans, because of popular and official opposition; but finally, as has been noted, councils were compelled to appoint a standing committee on the subject. Fifteen years passed without action. In 1830 a public meeting was held in Philadelphia in the interest of the new illuminant. A report which was issued declared : "This brilliant and economical method of illuminating the public streets, and public and private buildings, has long since been adopted in many of the prin cipal cities of Europe with entire success, and several places on this side of the Atlantic have followed the example. It has often been a matter of astonishment that the beautiful city of Philadelphia should have been suffered to slumber so long in comparative darkness." It was suggested that the plant should be placed on the ground used for the old city water works on the Schuylkill at the head of Chestnut street. It was computed that gas could be supplied at $3.50 per thousand cubic feet, just one- half of its price in New York. While the plan was being discussed, remon strances continued to be received from many sides. It was denounced as a project of "the most inexpedient, offensive and dangerous nature; in saying this," the remonstrants continued, • "we believe we are fully sustained by the accounts of explosion, loss of life and great destruction of property where this mode of lighting has been adopted. We consider gas to be an article as ignitibk as gunpowder and nearly as fatal in its effects." The refuse of the works would poison the shad and other fish in the two rivers; the air would be made un- 225 226 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA wholesome for man. The danger of fire would be increased. Every possible objection was stated, and many impossible ones conjured up in order to defeat the movement. Offers were made to councils by men who were willing to light the city free of charge in return for the privilege of manufacturing and selling gas. Two ingenious persons revived an old scheme of public illumination by lamps set behind glass upon a high tower like a lighthouse. Councils, still refusing to take any step alone, at last agreed to dispatch a scientist to Europe to study and report upon the subject. Samuel V. Merrick was chosen for the task. He returned in December, 1834, ready to recommend gas lighting very warmly, and on March 21, 1835, councils passed an ordinance authorizing the construction of the Philadelphia Gas Works. They were quasi-municipal from the first. The stock was sold to private investors, but the city built the works and held and directed the property under twelve trustees; councils retaining the right at any time to make an outright purchase by taking over the stock and converting it into a public loan. This result followed in 1841, and for many years Philadel phia was a conspicuous instance for the socialists of a city in America which was engaged directly in the gas business. A site for the manufactory was found on the east bank of the Schuylkill river, between Market and Filbert streets. The works were to have a capacity of 75,000 cubic feet of gas daily, and it was to be sold at $3.50 per thousand; no very large undertaking in its first stages. Few applications were made by the citizens for the introduction of the pipes. Only nineteen private connections had been asked for by the time the works were ready for use on February 8, 1836. But the value of the new illuminating agent soon came to be understood. The whale-oil lamp in the street which smoked the lantern so that it lighted men to their homes only dimly — and in the last quarters of the moon, for economy's sake, did not shine at all — was soon displaced. In shops and public and semi- public buildings, gas was rapidly introduced. Gradually it made its way into dwelling houses, and many enlargements of the plant were called for. Exten sive works were erected on a tract of land well down the river at Point Breeze. They began their operations in 1854, the year of the consolidation. The outlying corporations had their separate manufactories which were later brought into the general system. The new light remained supreme, even after the discovery of kerosene whose merits as an illuminating agent, if they had been known at an earlier day, might have made the revolution still more difficult. A great and a necessary convenience, as the city grew, was the omnibus. There had been stages to Germantown, Hamiltonvilk and nearby places as well as to more distant towns, for many years, but the first omnibus — though it was not yet known by that name — seems to have appeared near the end of the year 1829. It was announced then that "the Chestnut street accommodation stage would run regularly from the Coffee House along Chestnut street to the Schuylkill and return." On December 7th James Boxall, who kept an inn at the Upper Ferry (Callowhill street) bridge, advertised "an hourly stage coach" on Chestnut street. "Comfort, warmth and neatness" had been "peculiarly studied" in the selection of a coach. The course was from the Merchants' Coffee House in Second street, to the corner of Schuylkill Seventh and HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 227 Chestnut streets. The service would be maintained from 9. a. m. to 5 P- «-, and passengers would be carried at ten cents each. If tickets were bought, they could be had at the rate of twelve for one dollar. The coach was called "Boxall's Accommodation." But the time had not yet come for this improvement. The first real omnibus line in Philadelphia was established between the Navy Yard and Kensington by the way of Chestnut street, and the fare was a levy (twelve and a half cents). The first omnibus was called the "Jim Crow," in honor of Thomas D. Rice, the well-known minstrel of the day whose portrait ornamented the panels of the vehicle. *ts name was afterward changed to the "Cinderella." The proprietors of this line, Deschamps and Glenat, extended it, and made it useful to the public as well as profitable to themselves. Another line was soon founded with large coaches called the "William Penn," the "Benjamin Franklin," the "Stephen Girard" and the "Independence," which ran from the Coffee House out Chest nut street nearly to the Schuylkill, returning by Walnut street. These coaches were long narrow vehicles. They were entered from steps at the rear. Soon they were displaced by the square wagon of the usual omnibus type. Many like the "Nonesuch" and the "Nonpareil" were showily painted. They were instantly popular. The service became as frequent as a coach every fifteen minutes. Still another line ran from the Coffee House to the Columbia Railroad station at Broad and Vine streets and satisfied a real public need. In a few years omnibuses rattled over the cobble stone pavements in all direc tions. Season tickets were sold to regular riders. If they made more than four trips a day it was computed that the cost was little in excess of a penny a ride. The fare for the occasional passenger, which was long held at twelve and a half and ten cents, was reduced under competition to six and a quarter, five, four and even three cents. "Hundreds of omnibuses are constantly in motion in every direc tion," wrote Maxwell while he was a visitor to the city in 1840.1 For more than twenty years these vehicles crowded the narrow streets down town, where they all congregated ready to begin their trips to the railway stations, Kensington, Rich mond, Girard College, Fairmount, Hamilton Village, Mantua, Blockley, Heston- ville, Gray's Ferry, Moyamensing Prison and the Navy Yard. The principal re sort for the drivers was in Dock street, around the Merchants' Exchange. A movement was begun in the '40s and early '50s to rid the streets of the mar ket houses. These had come to occupy the middle of Market street from Front to Eighth street, and from Fifteenth to Seventeenth street ; Callowhill street from Fourth to Seventh street; Spring Garden from Sixth to Twelfth street; South Second from Pine to South street ; North Second from Coates to Poplar street ; while there were street markets also> on Girard avenue, in Shippen street from Third to Fifth street, in Southwark, in Kensington and in Moyamensing. They obstructed traffic, and besides this- they were very unsightly in appearance. They violated the laws of sanitation and were prey for fire, even though they had been rebuilt and much improved since the colonial time. The placing of these struc tures where they were was in response to a custom of the day in Europe. Some of these street markets which had been set up in Philadelphia had not been suc- 1 Vol. I, p. 166. 228 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA cessful, but others-, which were convenient of popular access, had played a very essential part in the history of the city. The proposal was to erect market houses as other houses were built— beside the street, not in the street. Several experi ments of this kind were made, but progress was slow. The State Fencibles' armory on Broad below Race street, on the site of the old West Chester Depot, (though it has been much remodeled) and the hall used by the Mercantile Library in Tenth street, opposite St. Stephen's church, are monuments to the commendable but unsuccessful attempt which was put forth to establish markets at new centers. A! number of efforts in this line were viewed more favorably, but the movement was premature. Market street, both in respect to the houses from Front to Eighth street and those west of Broad street — more recently erected to accommo date the population settled in that neighborhood — was finally put in the way of being cleared in 1859. At last, on January 1, i860, it was an unobstructed high way from the Schuylkill to the Delaware. Many of the old structures would dis figure Callowhill street, Spring Garden street, and Girard avenue into a time within the memory of Philadelphians who are still not very venerable. Some of the old buildings continue to stand and are in use in Second street. The western public squares were being improved, as those in the eastern part of the city had earlier been. The old wooden picket fences surrounding Ritten- house and Logan squares were removed, and iron railings were set up instead. As early as 1828 Market and Broad streets had been run through Penn Square, and the space had thus been divided into four squares. Some of the fine old trees were cut down and new ones were planted. Horticultural schemes more or less elaborate were wrought out for Washington and other city squares. All were lighted by gas, and seats were placed beside the shaded walks. In the center of Franklin Square there was a "splendid fountain with forty jets of water, enclosed in an ornamental iron railing." The improvements in social life in Philadelphia were many. From colonial days the churches had had the right to close the streets to vehicular traffic during the hours of worship. In a large city, it became a very serious inconvenience. It was stated that one wishing to drive north and south on a Sunday morning, no matter what his need, could not find a street open for his use between the Dela ware river and Ninth street. He must make a long detour in order to avoid the chains. In the same way, communication between Broad street and the Delaware was blocked effectually. Even the mails could not be brought into the post-office. Firemen were prevented from easily performing their duty. Petitions were sent to the legislature demanding a repeal of the law, and it was repealed in spite of the clerical and church-going element in the population which was loath to sur render this ancient right. The distance between the Upper Ferry, or Callowhill street, and the Falls bridges was inconveniently great. A wooden bridge was erected over the Schuyl kill at Girard avenue about 1840. This step was made the more necessary by the burning of the Callowhill street bridge on September 1, 1838. Built by Wernwag in 1813, it was regarded for many years as one of the wonders of the city. The burned structure was replaced by a wire suspension bridge which was opened for traffic in January, 1842 — in a way, an even greater curiosity. Its length was 343 feet, and the width of the drive and the adjoining footways was twenty-seven HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 229 feet. The bridge was supported by ten cables, five on each side. Each cable con tained 260 strands of wire of an aggregate weight of eight hundred tons. About 1855 a bridge was built over the Schuylkill at Penrose Ferry in Pass yunk, to take the place of the old "rope ferry" at that crossing. Musical Fund Hall and the Chinese Museum had been preeminent as popular meeting places for many years. In 1848 a bath house was erected on Sansom street, west of Sixth street, below Swaim's old baths. In connection with this a hall capable of seating a thousand persons, called Sansom Street Hall, was fitted up. It served the purpose of a lyceum, for which there was so much need at that day. Many notable meetings, lectures, dinners and balls were held in this audi torium. In 1852, a new building was erected on the north side of Chestnut street above Twelfth street. The owner was a carriage builder who used the lower and third stories for his purposes. On the second floor he arranged a hall which came to be known as Concert Hall, because of its frequent use for musical entertain ments. It was opened in February 1853. Thackeray lectured here on "The Four Georges" in 1855. On his former visit, in 1852, he had appeared in Musical Fund Hall. The auditorium drew to it, during twenty years, many representative as semblages. Later, it was known as Egyptian Hall, and more recently it has been occupied by the Free Library. After the Chinese Museum was burnt, in 1854, Concert Hall came into quite general use. In 1827 a Pennsylvania Horticultural Society had been formed in the city by Dr. James Mease, Joseph Hopkinson, George Pepper, John Vaughan, Reuben Haines, Horace Binney, Mathew Carey, Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, Charles Chaun cey, and other public spirited citizens. The Landreths and several men who knew gardening on its practical side, were appointed to obtain members, of which there were seventy-eight when the society was organized in December. Horace Binney was chosen to be its first president ; and Dr. Mease, Mathew Carey, David Landreth, Jr. and Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, vice presidents. In a few months, Mr. Binney resigning, Zaccheus Collins became president. Annual exhibitions were arranged, and held in various halls with great success. Assemblages of fashion able people were attracted to look at the flowers. For a number of years Masonic Hall was hired, and then as a rule the Chinese Museum, until it was burned. Then Concert Hall was sometimes used. It was not until after the Civil War that the Society built the hall bearing its own name on South Broad street. One of the most desirable and useful changes of the time was in the public school system. It had hitherto been a brand of indigence and pauperism for a child to attend a school maintained at the taxpayers' expense. By the law of June 13, 1836, the system was established upon a better basis in this as well as in other respects. In the first place, Lancaster's methods were put aside forever. He him self, after founding his Model School, had left the city in 1823 ; but his peculiar plans, including the teaching of the children by monitors chosen from their own number, survived for several years. Another educator with singular theories who came to Philadelphia at about the same time was Amos Bronson Alcott. He, however, did not succeed in en grafting his views upon the system of public education, though he may have exerted some influence in shaping it. He reached Philadelphia in 1830. He had always been an impractical, impecunious person who had unsuccessfully followed 230 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA various pursuits. He finally became a teacher in Connecticut, his native state. His fantastic views on the subject of education attracted public attention. He had the acquaintance in Philadelphia of Dr. Furness, Mathew Carey, Roberts Vaux, Reuben Haines, Robert Walsh, Dr. George McClellan, Dr. James Rush, John Vaughan and others. Through Reuben Haines, Alcott was induced to settle in Germantown, where he opened a school on the Main street, on the site of the present Masonic Hall. Here two of his daughters were bom, the second being Louisa May Alcott, who came to be one of the most popular of American story writers. The school room contained busts of Christ, Socrates and Shakespeare. Instead of the teacher punishing the child, the youngster laid the strap upon his teacher. There were parades of the pupils to the Wissahickon, and "soul en larging" was attempted by divers original means. The undertaking failed and Alcott moved into the city. Charles Godfrey Leland attended this school, which was in Eighth street. In three years Alcott went back to his own New England to become one of the high priests of the metaphysicians in which that land then abounded. Like Lan caster, he spoke for the quackery which at this time possessed the whole subject of education. Philadelphia, as Alcott fairly concluded, was not sufficiently "metaphysical and ethical" to give its favor for any length of time to such theories. The reforms instituted by the act of assembly of June 13, 1836, not only elim inated the pauper idea from the public schools, but it cleared them of the Lan caster influence. Paid teachers, many of them women, were substituted for the monitors. The pupils were classified and promoted from one school to another. Provision was made for a high school, the first to be established outside of New England.1 A site for the building was obtained on Juniper street, below Market street, facing Penn Square, now included in the area covered by the Wanamaker store. A brick structure whose corner-stone was laid on September 19, 1837, was erected here, and it was opened to classes in October, 1838. The faculty at first consisted of but four members: John Frost, who stood at the head of the English department, a writer of the day, later known for his industry in compiling works of history and biography; Enoch C. Wines; Joseph Wharton ; and E. Otis Kendall, the latter afterward for many years a professor in the University of Pennsylvania. Very soon Alexander Dallas Bache, a great- grandson of Franklin and a grandson of Alexander J. Dallas, became the prin cipal. He had been elected president of Girard College, but finding that there would be delays in the opening of that institution, chose to connect himself with the public school system. In 1842 he was succeeded by John S. Hart. Hart, like Frost, was known in the literary world. He was at one time an assistant in the editing of John Sartain's magazine, and later in his life wrote a number of man uals and other works upon educational and religious topics. Under his adminis tration, which continued until 1859, much was achieved in the high school. In 1853 the building was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and a site was procured at the southeast corner of Broad and Green streets. In the autumn of 1854 the 1 Edmonds, History of the High School, p. 29. PHILADELPHIA FROM THE NAVY YARD LOOKING UP THE DELAWARE IN 1836 From a picture in Library of Pennsylvania Historical Society HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 231 school moved into its new quarters — when the work was begun, in Spring Garden, but now by consolidation, in the greater city — and it found a home at this place for nearly forty years. By this time the high school had come to possess thirteen professors and teachers. The school system of the county was directed by a board of controllers drawn from eleven "sections" into which the city and the districts were divided. There were in June, 1853, one ni&n school for boys, one normal school for girls, sixty-five grammar schools, thirty-five secondary schools, one hundred and fifty- two primary schools and forty-two "unclassified schools." While up to 1819 there had been organized under the state law only ten schools, with 2,845 pupils (under only ten teachers plus the monitor system), there were in 1843, 214 schools with 33,130 pupils (under 449 teachers). Now, ten years later, in 1853, there were 296 schools with 50,008 pupils. The school system had cost the controllers in the year ending June, 1853, including the money laid out for the construction of new buildings, $411,303. A large new cemetery was projected on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill in that beautifully broken region which had been so greatly esteemed for its sites for country houses from the earliest days. Joseph Sims, a successful merchant, had a seat on the Ridge Road, a little south of the Falls, called "The Laurels." It commanded a beautiful view of the river, while such attention was given to the. groves and gardens that they soon won general admiration. Like all these places, after the river was dammed it went out of repute, and the mansion was used for a time as an inn, and then for a year or two as a Catholic college. Finally it came into the hands of Nathan Dunn, the proprietor of the Chinese Museum. Only a few months had passed since Mount Auburn, the first suburban cemetery in the United States, was dedicated in Boston, and the idea was now taken1 up in Philadelphia. The credit for originating the plan for a cemetery here is ascribed to John Jay Smith. Mr. Smith, Mr. Dunn, Benjamin W. Richards and Frede rick Brown were the managers of the enterprise, which was incorporated in 1836. The first interment was made in October of that year but the tract was at first accounted too remote. Gradually, as it became the resting place of various dis tinguished persons the favor in which it was held increased. Systematic efforts were made by agents of the company to secure the bones of eminent men. In 1838 the remains of Charles Thomson, the old secretary of Congress, were dug up at night and hastily removed from the burial ground at "Harriton," his home near Bryn Mawr, and reinterred in Laurel Hill, upon the order of a nephew, though the other relations violently opposed the step.1 A monument to Charles Brockden Brown which may still be seen in the cemetery was designed, to cause visitors to believe that the "first American novelist" was buried here, though he still rests somewhere in an unmarked spot in the Arch street meeting-house yard. The remains of General Hugh Mercer were removed from the Christ Church burying- ground with a procession and an oration in 1840. The people were still generally using the church-yards and other intra-mural burial places. A few out-of-town grounds had been opened, but the city was growing in around them. At Laurel Hill, on one side at least, that facing the river, there could be no encroachment. 1 Pa. Mag., XIII, p. 455, 232 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Later, the "Harkigh" estate, for some time the home of William Rawle, and the "Fairy Hill" property of the Pepper family were added to the Sims farm, and the area was much enlarged. The favor in which the name is held and the impossibility of further extension in the same neighborhood led later to the acquisition of lands on the west side of the river by some of those who had been interested in the fortunes of the Laurel Hill cemetery, though the two companies are under separate management. In 1850 a stage ran from Third street three times daily to Laurel Hill, and in summer the steamboat plying between Fairmount and Manayunk called at the cemetery and gave the people an opportunity of reaching it. The number of not able names on handsome tombs steadily increased, so that the place has long been of great interest to visitors. Another beautiful cemetery was laid out on the grounds of the Hamilton man sion, "Woodlands," in West Philadelphia, southeast of the old Darby Road, now Woodland avenue. One of the finest types of the English park in the neighbor hood of the city, this tract lent itself very well to such a use. In 1831, it was pur chased by Thomas Mitchell, who in 1839, with Andrew D. Cash, Eli K. Price and his brother Philip M. Price, Charles J. Ingersoll and others, formed the Wood lands Cemetery Company. It was incorporated in the next year and soon atten tion was drawn to the enterprise by the removal to the ground of the remains of . Commodore David Porter which since they were brought home from Constan tinople, where he had died, had lain at the foot of the flagstaff in the grounds of the Naval Asylum. As at Laurel Hill, this was an admirable situation, and the cemetery soon came into high favor for burial purposes. The railroads in 1850 had had ten or fifteen years of experimental service, and they had taken to themselves much of the business of transportation ; though river steamboats, canals, barges and stage coaches still had their uses as before. As we have seen, the state railroad to Columbia entered the city by the inclined plane and the Columbia Bridge, and then ran down to Fairmount on a street which was. and is still called Pennsylvania avenue, because the Pennsylvania Railroad used it for its tracks to Broad street. The trains could then be moved south on Broad street as far as Prime street. A track ran east on Willow street to the Delaware wharves. At Penn Square a line extended east on Market street on the north side of the. market houses as far as Third street, then down Third to Dock street, and down Dock to the river. In order to accommodate the tracks, the market houses in 1836-37 were rebuilt and brought into a narrower space, at which time the old court house at Second and Market streets was torn away. At Prime street, the Broad street track was continued eastwardly through Moyamensing and South wark to the Delaware wharves just above the Navy Yard, and in a western direction to Gray's Ferry Road and the bridge over the Schuylkill, where it met the lines of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad.1 The Germantown and Norristown lines, which came in Ninth to Green street 1 According to maps of the city of 1850, there were two tracks on Bioad street and on Prime and Washington streets ; two on Market street as far as the head of the market houses at Eighth street, and one from that point on to the river by way of Dock street ; one on Wil low street. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 233 were continued down Ninth street to connect with the tracks on Willow street. Thus freight or passenger coaches from the west or from the south could be run into Broad street and thence to the Delaware river by three different routes. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to Reading and Pottsville had a fourth route to the Delaware in the northern part of the county, its spur to Port Richmond. This company came over the Pennsylvania state road's tracks from the junction at Peters' Island (Belmont) into a terminal station at Broad and Cherry streets. The state road itself, about 1840, needed a station nearer the business centre, and found one at Eighth and Market streets. Its trains were drawn by horses in and out Broad street and up and down Market street for many years, or until the state works were sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the inclined plane was abandoned. The Reading Railroad, in August, 1847, nad 75 locomotives and 4,500 coal cars in use on its line to Pottsville. The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore passengers were still delivered at Eleventh and Market streets. Already in 1838 the company was advertising eight-wheeled cars. Each train contained one car especially fitted up for ladies, and attended by female servants. The West Chester cars continued to come to the depot at Broad and Race streets. Passengers from New York had two routes. They could go over the lines of the Camden and Amboy by Walnut street ferry, a distance of sixty-two miles to South Amboy, where steamboats for Perth Amboy and New York awaited the trains ; or, by way of Trenton and Jersey City in which case they went to the Kensington Depot, or else took a Delaware steamboat to connect with the trains on this line at Tacony. The latter plan was usually fol lowed when navigation was open. It was made necessary by reason of the failure of the scheme to bring the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad into Third Street Hall at Third and Willow streets. Some time after 1845, a single track, designed to connect the Columbia Rail road near Fairmount with the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore road, was laid on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill. It is doubtful whether it was ever finished farther south than South street, and it was useful only as a feeder to some Schuylkill coal yards. It soon came to be understood that the state system of railways and canals to the west was inadequate. The transfer from cars to boats and vice versa was very troublesome. New York, with its all water route via the Erie Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which was so actively working in the interests of Baltimore— even now contemplating a line to Pittsburg from Cumberland, Md — had already shaken and still further menaced Philadelphia's commercial position There was a feeling that something should be promptly done if the eastern and western portions of the state were to continue to be bound together, and the old city on the Delaware which had long played so prominent a part in the history of the nation was not to suffer irreparably. There were many plans for sectional boats, which could be loaded upon cars, and for combination cars and boats but none met with a very great amount of favor, and all would have been make-shifts at the best. Then, too, the canals were frozen up for three or four months in the year, when resort must again be had to stage coaches and Conestoga wagons h-ven during the navigable season, serious breaches in the banks often interfered with traffic. An accident of this kind at a point between Huntingdon and Holli- 234 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA daysburgh blocked the line for much of the summer of 1838. "Not only was a delay in the transportation of goods the consequence of this misfortune," said a board of trade report the next year, "but the increased expense occasioned by the land carriage around the break, drove large quantities of produce and merchan dise into other channels." It was this experience in large degree which brought ruin upon the new packet company in whose Philadelphia office Jay Cooke had held a place as a clerk. In 1846 the whole Juniata valley was swept by a flood and in a single night 20,000 tons of goods bound east and west were put at the mercy of the wagoners. Two months would be consumed in making the repairs. It was computed that an interruption of six months in the business of merchants in Pittsburg and Phila delphia would be occasioned by the accident when all its resultant effects were taken into account.1 Various surveys of the route over the mountains were made, from 1838 on ward, and a railroad was declared to be entirely feasible. Many of the farmers along the line had opposed the Columbia road; they would oppose the western extension in the belief that it would interfere with the sale of horses and grain. The tavern keepers and the wagoners were impelled in the same direction by similar considerations. A meeting was held in the Chinese Museum on Decem ber 10, 1845, under the chairmanship of Thomas P. Cope. The building of the road was earnestly advocated by William M. Meredith, Henry D. Gilpin, Isaac Hazkhurst and some speakers from the interior of the state. The next year, on April 13, 1846, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was incorporated by the legislature with a capital of $7,500,000 (a sum which might be increased to $10,- 000,000), with the object of building a line from Harrisburg to Pittsburg and branches to Erie, Uniontown and other places. On the 28th of April, 1846, an other large public meeting was held in the Chinese Museum, and subscriptions were asked of the citizens. Agents passed from house to house, soliciting public support for the enterprise. In the first annual report of the company, it appeared that there were 2,600 subscribers, 1,800 of whom had taken five shares or less. It was soon seen that so large an amount of money could not be secured from individuals, and public aid was sought. The city and the other corporations in the county of Philadelphia were urged to subscribe, a proposal which precipitated an angry public discussion. It was the issue in the election of councilmen in 1846, and continued to absorb attention for a long time to come. It was contended that the city did not possess the right to lay such a burden of debt upon the people. Learned counsel were employed and gave their opinions, Opposition came to nothing. On November 12, 1846, councils resolved that as "a large portion of the western trade, once enjoyed almost exclusively by Philadelphia, has already been diverted from her, and the remainder is seriously endangered by the rival projects of other cities and states," they would subscribe for 30,000 shares ($1,500,000) of the company's stock absolutely; for 10,000 shares more when 100 miles of road were built, and again for 10,000 shares when 125 miles were finished and in use, the whole to be conditional upon the company's securing subscriptions of equal amount from other sources. On February 20, 1851, the city subscribed 1 First Annual Report of the Penn. Railroad. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 235 for $1,500,000 more of the stock. Thus its total subscription, covered by six per cent, city loans, on account of this railroad reached a total of $4,000,000. Spring Garden and the Northern Liberties subscribed $500,000 each, so that the con solidated city's holdings in 1854 aggregated $5,000,000. At the other end of the line, Pittsburg city and Allegheny county granted the road similar aid, and the work was actively begun. The first president of the company was S. V. Merrick. He was succeeded in 1849 by William C. Pat terson. In 1847, Jonn Edgar Thomson became the road's chief engineer. He was a young man of Delaware County, whose father, John Thomson, had laid down the experimental railroad at Leiper's stone quarries in 1809, and had still earlier navigated a little boat, the "White Fish" from Presque Isle (Erie), on Lake Erie— where he, with one assistant, had built her— to Philadelphia by way of the water courses in New York state. Some portages had been necessary, but when the boat was set up in the State House yard it was a powerful argu ment for internal improvements. J. Edgar Thomson had therefore come to his interest in such subjects very naturally, and before the road was yet finished, in 1852, he became its president. The work of construction was begun in July, 1847, and the road was opened gradually by sections. On September 1, 1849, trains were run from Harrisburg to Lewistown, a distance of sixty-one miles, on a line parallelling the Juniata canal. A year later, on September 16, 1850, the eastern rail-head had reached Hollidaysburgh, where connection was made with the portage road over the mountains. In August, 1851, all but a section of twenty-eight miles west of Johnstown was finished and ready for use. On December 10, 1852, about five and a half years after the work was undertaken, cars ran for the first time from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by way of the portage road, which in 1854 was aban doned in favor of the company's own mountain line, designed to avoid the use of inclined planes. Thus, with the consolidation of the city the Pennsylvania Rail road was complete. Finally it was determined to sell the state works. They were under the management of a canal board which had been accounted "a foun tain of debauchery and profligacy for many years." x The Pennsylvania Rail road Company bought the Columbia Railroad, and the other works on the Pitts burg line, in 1857, for $7,500,000. As the new company needed a more direct route to Market street where the western passenger station had been located for several years, the tracks were turned away from the plane into West Philadelphia, coming over the river on the Market Street Bridge, which was extensively altered for this use. The plans of the management called for a freight station at Juniper and Market streets where about 1854 on the east side of Penn Square, on the site of the Central High School, which had gone to Broad and Green streets and on some adjoining property, a building was erected which continued in use until 1874. The com pany's passenger station was soon placed at Eleventh and Market streets in a building which had been abandoned by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Balti more Railroad, in favor of a station opened at Broad and Prime streets in 1852. The Baltimore company had strengthened the Gray's Ferry Bridge and brought its locomotives directly into the new terminal. 1McClure, Old-Time Notes, I, p. 225. 236 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The Market Street Bridge was still covered, and the use of locomotives upon it would have been attended with the gravest dangers. They stopped therefore in West Philadelphia. The cars were drawn in and out of the city, as before, by horses, in the stream of pedestrians, wagons, omnibuses and later street cars which had an equal right to the use of the crossing. For these reasons the com pany soon found that it must stop its trains in West Philadelphia, and with this end in view had bought the Powel estate, "Powelton," as early as in 185 1. It did not immediately use the area. On these ample grounds agricultural exhibi tions were given annually after 1854.1 The depot was established first at Thir tieth and then at Thirty-second and Market streets, near the site of the present West Philadelphia station of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1851, that section of the old state road running from Peters' Island, at the foot of the inclined plane, to Broad and Vine streets, was sold for $243,200 to the Reading Railroad, which had made use of it as a tenant for several years. Need ing a station nearer the city, one was opened at Broad and Cherry streets. In 1859 work was begun on a new station at Broad and Callowhill streets, which was the road's principal terminus for many years. The North Pennsylvania Railroad still remained to be built. For a long time various plans for reaching the Lehigh valley had been under discussion. The company was incorporated as the Philadelphia, Easton and Water Gap Rail road Company on April 8, 1852, — its name being changed to the North Pennsyl vania, "North Penn" in popular speech, the following year. The city and three or four of the districts made subscriptions to the stock of this road also. The line was finished as far as Gwynedd in Montgomery County in the summer of 1855, and by New Year's Day of 1857 reached Bethlehem, in the valley which it was desired to bring into communication with Philadelphia. The trains at first came into a station at Front and Willow streets, appropriately called the Cohoquinoque station, the Indian name for Pegg's Run, which had made way for Willow street. Later it was removed to about Third and Thompson streets, and still later to Cherry street (now Montgomery avenue) between Second and Third streets. This was usually called the Cohocksink Depot. One more line was projected and completed in this period, — the Camden and Atlantic Railroad extending across New Jersey, almost due east from Camden to the ocean. The taking up of this work at this time evidenced a confidence in the future which is unusual. Absecon Island, a sand bar some nine miles in length, covered with pines, cedars, holly trees and clumps of bay, the nesting place for innumerable flocks of terns, crows, herons and other birds, the white sand thrown around at the will of the winds and the waves, had little about it to promise its later development into the leading American seaside resort. Prac tically all of Atlantic City's present site, except one hundred and thirty-one acres owned by Thomas Chamberlain, was the property of Jeremiah Leeds and his descendants. The family had had a little farmhouse here for many years. They raised corn, rye and some live stock which eked out a precarious existence by feeding upon the salt grass on the meadows. 1 The mansion was for many years the home of E. Spencer Miller, Esq.. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, JUNIPER, BELOW MARKET STREET LAUNCH OF UNITED STATES SHIP "PENNSYLVANIA," 1837 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 237 Communication with the mainland was by boat through the thoroughfares. Parties occasionally with great labor passed over the roads from Philadelphia, which were deep with sand as recently as twenty years ago. Charcoal wagons, oyster wagons, and the stage coaches to Absecon and Somers' Point— two old villages within sight of the island— made the trip with the greatest difficulty. Sometimes Philadelphians established summer camps amid the dunes for the sake of the fishing, the bathing and the cool sea air. John Lucas, Henry Disston, William B. Mann and others knew of the island's attractions during the fishing and gunning season. There were a few cabins at the Inlet for fishermen, and a building which had been used for extracting salt from sea water early in the century. Leeds enlarged his farmhouse to receive summer boarders as soon as the demand arose, but this as yet was the sole claim of the beach as the terminus for a railway. There were, however, on the way, several glass works in the neighborhood of Hammonton. Iron furnaces were at work at Batsto. The land, covered for the most part with scrub timber which was being cut down and sawed, was owned in enormous tracts by men of considerable means who wished an outlet by rail for their products. At Absecon, a little village among the trees on the edge of the salt marshes, lived a well known and very interesting physician, Dr. Jonathan Pitney, who ministered to the sick on the mainland, in a territory ex tending all the way from Port Republic to English Creek. It was a bold thing to hazard the opinion that Absecon Island would become the leading watering place upon the coast, when Cape May in the south and Long Branch in the north were already firmly established, and seemed likely to supply every popu lar need for a long while to come. Dr. Pitney, together with Samuel Richards, one of the glass manufacturers near Hammonton, General Enoch Doughty, a large land owner, and some others, procured a charter for the railroad in 1852. The line was surveyed, and the work upon it was actively begun. Most of the capital which entered the road was furnished by Philadelphians, who at the same time invested freely in land on the beach. A number of names were suggested for the town which it was proposed to build, Ocean City, Strand and Bath among them; but the engineer, Richard Osborne, had marked the site Atlantic City upon his map, and this name was adopted at once. Mr. Osborne seems to have found it difficult at times to keep even the directors of the road in good cheer. Much doubt was expressed concerning the feasibility of placing a track on the meadows which separate Absecon from the beach. The tides twice swept the embankments away. Then it was discovered that if the irons were laid flat upon the grass, the water would wash over them harmlessly. The bridge across the thoroughfare was not yet done, but the first train was run down the line to that point, where it met boats on July 1, 1854. It carried 600 people in nine coaches, and covered the distance, with stops, in about two and a half hours. The locomotives burned wood and threw out a great amount of smoke, to the annoyance of the passengers, who sat on uncomfortable board seats in open cars. Among those on the train were Justice Robert C. Grier of the United States supreme court; Henry C. Carey, Abraham Browning, Robert Morris, Colonel Wynkoop, A. H. Simmons, James 238 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA S. Wallace and Thompson Westcott. Many of the visitors were newspaper men whose accounts of the place, upon their return home, were expected to be very helpful to the speculation. On the Fourth of July, trains began to run regularly; and excursion tickets, which were sold at one dollar, induced a considerable number of people to make the trip. By this time a few families had removed to the beach from the main land. Two little houses— Bedloe's Hotel and Cottage Retreat — had been built. The United States Hotel was in process of construction, and work upon it was so far completed that the excursionists of July ist were given their dinners there. The next year the Surf House, Congress Hall, and two private cottages were erected, and these were followed by the Mansion House, Schaufler's Hotel, and several other hotels and boarding houses. The permanent resident population of Atlantic City in 1854 was stated to be one hundred people. In i860 it was still only 687.1 The fares upon the railroads in 1848 from Philadelphia to several principal places were as follows : 2 New York (Amboy line) $ 3.00 New York (Trenton line) 4.00 Baltimore (rail from Eleventh and Market) 3.00 Baltimore (steamboat and rail from Dock street wharf) .... 2.00 Wilmington 50 Lancaster 2.50 Columbia 2. 87^ Harrisburg 4.00 Hollidaysburgh 8.00 Pittsburg 10.00 West Chester 75 Trenton 75 Manayunk 15 Germantown 15 Conshohocken 25 Norristown 40 Phoenixvilk 90 Reading 2.25 Pottsville 3.50 Williamsport 7.00 As 1848 antedates the completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a number of these places could be reached only by changing to the canal packets. Departure for New York could be effected at 9 a. m. and 4 130 p. m. by way of Trenton, and 6 a. m. by way of Amboy. The Baltimore lines left at 8 a. m. and 2 :30 and 6 p. m. There were two trains for the west daily at 8 a. m. and 12 midnight. To Germantown there were four trains a day ; to Manayunk and Norristown, three; to Phoenixvilk two; to Reading and Pottsville, one — at 9 a. m. Many of these trains were not run on Sunday. 1 Absegami, Annals of Eyren Haven and Atlantic City, 1609 to 1004, by A. M. Heston. 2 Philadelphia Almanac, 1848. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 239 In 1839, when George Combe was here, Sunday trains were placed on the Philadelphia and Columbia road with an apology that they were necessary to overtake "the greatly extended spring trade." It was promised, however, that it was but a temporary arrangement. The advertisements of the carrier com panies in deference to Sabbatarian feeling were likely to contain such notices as the following: "This is strictly a Sabbath-keeping line." "No business whatever transacted on the Sabbath." "This line will be conducted strictly upon Sabbath- keeping principles." If passengers were taken on morning and evening trains on Sunday, goods were almost never forwarded on that day. The Pennsyl vania Railroad Company in 1849 felt itself compelled out of respect for Sab batarian sentiments to announce that after the end of that year it would dis continue all Sunday business on its lines.1 The Delaware was still well supplied with steamboats which made their trips daily, or twice or three times a week to places in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, lying on the riverside. The boats ran up as far as Trenton, and down the bay as far as Lewes, Maurice River and Cape May. The railroad and the steamboat had not yet entirely displaced the stage coach, although it had ceased its trips to New York, Lancaster, Baltimore, Reading and places which were better served. Until the North Penn Railroad was finished, a stage left a Race street tavern daily at 4 a. m. for Allentown and Bethlehem, carrying passengers at $2.50 each. Another wagon, leaving at 6 a. m. charged the same price. In 1848 there were three stage lines to Easton, to which place the fare was $2.50. To Mauch Chunk, Hazleton, Northumberland and Wilkes- barre, a passenger could go by stage for the entire distance, or with the aid of the Reading Railroad to Pottsville. Stages still ran to Frankford, Rich mond, Holmesburg, Bridesburg and Bustleton, which were beyond the range of the omnibuses and had no railway connections, or were served in this way in frequently. Various places in New Jersey were reached by stages which ran in connection with the Delaware river ferries ; as were Jenkintown, Doykstown, West Chester, Chestnut Hill, Fox Chase, Darby, Blue Bell, Kennett Square, Roxborough and even Manayunk, and Germantown in spite of the railroad. A parcels express business had grown up with the railway. Forwarding agents for passengers and freight had appeared upon the completion of the state line west, and indeed before, in connection with the steamboats and stage coaches. The chief of these in 1850 were Sanford and Company, Adams and Com pany, and Livingston and Company. These "expresses" were by train and boat, and had regular times of departure which were advertised for the accommodation of the public. Sanford shipped letters and parcels to the south and west; Adams, the beginning of the great Adams Express Company of a later day, reached New York, Albany, Buffalo, Boston and all New England with his service; Livingston occupied the same field, with the addition of the Schuylkill valley towns on the Reading Railroad. The Adams and Sanford companies, which were already in alliance, with an office at 80 Chestnut street, advertised that they would forward "parcels, samples, packages, valuable articles, cases of goods, bank notes, specie etc." They would also make "collections of bills, notes, drafts, etc., in less time 1 Combe, I, p. 334; Mercantile Register, Phila., 1846. 240 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA and expense than by any other method." After the discovery of gold in Cali fornia, they specially recommended their western service by the Panama steamers. Much gold dust came east in their care. In 1852 they advertised their own trains. In 1850 the firm of Edward Hales and Company carried on an express busi ness in transatlantic and ship letters. There were also city express offices, the chief of which was Shattuck and Company on Third street below Market, with six deliveries daily. The city had grown to such- a size in point of territorial area, as well as of population, that the public was willing to pay for the con venience of this service. There were twelve cab stands in 1850: at Second and Dock, Fifth and Wal nut, Sixth and Chestnut, Sixth and Walnut, Ninth and Walnut, Ninth and George (Sansom), at the Museum building; Ninth and Chestnut, Eighth and Chestnut, Tenth and Chestnut, Broad and Walnut, Broad and Market, and Franklin and Race streets. The drivers of hackney coaches were authorized to charge a fare of twenty-five cents for each passenger taken anywhere within the city limits east of Broad street. A twenty-five cent zone was established likewise within the city limits west of Broad street. If the carriage crossed this street, the price for one passenger was fifty cents, and twenty-five cents for each additional passenger. The price per hour was one dollar; baggage was subject to extra charge. The rates for cabs were lower. A passenger could be driven from any point in the city east of Broad street to any point west of that street for three levies, and a charge of only one levy more would be made for each additional passenger. The rate per hour was fifty cents.1 The postal system underwent many changes and improvements in these years. The development of the railway led to a great quickening as well as to an in crease in the reliability of the service. The post office now for a long time had been located in the basement of the Merchants' Exchange at Third and Walnut streets. During Jackson's administration, a so-called "express mail" for the south had been introduced. Upon letters which were to enjoy the advantages of this special service the words "express mail" were to be written and the postage, which was triple the usual rates, must be prepaid. Newspapers, pam phlets, franked letters and letters in excess of one-half ounce in weight could not be forwarded under this special arrangement. In 1838 the time from Phila delphia to Wheeling, Va., was two days and two hours ; to Louisville, four days and four hours ; to St. Louis, six days ; to New Orleans, seven days ; to Natchez, Miss., eleven days. The time to Baltimore was reduced to nine hours; to Wash ington City thirteen hours ; to Richmond one day and fourteen hours ; to Charles ton four days; and to Savannah five days. The "express mail" arrived daily at 5 p. m. and closed daily at 5 a. m. But this special service was irregular and led to many disappointments. The postal contracts with the railroads took its place, and it was abandoned. In 1838 there were two ordinary mails to New York and the east, closing at 5 a. m. and 5 p. m. ; a daily mail south ; and a daily mail west. The post office was kept open from sunrise until 8 p. m., except on Sundays, the Fourth 1 Philadelphia Almanac, 1848. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 241 of July and Christmas, when it was open for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon only. To some places the postage must be prepaid; to others it might be collected from him or her to whom the letter was addressed. In certain cases, it was left to the sender's choice. Again, a part of the sum could be paid while the rest remained unpaid. If a man in. good standing wished to prepay the postage on his letters he could open an account with the postmaster and have the sums charged. Those who held boxes, and those to whom for an extra payment, the letters and papers were delivered by carriers, had this privilege. The bill was payable at the end of the month. This practice at length became very troublesome, since so many sent their letters to the post office in "slips" or envelopes on which their addresses were written as a memorandum asking to have credit for the postage, and, about 1850, one cent was added to the regular rates to cover the service. Stamps came to be sold after the passage of the act of Congress of 1847, and the people were then recommended to buy and use them. It was announced that if the charged account was not paid promptly ten days after the expiration of the month, it would be discontinued. In 1848 there were twenty-two carriers in the Philadelphia office, who de livered letters for an extra payment to those who wished to avail themselves of the service. In that year the rate for a letter not exceeding one-half ounce in weight for any distance not over 300 miles, was five cents. For a greater distance it was ten cents; a very substantial moderation in the charges which had been made in the days when stage coaches and mounted post-riders carried the mails. "Drop" letters from Philadelphia to" addresses within the city, must pay two cents each. Circulars and hand-bills were carried for three cents per sheet; pamphlets and magazines for two and a half cents per ounce for any distance (one cent for each additional ounce) ; newspapers for three cents per copy. The postage on circulars and newspapers must be prepaid in all cases. To avoid these charges it was usual for correspondents to impose their letters upon friends, and even strangers going upon a journey. Francis Lieber was much surprised when he was accosted at Walnut street wharf, as he was boarding a Delaware steamboat: "Sir, do you go to New York?" "Yes, sir, why?" "Please take these letters and throw them into the post office." "I did not know the gentleman," Mr. Lieber explains ; "I took the letters, at least five in number, and had no sooner opened my carpet bag to put them in than letters rained in from all sides, as if epistolary matter had broken loose from the clouds." In Europe, he observed, private carriage of sealed letters was forbidden by law.1 When several carriers undertook to make a business of it at special rates they were estopped by the government. In 1844, the American Letter Mail Company and Hale and Company had offices in Philadelphia, and offered to carry mail be tween. Philadelphia and New York and other cities at reduced rates. They sold 1 The Stranger in America, p. 41. vol. n— is 242 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA stamps, thus probably suggesting the idea to the post office department, but their letter bags were seized and after an angry contest at law their business was brought to an end.1 This prohibition did not immediately cover the local letter carrier service, and an opportunity arose for various city dispatch posts. One of these, es tablished in 1845, which was conducted by D. O. Blood and Company, and later by Charles Kochersperger and Company, long filled a very useful place in the life of the city. D. Otis Blood had been a cashier in the office of the Public Ledger. About 1845 ne took hold of a letter delivery service which had been started by a man named Halsey. The price for carrying letters anywhere within the city and the contiguous districts was fixed at one cent. Several hundred boxes in which letters could be placed were set up in stores, in public buildings and on the streets. Collections were made as frequently as once every two hours. A large force of carriers was employed. Blood's Penny Post, as it was called, collected and distributed thousands of letters daily, and attended to a large business faithfully until 1861 when Congress passed an act which made the service a monopoly of the post office department. Blood's letters were stamped. One device upon his stamps was that of a man leaping over the cupola of the Merchants' Exchange building, and there were other devices. In 1850 there were two mails each day between Philadelphia and New York; two to Wilmington, Baltimore and Washington; one to other southern points; one to Pittsburg and the west; two to western points east of the Susquehanna, and Carlisle and Chambersburg; one to the Schuylkill and Lehigh valley towns. To many places in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania and even so near at hand as in Chester, Delaware and Bucks Counties, the service was tri-weekly or bi weekly. On letters for other countries various charges were made. To Great Britain and Ireland, the rate was twenty-four cents. To the German states, if for warded by the Bremen line — a new line of American steamers from New York — from six to twelve cents, in addition to United States postage, according to the arrangements with the individual states; to Denmark, twenty-two cents ad ditional; to Norway, thirty cents; Sweden, thirty-nine cents; St. Petersburg, twenty- four cents; Austria, eighteen cents; Constantinople, thirty-seven cents — in all cases by the "Bremen line." Otherwise, and to other countries, the rate was twenty-four cents for a single letter of a half ounce, in addition to the in land postage which was five or ten cents according to the distance traversed. The greatest confusion prevailed in the international service. In some cases the letters must not weigh more than a quarter of an ounce each, in order to secure the advantages of the single rate. Communication with Europe had become tolerably regular and much more speedy, as a result of the application of steam to ocean navigation; but to other parts of the world the post office offered to forward letters only as "oppor tunity occurred." 1 Souder's History of Chestnut Street, ch. 23. a . ... j- mn. is #1 PANORAMA OF PHILADELPHIA FROM THE STATE HOUSE STEEPLE, LOOKING EAST, 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 243 The business of building and navigating sailing ships, for which Philadel phia had long exhibited so much aptitude was still large, but it would soon be come of a relatively diminishing importance to the city. The principal feat of the day was the construction at the Navy Yard of the great ship of the line "Pennsylvania." She was the largest naval vessel in the world when she was launched, and was long the premier of the American fleet. Her masts were 250 feet high. She was 228 feet long and 57 feet broad. She measured 375 feet from the end of her spanker boom. One of her anchors weighed 10,000 pounds. She had five decks and carried 140 guns. She was built of live oak, white oak, and yellow pine. For years while the shipwrights were at work upon her she was one of the city's principal sights. Fanny Kemble went to inspect this "great lady of the seas" in 1832 and feared for England after the spectacle. Finally on July 18, 1837, the hull was put into the water in the presence of a crowd, estimated to contain 100,000 people, more than had ever congregated in the city since the reception to Lafayette. Three hundred vessels hovered about the great frame in the river, their masts and shrouds black with men who were eager to secure a view of the proceeding. The old type of sailing ship in the merchant service had made way for the clipper ship. It was a long, sharp schooner, a very graceful rakish looking ves sel. Its peculiarity was "hollow entrance lines" at the bow which permitted of the attainment of greater speed. Made of timber cut from our own forest trees, navigated by the Yankee sailor trained on the whalers and in the packet service, this ship was the pride of the ocean. None was so pretty when under full canvas. The so-called "Baltimore clipper" was a very famous type of this vessel. In 1836 a sailing ship made the voyage from New York to Liverpool in less than fifteen days. In 1859 a "clipper" reduced the time between the two ports on a fortunate voyage to thirteen days and eight hours.1 The American flag was seen in all parts of the world, as it would be until the British iron ship became the mistress of the seas. The perfection of the ocean steamship dates from 1838. In that year the "Sirius," of seven hundred tons, from Cork, and the "Great Western," of 1,340 tons from Bristol, reached New York harbor. The first of these boats had crossed the Atlantic in nineteen days, the other in fifteen days. Another sweep ing change was at hand, in commerce, in passenger travel, in postal communica tion, and in the means of carrying on the general work of the world. The Philadelphia Board of Trade, whose president was Thomas P. Cope, made a report in 1839 in which it was stated that the city had not "looked un concernedly at the revolution which the last year had produced in the means of navigating the ocean." It was suggested that owners might find it very ad vantageous to send their steamships to Philadelphia where coal, so necessary to the engines, could be taken on very cheaply. "Surely," it said, "no port has greater advantages to offer to steamships from foreign ports, in whose expendi tures the article of coal forms so large an item." But the commercial impor tance of the city was already waning in comparison with New York's, favored as it was by the Erie Canal to the west, and a splendid harbor which did not need 1 Spears, Story of the Merchant Marine, pp. 221-22. 244 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA to be approached by a long river likely to be frozen up in the winter months. Already, in 1838, the registered tonnage of vessels in New York engaged in the foreign trade was 169,921 tons, as contrasted with Philadelphia's 42,266 tons. In the coasting trade, New York had 221,601 to Philadelphia's 42,640 tons.1 After the War of 1812, and particularly after 1820, New York ran away from Philadelphia in commerce at so rapid a rate that, even in 1850, the latter's earlier preeminence seemed like a memory. The China trade, which had helped to amass so many fortunes in Philadelphia, practically ceased at about the time of Girard's death. Jenkins mentions the clearance of one ship for Canton in 1842, but its return cargo was carried to New York. Nor was it merely a relative loss. The exports of Philadelphia had reached a value of $11,250,000 in 1825. In 1850 they were but $4,500,000. The imports in 1828 were worth $33,000,000; in 1850 only $12,000,000. Not until 1851 did the city have a steamship line, and this was founded by foreign capital and flew the British flag. It put into the service four screw boats: the "City of Glas gow," the "City of Manchester," the "City of Pittsburg" and the "City of Phila delphia." There were monthly sailings which were advertised in the newspapers. Passengers were taken in saloon berths at $90 each; "midship" for $65, and "forward" for $55. These prices included "provisions, and stewards' fees, but not wines and liquors." Each ship carried "an experienced surgeon," and it was promised that the "accommodations and attendance" would be found "most su perior.'' Freight charges on "fine goods" were sixty shillings a ton and primage, while "coarse goods, hardware, etc.," were taken at lower prices. The arrival of the "City of Glasgow," the first to come into the Delaware, was announced by telegraph on January 2, 1851. A steamboat carrying four hundred merchants went down the river to receive the ship. She was met and greeted near Chester with the strains of "Hail Columbia," a salute of thirteen guns and loud cheering. John Price Wetherill and Morton McMichael made speeches to the little English captain, who was much disconcerted by the atten tions showered upon him not only at this meeting, but also as he proceeded up the river amid decorated shipping, the firing of cannon and general huzzas, and after his arrival in the city. Eight hundred guests attended a dinner in the Chinese Museum in honor of the arrival of the ship. The mayor, Charles Gil pin, presided, and Senator James Buchanan, Ex-Secretary of the Treasury Wil liam M. Meredith, William C. Patterson, at this time president of the Pennsyl vania Railroad Company; Judge William D. Kelley, Robert Morris, and others spoke. But the line was an ill-starred venture. The "City of Philadelphia" went down off Cape Race on her first voyage in 1854. The "City of Glasgow" left Liverpool on March 1 of that year with five hundred persons and a valuable cargo. She was swallowed up by the sea and was never heard of again. The "City of Pittsburg" was burned in the harbor of Valparaiso in 1852. The "Manchester" was taken by the English government to carry troops to the Crimea, and the sailings of the line ceased. Of course a number of sailing ships were still in the service in Philadelphia, Jenkins, Memorial History, p. 503. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 245 both in the foreign and the coasting trade. The Copes and the McHenrys had lines to Liverpool. There were clipper ships twice a month around the Horn to California, sailings three times a month to New Orleans, and frequent de partures for other southern ports such as Savannah, Charleston, Mobile and Wilmington, N. C. — a branch of trade in which Heron's lines were very promi nent. In 1853 there were coasting steamer lines from Philadelphia to Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, Mobile, New Orleans, New York, Albany and Troy. These' were side-wheel boats. On these steamers passengers were taken to New York for $2, to Norfolk for $6 and to Richmond and Petersburg for $8. The> trip to New York was accomplished in eighteen hours. Smaller steamers for New York, the Hudson river and the east were sent through the Raritan canal. A company incorporated by the Lopers, William M. Baird, and some others, carried on a large business over this route, in steam propellers, for years. The telegraph was not far behind the locomotive and the steamship. Morse opened his experimental line between Baltimore and Washington on May 27, 1844. It was abandoned after a few months, and the first wires applied to the general uses of business were strung between New York and Philadelphia in 1845. The poles followed the Old York Road across New Jersey through or near New Hope in Bucks County, whence they were continued to this city. Swain of the Public Ledger, who with his partners had given so much encouragement to the telegraph, received the first dispatch over the line on January 2, 1846. Soon all the newspapers had columns of news which were marked "By the mag netic telegraph." The line was run through to Baltimore and Washington by the New York and Washington Telegraph Company. The Philadelphia, Read ing and Pottsville Telegraph Company erected its poles up the Schuylkill valley beside the Reading Railroad. The Atlantic and Ohio Magnetic Telegraph Com pany stretched its wires to Pittsburg, and there were lines threading the coun try in other directions. As early as 1848 it was possible to telegraph from Phila delphia to Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo and Montreal. The service was cheap. The rates from Philadelphia to the places which follow, on the basis of ten words to the message, were : New York 25 cents Trenton 10 Wilmington 10 Baltimore 25 Washington 30 Lancaster 20 Harrisburg 20 Chambersburg 20 Bedford 30 Pittsburg 40 Reading 10 Pottsville 15 Wheeling 60 Louisville 90 Cincinnati 80 246 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Cleveland 70 Boston 75 Albany 60 " Buffalo 75 " Montreal $1.75 Additional words were received at proportionate rates. By the year 1850 there were connections with New Orleans. The charge on a dispatch of ten words to Charleston was $1.09; to Savannah, $1.36; to Mobile, $1.97; and to New Orleans, $2.30. A second line to New York, House's, was established be fore this time, and the system was being extended in all directions. The successful laying of the Atlantic cable and the receipt of greetings from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan over wires under the sea was loudly acclaimed in August, 1858. On September 1, there was a public fete in honor of the occasion. There were military and civic processions in the streets; con gratulatory orations, and illuminations at night; all of which seemed out of pro portion to the achievement when it was discovered in a few days that the cur rent was too weak for practical use and that the cable would need to be taken up and relaid. No successful results were attained until after the Civil War. With the improvement of the prison system, which was evidenced by the construction and enlightened administration of the Eastern Penitentiary at Cherry Hill in Spring Garden, and the County Prison in Moyamensing, came the abolish ment of public hangings. This was another step in the direction of civilization. At half past two o'clock on the morning of Sunday, September 6, 1829, the mail coach on its way to Reading was held up on the Ridge Road on the out skirts of the city. Three men suddenly appeared: one seized the horses' heads; two others with loaded pistols commanded the driver to stop, and broke his "lights." The stage carried ten passengers, who were invited to get down from their seats and surrender their money and other valuables. The mail bags, saddle bags and luggage were seized and rifled. The men escaped in the dark ness after they had accomplished their object. The driver, who was in the employ of "Admiral" Reeside, turned his team back to the city, and a reward was offered for the arrest of the robbers. They were captured and put on their trial. One, turning state's evidence, went free; another, who was to have been executed, had his sentence commuted for some reason by President Jackson. The third, a man named Porter, was hanged on July 2, 1830, at Bush Hill in the old way, with his coffin in the wagon beside him in the presence of a crowd drawn up on the commons to watch the spectacle. There was another notable execution on May 19, 1837. This was the hang ing of James Moran, a sailor on the "William Wirt," bound from Boston to Rio Janeiro. He became mutinous, was punished, and in revenge killed the mate and mortally wounded the captain. He then took command of the vessel, but at length the seamen overpowered him and secured him below. He was brought to Cherry Hill, tried before a United States court, convicted, and sen tenced to death. The gallows were erected in the open air at what is now about Seventeenth and Green streets, and the hanging attracted thousands of people. PANORAMA OF PHILADELPHIA FROM THE STATE HOUSE STEEPLE LOOKING NORTH, 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 247 To this time there are old men in Philadelphia whose boyhood homes stood on the bush lots around Fairmount, and who reminiscently ask one another if they can remember "the day when Moran was hung?" Executions afterward were confined to the prison yards. Publicity of punishment as a deterrent upon crime had been tried. It had failed, and it was now finally abolished. CHAPTER XXVII. SPLENDORS OF THE FORTIES. The middle of the century revealed a city which was generally admired by visitors. None of any distinction from abroad failed to come to Philadelphia. It was the country's social capital. Moreover, it still stood on the high road from north to south, and no one could pass it by. It fills a large place, therefore, in the books in which European tourists of the period recorded their impressions of the United States. With the appearance of the city they were generally pleased. This was probably because it was "like a pleasant English town of earlier times in which a certain picturesque rural beauty still lingered," as Charles Godfrey Leland described it in recalling the Philadelphia of his youth. "The grand old double houses with high flights of steps, built by the colonal aristocracy, had a marked and pleasing character, as had many of the quaint black and red brick houses whose fronts reminded one of the chequer board map of our city. . . . Every house had its garden in which vines twined over arbors, and the magnolia, honeysuckle and rose spread rich perfume of summer nights, and where the humming bird rested, and scarlet tanager or oriole, with the yellow and blue bird flitted in sunshine or in shade. Then swallows darted at noon over the broad streets, and the mighty sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware that one could hardly remain a minute on the wharf in early morn or ruddy evening without seeing some six-foot monster dart high in air, falling on his side with a plash."1 Mrs. Trollope liked the place, though she was compelled to regard it as too "even, straight, uniform and uninteresting." She threaded its "parallelograms," and suffered from its silences of nights — she was manifestly in the city at a time when the firemen were not exercising, — and upon Sundays.2 She remarked the "elegant simplicity" of the dress of the people as compared with the "gaudy splendor" she had seen in Baltimore, and in some other American towns. Captain Alexander, here at about the same time, wrote: "I was surprised to see the luxurious living and the expensive furniture of the best classes in Philadelphia. I thought that a Quaker simplicity would have prevailed, but in their lofty rooms the eye was feasted with silken curtains and 1 Memoirs, pp. 8, 9. 'Domestic Manners, p. 218. 248 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 249 velvet-covered chairs, gilded walls and ceilings, mirrors and pictures in costly frames, and at supper in particular the viands were delicious and the wines unexceptionable." 1 Tyrone Power, the actor, said that Philadelphia was "one of the most at tractive looking towns" he had "ever beheld." "Coming immediately out of the noise, bustle and variety of Broadway," he continued, "its general aspect appears quiet, almost triste; but the cleanli ness, the neatness, the air of comfort, propriety and health that reigns on all sides bespeaks immediate favor." The people were well housed. The neat brick pavements, the quiet shaded streets, the green latticed shutters, the polished railings of the steps and the door mountings, the white marble which visitors had so long admired, awakened Mr. Power's enthusiasm also.2 "Philadelphia is certainly in appearance the most wealthy and imposing city in the Union," said Captain Marryat in 1839. "It is well built, and or namented with magnificent public edifices of white marble; indeed there is a great show of this material throughout the whole of the town, all the flights of steps to the doors, door lintels and window sills being very generally com posed of this material. The exterior of the houses, as well as the side pave ments are kept remarkably clean, and there is no intermixture of commerce as there is at New York, the bustle of business being confined to the quays and one or two streets adjoining the riverside." 3 Lieutenant-Colonel A. M. Maxwell, of the British Army, here in 1840, spoke of "the really splendid city of Philadelphia." Chestnut and High streets he found "magnificent." They were "very wide, long, and perfectly straight and level." The city was to be ranked "among the finest" he had ever beheld. The fine shops of Chestnut street which, when they were lighted up, made "a most brilliant appearance," the market in which "you may promenade upwards of a mile through a profusion of all the good things of the earth," the public squares and many of the public buildings, delighted him. In Chestnut street he was reminded of Milan.4 Fanny Kemble's first impressions in 1832 were very much to the city's ad vantage. "The town is perfect silence and solitude compared with New York," she observes;5 but for this she loved it. It was "very pretty and pleasant." New York looked as though it were "an irregular collection of temporary build ings, erected for some casual purpose." Philadelphia had "a much more sub stantial, sober and city-like appearance." 6 Charles Augustus Murray, an Englishman here in 1834-35, said that Phila delphia was his "favorite of all the American cities; there is here," he continued, "more quiet and leisure, more symptoms of comfort than elsewhere." Madeira 1 Transatlantic Sketches, II, p. 270. 2 Impressions, I, pp. 54, 58; II, p. 29. 8 Diary in America, I, pp. 144-145. 4 A Run through the United States, I, pp. 161-66. 6 Journal, I, p. 139. • Ibid., p. 143. 250 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA here poured forth for him "her thousand choicest vintages," and he was wooed to stay by "every culinary temptation from the rich Pennsylvania butter to the luscious terrapin." 1 What Buckingham most admired about the city when he visited the place in 1837-38, was its streets with their "beautiful rows of trees." These, he said, "when in full foliage, give a verdure, freshness, coolness and shade most agree able to the eye and most delicious to the feelings of the passenger. Scarcely anything can be imagined more beautiful, in streets at least, than the sight of one of these long avenues reaching from the Delaware to the Schuylkill, a length of two miles, lined with trees the whole way, and the termination of the vista at each extremity reposing on the opposite banks of the respective streams." The aspect of the houses presented "a combination of purity, comfort and re pose." Inside, in decorations and furniture, "there was less of ostentatious display than in New York, but more of luxurious ease than in Baltimore." Some of the mansions "would be accounted spacious and beautiful even in London." Chestnut street was to Philadelphia what Broadway was to New York, and Regent street to London, a "fashionable lounge" and a "shopping promenade;" it had stores which were "equal to any in Ludgate Hill." 2 Philadelphia, in Mr. Buckingham's eyes, was a "beautiful city." "The regu larity of its plan, the foliage of its streets and squares, the delightful rides and drives of its environs," together with the great hospitality of the people, caused him long to remember it.3 Charles Lyell, the British geologist, here in 1841-42, said: "The streets of Philadelphia rival the finest Dutch towns in cleanliness, and the beautiful avenues of various kinds of trees afford a most welcome shade in summer." 4 On a second visit in 1845 ne was "as much pleased as ever with the air of refinement of the principal streets, and the well-dressed people walk ing on the neat pavements under the shade of a double row of green trees." 5 T. C. Grattan, another visitor of the time, spoke of the "rows of trees at each side, their luxurious foliage in summer time forming a complete canopy" over the streets; of the "closely planted squares;" and of the "exterior cleanli ness of the dwellings, with their well-kept brick-work and marble doorways." He remarked the "somewhat oppressive though elegant monotony" of the city, while praising the "unreserved gracefulness and decorous gaiety of the people." 6 Another visitor, Robert Baird, who came in 1849, received a similar im pression. "The white marble steps and facings to the basement stories of the private houses," he wrote, "give to the whole town an air of peculiar elegance. It is clean to a degree." "Philadelphia seemed to me," he continued, "as if it had been laid down by a professor of mnemonics in an endeavor to ascertain how far it is practicable so to lay out a great city as to render it utterly im- 1 Travels in North America, 3rd ed., II, p. 275. 2 Buckingham's America, II, pp. 27-31. 3 Ibid., p. 224. 4 Travels, I, p. 61. 5 A Second Visit to the United States, II, p. 24. 8 Civilized America, 2nd ed., II, p. 184. PANORAMA OF PHILADELPHIA FROM THE STATE HOUSE STEEPLE LOOKING WEST, 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 251 possible for the most obtuse stranger to lose his way in it." He thought that no town in the United States could offer so much to interest a visitor.1 By another who came about 1834 the city was found to have "beauties and excellences of its own." This man thought that Philadelphia should be "the Athens of America." The "general aspect of things" should "invite the mind to study and reflection," more than in "most other towns of the Union." And he continued: "How anybody can pursue a straight train of thought while threading the crooked lanes and alleys of New York and Boston, especially with the din of the former in his ears, it is difficult to tell." Philadelphia was "orderly and well arranged." 2 Another visitor, Alexander Mackay, who was here in 1846-47, said that the streets were so straight that at every intersection "the country is visible in four different directions, seen as through the diminishing end of a telescope." s The cleanliness, which every one remarked, came with the completion of the Fairmount water works. With an abounding supply of water flowing from pipes, Philadelphia occupied a position in advance of many other cities. Mac kay wrote: "The supply of water distributed from this reservoir [Fairmount] is inexhaustible; at least, the Philadelphians use it as if it were so. You meet it everywhere, lavished on every purpose — municipal, domestic, and personal. Philadelphia seems to begin each day with a general ablution. On arriving one morning early from the south, I found the streets deluged with water, some recondite plug seeming to have been extracted in front of every house, and the water so squirting and gushing about in all directions that it was no easy matter to avoid it. Not only were windows, doors and doorsteps being cleaned, but the brick pavements themselves came in for their share of scrubbing." So, too, were the markets "copiously visited by the purifying influence of Fairmount" at the close of "each day's operations." 4 Captain Marryat got similar impressions. He says : "The first idea which strikes you when you arrive at Philadelphia is that it is Sunday; everything is so quiet and there are so few people stirring; but by the time you have paraded half a dozen streets, you come to the conclusion that it must be Satur day, as that day is, generally speaking, a washing day. Philadelphia is so ad mirably supplied with water that every house has it laid on from the attic to the basement, and all day long they wash windows, doors, marble steps and pavements in front of the houses. Indeed, they have so much water that they can afford to be very liberal to passers-by. One minute you have a shower bath from a negress who is throwing water at the windows on the first floor; and the next you have to hop over a stream across the pavement occasioned by some black fellow who * * * brings out the leather hose attached to the hydrants * * * and fizzes away with it." 5 1 Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America in 1849, p. 270. 2 Things as They Are, or, Notes of a Traveller through Some of the Middle and Northern States, pp. 29, 30. 3 The Western World, I, p. 91. 4 Ibid., I, pp. 94-95. 5 Diary in America, I, p. 145. 252 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Fanny Kemble, with some hyperbole, declared the streets on a Saturday morning "impassable except to a good swimmer." x She pronounced Philadel phia "the cleanest place in the world." 2 The shade of the trees overhanging the pavements, and the Fairmount water "welling through the pipes and deluging the thirsty streets" 3 were not without appreciation in Philadelphia during the heat of its rigorous summers. For high temperatures the city had a great reputation, especially among travelers accus tomed at home to a more moderate and equable climate. "It is summer," wrote Francis Lieber about 1830, "and a summer in Philadelphia is no trifle." * Mackay said that by common report it was the hottest city in the Union. One day while he was here, the thermometer being well above one hundred degrees, horses fell in the streets and nearly thirty persons, mostly laborers who were exposed to the heat, died of sunstroke. On a hot day, the top of the hill at Fairmount was recommended. There, exhausted beings could look upon the water in the reservoir and enjoy the breezes, if any stirred, while watching the city lying "like a great flat overbaked brick field below you." 5 Tyrone Power thought the city "about the hottest place" he knew of in the autumn.6 Nevertheless, many southern people visited it at this season. The inhabitants who did not go away in summer to their country seats, to mineral springs or to the baths — and though Samuel Breck remarked the number who did so, they were comparatively few — took primitive measures to make them selves comfortable. In hot weather the solid hall door in many of the finer houses was superseded by a door made of green lattice-work which, while bar ring the passing stranger, would admit the air. Other mansions were entirely shut up during the day. Doors were closed and shutters drawn until the sun fell. Then the town came to life. Those who had melted "in some secluded back room" waiting for evening to arrive, migrated to the front of the house, which was generally thrown open to receive the cooler breath of the night. Fam ilies whose means allowed them to do so, took up the carpet in favor of a grass matting and substituted a slim cane-bottomed chair for a piece of heavy stuffed furniture.7 It seems to be allowed by most commentators that the people, while making a very excellent appearance, were still a little lacking in warmth except toward their true and tried friends. Buckingham, as he walked the streets, met "none but well-dressed persons of whatever class." "The gentlemen," he continued, "have not that ease and polish of manners which seemed to us to characterize the same class at Baltimore; nor did the ladies appear to us so graceful and perfectly well-bred. But the number of pretty and elegantly dressed women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five that are to be seen in the principal streets of Philadelphia on a fine day, are as great perhaps as in any city of the 1 Journal, I, p. 155. 2 Records of a Girlhood, p. 553. 3 Tyrone Power, Impressions, I, p. 55. * A Stranger in America, p. 20. B Vol. I, pp. 91, 94. • Vol. I, p. S8. 7 Mackay, I, p. 90. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 253 world; though we did not find in either sex that hearty frankness and cordial generosity which exists so generally at Baltimore, and which is said to be char acteristic of the people of the entire south. The Philadelphians have the repu tation of being cold, formal and difficult of approach, and in comparison with the same class of society in New York and Baltimore we found them so; and heard the defect admitted. by themselves as well as reported of them by others." The feeling originated, in Mr. Buckingham's belief, in a spirit of self-satisfac tion, both concerning their persons and their city. This look and air "sat on almost every countenance we saw among the fashionable groups engaged in shopping, walking or visiting their neighbors." x The Kembles also gained this impression. They remained here a month in 1832. Fanny Kemble felt the neglect on her own account, as well as on her father's. She thought it impossible that any one of his distinction could have received so little attention in the same time in any other city. She was obliged to conclude that the Philadelphians were "about the most unhospitable set of people" she had ever fallen in with.2 They were not accused of pride in their wealth, but they were already thought to engage themselves with questions of ancestry and the location of residence. Captain Marryat said that Philadelphia laid claim to the title of being "the most aristocratic city in the Union." In no city was there "so much fuss about lineage and descent." 3 As early as in 1839, when George Combe was here, the area of the fashionable district, south of Market street, was very well fixed. The city presented "a great amount of female grace, beauty and accomplishments, and of handsome young men," who, however, he thought, "rather verged upon dandyism." But, he went on to explain, aristocracy had its particular haunts. "Market street is the northern boundary of fashionable residences. The fash ionable inhabitants of Chestnut, Walnut and Spruce streets which lie to the south of that line, will scarcely recognize as compeers families living to the north of it. If a stranger were to come to the city and occupy a house of the first class beyond the northern boundary, and give the most splendid entertain ments, he would nevertheless find it difficult to make his way into fashionable society. This is neither more nor less absurd than the rule in London thirty years ago, which limited all good style to localities south of Oxford street, and doomed the north to irretrievable vulgarity." 4 Harriet Martineau made very similar observations three or four years earlier. She had friends in both Arch and Chestnut streets. "When I had been a few weeks in the city," says she, "I found to my surprise that one of the ladies who were my admiration had not only never seen or heard of other beautiful young ladies whom I admired quite as much, but never would see or hear of them." The explanation which she received was that the fathers of the Arch street ladies had made their fortunes, while the Chestnut street ladies owed theirs to their grandfathers.5 Fanny Kemble was also told about the "Chestnut street set" 1 America, II, pp. 83-84. 2 Journal, I, p. 184. 3 Diary, I, p. 146. 4 Notes on the United States of North America, I, p. 245. 5 Society in America, II, p. 173. 254 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA and its imperious leadership of society, which she was obliged to consider "per fectly ludicrous." 1 It was this same prejudice of locality from which a New York lady suffered so recently as in 1896, when she came to take up her residence in Philadelphia and indiscreetly chose her lodgings north of Market street. At the end of her experience she concluded that there was only one way of getting into Philadel phia — "with your family tree in one hand, and a letter of introduction to one of the patronesses of the assembly in the other. Otherwise, you were liable to be treated like a mulatto, particularly if you got into the wrong locality." 2 Murray, in enthusiasm, declared that in the beauty of its women the city yielded the palm to none.3 Tyrone Power, after a walk in November, 1833, wrote : "About midday Chestnut street assumed quite a lively and very attractive appearance, for it was filled with shopping parties of well dressed women, and presented a sprinkling of carriages neatly appointed and exceedingly well horsed. Satisfied that I am correct in my judgment -when I assert that this population has the happiness to possess an unusual share of handsome girls. They walk with a freer air and more elastic step than their fair rivals in New York." 4 Inns and hotels had come and gone in Philadelphia ever since the first set tlement of the city. The Mansion House on Third near Spruce streets had long been preeminent. Its superior conduct under Joseph or "Joe" Head, to use the name by which he was so generally known, increased the attraction of Phila delphia for travelers. He had been a gentleman before his unfortunate endorse ments for a friend, driving his tandem at Saratoga, Ballston, and other fash ionable resorts of the day, and that he remained under all circumstances. The list of the famous people who stayed under his roof would include presidents, senators, the principal actors and authors of the day, titled personages of Eu rope and notables of every kind. He had entertained Lafayette in 1825 at the Franklin Hotel on Washington Square, and he soon after took the management of the Mansion House, already brought to a position of high repute by Renshaw. This and the Tremont House in Boston were universally accounted the best hotels in the country.5 Actors who must pass to other cities left the Mansion House reluctantly, and came back to it with joy. To Fanny Kemble, the pro prietor was "the enchanting Mr. Head." "Once a man of independent fortune and a great bon vivomt," he did to guests "as he would be done by." 6 He had a cook called Augustine, regarded as one of the most skillful in the country. Mrs. Head and Miss Head made the pastry with their own hands. Mr. Head him self went to market, and presided over his table. The company was small and the conversation was lively and often brilliant. Tyrone Power said that the dinner table was "as well appointed in every way as any gentleman could desire." Every luxury was to be found here in season. The wines were "un- 1 Journal, I, p. 162. 2 North of Market Street, p. 14. 8 Travels, II, p. 275. 4 Impressions, I, p. 92. 6 Kemble's Journal, I, p. 109. 6 Ibid., p. 142. COMMISSIONERS' HALL IN THE NORTHERN LIBERTIES, THIRD STREET BELOW GREEN STREET, 1852 NORTHERN LIBERTIES AND SPRING GARDEN WATER WORKS, 1853 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 255 exceptionable," and the service excellent. Mr. Power, who had traveled widely enough to be a judge, had "never yet met in any country of Europe" a table d'hote "so essentially good."1 Coming to the Mansion House in cold weather, he found his room well heated by crackling hickory logs. The window opened into an inner court where he had "one of the most attractive winter prospects imaginable in the form of entire carcasses of several fat bucks, all hanging in a comely row and linked together by a festooning composed of turkey, wood cock, snipe, grouse and ducks of several denominations." Although quartered here for a month to come, he "felt fortified against any fear of famine by this single glance without." 2 William B. Wood, writing in 1855, described the hotel as "a truly elegant establishment, quite unlike anything before or since known in the United States." In the case of a difficulty between a servant and a guest, the servant was in stantly dismissed. Mr. Head followed this course, he explained, because he would never allow himself to doubt the word of a guest.3 He did not receive all who came to his door to be lodged, and his career was unique among Phila delphia landlords.4 After Head's day had passed the Mansion House was made to appear old- fashioned by the United States Hotel on the north side of Chestnut above Fourth street, opposite the United States Bank, later the custom house. Here Charles Dickens was staying when Poe called upon him in 1842. Here Clay, Webster, John Quincy Adams, and the presidents who visited the city in the '40s and '50s were likely to be lodged. The "cream of the traveling aristocracy," Souder says, still went to Head's Mansion House, but "the active fashionables of the time" became the patrons of the United States. The hotel was established in the old brick mansion of James Smith, a wealthy Quaker merchant, and in some ad joining structures which were thrown into a general pile. It was opened in 1826 by Richard Renshaw, who was followed by a man named Dorrance and other landlords.5 Another important house of the day was the Congress Hall of John Sturdi- vant at Third and Chestnut streets — the old Judd's Hotel with a Chestnut street entrance added. A fine new hotel built by a company of business men in 1842 was the Merchants' Hotel in Fourth below Arch streets. It was successfully managed for a long time by a man named Sanderson, and was especially com mended because of the use of speaking tubes, instead of the noisy bells and gongs by which servants on the floors were usually summoned in American ho tels. Jones's Hotel, on the south side of Chestnut between Sixth and Seventh streets, when it appeared on the scene, surpassed the United States. Its su premacy was undisturbed until the erection of the Girard House still farther west on Chestnut street. Jones's stood on the ground which had been occupied 1 Impressions, I, p. 53. 2 Ibid., p. 113. 3 Philadelphia Press, October 30, 1874. 4 Head later lost money by his sons, left the Mansion House, probably about 1850, and had hotels afterward in Washington, D. C, and Pottsville, Pa. 5 History of Chestnut Street, ch. 41. 256 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA by Oellers' Hotel. After this structure had been burned in 1799, four dwelling houses were erected upon the site; two of these were torn down by Mrs. Yohe, a widow who was well known as a landlady in Philadelphia, and converted into a hotel, known as the North American, or often only as Mrs. Yohe's Hotel. In 1839 she sold her property to John A. Jones who gave the house his own name. Later he extended the building to cover the other two lots, and his hotel en joyed a very fine reputation around 1845 and 1850.1 It was patronized by Jenny Lind when she came to the city and numbered other distinguished people among its guests. Another Mansion House was found at the southeast corner of Eleventh and Market streets, adjoining the Baltimore depot. This was the hotel built for Renshaw by Thomas Leiper, and refitted now for other lessees. The City Hotel (a name already borne by at least two other establishments) on Third near Arch streets, was kept by Heiskell, earlier at the Indian Queen. Attached to the house were "warm and cold baths with marble tubs, fitted up on the most approved principles and in elegant style." The Marshall House stood in Chestnut street between Sixth and Seventh streets. Two favorite confectionery shops and refreshment rooms were Wood's and Parkinson's. In at least one of these, Parkinson's, guests were lodged. James Wood's place was in Chestnut street opposite the State House. His ices were celebrated.2 Parkinson's ice cream saloon was situated on Chestnut street above Seventh on the south side, and after 1852 on the north side above Tenth street. There was a garden in the rear of the house which was handsomely fitted up. It was illuminated at night, and in summer was a much frequented resort.3 The life in a hotel of the day in Philadelphia is described by Jay Cooke, who in 1838-39 was a clerk in Sturdivant's Congress Hall. In that house about a hundred negroes were employed. Many of the old comforts of the tavern which preceded the hotel were still offered to guests. Boots were blacked, coats brushed, and grateful little attentions bestowed upon visitors by the servants. The breakfast hour was eight o'clock. Dinner was served at three, tea at seven and supper from nine to twelve at night. The meals were paid for by the guest whether he ate them or not. The first hotel of any importance to be conducted on the European plan in Philadelphia was that which was opened in the upper stories of the Arcade about 1855. The viands at Congress Hall, as at the other hotels, were set upon the table: whole pigs, whole roast fowls, dishes of potatoes and other vegetables. The guests of the most distinction were attended in the hotel dining rooms by their own liveried servants who accompanied them on their 1 Souder, History of Chestnut Street, ch. 65. 2 This well-known resort was the scene of a sensational tragedy in 1839. Wood's daughter, who sold cakes in the store, had secretly married a man named Peake. When her father learned of this he shot and killed her with a pistol in a third story room. This was one of the first occasions on which newspaper cries were heard in Philadelphia : "Here's the Spirit of the Times. All about the horrible murder." Wood was taken to Moyamen sing but was acquitted on the ground of insanity. He continued to live in or near the city for many years, but the business passed into the hands of his widow and son, under a blight henceforth. — History of Chestnut Street, ch. 53. 8 History of Chestnut Street, chapters 71 and 78. Henry A. Murray, an English trav eller, lodged at Parkinson's. — Lands of the Slave and the Free, I, p. 357. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 257 travels. Everything was abundant, though the earlier custom at American inns of serving liquors freely upon demand, and dividing the expense pro rata with out regard to the amount which any one individual may have consumed, cannot now have prevailed. The temperance movement was making steady progress. Like abolition, it had its traveling apostles and lecturers, and many societies had been organized. At first meaning moderation, temperance had come to stand for total ab stinence. The crest of the wave of this reform was reached in 1854, when Pennsylvania voted against the "Maine Law." There appeared in the com munity an element which would not drink at all — something quite unheard of in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — and there was begun a kind of moral proscription of the drinkers by the non-drinkers. Strangely illiberal opin ions were uttered regarding the man who would take as much as a glass of beer. The number of drinking places was reduced by taxation. The agitation frightened into total abstinence some who, listening to the lecturers, came almost to fear for their souls' safety if they should continue to drink; while others, of course, greatly resented such an attack upon a long enjoyed personal right. Sev eral of Philadelphia's most fashionable families traced their lines back to an cestors who were in the beer, ale and gin business. Even they did not quite escape remark, and they could have wished themselves descended from the blacksmiths, cordwainers and ferrymen who had been the founders of the fam ilies of some of their more fortunate friends. Change in the people's diet had in several ways made malt and vinous liquors actually less necessary. When the oyster cellar appeared as a rival of the tavern, a change was at hand. Beer and oysters taken together were not very palatable, and the revolution which in our own time has gone still further in the direction of teetotalism — based largely upon the introduction of large amounts of sugar into our diet — made the day of universal drinking seem very far away. The rooms at a hotel like Congress Hall were large. They were carpeted, and contained bureaus, tables, mirrors, washstands and good beds.1 The hotel business was undergoing some changes in the work of accommo dating itself to the new lines of transportation. Earlier, a much prized situation was on a stage coach line. Now there was need of hotels for passengers com ing and going by railways and steamboats. Several of the stations, or depots as they were called, were combined with hotels which for a time divided the trade with the city houses. Soon after 1850, a fine, and for its day, a really magnificent hotel was built on the north side of Chestnut street above Eighth street by G. W. and J. W. Edwards. It was designed by John McArthur, Jr., who was beginning to make his impress upon the architecture of Philadelphia. This hotel, the Girard House, was five stories in height, and had balconies of ornamental ironwork. It was ready to receive Thackeray in 1852, and it was preeminent until the Continental Hotel was built on the other side of the street, to be opened in the first year of the Civil War. Another very much esteemed hotel, the La Pierre House, on Broad below Chestnut street, afterwards remod eled and known as the Lafayette, soon followed the Girard House. It, too, 1 Life of Jay Cooke, I, pp. 53, 55. vol. n—vt 258 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA was built by the Edwards, and was opened in October, 1853. On his second visit in 1855 Thackeray was quartered at the La Pierre. For those who wished a hotel so far west, it served an excellent purpose. At the time of the consolida tion, therefore, Philadelphia had two hotels which were metropolitan in their proportions and in the quality of their appointments. The wealth of the city was more widely distributed than at any earlier day. In 1845 ana- l&4° two curious publications giving brief biographies and estimates of the size of the fortunes of its rich men, appeared. That of 1846, written by "a merchant of Philadelphia" is the most valuable. It appears by this compila tion that at that time there were beyond 1,100 fortunes in Philadelphia of, or in excess of $50,000. There were 268 persons who possessed $100,000 and less than $200,000; and 94 who had $200,000 or more. There were eleven million aires, or millionaire estates. These were led by Stephen Girard's estate, valued at $7,000,000. The estate of Jacob Ridgway 1 was reckoned to be worth $3,500,000. After Girard and Ridgway followed the estate of George Pepper, who had made a fortune as a brewer and in real estate in Spring Garden which he took for a doubt ful debt, thought to be worth $3,000,000 ; Charles F. Sibbald, "merchant and later contractor with the United States for cutting live-oak timber," $1,500,000; John Bohlen, merchant in gin and general importer of Holland goods, $1,250,000; Henry Pratt's estate, $1,000,000; Paul Beck's estate, $1,000,000; John J. Ridgway, son of Jacob Ridgway, $1,000,000; Evans Rogers, a hardware merchant $1,000,000; Dr. James Rush who married Phoebe Ann Ridgway, daughter of Jacob Ridgway, long the social leader of Philadelphia, as Mrs. Bingham had been in an earlier era, $1,000,000; Dr. J. Rhea Barton, a "handsome man" who had married "on two occasions an heiress," a native of Philadelphia, "a skillful surgeon," possessing "fine talents and taste," $i,ooo,ooo.2 Other wealthy citizens of considerable fortunes, it is learned from this curious book, were Horace Binney, the lawyer, with $300,000; John A. Brown, linen and shipping merchant, $500,000; David S. Brown, dry-goods merchant, $300,000; Edmund S. Burd, $500,000; George W. Carpenter, the druggist, whose "palace" until a recent time stood in Germantown, near what is now Carpenter station on the Germantown branch of the Pennsylvania railroad, $300,- 000; Carey and Hart, the excellent publishers, $300,000; Thomas P. Cope, pro prietor of the Liverpool packets, $300,000 ; James Dundas, who married a daugh ter of Henry Pratt, of whose estate he was an executor and who built the man sion at the northeast corner of Broad and Walnut streets, where the Vauxhall Gardens had been, $700,000 ; the estate of Joseph Dugan, of Savage and Dugan, shipping men, $400,000; Adam Everly, comb and fancy goods merchant, $300,- 000; Jacob I. Florence, a Jewish merchant in the Southern and West Indian trade, who resided at Eleventh and Walnut streets, $500,000; Edwin Forrest, the 1 He was the ''artificer of his own fortune,'' which had become large enough to be mentioned with Girard's and Astor's in popular speech in all parts of the country. There was some rivalry between the two Philadelphia millionaires and Girard was quoted as say ing that he "could buy Ridgway and keep him, too," a statement which the other indignantly denied. Like Girard Ridgway was very economical. He appeared in the streets in the plainest clothes and rode in a one-horse gig. 2 Memoirs and Autobiography of Wealthy Citizens, p. 6. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 259 tragedian, $150,000; Grigg and Elliott, publishers and book-sellers, $400,000; Alexander Henry, an importer who "came to Philadelphia penniless," $500,000; H. Messchert, a retired capitalist, $400,000; John Moss, shipping merchant and an American agent of Rothschilds, $300,000; James Molony, "a respectable adopted citizen who made his own money, mostly in real estate, once a journey man currier, working for seventy-five cents a day," $900,000; Henry Pratt McKean, China merchant, grandson of Thomas McKean and of Henry Pratt, $300,000; Isaac Norris, lawyer, son of Joseph Parker Norris, $250,000; Dr. Philip Syng Physick's estate, $600,000 ; John Hare ' Powel, nephew of Mrs. Powel of Powelton, who changed his name in order to inherit her fortune, $300,- 000; the estate of Robert Ralston, merchant, $800,000; Joseph Ripka, merchant and manufacturer, of Manayunk, $250,000; Jacob Steinmetz, a German who profited by the enhancement in the value of property in Spring Garden, $700,000 ; estate of William Swaim, "the celebrated vendor of the panacea, once a book binder," $500,000; estate of Silas E. Weir, a dry-goods merchant and later a well-known auctioneer, $200,000; John Price Wetherill, white lead and chemical manufacturer, son of Samuel Wetherill, Jr., the Free Quaker, $300,000 ; Nathan Trotter, iron, tin and metal dealer, $200,000; Captain Robert F. Stockton, of the United States navy, a descendant of the "Signer" of that name, $250,000; Hartman Kuhn, son of Dr. Kuhn, $300,000; Henry Paul Beck, a son of Paul Beck, Jr., who married "an heiress of New York" and lived "in the most splen did style," $200,000; the estate of Joseph Archer, an enterprising merchant in the China trade, $300,000; Samuel Breck, $200,000; estate of George Harrison, long the navy agent in Philadelphia, $300,000; John F. Lewis, auctioneer and China merchant, $200,000 ; Robert Neilson, an Irishman representing the British Crown in America, $250,000; Samuel F. Smith, druggist, auctioneer, and real estate owner, $225,000; Richard Wistar, son of Richard Wistar, the ironmonger who was a brother of Dr. Caspar Wistar, $300,000; Joseph R. Evans of Maris and Evans, shipping merchants, $500,000. , The people, if they no longer lived in the country's capital still participated in scenes which attested to their civic pride and their national patriotism. The spirit of the times in which the government had been founded was re awakened in 1826, upon the receipt almost simultaneously, of the news of the death of Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and John Adams in Massachusetts. For some time past the newspapers had contained accounts of Jefferson's poverty. A meeting at which General Thomas Cadwalader presided was held in the county courthouse on May 10, 1826. A committee composed of twenty-eight persons was formed to take up subscriptions which should be limited, "upon republican principles of equality," to one dollar each, "for the aid of the author of the Declaration of Independence." Not many responded, and it was neces sary to ask for larger sums. A number of Jefferson's admirers contributed $100 each; and one, William Short, a personal friend, $500. But the committee was still in the midst of its labors when news arrived of the great democrat's death. Oddly enough, it had occurred on the Fourth of July, on the fiftieth anniversary of independence ; oddly, too, John Adams's death had taken place on the same day. The advices were five days in being borne to the city. The public mind was sadly impressed by the fact that these 260 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA two leaders, of opposite views, it is true, but bearers of a common share in the great responsibilities of the Revolution, had gone together. The bells of Christ Church were rung. Councils directed Independence Hall to be draped in black for six months, and John Sergeant was requested to deliver an oration upon the lives of Jefferson and Adams on the 24th of July. Business was entirely suspended upon that day. The bell of the State House was muffled and tolled. There were services in the churches. The militiamen were assembled, and fired minute guns. Flags were at half mast in the harbor. Mr. Sergeant spoke from a platform erected in the State House yard to a large audience which in cluded most of the distinguished people of the city. In 1832 the centennial anniversary of the birth of Washington afforded fur ther opportunity for patriotic demonstrations. A great procession was formed for the 22d of February, and although barely three weeks were given the com mittee for its work, several thousand persons took part in the parade. The mem bers of the Society of the Cincinnati had the place of honor. The militia companies — foot, horse and artillery, in full force — and bodies of mechanics and tradesmen, many of whom gave exhibitions of their craftsmanship upon cars and wagons which were drawn through the streets, followed in bewilder ing numbers. The mariners had a full rigged ship, called the "Washington," on wheels in the line. Models of canal boats, then the hope of the country, were seen. The Hunting Park Association, which maintained racing grounds at Hunting Park on the York Road near Nicetown, paraded with the famous "Top Gallant," then one of the fleetest animals upon the track in the world, and several other horses. Thirty-seven companies of firemen appeared with their engines and hose carriages. A large number of civic societies, teachers, school children, etc., also had places in the procession, which wound its way through the city over a long route, dispersing finally at the State House. So many people partici pated that practically the entire day was consumed by the march. The occasion revived interest in the project for the erection of a monu ment to Washington in Washington Square, which had been so hopefully be gun during Lafayette's visit in 1824. The marble masons were engaged in fashioning the cornerstone in the procession in the street on the 22d of February, and it was determined that it should be laid on the Fourth of July. The response, however, was not nearly so free as the committee would have liked, and it was resolved to postpone the event until Washington's birthday of the next year, 1833. Again there was a procession, both industrial and military. A place was dug for the stone in the centre of the square; in which process several skeletons of those who had for years been so thickly interred there, were taken up. David Paul Brown made an address, and the aged Bishop White offered a prayer. The stone was set and buried and it remains there to this day. The funds raised in 1824 and 1832 at length came into the hands of Joseph Inger soll, as the surviving trustee. They were discreetly invested and in 1882 they were held by a trust company to which they had been committed by the court. In that year, the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati, which had raised a con siderable sum for a Washington monument, asked that the money be made over to them. This was done. They thus received about $50,000 to add to their HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 261 own fund, and set on foot the movement which resulted in the unveiling of the large and impressive memorial at the Green street entrance of the park at Fairmount, in the presence of President McKinky, Vice President Hobart, six members of the Cabinet, the French Ambassador, and other notable guests, in 1897. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Many honors were done him, especially by the Anti- Jackson men, with whom he was known to sympathize. In December, 1831, the con vention which met in Baltimore and nominated Henry Clay and John Sergeant for president and vice president, adjourned to visit Carroll at his home. After the elections in 1832 in Philadelphia, which were favorable to the Whigs, word was to be sent to "the venerable Carroll at Baltimore." "Tell the sole surviving patriarch that his republic is still safe!" In a few weeks, on the 14th of No vember, he died. Councils passed resolutions of respect. Orations were de livered in his honor and praise. A military procession was formed, and marched through the streets. In the next year on the 24th of June, 1833, John Randolph of Roanoke, the half mad but very able Virginia statesman, died at the City Hotel in North Third street. He was on his way to England and came to Philadelphia to em bark on a packet, but he was too ill to go on. Dr. Joseph Parrish was sent for but no treatment of this frail, wasted frame could avail. Meetings were held to do him honor. Nicholas Biddle was the chairman of the committee of arrangements for a public funeral, but it was understood to have been Randolph's wish that no such attentions should be bestowed upon his remains, and his friends took steps at once to remove them to Virginia. In June, 1834, news came of the death of Lafayette on the 20th of May in Paris. Councils resolved upon a procession in his honor on July 21st. It was participated in by many civic organizations. Commemorative exercises were held at the Zion Lutheran church, in Cherry street, where Bishop White made a prayer and Peter S. Duponceau delivered the address. On July 6, 1835, John Marshall, the great chief justice, now 80 years of age, died at a boarding house in Walnut street, between Fourth and Fifth streets, to which he had come with three of his sons to seek relief formerly afforded him by the medical skill of the city. Dr. Physick and other famous physicians at tended the old jurist. The day after his death, a town meeting of citizens was held, with the venerable Bishop White presiding. Resolutions of respect were passed at this meeting, and also at a meeting of the lawyers of the city which was convened. A funeral procession was formed to convey the remains to the boat landing. The State House bell was cracked while being tolled on this occa sion. A committee under the chairmanship of William Rawle was created to collect a sum of money for the erection of a monument. The response was dis appointing, but the sum, known as the "Marshall Memorial Fund," was invested carefully under the management of Peter McCall, the last surviving member of the committee. At his death new trustees were named to take charge of the money. Congress was petitioned on the subject and the result in 1884 was the 262 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA statue by William W. Story, which stands within the shadow of the Capitol at Washington.1 Both Jackson and Clay were in Philadelphia in 1833; the first in June, the other in November ; and processions, as we have noted, attended the visit of each. So strong and numerous were the Whigs of the city that the Democratic leader received what was taken to be a barely civil welcome, while Clay, always the idol of the people, was the mark of the greatest attention. The feeling was more than ordinarily bitter toward the enemy and favorable to the friend at this time, because of Jackson's lately announced intention of removing the deposits from, and of ruining a great Philadelphia institution — the United States Bank. Clay's visits were not infrequent. He had warmly endeared himself to the manu facturers by his defense of the tariff, and they abounded in Pennsylvania. Phila delphia was the home of Mathew and Henry C. Carey, of whose doctrines Clay was the especial spokesman in Congress, as Horace Greeley and Morton Mc Michael propagated them through the newspapers. There were homes in Phila delphia, as in other parts of the Union, which contained "Clay rooms." They were kept for Clay, to be occupied by the peerless leader whenever he should come. Like so many others, when he was ill he turned to the preeminent Phila delphia physicians for treatment and care. Dr. Jackson and probably others attended him. On April 15, 1834, Senator William C. Preston, of South Carolina, addressed a large meeting in Musical Fund Hall. From the same state as Calhoun, and for many years his colleague in the United States Senate, Mr. Preston was yet a Whig. He was a favorite speaker in Philadelphia before south and north had become divided on party lines, and while the two sections were still standing shoulder to shoulder in their support of Clay, Webster and the other leaders of Whiggery. It was he who, five years later in a speech in Philadelphia, told of that famous conversation with Clay in which the great Kentuckian had said that he "had rather be right than president." The address of Senator Preston in 1834 was followed on April 22d by a great celebration on the Powelton estate, in West Philadelphia, now the property of John Hare Powel. It was arranged in honor of recent electoral victories over the Jackson men in New York state. A large delegation from New York was received by a crowd at the Chestnut street wharf. Stores were closed; the entire business district was deserted; "a stranger would have thought it Sun day," so great was the number who wished to celebrate the prospect of an early redemption of the country from the "desolating blight of Jacksonism." 2 The Market and Callowhill street bridges were thrown open to the crowds. They more than filled a twenty-acre field. Here, Frank Johnson's and the Philadel phia bands played upon elevated stages. Tables were spread everywhere and loaded down with viands which were free to all. Two or more barrels of beer stood at each table to quench the thirst of the people. From a ship called the "Constitution," full rigged, with polished brass ordnance, copies of "Hail Colum bia" were distributed. Speeches were made by James C. Biddle, Josiah Randall, JWm. Henry Rawle, the son of him who had had much to do with instituting the movement, was the orator at the unveiling exercises. 2 Poulson's Advertiser. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 263 James Watson Webb of New York, David Paul Brown and others. It was computed that 60,000 people attended the great "Powelton Jubilee." It was spoken of for years as one of the notable events in the political history of the city. In July, 1836, General William Henry Harrison visited Philadelphia. He was one of the presidential candidates of this year, though it was recognized to be a hopeless contest against Van Buren whom Jackson had named as his own successor. Nevertheless, great numbers of Whigs congregated at the steamboat landing to meet the hero of Tippecanoe. He was put into a fine barouche to which four horses were attached, to be drawn to his hotel. But the huzzas of the people were so disturbing to the animals that they must be taken out of the harness. Men then hastened to attach ropes to the vehicle, and so great was the desire of the crowd to do honor to the guest that not enough was at hand to afford space for those who wished to pull it. The cries of "more rope" were eagerly taken up by the Democrats, who concluded that if more were given to the Whigs they would promptly hang themselves. Many a fight in Philadelphia was induced in later years by a taunting call for "more rope." A leader of the other party, President Van Buren, reached the city on Oc tober 14, 1839. His friends made him the mark of considerable attention dur ing his brief stay. At the Trenton railroad depot a military and civic procession was formed to escort him to his lodgings at Sanderson's Merchants' Hotel on Fourth below Arch street. In the evening councils met and preceded by four high constables, bearing the staves of office, passed from the State House to the hotel to pay their respects to the visitor. His departure early the next morning prevented further demonstrations. On May 2, 1837, a convention to amend the old constitution of 1790 met at Harrisburg. John Sergeant was elected president, and it continued its sessions there until November 23d, when it adjourned to meet at Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia on November 28th. The delegates were welcomed to the city and they remained here until Washington's Birthday. They signed the new consti tution on February 22, 1838, and it was referred to and adopted by the people of the state at the election in the following October. The presidential election of 1840 was everywhere attended by a great deal of excitement. Philadelphia shared in this festival of log cabins, hard cider and coon skins. The disappoint-! ment of Clay's warmest personal admirers was keen when he was not nominated at the convention at Harrisburg — largely because of the sharp practice of Thur- low Weed of New York — but the Kentuckian had so soon disposed of any sug gestion of his own pique at the result by his prompt and cordial endorsement of the nomination, that the Whigs of Philadelphia became a united company. Their enthusiasm was so great that Harrison won in both the city and the state. Sorrowful, indeed, was the news in April, 1841, that the Whig president had died only a month after his inauguration. A funeral procession was arranged in connection with other commemorative exercises in Philadelphia, the first of any importance to be seen in the city since that one which was given in Washington's honor in 1799. April 12th was fixed upon as the day, but stormy weather in duced a postponement until the 20th. Then snow fell, but this was not allowed to prevent the movement of the procession. Eight black horses bearing plumes, 264 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA each led by a groom, drew a funeral car which was covered with black cloth trimmed with gold fringe. Inside the elaborately decorated hearse, in the place usually assigned to the coffin, were placed a sword, a wreath of laurel, rolls of parchment and a quantity of flowers. A riderless horse, led by a groom, fol lowed the car, and fourteen pall-bearers walked beside it. Officers of the city and district corporations, the militia companies, the fire companies and many benevolent and other organizations appeared in the line. Services were held in a number of the churches. Councils repaired to Christ Church where a dis course was delivered by Bishop Onderdonk, who had succeeded Bishop White at the latter's death in 1836. On June 9, 1843, President Tyler, with several members of his cabinet, was formally received in the city, though he was by this time so unpopular that his coming was viewed very coldly. He was on his way to Boston and was landed from the Wilmington boat at the Navy Yard where a crowd awaited him. Va rious militia companies escorted him to the United States Hotel. Councils grudg ingly gave his friends the use of Independence Hall for a reception. In the streets he was hissed. A Whig city could not be expected to accord a very cordial welcome to one who had betrayed the party and all its principles, and the presi dent left with no mistaken view of the opinion in which he was held in Phila delphia. Jackson's death, in 1845, called for the draping of Independence Hall, and the appointment of the 26th of June as a general day of mourning, when the bell upon that building was muffled and tolled and another great procession passed through the streets. George M. Dallas, who had been elected vice- president on the ticket with Polk the year before in a memorable campaign, de livered an oration from a platform in Washington Square. On December 2, 1846, Daniel Webster was tendered a dinner at the Chinese Museum. About four hundred persons were present. Samuel Breck presided. Some 1,500 ladies occupied the galleries and the great orator spoke for nearly five hours. It was a notable deliverance upon public questions, which no one who had the privilege of hearing it ever forgot. On June 23, 1847, President Polk came to Philadelphia. He was making a tour of the northern states, and it was his first visit to the city since his inaugu ration. He came up the river from Wilmington in a steamboat and landed at the Navy Yard, after having proceeded amid artillery salutes and the huzzas of the crowded wharves as far as Kensington in order to view the water front. He was received by Commodore Charles Stewart and General Robert Patter son, and escorted by three brigades of troops to the residence of Vice-President Dallas on the north side of Walnut street below Tenth street. Some German singing societies serenaded the president in the evening. During his stay he was shown the principal sights of the city, held a reception in Independence Hall, and attended a ball at the home of General Patterson. Clay came once more on February 24, 1848. At no time before had his reception been so enthusiastic. His friends again hoped to make him the party nominee for president. In 1844 he had been defeated by the smallest pluralities in New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Georgia, and a few other states in several of them, said his advocates, by shameless frauds. In Pennsylvania gross HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 265 deception had been practiced by the Democrats when they started the campaign cry of "Polk, Dallas, and the Tariff of '42." By this device it was made to appear that they were the defenders of a protective policy instead of Clay, and it spoke not well for the intelligence of the people that a considerable number of them were so easily misled. Now, however, in June, the national convention of the Whig party was to be held in Philadelphia, and it was hoped that he would again be nominated. Clay, on this visit which was meant to swell the sentiment in his behalf, was met by a reception committee at Elkton, the old "Head of Elk" in Maryland. He came into town by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, to its new station at Broad and Prime streets. There he was seated in a barouche behind four horses, and twelve hundred mounted citi zens, together with many in carriages, conducted him in a procession into town. Never before had this popular idol had such a reception in Philadelphia, what ever may have been his fate elsewhere, in a life filled with extraordinary ex periences of this kind. The huzzas which greeted him as he drove down Broad street are said to have formed "one incessant pean." No public man in American history ever awakened the interest and enjoyed the love of the ladies in such a degree as Henry Clay, and they waved their handkerchiefs from open windows and balconies on both sides of the way as the carriage advanced. The number of people who crowded the streets "has never been exceeded within our knowledge," said the Public Ledger in its report of the event. "At a fair computation" 100,000 persons appeared to welcome "the man who never lost a friend." The reporter had witnessed many recep tions of public men, but he had "never seen such a wild outpouring of the heart's feelings, such a warm, ardent, almost extravagant display of enthusiasm, such an intense and strong burst of popular welcome," as that which greeted the entrance of Henry Clay. The guest was conducted to the house of John Swift in Walnut street where he remained during his visit. In the evening the bands of the city vied with one another in serenading him. At a reception in Independence Hall, under the auspices of councils, thousands came to pay their respects to the distinguished guest. On March 1st he held a levee for the ladies in the grand saloon of the Chinese Museum. From eleven until after two o'clock it was "thronged with a gathering of beauty and fashion such as is not often looked upon." About 5,000 were personally introduced to him. Many brought their children, not a few of whom were his namesakes, to receive his blessing. Rings, breastpins, umbrellas, and other mementoes were showered upon the extraordinary man. Clay remained for several days, but had passed on to New York before the funeral ceremonies of his old friend and associate, his fellow victim of the "bar gain and corruption" story which for twenty years had played such havoc with the ambitions of them both. Clay had visited John Quincy Adams just before his death in Washington. News of the fatal result reached him in Baltimore. On the 7th of March the remains arrived in Philadelphia on their way to Quincy, Mass., the old Braintree which had been the family home, for interment. A large congressional committee accompanied the corpse. The party was received at the southern railway station by the First and Second City Troops. The coffin was placed in a funeral car especially designed for the occasion and given 266 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA into the charge of pall-bearers who were Chief Justice John Bannister Gib son, Richard Willing, Samuel Breck, John K. Kane, John M. Scott, Dr. R. M. Patterson, Horace Binney, Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, William J. Duane, Benja min W. Richards, Isaac Roach and James Page. The hearse was drawn by six white horses with waving black plumes. The members of councils, organiza tions and citizens formed a procession which carried the remains to Indepen dence Hall. Being now dark, the line was lighted by torches which made the occasion one of unwonted solemnity. The hall was draped with mourning cloth. During the night, the Washington Grays acted as a guard of honor, and the next day the cortege was formed again and conducted the body to the Kensing ton railway station for its journey to New York. Once again the hopes of Clay and his friends were to be dashed. War with Mexico had intervened. It was the approach of this contest over the Texas question and the extension of the area of slavery which had defeated Clay in the election of 1844. His efforts in the "Raleigh" and the "Alabama Letters" to hold the southern Whigs in line, had alienated enough anti-slavery votes to give Polk two or three important states in the north. On the other hand, his silence might have cost him some support which he received in the south. The expansionist issue, for which he had no heart, had led to his de feat, to his own great disappointment and the humiliation of his devoted fol lowing. Now, in 1848, the war had come to a successful end, and its triumphant generals were popular heroes — fit candidates, it was believed, for the presidential nomination. Hostilities had been declared on May 11, 1846. Two days later, a town meeting was held in the State House yard. While there was far from unanimity of opinion in regard to the justice or need of this war, it was desired to make the meeting entirely non-partisan. With this end in view, the sheriff of the county, Morton McMichael, called the assemblage to order, and moved that Mayor John Swift take the chair. The vice presidents were the city recorder, Richard Vaux, the presidents of select and common councils, and the heads of the several corporations, including Spring Garden, Southwark, Northern Liber ties, etc. The eleven secretaries were carefully chosen from the various political parties. Speeches were made by Robert T. Conrad, Josiah Randall, Peter A. Browne, James Page, Benjamin H. Brewster, General P. S. Smith, and others. It was resolved to support the country in the war, and the meeting was followed in a few days by the vigorous recruiting and enlistment of troops. Drummers and fifers marched through the streets, and soon more volunteers offered than could be accepted. Thirty companies of Grays and Blues and Guards and Fencibles and Artil lerists, variously designated, asked to be taken into the service. It was deter mined finally to receive none at this time, and interest in the war had so much declined by the November following that when one regiment was ordered to Pittsburg it was not at once easy to fill the ranks. Seven companies, however, were made ready. Three left over the Columbia Railroad on December 7th, three others on the 9th, and another on the 14th. They were dressed in sky- blue pantaloons, roundabout jackets and plain flat blue caps. Winter was already at hand, and the canals were frozen up. There was nothing to do but to march HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 267 from the Susquehanna to Pittsburg, a good foretaste of the hardships which were to ensue. Six of the companies, the Washington Light Infantry, the City Guards, the Monroe Guards, the Philadelphia Light Guards, the Cadwalader Grays and the Jefferson Guards were formed into the First Pennsylvania Regi ment; while the Philadelphia Rangers, Captain Charles Naylor, who had taken a prominent part on the popular side in the Native American Riots in 1844, were attached to the Second Regiment, made up principally of companies from other parts of the state. From Pittsburg the men proceeded down the Ohio, and the Mississippi to the scene of hostilities. Some recruits were taken into the regular army in Philadelphia during the progress of the war, but the First Regiment was the city's principal contribution to the success of the struggle on its military side. Now, as in each previous war, and as in the Civil War yet to come, Phila delphia played an essential part in forwarding the government's financial opera tions. E. W. Clark and Company, the firm to which Jay Cooke came in 1839 as a clerk and of which in 1843 ne became a partner, was now considered the "leading exchange house in the country." It had branches in New York, Boston, St. Louis and New Orleans. When Robert J. Walker, Polk's secretary of the treasury, advertised for proposals for loans to carry on the war with Mexico, this house and Corcoran and Riggs were the principal bidders. Their relations with the government seem to have been very profitable to them, because of Walker's lack of skill as a financier, or because of the nature of the legislation of Congress under which he was constrained to act.1 However this may have been the operations were of such a magnitude that they serve to identify the city with the war on its financial side in a noteworthy way. The operations of General Zachary Taylor, "Old Rough and Ready" as he came to be called, made him seem, in the eyes of people who were looking for heroes, a very great one. His movements earlier in the war, on the Rio Grande, caused meetings to be held in Philadelphia to bring him forward as a Whig candidate for the presidency. When the news of Taylor's victory over Santa Anna at Buena Vista reached the city, in 1847, steps were immediately taken for a civic celebration. April 19th was set aside for the purpose. The State House and its adjoining buildings were illuminated with candles at every pane. The steeple was festooned with colored lights. The old United States Bank building, "the tomb of many fortunes; the great catacomb of investment," as Dickens called it in his American Notes, which had already become the custom house, was ablaze, as were many shops, offices, factories, and private homes. The general introduction of gas as a means of lighting produced effects more brilliant than those which had been seen in any previous illumination. Trans parencies were again utilized in large numbers. A favorite subject for portrayal was the figure of General Taylor who was mounted on horses of every color. General Winfield Scott was crudely pictured, while battles and forts and minor heroes of the despatches whose names are now recognized by no one, also served as subjects for the painters. The streets were crowded with people who passed from place to place admiring the display until long after midnight. Night, 1 Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, pp. 81-83. 268 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA says the Public Ledger, was literally turned into day. The exhibition "surpassed anything of the kind ever before witnessed in this vicinity." The next year the troops came home. General George Cadwalader arrived in May, and was accorded a public reception at Independence Hall, whither he was escorted by several companies of cavalry. The managers of the Philadel phia Gas Works, in order to impress the public with the value of their illuminant and in some public spirit, with the permission of councils, arranged a display in front of the State House.' The pipes were so turned that the jets formed the figure of a Goddess of Peace seated on a chair and holding an olive branch. At her feet were the emblems of commerce and industry — the anchor, barrels and chests of goods, wheels and a plow. Over all, an eagle with outspread wings was suspended, with a scroll in its beak bearing the word "Peace." There were four thousand burners in use, and the device was of great size. The rank and file arrived on July 24th, over the Columbia Railroad. They dismounted at Fairmount, very near the house in which Edgar Allan Poe had lived five or six years earlier. There they were met by their friends and rela tions, a civic reception committee, the fire companies, six hundred mounted butchers, and a variety of clubs and societies. The military were excluded from this demonstration, as it was meant to indicate that the men were being welcomed back to the pursuits of peace. The six companies of the First Regiment had gone away with 559 men. They returned with only 254. They had therefore lost more than half their number from battle or disease. The soldiers marched through streets that were hung with flags, amid hurrahing crowds, to the Chinese Museum where they sat down to a collation. John M. Scott delivered the address of welcome, and several others spoke. In the evening the State House and the principal buildings of the city were illuminated. These remnants of the campaign were afterward formed into an organization called the "Scott Legion" which figured in the later history of the city. The "Scott Legion" cap and the tattered banners brought back from the war, were re marked in many a street pageant in Philadelphia. Out of the war, two military candidates for the presidency emerged; one was used in 1848, and the other in 1852. At the Whig Convention in Philadel phia, which met in the Chinese Museum in June, 1848, Clay was set aside in favor of Zachary Taylor. He was not known to have any affiliations with the party ; he deserved nothing at its hands ; but Thurlow Weed, who had done Clay out of his dues at Harrisburg in 1840, and a considerable number of leaders in Congress had determined that the Kentuckian could not be elected. Clay had con sented to the use of his name only upon the urgent representations of his friends, particularly in Ohio; but these, and even many of his Kentucky delegates, aban doned him and gave the nomination to an "old hero" instead. On the first ballot Zachary Taylor had in votes, Henry Clay 97, and Winfield Scott 43. On the fourth ballot, which was the last, Clay's vote fell to 32, and Taylor was declared to be the party's nominee. Clay had all along led the struggle against military heroes in public life, as ex emplified in the person of Andrew Jackson. He knew that Taylor stood for no Whig principle ; indeed, he had in his possession, though he f orebore to use it, a letter in which the general plainly stated that if he were not nominated by the HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 269 party he would run anyhow on an independent ticket. Therefore Clay withheld his support. Many of his friends also sulked. Signs of defection were noted at once in Philadelphia, where Clay was held in such high regard, at the Whig ratification meeting in Independence Square, called together at the conclusion of the convention. However, Taylor was elected by an appeal to the enthusiasm which his course in the war had evoked. In September of the next year, 1849, a few months after he had come into the presidency, he passed down the river on his way from New York to Washington. He had not arranged to stop, so Mayor Swift and a committee of councils met his steamboat near Port Richmond, and transferred him and two or three of his cabinet officers who accompanied him, to their own boat. The president was then brought along the river front at a leisurely rate of speed to be greeted by thousands of persons who, informed of his coming, had crowded the wharves. At the Navy Yard the president was put on board the "Robert Morris" of the Baltimore line, and proceeded on his journey south. His death soon ensued ; and a mock funeral, such as had been held for President Harrison, was arranged after the manner of the time. The day fixed upon for the procession was July 30, 1850. The State House and many other buildings in the city were draped. The funeral car was a cata falque, fifteen feet high, of black cloth and white satin, with much deep silver fringe. It was drawn by eight white horses led by grooms ; the empty horse be hind was also white. A very large number of city militiamen and returned Mexican volunteers appeared in the procession, together with forty-one fire com panies and other civic organizations. The day was one of intense heat. The thermometer approached one hundred degrees, and there was considerable suffer ing along the line of the procession, which is said to have extended the length of twenty-six city blocks. Millard Fillmore, who succeeded Taylor as president, stopped over night in Philadelphia on May 12th, 185 1. He was accompanied by Daniel Webster, his secretary of state, and several other members of the cabinet. Companies of volunteers escorted the party to the favorite United States Hotel on Chest nut street, opposite the Custom House. Both Fillmore and Webster spoke briefly to the crowds, and they were serenaded during the evening. But nothing since the Lafayette reception occurred in this period so plenti fully furnished with pageantry, to compare with the reception that was accorded Louis Kossuth, the exiled Hungarian patriot. He arrived in Philadelphia the day before Christmas, 1851, at the Kensington railway station, by the Phila delphia and Trenton Railroad. He was on his way to Washington where he hoped to move the wheels of government. The distinguished visitor and the members of his party came in the night, and were lodged at the United States Hotel. Independence Hall was decorated with greens in honor of the Christmas sea son, while the flags of Hungary, Turkey — in which country he had found refuge — and the United States were intertwined, in proof of the popular sympathy. The mayor and city councils received him. He was taken through the streets in a six-horse barouche, escorted by the First City Troop. A large number of military companies had come in from adjoining counties ; more, indeed, than had attended upon Lafayette in 1824. The civic representa- 270 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA tion in the procession was also large. Kossuth was the object of the greatest popular curiosity and appreciation wherever he appeared. In the evening the city corporation tendered the visitor a complimentary dinner at the United States Hotel, where speeches were made by Commodore George C. Read, Major-Gen- eral Robert Patterson, Morton McMichael, Judge Kane, William D. Kelley, and others. The next day, which was Christmas day, was more quietly spent. Indeed, the "great Hungarian" was confined to his room with a fever, and did not ven ture beyond doors. The Germans, who by this time by recent immigration had become an influential element in the city, arranged a great torchlight procession for the evening. Many of their number were exiles of 1848. They carried blazing fagots, and a variety of flags and painted transparencies. A number of singing societies had places in the procession, and they posted themselves on the steps of the custom house, opposite Kossuth's hotel. Falling snow did not cool their ardor or render their singing less beautiful. Though the visitor in whose honor the celebration was prepared, was in bed, some representatives of the bodies in the street outside were admitted to his room. The next day, the 26th, Kossuth met a large number of public school children at the Chinese Museum. In the evening a citizens' subscription dinner was tendered him at Musical Fund Hall. George M. Dallas, who presided, made an appropriate address, and the guest spoke until ten o'clock in reply. His fluent use of English, acquired, it is said, while in exile in Turkey, surprised every one and greatly raised him in the estimation of the people. In spite of its great length, the address is said to have been heard with enjoyment by the hundreds who were gathered in the hall and who, before the exercises were at an end, were compelled besides to listen to speeches from Simon Cameron, Judge Kane, Robert Morris, John Cad walader, Dr. William Elder, William D. Kelley and several other men. Kos suth departed the city for Washington on the following day. The death of Clay and Webster, neither long delayed, practically marked the end of the Whig party and of the era to which their gifts had added so much brilliancy. Clay died in Washington on June 29, 1852, and a cortege was formed to carry his body home to Kentucky by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo and other cities. The remains came into the Broad and Prime street station from Baltimore. A procession was formed behind the hearse, which was surrounded by distinguished men serving as pall-bearers, and was escorted by the First City Troop. It was evening, and the line was lighted by more than three thousand torches. Forty-six fire companies and large num bers of citizens accompanied the coffin to the State House, where it was to remain over night in charge of the Washington Grays. The next day, the hall was thrown open to the public, and thousands of persons passed through the apart ment to view the catafalque. A civic cortege escorted the remains Jo Walnut street wharf, where they were placed on the steamboat Trenton, which was especially draped for this service. Flags were suspended at half-mast in the streets, on the wharves, and on shipping in the port. In October, 1852, news was received of the death of Daniel Webster at his home in Massachusetts. On the day of the funeral at Marshfield, October 29th, Philadelphia was idle. The State House and the city buildings were again in UNITARIAN CHURCH, NORTHEAST CORNER OF TENTH AND LOCUST STREETS MARKET STREET FERRY, 1830 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 271 mourning. Stores and offices were closed. The bells of the State House, Christ Church, St. Peter's and other churches were tolled. It was felt by far-seeing men, as indeed subsequent events proved, that one age had gone, and another not likely to be better was about to begin. Not soon would the country again see the like of Clay and Webster. Each had just played his part in the arrange ment of the Compromise of 1850, his closing service to his country, in an effort to conciliate the two sections in reference to the slavery question. The next chapter would be civil war. CHAPTER XXVIII. NEGRO AND ANTI-CATHOLIC RIOTS. Slavery in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania at large had practically ceased to exist before the year 1825. The state, by reason of the influence of George Bryan and his associates who, from their reading of the French philosophy of the day, had become practically interested in the "rights of man," both black and white, and had arranged for the gradual abolishment of slavery by a law passed in 1780 and by later supplementary acts — had a position in advance of its neigh bors. Delaware and Maryland, of course, did not emancipate their slaves until they were compelled to do so by the nation, after the Civil War. New York, with a population in 1820 of 1,372,812, still had 10,088 slaves; and New Jersey, with 277,575 inhabitants, had 7,557 negroes in slavery. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, with 1,049,458 inhabitants, in the same year had but 211 slaves. These were for the most part aged family servants who disappeared one by one. Stephen Girard freed an old black woman at his death in 1831. Slavery, however, in the discussion aroused by the Missouri Compromise, was seen to have in it the seeds of a great political issue, which took root and grew to serious dimensions in the next two decades. Pennsylvania was bounded by slave states until the Civil War. Its southern counties were convenient ground for the fugitive slave to run into. It was territory to be visited by the "man hunters" from the south, and as it happened to be the seat of a determined abolition sentiment, the conflict of opinion which arose put an indelible stamp upon the life of the city and its neighborhood. The "New England conscience" was quick, but the Pennsylvania conscience was for tified behind all the stubborn spirit of martyrdom with which the Quakers pur sued a chosen idea. Because of the commercial relations of many of their lead ing members in Colonial times, binding them to the West Indies and other southern countries which used negro labor profitably, the Society of Friends had seemed to be slow to assume a definite attitude of hostility to this evil. There were among them men who had vigorously carried on an agitation for uncon ditional emancipation. The Yearly Meeting of 1787 "recommended to the watch ful attention of the Meeting for Sufferings in particular, and to Friends indi vidually, that no opportunity be lost of urging to those in power the moral and Christian necessity of suppressing the cruel traffic in those afflicted people; and manifesting to the world the religious ground of our Christian testimony against this public wickedness." In one way or another, in their meetings and as indi viduals, the Friends in southeastern Pennsylvania consistently opposed slavery. 272 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 273 They manumitted their own negroes. They charitably aided the free negro. They testified against the evil in other states and when it appeared in national politics. They forwarded the plans of those philanthropists who sought to colo nize the negroes. As time passed, they played leading parts as station keepers on the Underground Railroad, in forwarding black fugitives from the south to Canada, a business which they carried on steadily to the peril of their freedom and their own great pecuniary disadvantage. They, in short, would do all but fight to exterminate the abomination, or encourage and support others to fight in a war which they were doing so much to bring about. The Society of Friends lost some of its influence in this as in other matters lying near its hand at this period, by an unfortunate division in its ranks which has never been closed. A famous preacher named Elias Hicks appeared in New York state. He had been born on Long Island in 1748. Of very humble origin, he was one of that type of men in whom the Society had felt so much pride when it was founded in England. He preached from the overflowing spirit, without confusion or correction from books. His eloquence was great, his figure commanding, and when he rose, as one hearer said, he seemed "like an appari tion from another world." He traveled widely and was a not infrequent visitor to the meetings in Philadelphia. As early as 1818, however, accusations were made against him by Friends on the ground of his heretical sentiments. He gave utterance to much which a few came to think was antagonistic to their own beliefs, and which they considered at variance with the testimony of the So ciety. George Keith, more than a century earlier, had been dismissed from fur ther association with Friends for his "orthodoxy ;" that is, for his desire to lead the members of the Society back to those forms and professions which they had abandoned when they came out of the older churches. Meanwhile Quakerism seemed to have undergone a change, and many of its leaders were put upon their guard against a menace, as they considered it, in an opposite interest. The un duly liberal were at hand. Unitarianism and other too generous creeds were coming forward to assail the position of those whose views of Christianity were more severe. The more the disputants said about the divine origin of Christ, and the necessity of a belief in the doctrine of the atonement and other orthodox ritual of thought, the more essential a part of the faith did it appear to be. The time approached for a bitter controversy ¦ which rent the society in twain over a matter of no serious value to either side. The parties dwelt unduly upon the point at issue, until the views of each seemed extreme; and the obstinacy of minds which had been born to and which flourished in the perverse, admitted of no reconciliation. At first, leading Friends who differed from Hicks undertook to admonish him quietly. Letters passed from side to side. The dispute passed into the stage of print, and it soon became an angry pamphletary battle. In 1819 Hicks visited the monthly meeting in Pine street. He addressed both the men's and the wom en's meetings, and met with some affront. Jonathan Evans made himself a leader on the side opposed to Hicks who, when he came to Philadelphia again in 1822, was waited upon by a number of elders, bent upon remonstrating with him on the subject of his heresies. His views underwent no amendment, and he was commanded to appear before the male elders of the five monthly meet- 274 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ings in Philadelphia for a private conference. This summons Hicks refused to obey. He would attend only in company with some friends of his own choos ing, and the schism was seen already to be wide. On December 19, 1822, the ten elders who were to discipline the visiting minister: Caleb Pierce, Leonard Snowden, Joseph Scattergood, S. P. Griffitts, T. Stewardson, Edward Randolph, Israel Maule, Ellis Yarnall, Richard Humphries and Thomas Wister, wrote a letter to him. They complained that for some time past they had heard of his "holding and promulgating doctrines different from and repugnant to those held by our religious society." They had been informed by a Friend that he had said "that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God until after the baptism of John and the descent of the Holy Ghost, and that He was no more than a man ; that the same power that made Christ a Christian must make us Christians ; and that the same power that saved Him must save us." Through another in formant, the elders had heard that Hicks had somewhere said that Jesus Christ "had no more power given Him than man, for He was no more than man ; He had nothing to do with the healing of the soul, for that belongs to God only; Elisha had the same power to raise the dead ; that man, being obedient to the spirit of God in him, could arrive at as great or a greater degree of righteous ness than Jesus Christ ; that Jesus Christ thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; neither do I think it robbery for man to be equal with God." In a reply to this letter two days later, Hicks said that the sentiments at tributed to him were founded on the "forced and improper construction" of his words by unfriendly persons. Joseph Whitall, Ezra Comfort and Isaiah Bell were now standing as sponsors for the accusations against him. The controversy increased in bitterness. Friends were disowned by their meetings for their attitude in the dispute. Very soon the opponents of Hicks came to be called "Orthodox" Friends, and those favoring him "Hicksite" Friends; desig nations, however, which were never officially recognized on either side. Each went on its way, considering and naming itself the Society of Friends. In Philadelphia the orthodox element held all the offices and carried everything be fore it, except in the Green street meeting, which was secured by the other side, and in which, indeed, the rupture in Philadelphia was begun. The meet ings at Fourth and Arch streets, the Pine street meeting (near Second, on the old Society Hill, for which reason it was earlier called the "Hill Meeting"), the Twelfth street meeting, the Key's alley, or "Old North Meeting" (near Sec ond and Vine streets), which had taken the place of the Bank Meeting, were in the hands of Hicks's opponents, and remained there. The Hicksites, when the factions got clear of the disputes in their own dis ciplinary and business bodies, and their legal entanglements over the possession of meeting houses, schools, graveyards, records and other property, were obliged to build new places of worship in Philadelphia. They needed a meeting in the Fourth and Arch street neighborhood, and in 1829 they established one on Cherry north of Fifth street. Here the women convened at Yearly Meeting time, the men holding their sessions at Fourth and Green streets. For the southern part of the city the Hicksites erected a building at the corner of Ninth and Spruce streets, torn down some years ago to supply a site for a type foundry. The JOHN SWIFT HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 275 meeting house at Fifteenth and Race streets was not built until 1857, since which time their yearly meeting has been held in that large house.1 In the contiguous neighborhood of Chester, Bucks, Delaware and Montgom ery counties, the Hicksites quite generally predominated, and voted themselves the property of the Society. The orthodox faction there was obliged to take a room in one end of the old meeting house, when the feeling was not too strong for such near relationship, or to build a new, which was always a smaller house. Many of these meetings thrived so little that they must be "laid down" before this fate befell the old Hicksite meetings ; which, in recent years, have also grad ually closed their doors. In New Jersey, however, the Hicks teachings made very little progress, and it is from this source that the Yearly Meeting in Arch street to this day receives a large, if not the principal infusion of its ancient strength. Changing demands of fashion in speech, behavior and dress in the city have exerted a pressure to deprive the Friends of those distinguishing marks which have always rendered them so picturesque, but in rural neighborhoods they have more rigidly adhered to the old customs. Their coming to Philadelphia for a week in April of each year still crowds the pavements around the Arch street meeting house. But the neighborhood awakes only for this short season to the old-time sound of Quaker voices. Only the very aged can remember when Arch street was lined upon both sides with comfortable brick houses in which the Quaker families dwelt. In summer evenings, the neighbors met and sat upon their doorsteps, or on the wooden benches placed upon the pavements nearby. The country Quakers for many miles around drove in, putting their horses to pasture on common grazing ground provided by wealthy city members of the Society. They brought with them, under the seats of their gigs and chairs, eggs, sausages, fresh and dried meat, pickled oysters and preserves; and these were taken to the homes of their city friends and relations, to aid in provision ing themselves and their hosts at this general visiting time. The Jersey Quakers left their horses in Camden and, like the Pennsylvania country Quakers, lodged in the city during the week. Then, as now, there was a well fixed local tradi tion that they brought rain. The story is told of men at the wharves who anx iously awaited the end of the Yearly Meeting week. "There goes the last boatload of Quakers," they would say to each other; "now we shall have pleasant weather." Until near the middle of the century, the well dressed city elders continued to wear short clothes. Their low shoes had silver buckles. The broadcloth was brown or drab of an excellent quality. The hat was a broad-brimmed beaver, either soft or stiff, as convenience or taste seemed to dictate in each individual instance. The crape shawls and the plaited bonnets of the women gave them a characteristic appearance. At this time many of the bonnets were white, while in those of the "Jersey girls" there was "a hint of pink like the arbutus of their own woods." 2 Pockets then were separate from the dresses. When their side 1 The Cherry street meeting house was sold to Horstmanns, who used it for a time for business purposes, and later tore it down. 2 The Friends' Meeting House, Fourth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia ; a Centennial Celebration, 1904, p. 96. 276 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA of the house, at Yearly Meeting time, became crowded and more room was needed, a Friend would pass from seat to seat asking the women "to draw up their pockets." Then one or two more could press in upon the bench. The Pine street meeting being too far from the houses of the Friends living in the southern part of the city, it was abandoned in 1832 in favor of the Orange street meeting on Washington Square. Furthermore, the Key's alley meeting was now in a business district. After the Green street meeting passed to the Hicksites, there was need of an orthodox house in that neighborhood. Large numbers of Friends had established homes in the Northern Liberties and in Spring Garden, and to serve them a building was erected in 1838 at Sixth and Noble streets. The division diminished the power of the society. The relations of the two factions were far from friendly. When Bayard Taylor's Quakeress obtained her father's consent to marry her lover, "Indeed, 'twas not the least of shocks, For Benjamin was Hicksite, and father Orthodox." It was a severe strain upon the dispositions of this peace-loving people to pass through such a period of secession and schism, and to this day among rigid Friends, especially if they are of the orthodox branch, the mention of the dif ference awakens sentiments far from pleasing. The separation and the quarrels arising out of it were fresh upon the Quakers when they injected themselves in a prominent way into the anti-slavery struggle; and the heavy end of the service was taken by the Hicksites. They were ag gressive. They were regarded as the reformers of the Society, and reformers are wont to be more daring than those who are averse to being reformed. They were said (by the orthodox leaders) to be a rougher element in the Society, an impression which arose from the fact that they lived in the country. When they came to town, they were dressed in homespun and their manners did not always compare very favorably with those of city people. However this may have been, their leaders took their places eagerly, if quietly, in character with men of their faith in this impending moral struggle; and unremittingly labored until the war invoked other agencies to free the African slave. Since the Hicksites were so prominent in the movement, the Orthodox Friends were disposed to hold aloof from it. Their religion would suffice, many of them believed, as a weapon with which to combat this as well as other wrongs, and it was unseemly to go out and work in association with the "world's people" for this moral reform. It was, they feared, but one more manifestation of that movement which had produced the Unitarian church, the Hicksite division in their own meeting, and a whole series of "new thought" enterprises which were at work to undermine the Christian faith in its safe and established forms. Indeed, the Abolitionists were much as they were described. They raised their belief in the necessity for emancipation above the church, and every other social and political interest. Their speakers were often identified with other perfection ist schemes. In the lyceum and through every available agency itinerant lecturers were linking with abolition, temperance, woman's rights, spiritualism, socialism, a wider and more liberal church, and many other reforms, thus awakening much distrust. The Hicksites were opening their meeting houses to the travelling HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 277 advocates of a thousand isms, most of which had found their birth in New Eng land; and when they would not go far enough on this line to please some of their members, a number departed to a meeting of their own, calling them selves Progressive Friends, with a house at Longwood, near Kennett Square. As a seat for the exploitation of new and original views, this community became in some ways a rival to New England's Brook Farm. Franklin's old Abolition Society, which had been too late in entering upon its tasks to secure or deserve any of the credit for the abolition law in Penn sylvania, still exerted no important influence. The movement went forward without taking it into account. When, in 1813, memorials were received by the legislature from the mayor, aldermen and many citizens of Philadelphia, de claring the free negroes to be a nuisance, a protest was filed by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, a newer organization. The petitioners stated that at that time there were 9,672 colored persons registered in Philadelphia, and as many as 4,000 more who were runaways from service to which they were bound in other1 states. However this may have been, the negroes remained here without any thing material being done to restrain them. If they were nuisances, they con tinued to be nuisances. It is stated that the first public anti-slavery meeting in Philadelphia was that convened in November, 18 19, on the subject of the Mis souri question. It was held in the Declaration Room in the State House. Jared Ingersoll presided, and Robert Ralston, the merchant, served as secretary. Horace Binney offered the resolutions. A number of prominent gentlemen of the city were appointed members of a committee whose business it would be to correspond with similar committees which might exist elsewhere. In Mr. Binney's resolutions it was declared that: "The slavery of the human species being confessedly one of the greatest evils which exist in the United States, palpably inconsistent with the principles upon which the independence of this nation was asserted and justified before God and the world, as well as at variance with the indestructible doctrines of uni versal liberty and right upon which our Constitution is erected — it unavoidably follows that personal bondage beyond those states which were originally parties to the confederation must be deprecated and should be prevented by an exer tion of the" legislative power of Congress." But this meeting was not very different from many which were being held elsewhere in the north, as a protest against the extension of the area of slavery. The feeling which had called it forth subsided after the compromise of the question in 1821. These men were not the Abolitionists who soon appeared upon the scene and who, abating nothing on any account, did so much to bring on the Civil War. The city would have been more indulgent of them now than at a later day when the slavery issue made its definite entry into politics. Soon public opinion went backward. Agitation came to be discountenanced by those who at heart were honestly opposed to the evil. Indeed, at one time sentiment had seemed to turn rather strongly in favor of the Abolitionists because of the kidnapping of negroes in Philadelphia. This was an ancient and despicable wrong against which the Quakers had contended since the eighteenth century. Southern buc caneers hovered around the mouth of the Delaware and sent their emissaries 278 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ashore to entice free negroes to their ships. Whole families were carried south and sold into bondage. Sutcliff, in 1806, told of the case of a mother and her seven children who were taken off in the dead of night. A young Quaker named Joshua Rowland, of Lewes, Delaware, made it his business to follow the kid nappers to Georgia, and though the family had been scattered he succeeded in finding the poor blacks and returning them to their homes.1 In 1825 five chil dren had been enticed away to a vessel, carried to Virginia and sold. The negro quarters were put into a state of panic by the accounts of this and similar cases. Such outrages, which were by no means infrequent, coupled with the visits of slave masters to hunt and reclaim negroes held to be runaways from service, were revolting to white and black men alike. The state legislature and city councils took action penalizing such offenses, and offering rewards for the capture of the kidnappers. As for actual runaways, it was still generally held that they should be returned to their masters, in accord with the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law, but it was necessary to see that the rights of the black race, under this and other laws, were upheld. There were several men to whom this service was a duty and a joy, to none more than to Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker of the type of Anthony Benezet. He had been born in New Jersey in 1771 and began his life in Philadelphia as an apprentice in a tailor's shop. He later passed to New York where he died in 1852. He was a bulwark of the negro. In 1804, when it was known that Pierce Butler was about to take his man Ben to Georgia, separating the poor slave from his wife, it was Hopper who served the writ on Butler in his Chestnut street house. To the irate southerner's "Get out of my house, you scoundrel" he returned remarks about the beauty of the paper upon the walls. At the suggestion of a duel he retorted, "Surely there could be neither honor nor comfort in killing thee, for in thy present state of mind thou art not fit to die." Ben, after prolonged legal action, was set free. This was but one of the many cases to which Hopper and such as he, gave a philanthropic care. And soon in their great contest with slavery, they were actively engaged in the work not only of enforcing the laws which favored the negro but also of circumventing and defying those measures which were subversive of his liberties. The movement to colonize the blacks, particularly the free negroes, by whom the southern fugitives were constantly being harbored and with whom they were so often confused, occupied the attention of many of the abolition leaders early in the century. For instance, in Henry Clay's opinion until his death, there was no apparent cure for the evil, which was coming to divide the sections so dangerously, except colonization. For many years he was the president of the American Colonization Society. Benjamin Lundy, the pioneer in the work of arousing the country in favor of emancipation, at first expended his attention upon moral suasion as a means of ridding the country of the wrong. He sought to induce the masters to free their slaves, and colonize them. He preceded John G. Whittier, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips and others who later led the move ment with so much energy. 1 Travels in North America, p. 257. J^§ •4 ¦urn *¦ tit? m ) BURNING OF PENNSYLVANIA HALL Drawn on the spot and engraved by John Sartain ^ JOHN G. WHITTIER About 1838 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 279 Lundy was a New Jersey Quaker, like John Woolman, who had earlier spoken in such unmistakable tones on the subject of slavery. He had settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but was obliged to travel for his health. He at length established himself at Wheeling, Va., then a market place for slaves in clanking chains. This spectacle aroused him to a sense of duty, and in 1821 he established his Genius of Universal Emancipation; the first avowedly anti- slavery paper in the country. He continued its publication, regularly or irregularly, as time and place favored it, for nearly eighteen years. During this period he made long missionary journeys in the south. speaking wherever he could, indoors and out of doors, to every one who would stop to hear, on the wrong of keeping men in bondage. He had plans for send ing the freedmen to Hayti, Mexico and Texas. He was at first received rather cordially; or at any rate his doings were looked upon by the southern people as quite harmless. At this time, as in the day of the great Virginians, slavery was recognized to be an evil for which sooner or later a remedy must be found. There were large numbers of anti-slavery societies in the slave-holding states ; and if more radical men had not appeared to inflame the southern mind, it is con ceivable that Lundy's or some other way might have opened in the end. The Liberia scheme was brought forward, but the negroes had no wish to be deported ; and the entire colonization plan, in spite of the support of such leaders as Henry Clay, and later Abraham Lincoln, could well have been abandoned at once. The most prominent negro in Philadelphia was James Forten, a sailmaker who employed white as well as black men and accumulated what, for its day, was a large fortune, though he lent of his means imprudently and lost much before his death, which occurred in 1842. His estate in 1846 was reckoned to be worth $50,- 000. He was cited as "a singular instance of a colored man rising to fortune and respect by sheer industry and correct deportment. * * * He was a man of integrity and genuine politeness." 1 Samuel Breck grasped him by the hand in a public street, as he could afford to do, since he had taken fifteen of his white journeymen to the polls to vote for Mr. Breck for congressman. Neither Mr. Forten, nor any other negro himself presumed to take part in the elections in Pennsylvania, though the law permitted it if he was a tax payer.2 A man like this had no sympathy to spare for the colonization scheme. As early as in 1819, a number of blacks met in Philadelphia under his chairmanship and "Resolved, That, how clamorously soever a few obscure and dissatisfied strangers among us may be in favor of being made presidents, governors and principal men in Africa, there is but one sentiment among the respectable inhabi tants of color in this city and county — which is, that it meets their unanimous and decided disapprobation. "Resolved, That we are determined to have neither lot nor portion in a plan which we only perceive to be intended to perpetuate slavery in the United States. And it is moreover 1 Memoirs of Some of the Wealthy Citizens of Philadelphia, p. 24. 2 Recollections, p. 302; see also Lyell's Travels in North America, I, p. 164 and Mar- ryat's Diary, I, p. 150, for references to Mr. Forten. 280 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA "Resolved, That the people of color of Philadelphia now enter and proclaim their most solemn protest against the proposition to send their people to Africa, and against every measure which may have a tendency to convey the idea that they give the project a single particle of countenance or encouragement." Lundy, with his colonization and other plans, in common with all the northern missionaries, was soon compelled to withdraw from the Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee, and at last from such middle ground as Washington and Baltimore, to enjoy the shelter of Philadelphia, "on the borders of slavery," as Whittier described it when he came hither to serve the abolition cause. Lundy was again a pioneer in organizing in Philadelphia, in 1828, the society to encourage the use of free labor products. Soon there were advertisements in the anti-slavery papers, whose number rapidly increased, of "Lydia White's Requited Labor Grocery and Dry-Goods Store," which was at 219 North Second street; and there were similar shops which sold cotton, sugar, rice and other southern merchandise only under certified guarantees that slaves had had no hand in making them ready for mar ket. Much free labor cotton was woven on hand looms into fabrics for the con scientious Abolitionists, who believed with Lundy that "if there were no con sumers of slave produce, there would be no slaves." The Yearly Meeting (Hick site) in 1837 recommended that "when any of our members feel any religious scruples as to the use of the products of slave labor that they faithfully attend thereto." In December, 1833, a little body of men and women met at the Adelphi Build ing in Fifth street below Walnut street to form the American Anti-slavery Society. Among the number were John G. Whittier, the young poet of Massachusetts whose name was still strange to most men ; and Lucretia Mott, a Philadelphia Friend born in Nantucket, who had been married in this city. She had begun to speak in the Twelfth street meeting, before the separation. She became a Hick site, and was for years one of the leading ministers of that branch of the Society. Whittier found her a "beautiful, graceful woman, in the prime of life, with a face beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of Madame Roland." Others in the little company were James Mott, the husband of Lucretia Mott, a cotton merchant, who, lest he should encourage slavery by dealing in slave-made produce, turned his attention to the wool business ; Robert Purvis, who always associated with people of color but was really a white man except for some blood received through his mother from the Moors ; James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian clergy man of Lancaster County, who married a Chester County Quakeress and was later himself a member of the Society of Friends ; William Lloyd Garrison ; Sam uel J. May ; Lewis Tappan, and Elizur Wright, Jr. Delegates were present from ten states. Before they parted, they framed and adopted a Declaration of Anti-slavery Sentiments. It was written principally at night, in a negro's attic, and was the boldest statement of hostility to the evil that had yet been uttered. The society which was formed was to be a militant organ ization. In two or three years Whittier became its secretary. Lundy's methods seemed much too mild for these new Abolitionists. He had brought his "G. U. E.," as he familiarly called the Genius, to Philadelphia ; and directed another pa- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 281 per in the city, The National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty, a weekly which on March 15, 1838, was converted into the Pennsylvania Freeman. The parting from him was friendly. ' "It would perhaps be improper for me to say anything in recommendation of the gentleman who succeeds me as editor of the National Enquirer," wrote Lundy of Whittier in the last issue of his paper, "He is known to some of its readers personally, and to all of them by reputation. * * * I am confident that a better selection could npt have been made among the well tried friends of our cause." The next Thursday, March 15, the Enquirer became the Pennsylvania Free man, and Whittier wrote of the retiring editor : "It will be seen that the present volume of this paper commences under new auspices. Its veteran editor has re tired from his post, after having for more than twenty years worn the abolition harness and fought the battles of freedom, a greater part of the period single- handed and alone, sacrificing his time, his hard-earned property and his health, amidst derision and contempt on one hand and active persecution on the other." For a long time the Pennsylvania Freeman was an active rival of Garrison's Liberator in the esteem of Abolitionists, especially in the middle states. Lowell wrote for it while he was in the city, after Whittier's connection with it had ceased. It was so completely in Quaker hands that it was published on "Fifth Days" instead of Thursdays; and letters to the editor were addressed to "Friend Whittier." The gage of battle had been given, and the contest increased in warmth. Si lently and stealthily, as a few chosen spirits knew, southern refugees were join ing the negro colony, or were being forwarded north by faithful agents, from Maryland and Delaware on routes touching the borders of Philadelphia. The city was avoided on account of the difficulty of carrying on such a business through a large centre of population; but many a Quaker farm-house not more than ten miles away held the fugitives. This was the Underground Railroad. Night after night and year after year, the owner slept with one ear open for the sound of the wagon which would bring him, under cover of darkness, a load of slaves ambitious to enjoy the sweets of freedom in Canada. Many a Quaker ma tron and maid cooked and sewed for the blacks who came to these quiet homes to remain until they could be sent on to the next station, where hearts were as faith ful and lips as discreet. Against consciences like these, diligent non-Quaker con stables and southern masters with whips in hand, who not infrequently drove over the border to recover their runaways, were of no avail. In August, 1834, a serious race riot occurred in the city. It was not the first disturbance of the kind. Indeed, such disorders were becoming disgracefully fre quent. Mobs made and extinguished fires, broke up political meetings, interfered with elections and roamed the streets throughout this period with more freedom than at any time since the Revolution. The old system of a night watch, with but partially lighted streets encouraged unruliness. Girard had left a fund for the improvement of the police arrangements. Old householders knew the danger of the situation, but nothing practical would be done for many years to come. An offender against the peace could run from Philadelphia into Southwark, and then possibly into Moyamensing or Passyunk. The multiplicity of jurisdictions made 282 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA it possible for him to escape effectual pursuit for his misdeeds. In some of the districts, naturally, the police system was worse than in the city itself, and popu lar rule enjoyed little regulation. Color and race form' an excellent basis for prej udice, and as soon as the Abolitionists began to make something of the negroes there were large classes of white hoodlums ready to heap indignities upon them. The riot in 1834 began in an attack on a flying horse exhibition — similar, per haps, to a "merry-go-round" of this day — at Seventh and South streets. A party of rowdies on the night of August 12 gathered there and destroyed the building and its machinery. The next night a still larger crowd appeared. They ren dezvoused in an open lot near the Pennsylvania Hospital, and marched down to Moyamensing where many negroes resided. Windows and doors were broken, furniture was destroyed, black men and women were beaten without mercy, and the riot proceeded unhindered until Mayor John Swift and the officers arrived. About twenty persons were taken. The next day a body of three hundred special constables, under command of Peter A. Browne, were sworn in; the First City Troop and the Washington Grays were mobilized. The third night was to be devoted by the mob to an attack upon a negro Masonic lodge room on Seventh street, south of Lombard, where it was said several hundreds of armed blacks were concealed. They gladly obeyed an order toi depart. Mayor Swift and a posse of constables were on the ground and prevented harm coming to them as they dispersed. In another portion of the city, however, on the Moyamensing Road, a mob was at work tearing down a small meeting house used as a church by the negroes, and breaking into dwelling houses. Several thousand dollars worth of property had been destroyed in this series of disturbances, and a citizens' com mittee was appointed to collect a fund for the reimbursement of the sufferers. In July, 1835, there was a fresh outbreak of race feeling. It was immediately induced by the brutal attack with an axe of a native African boy upon Robert R. Stewart, who had been United States consul to Trinidad, and now resided on Sixth near Walnut street. The fellow had been brought to Philadelphia from the West Indies. The outrage led to the expression of great popular resentment. On the night of July 13, a mob would have killed the black boy but for the interven tion of the police. These officers had been made more watchful by recent experi ence, but in spite of their exertions a crowd of ruffians attacked the houses of the negroes in the southern portions of the city. "Red Row," eight or nine houses on Eighth street below Shippen street, was set on fire and when the volunteers came with their engines and hose to extinguish it, the mob attempted to destroy their appliances. They, however, resisted the rioters and succeeded in putting out the flames before great damage was done. The mob continued its depredations, as saulting negroes and breaking into their houses until the entire colored population of the city was in a state bordering upon panic. The Indians at the time of the excitement over the coming of the "Paxton Boys" had not been in such a condi tion of helpless fear. Hundreds of families moved out of their frame and brick cabins and sought safety in the woods and fields. The mob assembled again on the evening of the 14th, and but for the clever management of the police would have made an attack upon a building which contained fifty or sixty negroes armed with bludgeons, pistols and knives, when there would have certainly been bloody strife. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 283 Many directly ascribed the intensification of feeling to the actions of the Aboli tionists. Slave masters and the southern people generally were bitterly attacked by their speakers and writers, while the negro race was correspondingly raised up for praise and sanctification. There were many more than the leaders of mobs who saw in the whole movement what was distasteful to them and what appeared, in their view, to be very dangerous to the political as well as the social peace. A town meeting was called, and assembled at Musical Fund Hall on August 24, 1835, to take action in deprecation of the course of the Abolitionists. Resolutions which were presented by Robert T. Conrad were adopted. The citizens assembled viewed "with indignation and horror" the "dissemination of incendiary publica tions through the slave states." The very next day a steamboat arrived from New York with a wooden box which was addressed to a well known Philadelphian. It was by accident broken open by laborers, and found to contain packets of Garrison's Liberator and other anti-slavery papers. The occurrence was reported to Mr. Conrad and his friends of the night before. A committee therefore visited the person to whom the shipment was consigned. He, truthfully or untruthfully, denied all interest in the box, though it bore his name, and made over his rights to his visitors who with much cheerful ceremony took it out in a boat upon the Delaware river and consigned the papers to the tide. Thus stood public sentiment on the subject of abolition when Whittier came to lead the movement in the city. A slight, poetic man, his health injured by early hardships upon his father's farm, he had little of the figure for the part he was now to play. His spirit, however, was bold beyond his physical powers, and Garrison himself could not denounce the slaveholder more scathingly. Just where he resided when here has never been told. He was a lodger or a boarder, in all likelihood, in the Quaker community in Arch street, which Lowell later joined. The New England Friends had not been materially affected by the Hicksite di vision, and Whittier adhered to the orthodox branch of the Society. He often attended upon "First Days" at the Twelfth street meeting. It was a matter of deep regret to him when he discovered how conservative the orthodox Quakers of Pennsylvania were in all that related to the emancipation of the slaves. His friends and associates in the abolition work were largely on the other side. They numbered Lucretia and James Mott; Dr. Joseph Parrish, an eminent physician who took so many young men into his office to train them for medicine and had time remaining for philanthropic interests; James Miller McKim; William H. Burleigh and C. C. Burleigh, brothers from Connecticut, who were writers and lecturers ; Mary Grew, the little Quakeress of whom Whittier wrote, "The world were safe if but a few Could grow in grace as Mary Grew;" Robert Purvis ; Abraham L. Pennock and John Coxe, the Chester County leaders ; Joseph Healy, of Bucks County, the financial backer and business man of the Pennsylvania Freeman; Daniel Neall, and many more, both men and women, who had nothing to surrender so long as they lived on the subject of their opposition to slavery. The movement, unfortunately, drew to it many eccentric and ill- balanced persons. Their doings were confused with those of wiser ones ; and the 284 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA entire mass of thought, speech, writing and action on the subject was known under the name of abolition, which soon by all but a few was alluded to in the most opprobrious terms. The Abolitionists had a paper in Lundy's, now Whittier's, Pennsylvania Free man; they yet needed a hall in which they could express their opinions freely. Owners who were not in sympathy with the movement would not hire their buildings to abolition societies ; and to obviate the need of asking these favors in the future, the Pennsylvania Hall Association was formed. Its president was Daniel Neall, of whom Whittier wrote admiringly. He was "formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man. He blew no trumpet in the market place; Nor in the church, with hypocritic face, Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace. Loathing pretense, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still." There were two thousand shares of stock which were sold at twenty dollars each, many of them subscribed for cheerfully by women and workingmen. A1 site was obtained in Sixth street at the southwest corner of Haines, between Race and Cherry streets. The edifice was nearly ready for dedication when Whittier came to Philadelphia in the spring of 1838. On the first floor there were committee rooms, offices, stores, and a small auditorium. Over these, on the second story, was a large hall which, with its galleries, would seat 3,000 people. The opening ceremonies were to take place during the week beginning May 14, and they brought to the city Abolitionists of all degrees of ability and zeal. An orator was found in David Paul Brown, the well known criminal lawyer and play wright, as eloquent as he was eccentric. Brown said that he was ready "to fight the battle of Liberty" as long as he had "a shot in the locker." This shot, how ever, was not well enough aimed to please many of those present, including the radical young Whittier who, for the next day's ceremonies, contributed a poem which he addressed to "this fair hall, to truth and freedom given, Pledged to the right before all earth and heaven ; A free arena for the strife of mind, To caste, or sect, or color unconfined." Various anti-slavery societies were convening in various parts of the building during these days. On the evening of the third day, Wednesday, May 16, the anti-slavery women were holding a crowded meeting in the large hall. It was addressed briefly by Garrison who was followed by Angelina E. Grimke, married a little while before to Theodore D. Weld, another well-known Abolitionist. She was one of two sisters who had emancipated their blacks in South Carolina and had come north to give their testimony against slavery. Naturally, they were very HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 285 welcome additions to the group of militant Abolitionists who, on paper and on platform, were engaged in the work of creating a situation which would lead to unconditional emancipation. Mrs. Grimke-Weld had barely begun her discourse when a large mob which for some time had been assembling outside interrupted her remarks by hideous noises and cries of "fire," meant to create a panic and cause an outpouring of the audience into the street. A number of southern students in the medical schools of the city, reinforced by the whole tribe of ruffians who were making Philadelphia notorious for its mobs, had gathered upon the call of their leaders. Mrs. Weld continued to speak, though none could hear her. Lucretia Mott rose to reassure the timorous. The mob committed no greater violence than to hurl at the win dows stones, which shattered the glass but were stopped on their course by the inside blinds. These meetings were attended by many free negroes; and the Abolitionists, who were as nearly without race prejudice as men can be on this earth, were accused of walking arm in arm with them. At length, the women in the hall were allowed to proceed to their homes without indignity, though several blacks, as they filed out, were attacked by the crowd. The next day, Thursday, May 17, the mob gained courage, and it grew clear that the coming meeting could not be held. Mayor Swift was asked to protect the building. He promised to do so, and appeared before the assembled hoodlums, urging them to preserve order. Such measures were entirely futile. The mayor had no sooner gone than leaders appeared among the 15,000 people said to have been gathered together on this occasion, and the doors were beaten down. They swarmed in and pillaged the offices. A flame was kindled among the abolition books on the rostrum in the hall, and the new temple of free speech in Philadel phia was soon lighting the skies. Whittier was at the home of Dr. Joseph Par rish, on Arch street near Third, when news came to him of the doings of the mob. He hurriedly put on one of the doctor's great-coats and, drawing his hat down over his eyes, sallied out into the street. He looked on while the mob rifled his desk and strewed his papers about. Probably no act of greater daring was ever performed by this quiet Quaker poet who, in the enthusiasm of his youth, raged in print against slavery but could never speak in public or even read his own sounding verses, and who abhorred war and riot with a pure hate. To his dying day, he was wont to tell of this adventure in Philadelphia with almost boyish de light. Another witness of the scene was Jay Cooke, who was to be the financier of the Civil War. He had just come to the city from Ohio to take his place in the office of his brother-in-law's Pittsburg packet company. He was writing a letter home but was interrupted. When he resumed, it was to say this : "Last evening when I had written as far as you see, I was arrested in my pro gress by the cry of fire and the usual noise and bustle which attend it. I inquired of some of the firemen where it was, and being told it was only five or six blocks from me I determined upon seeing it. I shut up shop, and when I came to the vicinity of the fire I found it to proceed from the large building called Pennsyl vania Hall, which had only been completed four or five days, and was used for abolition meetings and for free discussion upon all subjects. It had been set fire to by the mob who were furious and much excited." 286 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The firemen came, but they did not attempt to direct their streams upon the hall itself. The mob would not have permitted this, if they themsdves'had really desired to save it. They successfully gave their attention to the work of pro tecting adjoining property which bore none of the onus of abolitionism.1 Poor Lundy, who had little enough at best, had stored his effects in a room in the building, preparatory to his removal to the west, and they were totally de stroyed. The Anti-Slavery Society, which had adjourned until the following day, met in the street beside the smoking embers in the spirit of the ancient martyrs. The next night the mob in triumph again poured through the streets, bent upon razing the homes of Lucretia Mott (in Arch street) and other Abolitionists. It was turned from its object, and made an attack instead on a negro orphan asylum, recently erected by the Orthodox Friends in Thirteenth street above Callowhill. The building was soon in flames. The crowd endeavored to prevent the firemen from doing their duty as on the previous night, but under the leadership of Mor ton McMichael, the citizens standing by drove it back and saved the property. Rioting proceeded also in front of the office of the Public Ledger, at the north west corner of Second and Dock streets. That newspaper had strongly denounced the lawless spirit which ruled in the city. By this course it had aroused the re- sentiment of those whom it had so properly criticized, and the rioters threatened to tear down or burn its building. The excitement in this neighborhood continued for two or three days, before the city could be calmed and men again pursued their accustomed ways. The governor of Pennsylvania at this time was Joseph Ritner, a south Penn sylvania farmer who in his message to the legislature in 1838 had spoken of the "base bowing of the knee to the dark spirit of slavery." The expression of such sentiments caused him to be regarded as something near akin to an Abolitionist, and Whittier wrote bitterly : "Thank God for the token ! One lip is still free, One spirit untrammel'd, unbending one knee. * * * O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown ; Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone ; To the land of the South — of the Charter and Chain — Of liberty, sweeten'd with slavery's pain: Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips — Of the forgers of fetters and wielders of whips." Governor Ritner now came forward and offered a reward for the apprehen sion of the leaders of the Philadelphia mob, and Mayor Swift, stirred at last to a sense of his duty, issued a similar proclamation. It was quite without effect. The dark deed was done, and all but a few, if the truth were known, were quietly glad that this lesson had been administered to the Abolitionists. As a method of coping with misrule, the legislature, some time before this outrage, had passed a law making the county pecuniarily responsible for damages inflicted by mobs. It 1 Life of Jay Cooke, I, p. 44. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 287 was a measure similar to that which has more lately been adopted in some of the southern states with the purpose of putting an end to the lynching evil. If the tax-payers in a neighborhood are made to understand that they must meet the cost of frolics by its ruffians, it is argued, whether correctly or incorrectly, that they' will use their efforts in favor of good order. The jury to which the question of damages for the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall was referred, was three years in making its award. The large sum asked for was measurably scaled. The county at last paid $33,000. Attempts were made to secure subscriptions to the stock of a new Pennsylvania Hall, but the movement failed. The blackened ruins remained for several years — a mute witness to the disgrace of the city. At length the lot was sold to the Odd Fellows, who erected a building devoted to their uses which still stands upon this historic site. The entire summer was riotous. A number of murders which were committed by negroes did not serve to improve the position of the Abolitionists. A watchman had been killed while in the performance of his duty. A white man standing on the street with his sister was fatally stabbed with a knife by a mulatto. One of the offenders was clearly insane, but a mob assembled on Passyunk Road on the day of the funeral (Sunday, June 10, 1836) of his victim. They drove off the sheriff who urged them to disperse, and swept up Fifth street. When they reached Pine street, they met Mayor Swift who had taken a stand there with a body of officers. With only a cane in his hand he seized the ringleader with so much courage that the ruffians retreated and crossed the city boundary into South wark, where they scattered. They gathered again in the evening and committed some further outrages in the negro quarter. On June 8, 1838, while this series of disturbances was in progress, Jay Cooke wrote home : "The bells have just com menced ringing for the militia and fire companies to proceed to the southern part of the city to quell another tremendous mob, produced by the murder of three whites by three negroes. It is feared by some that the mob cannot be quelled." The boy was made very homesick by his experiences, during this exciting year in Philadelphia. "Fires and murders, mobs and abolition squabbles, are every day occurences," he wrote to his brother. Two taverns which exhibited at their doors the signs of his company's packet line and received passengers for it, were burned.1 The Abolitionists, had no intention of leaving the field because of abuse or violence. A few timid souls, as they were denominated by the leaders, thought it was time to adopt milder views and pursue other methods. One of these was Dr. Joseph Parrish,2 but Whittier, the Motts and most of those who were direct ing the campaign against slavery had nothing to surrender. Whittier wrote for the Pennsylvania Freeman the night that the hall was burned: "In the heart of this city a flame has gone up to Heaven. It will be seen from Maine to Georgia. In its red and lurid light men will see more clearly than ever the black abomina tions of the fiend at whose instigation it was kindled." The people of this state "within sight of the Hall of Independence and over the graves of Franklin, and Rush, and Morris" would not yield. "No ! the old spirit of Pennsylvania yet lives 1 Life of Jay Cooke, I, p. 47. 2 See the Memoir of Lucretia and James Mott. 288 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA along her noble rivers," the Abolition Society of the state declared in a public address, "and the fastnesses of her mountains are still the homes of liberty." Whittier, Lucretia Mott and the other leaders of the day found an excellent coadjutor in Dr. William Henry Furness, who in 1824 had come to the city to take charge of a little Unitarian congregation which had been established by Dr. Joseph Priestley. He was a native of Boston, a graduate of Harvard in 1820— one year ahead of Emerson whose friend and companion he long had been. For many years the church stood at the corner of Tenth and Locust streets. He preached here for fifty years, and continued his discourses from time to time for twenty years more, or until his death in 1896. A parishioner was once heard to say that in twenty-five years he was certain no Sunday had been allowed to pass by Dr. Furness without some allusion in sermon or prayer to the evils of African slavery.1 On the first of August, 1842, the race riots were renewed in a violent form. A number of colored persons who marched in a procession of the Moyamensing Temperance Society, were attacked by white bystanders. "A terrible fight, riot and bloodshed ensued," says the Public Ledger. A mob which was formed as a result of these disturbances attacked the dwellings of many blacks situated on Lombard street between Fifth and Eighth streets. Again windows were broken, furniture thrown into the streets and negroes beaten. These outrages were com mitted in daylight. In the evening the disorder increased. In spite of the exer tions of the police, a hall used as a place of meeting for colored beneficial societies was fired and burned to the ground. A colored church in the same neighborhood was also burned. The next day some Irish laborers in the coal yards on the Schuylkill river made an unprovoked assault upon negroes at work beside them. The mayor sent a posse of sixty men to the scene of the disturbance, but the rioters drove them off and, marching to Moyamensing, made a general assault upon the blacks resid ing in the alleys and lanes east of Thirteenth street. The situation seemed to be so serious, and the sheriff, at this time Henry Morris, was so alert that the troops were called out in strength. The various commands filled Washington Square. Money was voted to pay them for their service so long as it might be needed, and by these vigorous measures order was quickly restored. On the night of the election, October 9, 1849, a political riot developed into an anti-negro disturbance. An old wagon filled with combustibles was set on fire and drawn through the streets in Moyamensing — a very usual, if very dan gerous, means of celebrating party victories at this period. During the day there had been persistent rumors that an attack would be made upon the California House, a tavern at the corner of Sixth and St. Mary streets, kept by a mulatto, who was married to a white woman. Possibly nothing would have come of the trip of the blazing wagon, if the negroes had not thrown bricks and paving stones at the whites. This action on their part led at once to a movement upon the house, which was vigorously defended. The mob finally pressed into the building and set fire to it. The gas fixtures were broken and the gas set free, a trick by which the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall had been hastened. The police were 1 Dr. Furness was the father of Horace Howard Furness, today foremost among Shakes pearean scholars. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 289 powerless. The alarm of fire was sounded, and the companies, as they came up, were beaten off. Two members of the Good Will company were shot and killed. The fire spread to some adjoining houses. At midnight the State House bell was rung, calling for the militia, but when the soldiers reached the scene, two or three hours later, the mob had dispersed. The next morning it resumed its of fenses, attacking the colored people and setting fire to their houses. Again the volunteers who ran to the fire were driven away, while their hose was cut, and their engines were seized. The blacks rallied to the support of the firemen, and the morning hours were marked by a fierce battle. Again the military were called out. When the troops arrived guards were stationed plentifully in the dis trict and cannon were placed in positions to command and sweep the streets. In all, four persons were killed and many wounded ; twenty-five severely enough to be taken to the hospitals. There was no amelioration in the conditions affecting the relations of the races until after the Civil War. Indeed the tension increased, though by one means or another life and property were made more secure against the depreda tions of mobs. The passage of the stringent Fugitive Slave Law, which was a feature of the Compromise of 1850, led to something akin to panic in the negro quarters. Those who could not prove beyond all peradventure that they were free, took flight. United States officers, armed with full authority, were now actively engaged in the work of returning runaways to their southern masters. The Abolitionists abated nothing of their faith, and continued to be unremitting in their friendly offices to the negroes, both slave and free. The station keepers on the Underground Railroad were never before in so much peril, but they con tinued to forward their "passengers" over the line as their consciences required, in spite of the increased risk of discovery and punishment. Entire Quaker com munities connived at the defeat of the purposes of the law. Conviction that sla very was disgraced by great brutalities, increased. The dispute separated men from their friends. As some became more uncompromising, so many grew more truculent toward the slave power. A firm of Philadelphia publishers declined the manuscript of Uncle Tom's Cabin, lest they injure their business in the south. Indeed, no house of position and reputation would agree to print the book. In 1850 Godey struck "Grace Greenwood" from the list of his contributors because her name was identified with an anti-slavery society, and Graham about the same time made a scathing attack upon Uncle Tom's Cabin under the title of "Black Letters, or Uncle Tom Foolery in Literature," meant to entrench him self in the confidence of his southern subscribers. But aside from its race troubles, Philadelphia had others. Its social history throughout the period, while it was in many ways so honorable, was marred by much which brought it deep disgrace. Whether the spirit was born with Andrew Jackson and his lawless example in the president's office, as many seemed to be lieve, or whether it was due to other causes, the lords of misrule were in almost complete control everywhere. The population had very much increased, and many immigrants drawn from the least desirable classes in Europe had been com ing into the city and the surrounding districts. The improvement of the means of governing them had not kept pace with the need. The new view of democracy which Jackson had introduced encouraged men to be insolent in the face of every vol n— 19 290 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA suggestion of restraint. The democracy of Franklin, and Paine, and George Bryan had made way for that of Jefferson and the Virginians, represented in Philadelphia by the Baches and Duanes. Their democracy, however, as has been noted before, was bound in some way by a traditional respect for intelligent leaders. It presupposed government by the more fit, and not by a mob. Its re liance was, in some measure at least, in talent and ability, not in mere physical strength, to which standards public life at this time made a dangerous approach. The elections were nearly always tumultuous. It was a fortunate year when election night did not yield mobs and fires. The most serious of these alterca tions occurred in October, 1834, the year in which Jackson's second term began. He visited the city in June when, as we have noted, he was shown scant courtesy in the view of his partisans. In August the great race riot, which began at the flying-horse exhibition and lasted for three days, had greatly excited the people. Party feeling ran high. On the third of October a young man named William Perry, who was standing on the street, near the polling-place in Locust Ward where officers for the ensuing election at the State House were being chosen, was stabbed. The assailant escaped, and was never identified. Perry, who was a Democrat, was given a funeral of a political character (4,000 Jackson men ap peared in the procession) and the Democratic club of the ward placed a monu ment upon his grave. The general state election followed, on the 14th, and the evening was marked by serious disturbances around the Commissioners' Hall at Ninth and Christian streets in Moyamensing, near which the Whigs and the Democrats had established their headquarters. The Jackson men had erected a hickory pole, while the Whigs had a "liberty-pole" of some other wood, ac cording to the general custom of the time, to proclaim their sentiments. The Whigs cut down the hickory pole, and the Democrats in retaliation determined to destroy the pole of their rivals who, however, had taken the precaution to hoop the wood around the base with iron, up to a considerable height. It could not, therefore, be felled very easily, and a fire was built around it. The Whigs dis charged buckshot into the crowd from the windows of their headquarters, wound ing fifteen or twenty persons. Such action led to an attack upon the house. Meantime, the fire around the pole, or some other, spread until a row of dwelling houses were in flames. An alarm followed and with the volunteer companies, always the patrons of riot, upon the scene, fighting began in real earnest. Much fire entinguishing apparatus was destroyed, and many firemen were beaten. Nothing at all could be done to check the flames in the disorder which prevailed, and the destruction of property — mainly that of James Robb — on this night was the immediate cause of the enactment of the law, making the county pecuniarily liable for damages inflicted by mobs. The election in October, 1838, the year of the attack on Pennsylvania Hall, led to that series of incidents which passed into state history under the name of the "Buckshot War." Though entirely bloodless, it had promise at times of de veloping its battles. The strife of opinion was bitter enough, in all reason, to have produced a war. The dispute arose over the election of the Whig or the Democratic assembly ticket. With the Northern Liberties, the Whigs had car ried the county. Without the Northern Liberties, where it was said that the vote was fraudulent, the Democrats had triumphed and were entitled to dispatch their HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 291 representatives to Harrisburg. Both sets of claimants presented themselves be fore the legislature and sought to take their seats. In the senate, the Whig candi dates were recognized, but in the house rival bodies were organized : one, Whig, including the Philadelphia Whig delegation; the other, Democratic, which wel comed the contesting delegation from Philadelphia. Fearing an outbreak, Gov ernor Ritner called out a division of the state militia. On the morning of Decem ber 8, about twelve hundred of the volunteer soldiery left Broad street in cars of the Columbia Railroad, on the way to the state capital. There they were put on duty guarding the state property and stores. Large numbers of Philadelphians accompanied or followed the troops to Harrisburg, and threatened to foment disorder. The two houses kept up their separate organizations for some time, amid noise and turbulence on the floor and in the galleries; but at length the Democrats gained their point, and the troops and the citizens came home without having seen very much of that "war" which they went out rather too eagerly to attend. All the negro, fire company and election rioting of the period pales into insig nificance, however, beside the Weavers' and the Native American riots. The others, of which we have already spoken, were chiefly instigated and conducted by the ruffianly elements settled in the southern part of the city and its adjoining districts. The Weavers' riots began in Kensington. The first of this series of mob outrages occurred as early as in 1828. The Kensington region was being rapidly occupied by manufacturers, engaged particularly in the textile industries, which were afforded great encouragement by some of Henry Clay's tariff laws. The employers themselves were in many cases practical weavers, lately come from England or Ireland, and they hired large numbers of men who were brought into the country because of practical knowledge of this handicraft gained upon the other side of the ocean. Mills were not at first built to any large extent, but the weavers worked at their own homes upon hand looms. The families which came here in response to this industrial need were mostly Irish Catholics, and their religion as well as their nationality made them objects of hatred to many of their neighbors. Their situation seemed to be in a few particulars better than that of the negroes, in a community which was ill regulated to the last degree. One night, in August, 1828, a watchman of the Northern Liberties named Heimer entered a tavern on Third street above Poplar. The landlord was an Irishman. The visitor, whose name might indicate a German strain in his ances try, is alleged to have made some remarks while in the inn concerning the "bloody Irish transports." This was taken, by the Irish within hearing, to be offensive language, and they set upon and beat him so severely that he died. For several days subsequently, rioting between the Irish and the anti-Irish pro ceeded in the neighborhood. Guns were fired, stones thrown and several persons were wounded before a sheriff's posse could restore order. The weavers, as a class, disclaimed responsibility for the murder of Heimer, but it was the be ginning of a season of angry feeling which had much more serious consequences. In an outbreak in January, 1843, tne militia was called into service. The dis turbance began with a strike for higher wages. Those who continued at their work were assaulted by those who had left it. Houses were entered, warps cut and looms destroyed. The sheriff and his posse, upon their arrival, found that 292 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the men had taken refuge in a market house, generally known as the Nanny Goat Market, in American street north of Master. The sheriff himself was injured in the conflict and his force beaten off. Such a result strengthened the resolution of the weavers, and the next day the streets of Kensington were in complete possession of the men, nearly all of whom were armed with clubs. A number of persons were maltreated, and it was not until four companies of soldiers were sent up to quell the riot, and eight more companies were assembled at their armories ready to depart for the scene, that quiet was restored in the neigh borhood. For several years there had been rumblings of a movement which at length made its way prominently into politics. It is very easy to develop an animosity for the "foreigner." While the United States would seem to be ground on which such prejudices could only with singular inconsistency be made to thrive, this consideration in no way prevented their growth. One or two generations in America had made the people forget that they themselves were all aliens. They forgot that the nation was established on the principle that it should be a haven for the oppressed of Europe; or else, in an unwarrantable way, they strained the theory until it was made to justify their own particular purposes.. It is stated that the first native American meeting in Philadelphia County was held at Germantown in 1837.1 The repeal of the naturalization laws was demanded. A particular desire was expressed to bar immigrants, — people arrived in the country more lately than those who met and passed resolutions, — from vot ing and holding office. The feeling of prejudice was fomented by religious fanaticism which, when it is once aroused, leads to extraordinary exhibitions of bigotry. The public schools, begun as aids merely to the indigent, with children who were looked askance at because their parents were unable to pay for having them educated, had become very much more inclusive. Their influence was greatly extended. Classes of the people far above want contributed pupils, and a pother was soon created over the religious instruction which they should receive. It was held that the Bible might be read without meeting objection from any side. The Catholics said that they did not oppose a reading of the Scriptures in the schools, but they did undoubtedly resent some interpretations of the transla tors, and differences arose with the teachers and the management generally as to what they, as tax-payers, might fairly receive in common with other tax-pay ers from the system of public education. Their position was misrepresented and exaggerated by the other side, and came to play a large part in the move ment which led to the formation of what was called the Native American party. In 1843 and 1844 a number of ward associations were organized and the prin ciples of the party assumed a definite form. Their program very generally called for a residence of twenty-one years as a condition for the exercise of the franchise by foreigners; and demanded that "native Americans only should be appointed to office to legislate, administer or execute the laws of the country." Furthermore, it was generally maintained "that the Bible, without note or com ment, is not sectarian ; that it is the fountain-head of morality and all good gov ernment, and should be used in our public schools as a reading book." 1 Scharf & Westcott, Vol. I, p. 663. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 293 The series of riots which are specifically known as the "Native American Riots" began on May 3, 1844. On that day a meeting was held to form a Native American association in one of the wards of Kensington — a neighborhood, as we have seen, very largely inhabited by Irish and other foreign peoples. The meeting place was a vacant lot at the corner of Second and Master streets. A number of men armed with clubs suddenly fell upon those who were assembled and drove them away. The Native Americans rallied, and passed resolutions de nouncing the outrage. They agreed to meet on the following Monday after noon, May 6, at the same place. At that time they were again disturbed and sought shelter in the Nanny Goat Market which the weavers had used as a fort ress in the previous year. The house of an Irish fire company stood nearby, and from that vantage-point shots were fired into the market. The Native Americans inside mostly ran, though a few stood their ground, replying to the irregular volley with stones and brickbats. The number of combatants soon increased, and in a little while something like a pitched battle was in progress. The field of disturbance was shifted and enlarged. In one of the skirmishes a boy, George Shiffler, was mortally wounded. He at the time, it is said, was bearing an Ameri can flag, and he was made into a great popular hero. He was buried with honors. A hose company was named for him, and he long figured prominently in public speech. Eleven others were wounded during the day; and in the evening, in the neighborhood of a Catholic school at the corner of Second and Thompson streets, two men were killed. The excitement created by all this irregular rioting led to a call for a meeting in the State House yard on the following afternoon at half past three o'clock. On the hand-bills, every man was asked to "come pre pared to defend himself." An enormous crowd assembled to be harangued by several speakers. It was — "Resolved, That the proceedings of a portion of the Irish inhabitants of the district of Kensington on Monday afternoon is the surest evidence that can be given that our views on the naturalization laws are correct, and that foreigners in the short space of five years are incapable of entering into the spirit of our institutions. "Resolved, That we consider the Bible in the public schools as necessary for a faithful course of instruction therein, and we are determined to maintain it there in spite of the efforts of naturalized and unnaturalized foreigners to eject it therefrom. "Resolved, That this meeting believes that the recently successful efforts of the friends of the Bible in Kensington were the inciting cause which resulted in the murderous scene of the 6th instant." Some daring persons suggested that the company proceed at once to Second and Master streets. The people swarmed into Chestnut street where a proces sion was formed for the march to Kensington. The crowd grew as it advanced. The American flag was to be hoisted on the spot where Shiffler had fallen. Hav ing arrived there the persons who undertook to perform this duty were fired upon from the Irish hose house. This led to an attack upon the building whence the shots came. ' It was broken open and burned. The flames spread to adjoin ing buildings; again several persons were killed and wounded. One Irishman barely escaped being hanged to a lamp-post. Before the fire was checked it had 294 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA destroyed about thirty buildings, including the Nanny Goat Market. The militia which had been called out, exhibited signs of an indisposition to respond to the summons, but some companies came upon the ground while the fire was burning and gave their protection to the hosemen. Very unwisely, after this incident, most of the soldiers were withdrawn and the next day, May 8, several more homes were pillaged and burned. The Irish were now quite generally packing up their goods and fleeing for safety, as the negroes in the lower part of the city had more than once fled from the mobs. There were at this time in the city and its contiguous districts as many as eleven Catholic churches. Old St. Joseph's and St. Mary's, which had faced the persecutions of the Colonial days, had been joined by Holy Trinity at Sixth and Spruce streets; St. Augustine's, in Fourth street below Vine; St. John's in Thir teenth below Market; St. Francis Xavier, near Fairmount; St. Patrick's, at Spruce and Schuylkill Third ; St. Philip de Neri in Queen above Second, in South wark; St. Peter's, at Fifth and Franklin, in Kensington; St. Paul's, in Chris tian below Tenth, in Moyamensing; and St. Michael's in Kensington. This growth in the number of churches sufficiently well attested to the growth of the Catholic element in the population. St. Michael's, in Kensington, was a large brick church at the corner of Sec ond and Jefferson streets, in the neighborhood of the disturbance. The mob set it on fire, and the structure was completely destroyed, together with several ad joining buildings. Fires broke out in other neighborhoods, all the work of incen diaries, and as night approached there was fear of worse outrages. However, at about five o'clock, the First Brigade, under Brigadier-General George Cad walader (who was accompanied by Major-General Robert Patterson and the sheriff, Morton McMichael) appeared upon the ground. The presence of the military served to promote a better feeling, but their coming had left other por tions of the city without protection, and caused the mob to gather in dangerous force elsewhere. The attention of the rioters was particularly directed to St. Augustine's Catholic church, on Fourth street below Vine. The mayor, John M. Scott, with a special posse guarded the building. The First City Troop was stationed nearby, but some ruffian, under cover of the crowd, stole into the church, and in a moment it was on fire. The mob shouted with joy ; the firemen were unable to do aught but struggle to save the adjoining property. Even in this they were not conspicuously successful, and several structures went down with the church. Among these was the Catholic school, where the Sisters of Mercy had worked so nobly to relieve the sufferings of the cholera victims in 1832. The large and valuable library of the Hermits of St. Augustine was de stroyed, barring a few books which were thrown out into the street to be trodden under foot by the crowd, but which were gathered up, and returned at length in a damaged condition to the fathers. When the news of this outrage reached Kensington, many of the troops were ordered back to town, and were stationed around the other Catholic churches to protect them from harm. The city was now thoroughly alarmed. On the morning of May 9, the mayor called a citizens' meeting for the State House yard. John Meredith Read pre sided ; Frederick Fraley was the secretary. Speeches were made by such repre sentative men as Horace Binney and John K. Kane. Lovers of peace were rec- FIREMEN'S PARADE IN FRONT OF BANK OF THE UNITED STATES, 1852 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 295 ommended to form themselves into companies for patrol and guard duty. Only one brigade of the militia had been in service. General Patterson now called out the entire division, and established his headquarters at the Girard Bank. Gov ernor Porter arrived in the city on this day, the 9th, to give personal supervision to the work of quelling the disorder. By such measures, quiet was re-established and no fresh outbreaks occurred for two months. Meanwhile, however, the Native Americans were increasing their strength by the formation of associations in practically every ward and township in the county; a mark of approval, it would seem, of the riotous proceedings of May. They soon counted their members by the thousand, and "America for the Ameri cans" was a watchword heard on every side. So numerous did they become that a Native American procession was arranged for the Fourth of July, 1844. The associations carried beautiful banners. Several floats, showing the usual ships manned by seamen, temples of liberty and other devices, were drawn through the streets. Visiting representatives came from other states. Many bands of music accompanied the men, who probably numbered 4,000 or 5,000; and the proces sion is thought to have been the finest political demonstration which had been seen up to that time in Philadelphia. It marched to a pretty little glen on the banks of the Schuylkill, which has long since disappeared. It was beyond "Sedge ley," above Fairmount, where many brewery buildings now stand. Here there were exercises appropriate to the American natal day. The Fourth passed without unhappy incident, but there was some Catholic denunciation of the "Church Burners," as the Native Americans had rather fairly come to be called, and on the evening of the 5th of July a mob gathered around the church of St. Philip de Neri, on Queen street above Second, in Southwark. Sheriff McMichael was appealed to, and he in turn called upon General Patterson. It was stated in defense of the mob that Catholics had been seen carrying loaded muskets into the church. A party was delegated to enter and institute a search, which resulted in the bringing forth of a large number of guns, pistols, axes, bludgeons, knives and pikes, and some powder. Such a discovery was most disquieting. It appeared, upon subsequent investigation, that a brother of the priest in charge had, upon his own responsibility, converted the edifice into a kind of arsenal for its defense ; and, on the evening of the Fourth of July, had had as many as a hunded and fifty men on guard inside. The Native Americans refused to be pacified, and, although many militiamen were on the ground under command of General George Cadwalader, and Sheriff McMichael had sworn in a large posse of civilians, trouble seemed imminent on the evening of Saturday, July 6th. Cannon were planted in the streets and General Cadwalader, after bearing the taunts of the crowd as long as he could, ordered his men to fire. With this, Charles Naylor, a lawyer of the city who had earlier been a member of Congress, stepped out in front of the gun which was pointed at the mob, and stayed the hand of the soldiers. Cadwalader ordered Naylor's arrest, and sent him off a prisoner to the Catholic church. This served to increase the popular excitement; but about midnight the people seemed to be dispersing, and some of the military companies were withdrawn. A mistake was made in leaving a distinctly Irish company, the Montgomery Hibernia Greens, upon the ground. They added to the irritation subsequently. 296 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA At daybreak on Sunday, July 7th, the mob reassembled around the church and demanded the release of Naylor, the people's friend, who was held a pris oner there — it was with too much truth alleged — by Irish soldiers. The crowd got hold of some old cannon, and began to bombard the walls with slugs, nails and paving stones. This assault was without effect, and timbers were brought up to crush in the doors. The troops inside did not fire ; and, rather than enact a scene of bloodshed, Naylor was given up to the mob, which he addressed, en treating it to keep the peace. It now demanded that the Irish soldiers should leave the church ; and they did so, though in the act they were pelted with stones and brickbats, and some were badly beaten. They broke ranks, and ran into the city in disorder. All these events were reported and magnified throughout the day. During Sunday afternoon, men came into Southwark from all directions to see for themselves and pressed around the church. With a battering ram a party of ruffians made a breach in a side-yard wall and broke open the doors and windows, whereupon the crowd streamed into the building. Thousands sated their curiosity in this way during the afternoon, but without serious harm to the property. In fear of further outrage, the State House bell was rung for the assembling of the militia. The companies gathered, formed, and left Inde pendence Square, with their bands playing, at about half past six o'clock. Their movements increased the crowd. They proceeded down Fifth street and made their way through the dense mass of people to the church. It was a long summer day, and the evening hours were spent in efforts to clear the streets. Bayonets were flourished, and the popular animosity against the soldiers was increased. Bricks and stones were soon hurled at them. One fellow seized Captain Joseph Hill, of the City Guards, and attempted to wrest his sword from his hands, whereupon he commanded his men to fire. Four or five were killed, and a number severely wounded by this discharge. Some women had been struck by the shots, and the crowd accounted the order a very out rageous proceeding. The dead and injured were taken into the Commissioners' Hall, the town hall of Southwark nearby. Here there were some guns, which were at once turned upon the soldiers. Soon a pitched battle was in progress. The militiamen, in their own defense, turned out the lights, so that they could not be distinctly seen. Another body of rioters took their stand in the Wharton Market, at Second and Wharton streets; they had several cannon, which they loaded with scrap iron. Before ten o'clock, a general alarm having been given, additional military companies arrived on the ground. At eleven came some cavalrymen who proved to be of the greatest use. During the night they captured several guns in spite of ropes stretched across the streets to throw their horses, and the fight was at an end. In all, two soldiers were killed, both sub-officers of the Germantown Blues, and twelve citizens. One of the latter, a German, who looked out of a garret window, had his head entirely taken off by a cannon ball. Scores were injured, many of them seriously. Governor Porter reached the city on the afternoon of Monday, stirred by the receipt of the news, and called out troops from adjoining counties in the state. They quickly repaired to Philadelphia, and at one time as many as five thousand soldiers were under arms. The streets were patrolled for several days, but there were no fur ther outbreaks. The Native American riots had come to an end. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 297 The city having been brought to feel the great weakness of its position, councils on July nth appropriated $10,000 for the enlistment of a battalion of artillery, a regiment of infantry and a troop of horse. Subsequently further sums of money were voted to the service. Late in September the complement was made up. It consisted of 1,350 men. Steps were also taken to strengthen the police system and to remedy the evils of the separate incorporated districts without going to the length of consolidation, which was to be delayed until 1854- On April 12, 1845, the legislature passed an act requiring the city of Phila delphia and the districts of Spring Garden, Northern Liberties, Kensington, Penn, Southwark, and the township of Moyamensing to establish and maintain police forces consisting of not less than one able-bodied man "for every one hundred and fifty taxable inhabitants." The police force of each district was given its own superintendent, a great advance over the old "watch" which, with not many im provements, had continued to be the system of maintaining order since colonial days. The sheriff of the county, in case of riot within the jurisdiction of one cor poration, could summon to his assistance the police forces of any or all of the other corporations. The sheriff, or his deputies, or the police superintendents, going up to a group of persons and ordering them to disperse, could immediately arrest them if they failed to do so. The sheriff was specifically authorized at any time, in case of need, to call upon the commanding militia officers for aid "to restore the public peace." The hand of the law was still further strengthened by act of assembly of May 3, 1850, when the city and the various districts were formed into one police juris diction, and an extra force to cover the entire territory was put under the charge of a marshal of police to be elected by the people for a term of three years. The first occupant of the office was John S. Keyser. The law provided that "the num ber of said policemen shall at no time exceed one for every 150 taxable inhab itants as enumerated at the last septemnial assessment, nor less than one for every 600 taxable inhabitants of said city or districts." Four hundred was chosen as the unit of representation. This arrangement gave the city 55 policemen, Spring Garden 26, Kensington 24, the Northern Liberties 21, Southwark 18, Moyamen sing 12, Penn 4 and Richmond 4. Three were added for West Philadelphia in the next year upon the incorporation of that district. The city was entitled to four lieutenants and each outlying district one. The force then numbered 180 — one marshal, twelve lieutenants and 167 men. The creation of this body justified itself at once. The marshal's police made more than 12,000 arrests in less than a year, from November 21, 1850, the date of their organization, to November 1, 1851. By certain signals given by bells, the entire body of men could be concentrated "in any one part of the city or dis tricts in the short space of twenty minutes." 1 However, since they were on duty only during the day, and much of the disorder which it was intended that they should quell was indigenous to the night, it was justly complained that their ser vices were not so valuable to the community as they might well have been. 1 Phila. As It Is in 1852, p. 373. 298 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Throughout this time the watchmen and policemen were without uniforms. In the city they had been asked as early as in 1848, to wear some distinctive dress while on duty, but this order was not obeyed. After the establishment of the marshal's or consolidated police in 1850 steps were taken to make the men rec ognizable, but they strongly opposed the innovation. The commissioners of police in New York had determined to uniform the agents of law and order in that city beginning November 15, 1853, but the men there had raised a fund of $500 to test their rights in the case. The Public Ledger in commenting upon the occur rence said: "The commissioners ought to compel them to resign if they do not put it [the uniform] on. There is no good reason why the police force in every large city should not wear a uniform, one so clearly distinctive and conspicuous that every body shall know a police officer as soon as he sees him. It would add much to the confidence of the citizens, be a constant check upon rowdyism and crime, and add generally to the efficiency of the police." 1 On the very day that the citizens of Philadelphia were reading these lines in their favorite newspaper, the police board, by a vote of eight to two, adopted a similar rule for the county police in Philadelphia. The marshal now was John K. Murphy, who had earlier been a tipstaff in the court of quarter sessions. He said that in a crowd he could not distinguish his own men and he warmly urged the board to its course.2 The uniform in Philadelphia was similar to that which had been chosen in New York. A marshal's policeman should wear a frock coat of navy blue doth which should be single-breasted with a standing collar, exhibiting nine bright gilded metal buttons on the breast, two on the hips and two on the bottom of the skirts. The pantaloons should be of dark gray cloth or cassimere ; the cap of blue cloth of such shape as the marshal may designate with the name of the police division to which the wearer is attached placed on it in metallic let ters. Thus the men would be marked "Moyamensing," "Spring Garden" or "Richmond," according as they were contributed to the force by one or another district in the county. The long coats were to be worn throughout the year, ex cept in June, July and August, when they were to be replaced by garments of a lighter material. The marshal could be distinguished by a double-breasted coat, and the lieutenants by stars in addition to the letters upon their caps. The measure was to take effect on January 1, 1854. But that time came and nothing was done toward the enforcement of the rule. The lieutenants led the revolt against the regulation, and the men then could not be expected to favor it. They declared that they ought not to be obliged to pay for their suits; the county had paid for their stars which up to this time had been the only badges of their office. The uniform was declared to be an effort "to imitate the Eng lish." It was "a glaring violation of our republican institutions." Eight out of eleven of the men in Moyamensing said that they would leave the service rather than appear in the new dress. It was alleged with truth that the police were afraid, to wear the uniform because of the ill favor in which they were held by the firemen. Their clothing would subject them to ridicule, if not to violence. 1 Public Ledger, Nov. 11, 1853. 2 Ibid., Nov. 12, 1853. CHESTNUT STREET THEATRE AND SHAKESPEARE BUILDING. 1830 NIGHT WATCHMAN, 1830 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 299 The lieutenants appealed to Horace Binney for an opinion as to whether they could be compelled to obey the rule of the board. Some slight changes were made in the prescribed form of the suits but the marshal was firm and on January 22, 1854, several of the men appeared in the streets in their regalia.1 The city watchmen were still without distinguishing dress. This reform with many more awaited the years which followed consolidation. r Public Ledger, Jan. 14, 17, 19, 23, 1854. CHAPTER XXIX. CONSOLIDATION. The influence exerted by the fire companies upon the sodal and political life of the period in Philadelphia is not easily exaggerated. From little groups of staid Quaker householders, doctors, lawyers and even clergymen, who combined in this way in volunteer societies for the protection of their own property, the companies had come to be — to a very large degree — bands of ruffians who found in organization of this kind license for the gravest misbehavior. They were, in short, what London has come to call "Hooligans," and Paris "Apaches." They kindled fires, and sometimes put them out. They fought with other firemen for the "honor" of bringing their engine first to the scene of a fire and for the re wards, if there should be any, for extinguishing the flames. Riot and murder dis graced their movements. Pistols, knives, iron spanners and slung-shot were freely used. The volunteer "Jakey," coarse, swaggering, drunken, became a type of the town. The companies ran up and down the streets, especially at night, recklessly, and often for no reason except their own amusement. Alarms were rung for no cause. The system of signals was founded on that devised by Frank lin Peale. It was as follows: North : one — one — one. South : two — two — two. East : three — three — three. West : four — four — four. Northeast: one, three — one, three. Northwest: one, four — one, four. Southeast : two, three — two, three. Southwest: two, four — two, four. The sound of the bell sent a crowd dashing in the direction in which the fire was said to be ; though at some periods the alarm was so often false that no ac count was taken of it. Without looking out of their doors the people would say to themselves that it was only another frolic of the firemen. For many years the bell-ringer in the State House tower was a town figure, known as "Tommy" Downing. He lived up there, and as the city did not provide his home with a chimney, he made a hole for a stove-pipe which oddly protruded 300 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 301 from the steeple of the venerable building. Fires were "literally of nightly occur rence." 1 Howitt, who was here in 1820, wrote : "Before I leave Philadelphia, let me add that I have lost a great deal of sleep in it by the almost nightly alarms from fire. This arises from the old houses being built of timber; and such is the terrible uproar made by the firemen and boys dragging their patent hose or fire engine along the pavement, and their unceasing yell of 'Fire !' that no sleep can resist it but the sleep of death." Jay Cooke, in 1838, found it impossible to get any peace in the evenings in Philadelphia. "Crowds of firemen and engines, with bells ringing and loud clamor" made rest out of the question until a late hour. George Combe in 1839 speaks of a day in April in which the fire companies were out in the morning at 7 o'clock, again at 2 p. m., and again at 10 p. m. The engines were "rushing and roaring" past his windows. Worse was the "hideous noise" which the leader of the engine made "through a brass or tin trumpet," as he advanced. This instrument was intended "to sound an alarm and to give no tice to clear the streets for the passage of the procession." 2 The competition among the companies was so great, Mr. Combe said, that ambitious young men slept "as if a part of the brain was left awake to watch for the word 'fire,' or the sound of the State House alarm bell." They carried their clothes in bundles and dressed as they went along the streets.3 "We were four days here," said Lyell, the English geologist, "and every night there was an alarm of fire, usually a false one ; but the noise of the firemen was tremendous. At the head of the procession came a runner blowing a horn with a deep unearthly sound ; next a long team of men ( for no horses are employed) drawing a strong rope to which the ponderous engine was attached with a large bell at the top, ringing all the way ; next followed a mob, some with torches, others shouting loudly ; and before they were half out of hearing another engine follows, with a like escort; the whole affair resembling a scene in Der Freischutz or Robert le Diable, rather than an act in real life." 4 Charles Godfrey Leland tells of this time in his Memoirs. He says : "I re member that, even in Walnut street below Thirteenth, before my father's house (this being then by far the most respectable portion of Philadelphia) it happened several nights in succession that rival fire companies, running side by side, fought as they ran with torches and knives, while firing pistols. There was a young lady named Mary Bicking, who lived near us. I asked her one day if she had ever seen a man shot; and when she answered 'No,' I replied, 'Why don't you look out of your window some night, and see one?' The southern part of the city was a favorite battle-ground, and I can remember hearing ladies who lived in Pine street describe how, on Sunday summer afternoons, they could always hear, 1 Leland's Memoirs, p. 217. 2 Notes, II, p. 10. 3 Ibid., I, p. 320. * Lyell, Travels in the Years 1841-42, I, p. 6. 302 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA singly or in volleys, the shots of the revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in Moyamensing." 1 Because of the relations which the companies bore to the public, even their worst doings were viewed with some leniency. At first sight the volunteer service appeared "to present a noble specimen of civic devotion and disinterested benev olence," but on closer scrutiny it turned out to be "a convenient apology" for many kinds of outlawry.2 The firemen levied blackmail upon the community by the sale of tickets to their balls and by appeals for money to repair their apparatus. "It was well un derstood," says Leland, "that those who refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected. The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most degrading and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity among youth; and finally such a prevalence of conflagration that no one who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence Hall without ter ror." 3 The firemen had a prominent place in all of the city's pageantry, and insti tuted many parades of their own. Their love of appearing in a public procession, with their brightly polished engines, their hose carriages garlanded with flowers, their horns filled with bouquets, and their "laddies" in tall painted hats drawing the ropes, was proverbial. Music increased their zest for the exercise. The ornamentation of the apparatus of the companies came to be "almost barbaric." 4 Paintings, gold and silver mountings, mirrors, mother-of-pearl, glittering stones, banners, ribbons, artificial flowers, were added to excess in the rivalry which existed among the various companies. They had made a very fine appearance in the Washington Centennial procession on February 22, 1832. They were so much pleased by their reception then that they ar ranged a parade of their own for the next year, on March 27, 1833. Some forty companies participated, and the day ended with a ball in Musical Fund Hall. On March 27 of the next year the firemen again paraded, but after this time the processions were arranged only at three-year intervals : in 1837, 1840, 1843, T&46, 1849 and 1852. The last of these parades was of unusual splendor; 5,089 fire men arid 600 musicians, many of them brought from other dries, were taken over a long route by two hundred marshals. It required two hours for the procession to pass a given point. Following 1852, by reason of the consolidation, there was none until 1857 i and then because of the war none until 1865. On March 27, 1849, there was a driving snow-storm, and the parade was much interfered with. The companies decided to repeat it in May, and thereafter it took place in that month. From six to eight thousand men usually appeared in the processions. Even at these times, when good will should have been supreme, serious disputes were not always averted. Some companies marched with colored musicians; others with white bands, which would not appear in a parade with negroes. These companies must therefore march by themselves, thus dividing the display. 1 Memoirs, p. 218. 2 Combe, I, p. 320. 3 Memoirs, p. 217. 1 Scharf & Westcott, Vol. I, p. 636. PHILADELPHIA FROM CAMDEN, 1850 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 303 In 1852 there were thirty-seven engine companies, thirty-seven hose companies, and two hook and ladder companies in Philadelphia and the districts; in all, sev enty-six companies. In 1858 there were forty-five engine companies, forty-two hose companies and five ladder companies; in all, ninety-two. There were four Franklin companies in different parts of the city ; four Washingtons ; three Colum- bias; and three Good Intents. On March 7, 1848, the legislature passed an act "for the better regulation of the fire department in the city and incorporated districts of the county of Phila delphia." New companies could be created only with the approval of the court of quarter sessions. The "stationary alarm bell" was abolished. Hereafter the dty and the districts should maintain and ring the bells. On account of their political influence, however, exception was made later for some of the companies by special laws. The disfigurement or destruction of fire apparatus was made a felony, punishable by fine or imprisonment. Minors were not to be elected to membership under penalty. If the members of a company fought on the streets, that company might be suspended from service for six months and the doors of its house closed. For a second offense the penalty was the disbandment of the organization. How useful the law was, may be judged by the fact that on a Sun day in June, 1849, the firemen in Moyamensing were fighting all day with bricks, stones and guns in the public streets. The district from Eighth to Eleventh and from Christian to Fitzwater streets was completely terrorized. A favorite de vice for years was for a band of young desperadoes in one company to kindle a fire near their engine house and raise an alarm. Then they would lie in am bush on their own ground until the men of another company, with whom they wished to precipitate a fight, came running by. In an instant, shots were fired, knives were flashed, and the object was attained — a free fight. If possible, the engine or hose carriage of the enemy was seized and broken up, or perhaps run into the river. In the summer of 1848, in a fight between two hose companies down town, one man was killed, and ten were wounded. Such altercations were so usual that they were barely remarked by any one. The court made several efforts to discipline fire companies under the anti-riot law. The Northern Liberties Hose Company was convicted of fighting, and the sheriff, early in 1849, was ordered to close the doors of their house. They did not heed him, continuing to run to fires as before. He thereupon put a padlock on the door. This was broken. He then summoned a posse, purchased lumber and spikes, hired carpenters, who securely barricaded the doors inside and out, and left a watch at the house.1 The court on June 29, 1850, disbanded two companies, the Franklin and the Moyamensing. Both had been convicted of rioting, and as it was their second offense within a year, they were dismissed from the service.2 Worse than all this, though allied to it and directed by the same lawless char acters, were the organizations formed with the open purpose of intimidation, rob bery and murder. These gangs of ruffians did not conceal their objects under cover of protecting the community from fires or Abolitionists, of anti-Cath- 1 National Intelligencer, January 23, 1850. 2 Ibid., July 3, 1850. 304 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA olic sentiments, or of their love for Jackson or Clay. Brutes, who resided for the most part in Moyamensing, associated themselves as "Killers No. I," "Buf fers No. i," "Rats No. i," "Bouncers," "Reed Birds," "Stingers," "Smashers," "Schuylkill Rangers," "Blood Tubs," etc. They painted their hideous names on walls and fences and roamed about with impunity. In a riot the cry "Go it Stingers" or "At them Killers" increased the terror of the crowds. The police feared these desperadoes, as did all classes of the inhabitants whose affairs in a large district they attempted to regulate. If the organizations had confined them selves to the work of exterminating one another, they might have performed some appropriate and useful service, but their depredations had a wider range. Under the date of August 2, 1847, a writer in the Philadelphia Almanac, wrote: "Scarcely a night now passes without the perpetration of some outrage by a gang of Moyamensing desperadoes called 'Killers.' Brutal assaults, robbery, stabbing and murder help to make up the catalogue of their crimes." There was enough serious work for the firemen of the '30s, '40s and '50s in Philadelphia in extinguishing fires which were due to natural and unavoidable causes without their efforts to increase the number. We have spoken of the fires which were started by the Abolition and Native American mobs, when Penn sylvania Hall and the Catholic churches were burned, and similar incendiary out rages. Some of the other fires, because of their very destructive character, or the prominence of the structures which were destroyed, should be mentioned. On October 4, 1839, a great fire swept over the Delaware river front, at the foot of Chestnut street. The loss was stated to be about $350,000. Two men were killed, and several were injured by the falling walls. On January 23, 1841, two firemen were killed at a fire in Market street, near Third; another was killed on June 24 of the same year in Market street near Sixth. On June 11, 1845, the building of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, on Chestnut above Tenth street, was burned together with many of its pictures, statues and other collections. In September of the same year several forwarding houses near the Columbia Railroad depot, at Broad and Vine streets, were destroyed. On August 20, 1847, a dreadful fire occurred in a sugar re finery at Bread and Quarry streets (near Second and Race streets). Here sev eral were killed and injured by falling walls. The greatest of all the fires of the time, in point of the area swept by the flames and the number of lives lost, broke out on July 9, 1850, in a warehouse in Water street below Vine street. The pressed hay, which was the stock in trade of one of the firms doing business in the building, was ignited. Quantities of saltpetre and brimstone stored here exploded, throwing bricks, stones and blaz ing timbers in all directions. Pieces of brimstone were picked up afterward in Broad street. Fragments of metal which had been hurled into the air were found in Ridge avenue. Men on the wharves were blown into the river. The concussion was so violent that people were killed in the street and in adjoining houses. Dense volumes of flame and smoke terrified the city, and many packed up their effects and prepared for flight. Aid was sought by telegraph in neigh boring cities. Firemen from New York, Baltimore, Newark and other places came on during the night. The flames were checked early on the following morning, but not before 367 stores and dwelling houses were entirely consumed, HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 305 and many more had suffered partial injury. The burned area extended from the river front to Second street, and from Callowhill to Vine streets. It is defi nitely known that twenty-eight persons were killed, and fifty-eight injured in the fire; the real number was probably still greater. Several of the victims were fire men who laid down their lives in the performance of their duty. On March 18 of the next year, 185 1, the Assembly Building, at the south west corner of Tenth and Chestnut streets, was burned. Since 1839, its halls upstairs had been in almost constant use for lectures, concerts and balls. It was rebuilt after the fire, again opened in 1852, and remained in use until a very recent time. The firemen were barely able to save the adjoining property because of the water freezing in the plugs and in the hose, and by reason of the falling snow which was so heavy that the next day the roof of a Presbyterian church in Spring Garden fell in under the weight. On November 12, 1851, a cotton mill at Twenty-third and Hamilton streets was burned down. The employees were shut up in the building as in a trap. Many were hurt by jumping, and others who remained were burned to death. On the night of December 26, the city was devastated again. Kossuth was being treated to his subscription dinner at Musical Fund Hall. He had finished his very long speech, and the guests were returning home when the alarm of fire was sounded. The flames were seen to be issuing from a large building owned by Abraham Hart of the old publishing house of Carey and Hart, erected at the northeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets on the site of the residence of P. S. Duponceau. It was a cold stormy night. The thermometer stood at four degrees below zero. The water in the fire plugs was frozen, though they were surrounded by straw, as was the custom in those days in winter. The vol unteers who came up with their engines set fire to the straw, which in many cases burnt the wooden covers of the hydrants ; thus the pipes were thawed out, and the streams began to play upon the flames. The fire, however, shot across Sixth street to the northwest corner, where the Shakespeare Building stood. This historic landmark, used now by Blood's Despatch Company and by other tenants, was entirely destroyed. Next beyond it on the west was the Chestnut Street Theatre, which was saved by the thick dividing wall. Meanwhile the fire was running down Chestnut street opposite the State House, and sparks were flung over on the roof of the old Congress Hall, the county court house. Inde pendence Hall was in the greatest danger. A few days later, in the afternoon of December 30, fire was discovered in Barnum's Museum at the southeast corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets, and another landmark was destroyed. Here, it may be well to recall, stood the old mansion of William Wain. Oellers' Hotel had earlier occupied the middle of the block, then came the house in which that much esteemed citizen, George Clymer, so long had lived, and then at the corner Latrobe had built a handsome mansion for Mr. Wain. At length the house fell into the hands of William Swaim, who preceded David Jayne as the city's principal manufacturer of patent medi cines. South of the house, facing Seventh street, Mr. Swaim had erected an office and a laboratory and at the rear of the lot he had set up his baths. After his death the estate, in 1848 or thereabouts, tore down the Wain man sion, and caused to be erected on the site a handsome five-story brown vol. n— 20 306 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA stone building. There were stores below; and in the third and fourth stories, equipped originally for a theatre, Barnum — desiring a branch museum in Phila delphia—exhibited his curiosities. Lectures, songs, and sleight-of-hand exhibi tions were sometimes given on the stage. On the night of December 30, 1851, while the ruins of the Shakespeare and the Hart buildings, only a square away, were still smoking, Barnum's Museum somehow caught fire. The adjoining Clymer mansion was fortunately saved, and the flames were not allowed to spread, though the loss, as it was, proved great. On July 5, 1854, came the destruction of Burton's old National Theatre, at the southeast corner of Ninth and Chestnut streets, and the Chinese Museum standing behind it. Considerable adjoining property was burned or seriously damaged by this fire. The heroic service of the volunteers at such times as these in fighting the city's great fires, and the frequent death and injury of the men while in the line of duty, led the people to look upon their riots forgivingly. Each company had its adherents. There was pride of neighborhood, or family, or race in its per formances. The "lady friends" of the members of a company embroidered its banners and danced at its balls. In short, the volunteer fire company was a social club. It became supreme in many fields. It made itself coterminous with the city's pageantry, its society — within certain boundaries — and its politics. There were many proposals for the abolition of the volunteer system and the introduc tion of a paid fire department in its place. The grand jury in September, 1852, made a presentment against the volunteer system and argued that it would be far cheaper to pay the firemen for their services. As it was $21,000 a year were distributed among the companies by the corporation to say nothing of the private contributions of citizens, firms, and associations. To this might be added the cost of the police whose chief occupation, it was said with some exaggeration, consisted in quelling the firemen's riots.1 Several meetings were held in the interest of the reform. On March 4, 1853, in the Chinese Museum it was "re solved that the landed and building interests require a change from the volun tary to a paid department; because the value of property is materially lessened in all locations, which by their remoteness from the centres of population and police are favorable theatres for riotous and disorderly exhibitions, mainly pro duced and carried on by minors and other evil-disposed adherents, over whom the real firemen have no control." But the opposition of the companies was much too powerful to permit of the reform. Not until 1870 2 could this neces sary change in the system be brought about. The strength of the volunteers was due, of course, to the indisposition of the people to antagonize a body of men standing in such relation to the property in terests of the city and to their great political influence. A leader whose power was drawn from the fire companies was Thomas B. Florence, usually known as "Tom" Florence. He was the son of a Southwark boat builder. He early apprenticed himself to a hatter in Third street, but had no marked success in his business and he selected a "public career." He belonged to the Hope Hose Company and made himself a political force in Walnut ward. He was elected 1 National Intelligencer, Sept. 30, 1852. 2 December 29, 1870, Ordinances, p. 590. ' // ¦/////// //y /.i//////i/Y// /,l/n>l.; //T,r,f. /'Vttwt* fffiif. rM-'-fa'-fe-"/ //;//„„„ /!/„. u».s /'/;.. -;y //.(-/. m//,,tM \,fff„M/ /,/ /.1/lli/nA../' //.,;,, /t.f;;/ /7„;„„.>/;..¦ /¦,/u„/./i,ir,H Umtit/ /Mf./r f, At, 1/ 1 './.„6„m.i II ,//,.,,„/{,/./, U/./M f.,-tll< 1 >,!>•>././ //,, /„.,„,. ¦« /M,/. /,/h.f f.r.Jvr'J/.i'ti'i / ///.-.*»/ ,'lrf>>.> /i,«/„l. ¦:„.„ , /:„» TICKET FOR THE CONSOLIDATION BALL V/ k. ;>. fii'jtu. X'ElbriLK. > . J- LNUKRa'OLL. W.VL MKKUDlTli. ^ r l.EVKTT IIAIIHIS. JNO M. n 1MU. H\M. ,M.C.\.M,u', TKQ, MitottC WTI.ua i: INVITATION TO THE DANCING ASSEMBLY HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 307 a colonel of a regiment of militia. He drank freely, much more than seemed to be to his personal advantage, appeared with the firemen with many badges, had some connection with Democratic journalism, and was chosen to Congress.1 More typical was the career of "Bill" McMulkn. He was born about fifteen years later than Florence, in 1824. His father was a grocer at Seventh and Bain- bridge streets. The son was apprenticed to a printer and then to a carpenter. Not liking these pursuits he worked for a time in his father's store and then entered the navy. At the outbreak of the Mexican War he enlisted in the Phila delphia regiment and upon his return made himself a power in the Moyamensing Hose Company, taking a personal hand in the riots of one of the most unruly of the volunteer organizations. As a result of one of his brawls he carried a bullet in his body until his death. In 1854 he opened a saloon in Moyamensing and soon became an alderman, an office which he held for twenty years, and which caused him in later life to be known very generally as "the squire." 2 These men were local "bosses," and they and their like were the forerun ners of a race of men who soon entirely dominated the politics of the city. Other leaders of this kind were "Bill" Leeds and, more powerful and more able, "Jim" McManes, both of whom were to gain their principal successes at a later day as officers of the "Gas Trust." In their youth Samuel J. Randall, Richard Vaux, Lewis C. Cassidy, William B. Mann and politicians who were held in some esteem cooperated with and attained their ends very largely through the fire companies, and when the volunteer system fell they would be under the neces sity of finding new support for their claims upon public office. A very great improvement in the method of extinguishing fires followed the introduction of the steam fire engine. The clumsy little hand engines were soon displaced, when the value of the new invention came to be understood. In Feb ruary, 1855, the "Miles Greenwood," an engine which had been built in Cincin nati, and was on its way to Boston, gave an exhibition at Dock street wharf. It was said in behalf of this machine that it could throw a stream of water 130 feet into the air, and 240 feet horizontally, but it failed to justify all of these claims. In May, another Cincinnati engine appeared in Philadelphia, the "Young America." The manufacturer wished to sell it to the city, and the ma chine was given a number of tests. Councils refused to buy it for the price which the maker asked, $9,500, and a number of citizens thereupon subscribed the money, and it was presented to the city. But their charity was misplaced. The engine weighed 20,000 pounds. It could be drawn to fires only with the greatest difficulty and was constantly breaking down. It is stated that for the three years during which it was attempted to keep the engine in the service, the cost to the city for maintenance and repairs was $20,000, more than twice the amount of the original price of the gift. The volunteer companies opposed the change from hand to steam engines. They feared that the reform would, sooner or later, call for a reduced number of firemen— a misfortune indeed from their point of view. They contemptu ously alluded to the "Young America" as the "Big Squirt." The Philadelphia 1 Souder's Chestnut Street, ch. 14. 2 He died March 31, 1901, at the age of 77. 308 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Hose Company was the first to add a steam engine to its fire extinguishing equipment. In January, 1857, a New York manufacturer sent this organization a machine on trial. It was called the "Fire Fly." The company determined to have an engine which was made in Philadelphia, and they employed Reaney, Neafie and Company, of Kensington, to build it for $3,500. It was ready for use in January, 1858. The Hope followed in July, 1858, and the old Hibernia in November, 1858. The Hibernia at once took its new engine to New York and Boston where the members of the company, accompanied by a band of music, were the recipients of many honors.1 In the next year or two, the firemen generally purchased steam engines, and soon the old hand engine was seen no more except as a curiosity. In i860, the Philadelphia fire companies had 27 steam engines, 46 hand engines, 114 hose carriages, 76,338 feet of hose, and 1,595 feet of ladders. The companies had 11,721 members, a total which included the honorary members. The active members numbered about 3,000, belonging to about 90 different companies.2 The evils connected with the government— or, in many instances, the non government of the city — were at length too great to be borne any longer. The population of the old city between the two rivers from South to Vine streets, and of the Northern Liberties, Southwark, Moyamensing, Passyunk and Penn Township, and their later subdivisions, all integral parts of the city so far as eye could see, had grown from 96,660 in 1810 to 360,305 in 1850. The figures for the city and county for three successive decades were as follows : City and suburbs. County. 1830 167,811 188,961 1840 220,523 258,037 1850 360,305 408,762 s In 1820 the principal governmental jurisdictions in the county, and their re spective areas, were as follows : The city 1,280 acres Northern Liberties — incorporated part from the Dela ware to Sixth street, north of Vine and up to Cohocksink creek 640 acres Southwark 760 acres Moyamensing — eastern part of the "Neck" 2,560 acres Passyunk — western part of the "Neck" 5.1 10 acres Penn Township — lying north of the city and west of Sixth street, reaching nearly to Nicetown and the mouth of the Wissahickon creek 7,680 acres Northern Liberties — unincorporated portions running up nearly to "Stenton" on the Germantown Road, Logan on the York Road and to Frankford creek, and lying east of the Germantown Road 6,700 acres Kingsessing — west of the Schuylkill river 6,800 acres 1 The Hibernia Fire Engine Co., published in Phila. in 1859. 2 Fireman's Almanac for 1861 ; see also Phila. Fire Marshal Almanac for i860. 3 From T. Westcott, Phila. Guide Book. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 309 Blockley — north of Kingsessing, an area penetrated by the Lancaster, Darby, Haverford and West Chester Roads 7,58o acres Roxborough 5,7°o acres Germantown 7>°4° acres Oxford— including Frankford borough 7,°8o acres Dublin • 9>5°° acres Moreland 3>75Q acres Bristol S»66o acres Byberry • • • • -4,7°° acres These sixteen local hegemonies, included in the county of Philadelphia, cov ered 83,200 acres of ground. The disintegration and re-arrangement of boun daries went forward so rapidly after 1820 that in 1854 there were in the county twenty-nine separate local jurisdictions. Ten of these were "municipal corpora tions ;" six were boroughs ; and thirteen were townships. All the corporations were practically contiguous and integral parts of the city, and the time when the out lying boroughs in the county would be brought into similar relationship with the city and the townships would be settled, seemed not so far away as to impose very greatly upon the imagination. The ten corporations were the old city and the districts of Southwark, the Northern Liberties, Kensington, Spring Garden, Penn, Moyamensing, Richmond, West Philadelphia and Belmont. Southwark, the oldest of the districts, had been laid out under an act of as sembly as early as in 1762. It was created a municipal corporation in 1794. Its southern boundaries had been changed as late as in 1850. In general it occupied the space between the Delaware river and Passyunk Road, extending south of South street as far as Mifflin street. The name Northern Liberties had undergone much change of meaning since it was first brought into local geography in William Penn's day. It was now a great township extending northward from Vine street to Frankford creek, bounded by the Delaware on the east and on the west on its upper reaches by the Germantown Road. The lower portion of the area, adjoining the city east of Sixth street and extending as far north as the Cohocksink creek, was formed into an incorporated township in 1803, and into a district in 1819. Spring Garden, which began as a village in the Northern Liberties and later in Penn Township, just north of the westernmost boundary of the District of Northern Liberties at Sixth street, was incorporated in 1813. Its area was ex tended in 1827. It covered all the territory north of the city between Sixth street and the Schuylkill river as far up as a line beyond Poplar street. The district included Morrisville, Francisville, Fairmount and Lemon Hill. Kensington, having become a populous settlement, was incorporated as a dis trict in 1820. It was taken from the unincorporated area of the Northern Lib erties, and extended north from the Cohocksink creek and east to the Delaware river. Its boundaries were enlarged four times between the years 1848 and 1852. Moyamensing was incorporated as a township in 1812. Its boundaries were materially changed in 1848, when the assembly converted it into a district and again in 1850. Earlier it had divided the "Neck" on longitudinal lines with 310 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Passyunk. It now surrendered its southern territory to Passyunk, and was swung west to the Schuylkill river over ground which Passyunk had hitherto included in its boundaries. Its southern line, east of Broad street, was near McKean street; west of Broad street, near Tasker street. The District of Penn, usually called South Penn, was formed by laws of 1843, 1844 and 1847. It lay north of Spring Garden between Sixth street and the Schuylkill river, running in general to a point a little beyond the Columbia Bridge and Columbia avenue. Its organization was made necessary by the extension of the lines of settlement in that direction. Richmond, north and east of Kensington on the Delaware, was formed in 1847 from unincorporated parts of the Northern Liberties. It was an industrial settle ment, built up around the Reading Railroad's great coal docks. West Philadelphia, the enlarged Hamilton Village at the forks of the Darby and West Chester Roads, with Mantua, situated above the Lancaster Road, was incorporated as a borough in 1844, and as a district in 1851. The ground was taken out of Blockley township. Belmont, the most recently formed corporation, was created by act of as sembly of April 14, 1853. It adjoined West Philadelphia on the north, and was also created at the expense of Blockley township. The city had come to have seventeen wards. In 1825 when the boundary line of the eastern and western wards was changed from Fourth to Seventh street. Pine ward was formed and inserted in the scheme between Dock and New Market wards in the southeast. There were thus eight wards east of Seventh street, and seven wards west of that street. In 1846 Cedar ward in the southwest was divided into three wards: Spruce, between Seventh and Twelfth; Lombard between Twelfth and Schuylkill Seventh (Sixteenth) streets; and Cedar from Sixteenth street west to the Schuylkill river. Southwark had six wards ; the Northern Lib erties, seven ; Spring Garden, seven ; Kensington, eight ; Moyamensing, five ; West Philadelphia, three; and Penn, three. All the voters of the city were still coming to the State House, but the number of election precincts was increased, and additional windows were opened to facil itate the balloting. The districts were governed by boards of commissioners, varying in size. The Northern Liberties had 21 commissioners; Spring Garden, 21; Southwark, 18; Kensington, 24; and Moyamensing, 15. Voting in them was done at the commissioners' halls, the name usually given to the "town houses." The six boroughs were Germantown, Frankford, Manayunk, Bridesburg, Whitehall, and Aramingo. Germantown, the most ancient of these boroughs, was incorporated in 1689, being therefore almost as old as the city itself. Frankford was taken from Oxford township, and incorporated in 1800. Manayunk was formed from Roxborough township in 1840. Bridesburg, running from Rich mond north to Frankford creek, was incorporated in 1848, and enlarged in 1850. Whitehall, east of Frankford, was incorporated in 1849. Aramingo was the name given to a piece of territory taken from the Northern Liberties, north of the Dis trict of Richmond and west of Bridesburg, and organized under a mixed borough and district government in 1850. The thirteen townships were Passyunk in the south ; Blockley and Kingsessing west of the Schuylkill river; Roxborough and Germantown in the northwest; No. 2200 No. 1900 No. 1800 jpNo. 1700 sNo. 1600 No. 1500 2 o § 1400 22nd 21st 20th 19th 18th 17th16th 15th 2201 2101 2001 1901 IS01 Th, Drtimil Strtrm «/ One Hundred Nnmners mrr act apart 'for mcli square, which lenrte m frw spare numbers for each, to r hat one »qimr* cmi. In future, be re-numbered without disar ranging the entire street. The Initiate, or starting points, are at the, Uelitw.tr,- Itivor and Market street. Persons can, by merely looking at the numbers on the Houses, know how many squares they are from the Delaware or Market street. By-streets are numbered as though they extended to the Delaware or Market St. Numbers, properly arranged, suggest distances to the mind; Improperly placed, they make confusion worse contour "- 1701 1601a- —CO r w S §¦ E 1501 1401 55 •< < '4 p a 3 o 8 *S « g Braid " Street. No. 1300 O¦n e? c 9No. 1200 900 -No. 1100 999 g No. 1000 E N". 900 No. 800 Delaware 13th12th 11th 10th 9th8th No. 100 Front. No. 101 - j? ? '* © g 8 § No. 1301 No. 1001 i No. 901 No. 801 9 t I I ?5) tg 5! 3 Marshall «t. THE DECIMAL SYSTEM OF NUMBERING HOUSES INTRODUCED IN 1856 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 311 Bristol, Oxford, Moreland, Byberry, Northern Liberties (a much reduced area lying in the northern part of the old township, east of the Germantown Road) and Penn (also a remainder, in the north, lying between the Germantown Road and the Schuylkill), Lower Dublin and Delaware (these latter formed from the old Lower Dublin township in 1852). 1 The conviction that all these districts should be consolidated had been deepen ing for a long time. Whether the city should be made coterminous with the county or not, might be a doubtful question. There was no doubt in the minds of a very large number of men that at the very least the populous districts lying north and south of the city should be added to it, and brought under a common government. The experience with the mobs, year after year, had been a severe lesson. Rob bers, murderers and other disturbers of order were constantly passing from one jurisdiction to another to escape the penalty of their misdeeds. Absolute neces sity had recently led to some common police arrangements, as has been noted on an earlier page. But this was a makeshift at best. Every important interest — social, political, commercial, artistic, called for a union of the districts into one larger Philadelphia. As early as in December, 1844, soon after the Native American riots, when it was seen that the old constables would no longer do their duty as peace offi cers, but confined themselves to such branches of their business as yielded them lucrative fees, and that the sheriff must call out posses of citizens, who also served with reluctance and whom very possibly he had no legal right to call upon, several public spirited men convened a meeting in the county courthouse. Samuel Webb presided, and Joseph Reese Fry served as the secretary. The assembled citizens recommended consolidation, which at once awakened a vigor ous movement in opposition, and led to another meeting at an inn in George street. Men like ex-Mayor John M. Scott, Richard Vaux, Horace Binney, Josiah Randall, Horn R. Kneass, Sidney George Fisher, St. George Tucker Campbell, Robert Hare and James W. Paul, strongly protested against the step. Memo rials to councils and the legislature were prepared. The time had not yet come for the reform, and the only result of the movement was a change in the police system. Another meeting was held on November 16, 1849. Some of those who had earlier opposed the plan seemed now to have been brought to favor it. The call for the meeting was signed by such citizens as John Swift, William Rawle, David Paul Brown, Francis Wharton, John Cadwalader, Clement C. Biddle, William Elder, Henry D. Gilpin, George H. Earle, Eli K. Price, William L. Hirst, Joel B. Sutherland, B. H. Brewster, Passmore Williamson, John Naglee, Theodore Cuyler, George W. Biddle, Chapman Biddle, Henry Horn, Henry M. Watts and Edwin R. Cope. The movement had come into better hands. As a result of the meeting, an executive committee was appointed. It was com posed as follows : Eli K. Price, John M. Read, John Cadwalader, Gideon G. Westcott, Charles L. Ingram, John M. Coleman, Henry L. Benner, John M. Ogden, Francis 1 Boundaries of the Incorporated Districts, Boroughs and Townships of Philadelphia County, edited by Lewis R. Harley, 1908, and other pamphlets. 312 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Tiernan, William White, George W. Tryon, Job R. Tyson, John G. Brenner, Josiah Randall, William L. Hirst, Henry M. Watts, John H. Dohnert, John M. Kennedy, Edward A. Penniman, Jacob F. Hoeckky, Thomas S. Smith, Peter Williamson, Alexander Cummings, Jacob Esher, Christopher Fallon and Michael Pray. Eli K. Price afterward made himself such an advocate of the change of the form of government that he was generally known as the "Father of Consolidation." Nothing now came of this effort, however, except another police bill and further recognition of the fact that the principal influence behind the move ment was a desire to put the community in a position to maintain civil order. From this time on, the agitation was continuous, until at length the opposition was overcome. Men antagonized the idea on various accounts. Some there are who are opposed to changes of all kinds, and conservatives of this class put their weight in the balance against the reform. Others feared an increase of taxation, and there seemed to be some justification for this feeling when, as soon as consolidation became inevitable, several of the corporations entered a discreditable competition in the creation of debt for improvements in- their respective neighborhoods, knowing that the sums were to be massed and be queathed to the new government. The principal adverse influences were polit ical. Each district had its own politicians who drew their strength in large part from the fire companies. Their organization was not so thorough and effective as it must be to succeed at this day, but they had strength. Each set of men entrenched in place, zealously held it. They knew how to keep their present positions, they knew nothing about gaining new ones in the greater city. The small honors, as well as the emoluments of office in the districts, were much enjoyed.1 No one was willing to part with them. And these influences were such now in councils and in the legislature that they would need to be considered. Up to the '30s and '40s, the city government had been kept tolerably free from the huckstering type of politician. Now and then a trader or a demagogue appeared, but such men were not at any time a predominant influence. Councils held their respectable position longer than the state legislature, whose mem bers came from what used to be called the "back country," and might still fairly answer to this name. The city was Federalist, and then Whig, which were parties — whatever else we may think of them — drawing their strength from the conservative, aristocratic and property-holding classes of the people. The gov ernment before the Revolution had gone on entirely undisturbed by popular elections. Under the new charter, in 1789, the people elected the common coun cil, and after 1796, when the bi-cameral system was introduced, the select and common councils — councils, as they were called. Until the spending power of the government had been very much increased, and systematic attempts were made by interested persons to gain control of it, eminent lawyers, physicians and 1 In an assemblage of persons in Philadelphia, about 1850, there were a number of guests of distinction from afar. They were being presented by their various titles. A Baron or a Sir was followed by a Professor or a Doctor. A Philadelphian who was to be introduced was asked for his title. "Introduce me," he said, "as ex-Commissioner of the Northern Liberties;" which was done, it is related, with impressive effect. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 313 business men sat in the city legislature. One who should have looked in on either body at its work would have seen before him the faces of many of Philadelphia's most eminent citizens. It was only lately, since each engine and hose carriage house had become a hive of political activity, and clever leaders who could arouse the enthusiasm and control the votes of the lower orders of men, had come into prominence, that the councils began to pass out of the hands of those who had always hitherto kept the government at a level of honor and dignity. The mayor continued to be elected by councils until 1839. Chosen at first from among the aldermen, after 1826 any freeholder was eligible. Though the term was for but a single year, this indirect method of choosing the city's chief magistrate protected the office from the whims of the people and seemed to add something to its character. The most prominent figure among the mayors of the '30s and '40s was John Swift. His administration, as we have seen, covered the period of the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, and while he was much criticized by the Abolitionists for his course on this occasion, he did not thereby forfeit any of the respect in which he was held by the people generally. This was but one of many mobs which he faced during his various terms of office, and he was a familiar and influential figure in the city. Mr. Swift was succeeded, as a result of the election in 1838, by Isaac Roach, a soldier of the War of 1812. He was in office for but a single year. On June 21, 1839, the assembly passed an act amending the charter of the city in several respects. The most important change made the mayor, who had hitherto been elected by councils, elective by the people. The salary of this officer, which in 1797 had been fixed at $1,000, was increased in 1805 to $2,000 and in 1835 to $3,000. His tasks and responsibilities grew with the city. The first popular election for a mayor was held in October, 1839. There were three candidates: John Swift, who received 3,343 votes; John K. Kane, with 3,294, and John C. Montgomery, with 2,670 votes. No one having a majority, councils again made the choice. They selected John Swift. His election by the people followed in 1840, when out of over 11,000 votes polled, he received 6,355. For the next three years the incumbent was John M. Scott, a native of New York, who had come to Philadelphia as a lad, about the year 1807. He was a graduate of Princeton College, had read law with William Rawle, served in the Second City Troop and enjoyed a series of terms in councils. He was mayor during the Native American riots. Peter McCall, a well known lawyer, also a graduate of Princeton, was elected to the mayoralty in 1844, but in 1845, 1846 and 1847 John Swift returned to the place, thus giving him in all twelve terms. a record which is to be compared only with that of Robert Wharton's. The subject of consolidation had several times entered into the state legis lative contests, but the members, though they made fair promises before they were elected, altered their views afterward. This policy could not be followed indefinitely to advantage, and at the session of 1853-54 the bill was pressed to a vote and became a law. The city, by this act, was made to include the entire county from Bow Creek in the south to the Poquessing on the northern boundary of Byberry, and from the Delaware to Mikstown, to Barren Hill and 3U HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA —beyond the Schuylkill, — to Haddington and the western limits of Blockley. This great area was divided into twenty-four wards, to be known by numbers. It seemed to be an arithmetical age. Militia companies were to lose their dis tinctive titles and carry numbers. Banks, when S. P. Chase became secretary of the treasury in President Lincoln's cabinet, were to be numbered. By some strange misplay, the entire system of nomenclature, with which the city had grown up and by which its neighborhoods had always been distinguished, was swept from the map. It is extraordinary that such a change could have been made by mere legislative fiat, yet it is so; and by this time many of the names which meant so much to all Philadelphians a generation or two ago, have passed out of popular recognition. Nor does one person in several thousand, though he be in other things a well informed man, know what the present num bers mean. Unfortunately, it is only with a map before him' that he can asso ciate the first, or the eleventh, or the twenty-third ward with a particular neigh borhood. This was not the price of consolidation, but because of the peculiarity of mind of some of those who brought it about, and who were filled by the mention of the numbers with some false sense of aggrandizement. The numerical scheme began with Passyunk and Moyamensing. All of this great tract between the two rivers south of the Navy Yard, in the east, and south of South street in the west, was formed into the First Ward. The Second, Third and Fourth Wards were made to include the old Southwark and some adjoining territory. The Fifth and Sixth were formed from the old city east of Seventh street; the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth from the old city west of Seventh street. The Eleventh and Twelfth Wards were in the Northern Liberties ; the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth, in Spring Garden. The Sixteenth, Seven teenth and Eighteenth, included the remaining parts of the Northern Liberties and Kensington ; Nineteenth, Richmond and neighboring territory ; Twentieth, South Penn ; Twenty-first, Penn Township, Roxborough and Manayunk ; Twenty- second, Germantown, Chestnut Hill and the York Road region; Twenty-third, the great sparsely settled region running northeast from the German- town Road at Rising Sun, Nicetown and the new village of Kenderton (originally the name of a country seat of John Smith, on the west side of the Germantown Road), to the upper bounds of Byberry, and including the boroughs of Frank ford, Bridesburg and Aramingo; Twenty-fourth, Kingsessing, Blockley and all that they had come to contain on the western side of the Schuylkill. The government was entirely re-organized and the people were given still more direct control of it. The term of the mayor was extended from one to two years. The select council was a body of twenty-four men. One member was chosen from each ward for a term of two years. The common council was made up of three members for each ward, except the Seventeenth in Kensing ton, and the Twenty-third running for miles into the north, each of which might elect four. After 1855, however, it was provided that there should be an ap portionment of members on the basis of taxable population in the wards. The term of the common councilman was one year. Members of the board of health, school directors, a recorder, aldermen, con stables, assessors, a marshal of police, a city treasurer, three city commissioners to stand in the places of the old county commissioners, a city solicitor, a city HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 315 controller and a receiver of taxes (the last two new offices) were provided for in the act. The passage of the bill was the signal for a great celebration, which took the form of an invitation to the governor, members of the legislature and other officers of the state government to visit the city. They were put upon a steam boat on March n, 1854, and shown the water front. A dinner was served in the cabin. There were speeches by Samuel V. Merrick, Morton McMichael, William C. Patterson, Governor Bigler and others. In the evening three or four thousand people gathered at the Chinese Museum for the so-called "Consolida tion Ball." Both halls were thrown open and were handsomely decorated for the occasion. The next day, on March 12, the city tendered a dinner to the governor and its other distinguished guests in the Sansom Street Hall. Morton McMichael presided, and the greater Philadelphia was sent upon its way hope fully and confidently. The law stated that the first election should be held on the first Tuesday in June,1 when the Whigs nominated as their candidate for mayor Robert T. Conrad against Richard Vaux, the Democratic nominee. Judge Conrad, as we have seen, was a poet, a playwright and a journalist, and he was a well known figure in the city. The Democratic nominee was a son of Roberts Vaux, a useful and philanthropic citizen who has been several times mentioned in the course of this narrative. He was born in 181 6, and was at this time therefore a man of thirty-eight years of age. While still little more than a boy, he had held some important posts in one or two of the European embassies. It was while in this service that he "danced with Queen Victoria," an episode the fame of which followed him to the end of his life — at the end in some ways picturesque, if not really eccentric. He had been admitted to the bar in 1836, at the age of twenty, and under the old city government he had served for several years as recorder, and in other offices. Judge Conrad, however, was favored by the "Know Nothing" movement, and he polled 29,507 votes to Vaux's 21,011. The united city, therefore, had a voting population of approximately 50,000, a num ber which by i860 was increased to more than 70,000. The new officer began his administration on the first Monday in July. Coun cils, made up of strange and untried material, without any of the reputation for culture and intelligence which had adhered to that body in earlier times, were organized for work on the same day. The tasks of the first mayor of the con solidated city were new and onerous. The government came into possession of all the public property of the twenty-nine constituent localities. This included not only the municipal establishment of the old city, but the town halls, gas works, water works, prisons, schools, bridges, markets, hospitals, squares, poor-houses, wharves and real estate in the districts, boroughs and townships. In addition to the water works at Fairmount, there were the Spring Garden works, further up the river, for the supply of Spring Garden and northern portions of the city, built in 1843; and the Kensington works, which pumped from the Delaware built 1 Henceforth, the elections were to be held in the spring on the first Tuesday in May. 316 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA in 1850. The number of gallons of water supplied to the city from these three plants in 1854 was as follows: Fairmount, 2,286,402,222 Spring Garden, 1,366,011,559 Kensington, 618,173,121 It was announced that there were in the consolidated city over 60,000 "water takers." The West Philadelphia water works, opposite Lemon Hill, within the present boundaries of the Zoological Garden, were just fairly opened at the time of the consolidation. Their erection was authorized by act of May 1, 1852. The city gas works, near the end of the Market street bridge, in 1854 manu factured 277,000,000 cubic feet of gas. There were 202,702 burners distributed among 13,893 consumers. The public lamps numbered 2,020. The Spring Gar den gas works, established in 1846 for supplying that district, sold 66,232,600 cubic feet of gas in 1854. The Northern Liberties were supplied by a plant sit uated near the point at which the Frankford Road crossed Gunner's Run. It was authorized by a local ordinance in 1838, and was soon afterward in operation. The large new Point Breeze works were nearly ready for use when the city and the districts were consolidated. It was an important legacy. What to do with all this property in order to make it serve its best uses was a problem which called' for careful study. All could not be brought into relation with the needs of the larger city, and the ad justment would not be completed for several years. The districts also be queathed the greater Philadelphia a large debt which, as has been said, was hur riedly piled up in a few weeks, between the time when consolidation was seen to be inevitable and that time when it was actually effected. The total sum was $17,108,343.79; one-fourth of which had been irresponsibly created in a period of thirty days. The principal items were these : Old City $8,541,000 Philadelphia County 1,815,177 Spring Garden 1,847,371 Northern Liberties 1,341,000 Richmond 804,839 Kensington 726,563 Southwark 492,200 West Philadelphia 376,1 10 Of this large sum, $8,350,000 was made up of subscriptions to the stock of railroad companies, divided as follows: Old City $6,100,000 Northern Liberties 1,000,000 Spring Garden 750,000 Richmond 500,000 The beneficiaries were the Pennsylvania Railroad, to the extent of $5,000,- 000; the North Pennsylvania, $1,400,000; Sunbury and Erie, $1,200,000; Hemp- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 317 field,1 $600,000; and Northwestern,2 $150,000. The Hempfield and North western schemes came to naught, and the money voted to them was wholly lost. On December 8, 1853, councils officially altered the names of some of the principal streets. They had already been changed by popular usage, and the necessity of keeping up the old fiction in deeds, public ordinances and proclama tions, and on the boards set up for the information of the wayfarer at the cor ners, was burdensome. Chestnut street had been "Chesnut" by a mis-spelling of the word, but more than reference to a dictionary was needed in some other instances. High became Market street by law ; Mulberry, Arch ; Sassafras, Race ; and Cedar, South. The streets called Schuylkill Front, Second, etc., west of Broad street, were numbered consecutively from the Delaware, omitting Four teenth, which was Broad street. Schuylkill Eighth became Fifteenth, and so on to the river and beyond. This reorganization was extended still further on September 1, 1858, when an ordinance was passed changing the names of between 900 and 1,000 streets, lanes, courts and alleys, with a view to introducing greater simplicity and uni formity into the system of nomenclature.3 Another confusion, arising from the numbering of the houses, was not to be gotten rid of until after 1856.4 when an ordinance was passed by councils to bring about that object. The chief commissioner of highways within six months after the passage of the act, should properly number all houses or other buildings, according to a new "deci mal system." The starting point north and south was Market street; for the other direction the Delaware river. This was as it had been before. The odd numbers were placed on one side of the street and the even numbers on the other, as hitherto But it was further specified that there should be "one hun dred numbers to each square of 350 or more feet in length," and the enumera tion should begin with "an even hundred at the commencement of each square." A chart accompanied the ordinance. Thus a house numbered 912 on Chestnut street, it would be instantly known, stood between Ninth and Tenth streets on Chestnut street. No. 225 South Ninth street would be between the second and third street south of Market street; that is, between Walnut and Spruce streets. Each owner was informed of the number which had been assigned to his house or other property and within sixty days he must have it placed "in a conspicu ous place upon such house or property in a permanent and durable manner" under a penalty of $5-5 This step was revolutionary. The directory makers must change all their addresses, and while the system possesses great excellencies, it has been and is a hopeless source of confusion to antiquaries. There is often no way to trace 1 This odd name was applied to a railroad company which would run from Greensburg in Pennsylvania to Wheeling in West Virginia. It was urged that the line would furnish railroad connections with Cincinnati and the Ohio valley. 2 The Northwestern Railroad Company, incorporated in 1853, was intended to begin west of the Portage terminus at Johnstown and extend by way of Butler to the Ohio state line. 3 Ordinances for 1858, p. 257. 4 Ordinance of September 16, 1856, Ordinances, p. 219. 6 Ordinances for 1856, p. 219. 318 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the location of a house prior to 1856, though the old number be at hand, except by a reference to the deeds. Matthias W. Baldwin, the locomotive builder, who had lived at 335 Spruce street, now found his house numbered 103 1. Jay Cooke was changed from 262 to 904 Pine street; Eli K. Price from 307 to 811 Arch street; Dr. Nathaniel Chapman from 332 to 1206 Chestnut; William M. Mere dith from 98 to 216 South Fourth street; E. W. Clark and Company from 25 to 35 South Third street; the Evening Bulletin from 50 to 112 South Third street. The dominant note in Mayor Conrad's administration was Know Nothing- ism. He seems to have been deeply influenced by this passing political whim. His messages breathed anathema for the foreigner. He began a vigorous en forcement of the temperance laws and the Sunday laws, with a view to making Philadelphia as uncomfortable as possible for the "exiles of European cities," and inaugurated policies little calculated to entrench himself in popular favor.1 In 1856 Richard Vaux was again nominated for mayor by the Democrats ; the Whigs and their allies supporting Henry D. Moore. Politics were passing into a new phase in the nation, and local organizations, then as since, have been closely affected by national issues. The supporters of Vaux were the advocates of James Buchanan for the presidency. That leader was just returning from England where he had been the American minister since 1853. His friends wished to give him a reception in Independence Hall, whose honors, like Christ Church's bells, were as a rule very freely bestowed; but the political opposition in councils prevented the use of the building as a place in which to welcome the guest, and he was taken to the Merchants' Exchange. The Native Americans had held their national con vention in Philadelphia on February 22, 1856, nominating Millard Fillmore of New York, and A. T. Donelson of Tennessee, for president and vice-president. The Whigs were rapidly falling to pieces, and the Republicans who were rising from the ruins had not yet gained any independent strength. Their nominee for mayor in 1856 was William B. Thomas, an extensive flour miller. He was a powerful man about six feet in height, a native of Montgomery county; and had been in business for some time at the Gulf Mills, on the way from Bryn Mawr to Valley Forge. In Philadelphia he acquired and built large steam mills, making himself one of the leading merchants of the city. Earlier a Democrat, he had definite views on the slavery question, and now openly espoused the cause of the new Republican party. Its first national convention would be held in Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, in Musical Fund Hall, where John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton were nominated for president and vice-president. Vaux made his campaign on a platform calling for a provident and econom ical management of the city's affairs. He promised a vigorous but no fanatical enforcement of the laws. He was supported in the canvass by such leaders as 1 When the Prohibition law was defeated by the people in 1854 the Assembly in answer to the popular demand for some restrictive legislation passed a series of high license laws (see Laws of Pa., 1855, 1856 and 1858) and for a year or two the sale of liquors in Penn sylvania was very stringently regulated. The policy was particularly aimed at the foreigner ¦who loved his glass at home and wished to continue its use in America. Prohibitory and kindred measures became prominent features of the Native American campaign everywhere. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 319 Lewis C. Cassidy, Daniel Dougherty (already famous as an orator at the bar and on the stump) and Brinton Coxe. Mr. Thomas, the Republican candidate, was almost entirely neglected. Vaux was elected, receiving 29,534 votes, while his opponent, Henry D. Moore, afterward state treasurer, had only 25,545. By the year 1858 the Republicans had gained greater strength, though they did not use the name when they nominated Alexander Henry. He was put for ward as a people's candidate, and was elected by 33,772 votes to 29,039 for Mr. Vaux. He was reelected by a narrow majority, less than a thousand, in i860, over the Democratic candidate, John Robbins, Jr., who had held a seat in Con gress for a time and had occupied other political offices, and again in 1862, under the three-year rule, so that his administration covered the entire period of the Civil War — the most trying period, in many ways in the history of the office. Mr. Henry was the son of John Henry, and a grandson of that Alexander Henry who had come to Philadelphia from the north of Ireland in 1783, ac cumulated a fortune as a merchant and made himself very prominent in the work of the Presbyterian church. The grandson was born in 1823. He gradu ated at Princeton and studied law. He was a younger man than Vaux by seven years and came to the mayoralty when only thirty-five years of age. One of the chief tasks of Conrad, Vaux and Henry — the first three mayors of the consolidated city — was the reorganization of the police force. The mar shal of police, under the law of 1850, at the time the city and the districts were united, was Colonel John K. Murphy. He had been elected in October, 1853, and had three years to serve. He was not disturbed in his office, but by act of May 13, 1856, the legislature abolished it, and provided in its stead a chief of police to be appointed by and to hold office at the pleasure of the mayor. The first chief was Samuel G. Ruggles. He was a trunk maker. It is said that he was at work in the cellar of his shop when Vaux visited him to proffer him the office. The mayor, standing on the pavement, called out : "Sam, did you ever belong to the Know Nothings?" "Never, sir," answered Ruggles. "Come up here then. Would you like to be chief of police under me?" "I would," the man replied. "Then," said Vaux, "come to my office and get your star." Appointed in 1857, Ruggles continued to stand at the head of the police force of the city until after the Civil War. Some material reforms had been instituted before consolidation, but they were not many, outside of that body of men with general powers known as the "Marshal's Police." In other respects, the inefficient "watch," somewhat rein forced, was still the main reliance of the city, and of the populous neighboring districts whose systems were patterned after those of the larger corporation.1 1 In 1852 the force in Philadelphia proper consisted of one lieutenant, four special con stables, four captains of the night police, four lieutenants of the night police, four high con stables for day service, thirty-six day policemen, two hundred night policemen — usually still called watchmen — and six turnkeys ; in all two hundred and fifty-nine men. Lamp-lighting had been taken out of the hands of the police by this time, and fifty-seven men, under four superintendents, were at work in this branch of the service. 320 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA In earlier years the watchmen had been the jest of the town. For long, when the service had been unpaid and householders had been compelled to take their turns at it, loafers were hired for a few pennies or a drink to act as substitutes. Afterward, conditions were somewhat improved, but the "Charlies," as they were called, came in for much banter at the hands of the townspeople. Occa sionally young bucks out late at night would tie them in their boxes, and they were obliged to remain there until their yells brought some one to the rescue. Sometimes, too, the boxes would be upset while the "Charlies" were inside, and tricks of other kinds were played upon them by no means infrequently. All this was now to be changed as rapidly as possible. The aldermen, when they were taken out of the council, were made into police magistrates, which they contin ued to be both before and after consolidation,1 though they were elected by the people after 1854. Consolidation required that police districts should be created, that station houses and lock-ups should be established or relocated, and that the force should be placed' under the direction of lieutenants and sergeants. The wages, small though they were, led to great competition for the appointments. Each incom ing mayor was besieged by applicants and their friends. His office was packed while crowds stood outside waiting to gain his ear in those "good old days" which preceded the period of laws for the government of the civil service. Mayor Conrad had about 900 policemen, too small a number, he believed, for a city of so great a superficial extent as Philadelphia. When it was considered that the force must be divided into three classes, each one taking its turn at active duty, it appeared that not more than 250 were at hand at any one time to guard 60,000 houses, and patrol 600 miles of streets. Conrad's policemen must be native Americans, from twenty-three to fifty years old, temperate, peaceable, courteous, genteel of dress, and of "unquestion able courage." An important part of their duty, as has been said, was the en forcement of the Sunday laws. Making and keeping the Sabbath "sacred" was a measure close to the mayor's heart, and he began an active campaign against the inns, oyster houses and gardens which refreshed the people on Sunday; the editors and publishers of the Sunday newspapers, now coming into more general favor; and others who found six days in the week not enough for their amuse ment and their work. A number of arrests were made. Protests were registered at public meetings. Clergymen and others assembled to commend the mayor. The issue was taken to the polls, where it was seen to have few friends. When Mayor Vaux came into office, he turned his attention to questions of more practical importance, and made himself the real foe of the "Moyamensing Killers," and the other desperadoes whose outrages still disgraced the city. This 1 "The alderman," says a contemporary account, "is a fine, fat old gentleman, well known and much respected in the community where he lives. His duty is to have all rogues brought before him, to listen to what excuse they have to offer for themselves and then to send them to the station-house or county prison. * * * Each alderman has an office with his name painted on a sign and hung to the window shutter, so that every one in the district may know where he lives. You may see him as you pass the house, sitting in his arm-chair, and listening to what the people in the office have to say either for or against the prisoners." — City Characters, 1851, pp. 95-96. fr*r I *-\-r-\T \( CITV ' RAILWAY ' CAR ta n t-' .11 mh 3 ¦if rati Jill ; iii im AN EARLY TYPE OF STREET CAR RICHARD VAUX, ABOUT 1842 FRONT STREET END OF MARKET HOUSES ON MARKET STREET ABOUT 1859 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 321 work was very much facilitated by the installation, in the winter of 1855-56 of the police and fire alarm telegraph system. The adaptation of this new inven-, tion to the business of reporting fires, riots, crimes and other matters of interest to the agents of peace and order, thus enabling them to concentrate a force at the point of need at the earliest possible moment, was of itself almost revolu tionary in its consequences. The advantages of the system were given practical demonstration almost immediately. In i860, 47,659 messages were sent from the central police telegraph office at Fifth and Chestnut streets to the different outlying stations, which numbered 163 in all parts of the county. The fire alarm telegraph office in i860 received 401 alarms. The State House bell in that year was rung 164 times, while in 237 cases the fires were of so trifling a character that no alarm was given. Mayor Vaux increased the police force to about one thousand men, which number must again have been reduced, for when Mayor Henry came into office he found but six hundred and fifty on duty. The first Sunday after his installa tion Vaux went down to the city hall and found the office locked. Hitherto, no one had been in the habit of appearing for service on this day, though it was that one which was usually chosen by the "Killers" and the firemen for their riots. Vaux said that these things should be changed at once, and he drafted a new set of rules for his policemen.1 As a measure designed to improve the efficiency of the service, he set aside sixty picked men as a "reserve corps." One- half of these men were given places on Chestnut street between Fourth and Broad streets. The other half were told to remain at Fifth and Chestnut streets for emergency duty. This body was aimed particularly at the firemen, who from the first had felt an instinctive dislike for the police which they never over came, and the "Schuylkill Rangers," whose rendezvous was near the end of the Market street bridge. This gang of "Killers" looted boats, invaded back yards, broke into houses and stores, and instituted a reign of terror over a large area. When other measures- failed in the campaign against them, Vaux stationed a large force of men on the river front and soon had the pleasure of seeing the band broken up. "Dick Vaux's police" were soon feared by evil-doers of all kinds. The mayor did not spare himself from service, and often walked through the city in the middle of the stormiest of nights to ascertain if his men were at their places. One night three of the "Rangers," surprised by Mr. Vaux and a squad of his police, jumped into the river, though the water was icy cold, and swam out to a tugboat standing in mid-stream. There they thought they would be safe, but the mayor got a boat and pursued them. They were soon brought back to shore and lodged in jail.2 Vaux also appointed fire detective police. It would be their duty to pursue and arrest incendiaries including the volunteers, who must be prevented from setting fire to and robbing houses while they were presumably employed in pro tecting the property of the people. Ropes were stretched around burning build ings to bar other thieves from the scene. Charles Godfrey Leland believed that 1 Sprogle's Philadelphia Police, p. 106. 2 Ibid., p. 108. 322 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA he had instituted this reform through the columns of the Evening Bulletin. Dr. Alexander W. Blackburn, a Virginian, who had been a surgeon in the army and who had lately been a newspaper writer, stood at the head of this depart ment of the service. He was called the fire marshal. One firebug whom he caught was "noted for invariably setting fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many inmates as possible. If there were an exit, he would block it up." Blackburn had "unerring and red Indian skill" in identifying and arrest ing incendiaries.1 In the first two and a half years of his administration, arson was diminished fifty per cent. In this period 253 persons were arrested in Phila delphia on the charge of incendiarism.2 "Dick's police" were a body of men with many of his own rugged traits. Some of them were undoubtedly rough characters, but they had difficult tasks to perform. His administration was conspicuously useful in restoring order to a city which had long ago ceased to enjoy it, and little remained for Mayor Henry but to continue the arrangements of his predecessor in respect to this department of the government.3 Sporadic attempts had been made to put the police into distinctive dress, but they had always disapproved of the suggestion. Some headway had been achieved in the direction of uniforming the marshal's police just prior to consolidation. When the force was unified and reorganized for the larger city, Mayor Conrad, the first mayor, had required the police to wear glossy patent leather coverings on their hats. This mark, with the wooden mace, enabled a passer-by to know an officer of the peace from other men.4 The special head dress, if it were ever in general use, was abandoned after Conrad left office. Mayor Vaux re quired only the star as a badge of authority; though he urged the men to wear long blue coats and silk hats. His policemen were drilled; they were required to keep their shoes clean, to wash their faces and present a tidy appearance while on duty.In October, 1858, early in Mayor Henry's administration, the members of the "reserve corps" were put into uniforms; and with such an example in No vember, i860, the whole force, except the turnkeys and the telegraph operators, followed. The dress which was adopted was a single-breasted blue frock coat with brass buttons, gray trousers, and a "Scott Legion" cap "with a broad top and a leathern visor." 5 Repugnance to this special attire continued to be ex pressed, and it is stated that as soon as the men left for their respective beats, they were likely to go home to exchange it for their own garments, donning the uniforms again only when the time approached for them to report at the station house. 1 Leland's Memoirs, pp. 219-20. 2 Phila. Fire Marshal's Almanac for i860. 8 The young mayor gained so much popularity, says Leland wittily, that he was some times called the "Vaux populi." 4 The dress of a policeman of the day is depicted more or less accurately in City Char acters, p. 90. 5 This uniform continued to be used until Mayor Stokley's first term, when the color of the trousers was changed to blue to conform with the color of the coat. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 323 Early in Mayor Henry's administration a beginning had been made with the river and harbor police, at first only ten men and a lieutenant — two boat's crews. The service was confined to the Delaware, a special body of Schuylkill river and harbor police not being created until 1866. Mayor Henry also improved the detective system. This work had been performed by three or four men, and had never been very efficient, though as early as in 1847 there were city detectives who ran down and broke up gangs which had perpetrated two of the most daring robberies in the history of the Philadel phia police department : the Kempton robbery, and the robbery of Dr. Darlington at the West Chester Depot on Broad street. The Kempton robbery took place at the home of James C. Kempton, a wealthy manufacturer, on School Lane, a mile or two from Germantown, on the evening of March 22, 1847. Five men with blackened faces were involved in this outrage. They first tied the coachman, then a male servant in the house, and then Mr. Kempton himself, though not until one of the rascals had politely expressed regret at being obliged to treat a gentleman in this manner in his own home. The silver, silks and other valuables were collected and spread out upon a table in front of Mr. Kempton's eyes. "That is the way, Mr. Kempton," said- one of the robbers, "that we equalize property." After drinking toasts to their unwilling host from the well stocked wine cellar, the thieves thrust the bound men into a pantry and fastened the door securely, whereupon they departed with their plunder in peace. The next day Mr. Kempton came to town and re ported the case to Mayor Swift, who at once put it into the hands of the de tectives. A large muscular Englishman had been plainly recognized and min utely described by Mr. Kempton and his servants; and for this fellow, search was immediately instituted. The first clue came through a dealer on Market street who had been offered a bag of broken silver. The incident was reported to Detective Callanan at the mayor's office. The man who had tried to- sell the metal was recognized as James Williams, formerly of the Golden Horse tavern, a place of resort for many crooks of the day in Philadelphia. He was arrested and his associates were discovered and "shadowed." The detectives still had the big Englishman in view; and one day Callanan found him in Camden. He was going with an accomplice in crime to the steamboat landing, whither the detective followed. Callanan asked a man on the boat, on the way across the river, to arrest the accomplice. He himself would take the principal prize and lead him to the mayor's office. The task was not easy, but it was accomplished. The captive proved to be James Dickinson, who had often used other names, and he was at once connected with the crime. The names of his four confed erates were discovered and two of them were taken. The Kempton treasure was recovered, though a good deal of it had been melted up. In September, 1847, tne men were tried and were sentenced to terms in prison. Dickinson was hanged afterward in Ohio for killing one of his associates in another daring crime. The Kempton robbery, however, was less bold than that of Dr. William Darlington on December 23, 1847. I*1 tnis a number of men, members of the "Old English Gang," who met at Williams's "Golden Horse" were involved. Dr. Darlington was a well known botanist, a member of Congress for several 324 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA years, and at this time the president of the Bank of Chester County in West Chester. It was his custom to come to the city from time to time to exchange Philadelphia bank notes for the notes of his own bank, and he was going home from the depot at Broad and Race streets on this occasion, with $50,000 worth of the Chester County bills. The money was placed in a small leathern satchel. It was a cold day, and he left it on a car seat, while he went to the stove to warm himself. He thought that his eyes were not at any time taken off the satchel, but others came into the car, some pushing him rather rudely. A few min utes later he returned to his seat to guard the money, which meanwhile, to his great surprise, had disappeared. Dr. Darlington at once reported his loss to Mayor Swift, describing those who had jostled him as well as he could. He offered a reward of $5,000 for the apprehension of the robbers, described the notes — four of them having been of the denomination of one thousand dollars — and it at once subjected a man to suspicion if he were seen with Chester County bank bills in his possession. Several weeks passed, but at length the crime was fixed upon a noted crook, George Williams, known as "Slappy Wil liams;" John Thompson, otherwise "Tobacco Jack;" and John Roberts, usually called "the old Duke," because of a supposed resemblance to the Duke of Well ington. All were Englishmen, and had been carrying on their criminal operations in Philadelphia for several months, at a time when the city had offenders enough of its own. These, and two or three other men accused of having a part in the robbery, were convicted and served their terms in prison.1 Mayor Henry asked to have the staff of detectives increased to twelve men, and on October 20, 1859, councils gave him eight and a chief, to be organized as the detective department of the police force of the city of Philadelphia, thus putting the work upon a much more efficient basis. Joseph Wood, earlier a superintendent of the watch in Spring Garden, was appointed chief of the detectives. A "Rogues' Gallery" of photographs was established for the first time in Philadelphia. The men watched the railway stations and the boat landings for criminals coming in from other cities, and a number of notorious offenders were soon taken bv the new sleuths.2 1 Newspaper articles by Joseph L. Fortescue : Cuttings in Library of Penna. Historical Society. 2 Sprogle, pp. 117-118. CHAPTER XXX. THE CITY BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR. The new methods of transportation brought with them new dangers. Ex plosions on steamboats had made their levies upon human life, and the con struction of the engines was still so imperfect that passengers and employees were without satisfactory guaranty against the recurrence of these disasters. The boats were also little guarded from collision and fire, and the Delaware had a number of melancholy accidents, in common with all other watercourses. In July, 1855, the steamboat "John Stevens" caught fire on the river and was entirely destroyed. Five negroes lost their lives in the flames. In August, in a collision between a steamboat and a schooner near Fort Mifflin, eight persons were drowned. The city experienced two very severe winters in 1854-55 and 1855-56. Many of the people were without employment and quite destitute, and the charitable were called upon for aid which was freely extended to large numbers of the sufferers. In January, 1856, the Delaware was frozen from bank to bank to such a depth that skating and sleighing went forward on the surface of the stream day after day. Venders and gamblers set up their booths at a number of places, and carried on a profitable trade on the ice. On the 26th of January, 1856, when upwards of twenty thousand people were making merry on the river, a horse and a sleigh containing five persons were seen to fall suddenly into an air hole. Though Colonel James Page, one of the most expert skaters of the day and other members of the skating club, were early on the scene, two women were drowned. This fatal accident put a quietus on the crowd and brought much of this kind of frolicking to an end. It was not until March that the river could be cleared for navigation. The explosion of gunpowder and the efforts of the ice boats, availed nothing. While the channel was not yet cleared, on March 15, 1856, a ferry boat crossing from Walnut street wharf to Camden, took fire. About one hundred passengers were aboard the vessel; it was unmanageable in the ice, and though it was brought to within a few feet of the shore, more than thirty lost their lives in this catastrophe. In May follow ing, on the lower Delaware near New Castle, four men were killed in a boiler explosion on a steamboat, painfully recalling the dangers of river navigation — since then, by mechanical improvements and precautionary measures, almost entirely eliminated. The railway offered new hazards. The Camden and Amboy road soon gained a very unsavory reputation for its accidents. As early as 1833, when 325 326 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Tyrone Power, John Quincy Adams, and the Belgian Minister passed over it from New York, an axle of the rear car broke while the train was proceeding at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. The car was overturned. Out of twenty- four persons in it only one escaped unhurt; two were killed.1 The most serious accident on this road occurred in the summer of 1855. On the morn ing of August 29, a mile above Burlington the engineer saw a train approach ing; and, though he reversed his locomotive, a collision could not be averted. Twenty-three persons were killed, and some fifty more painfully wounded in the wreck. Several of the victims of the disaster were people of much prominence in the city. The French Consul in Philadelphia was included in the number. Another accident, even more serious, occurred the next summer on the new North Penn road. On the 17th of July, six hundred persons, mostly children, of St. Michael's Catholic Church of Kensington, boarded an excursion train at the Cohocksink or Shackamaxon Depot. They were to spend a pleasant day in the country. When about thirteen miles from the city, near Fort Wash ington, the engineer saw not far away in front of him the train from Gwynedd. The two locomotives in a moment crashed into each other. Fire spread from the engines to the wreck, from which more than sixty dead and a hundred wounded persons were extricated. These accidents led to much revulsion of feeling on the subject of railroads. The question of double-tracking the lines was agitated. When this could not be done, the directors were asked to fence in their lines, a course which would be use ful in preventing fatalities at level crossings, already very numerous. It was sug gested, too, that the trains were run at too great a speed. No locomotive should travel at a rate of more than thirty miles an hour. The stage coach had its dis advantages, but it never killed and maimed its passengers in this wholesale manner. Nevertheless, the railway steadily improved its service, despite some rather inevitable early misfortunes; and it was announced in one of the newspapers in 1855 that the mail stages out of Philadelphia had made their last trips. The passenger stages to some points inaccessible by rail, would continue their de partures yet a while, but the city had definitely passed into a new age on the subject of transportation. Another change affected urban passenger traffic and marked the doom of the omnibus. This came in the shape of the street car, drawn by horses. The West Chester cars, the Wilmington cars, the Columbia cars, were pulled along Market street and Broad street. Horses and mules drew freight cars to the river on Willow, Dock and Prime streets. After the plane was abandoned it was horse power which carried passengers over the bridge to West Philadel phia to meet the locomotives of the Pennsylvania Railroad. But these were not street railroads, because passengers were not taken for short distances from one portion of the city to another. More like a street railroad was the line which ran from Front and Willow, a distance of one and a half miles, to con nect with the North Penn Railroad at the Cohocksink Depot in Kensington. The 1 Power's Impressions, I, pp. 85-87. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 327 cars were capable of carrying twenty-four passengers each. It was no long step to the city tramway. Frankford was a growing settlement with which communication was badly needed; none of the steam roads reached this borough. Stages were run back and forth at frequent intervals at a profit to the undertakers, and it was safely concluded that a beginning could very well be made here. Meetings were held in Frankford in the interest of the road. A convenient license for the enter prise was at hand in the charter granted by the legislature to the Philadelphia and Delaware River Railroad Company on April 4, 1854. Its objective point was Easton but the plan failed, and merely a supplementary act was needed, it was believed, to permit of its conversion into a city passenger railway company with power to lay its tracks over Fifth and Sixth streets and to run cars between Frankford and Southwark. As could have been expected, the proposal led to vigorous protests. It was declared to be a scheme of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, which killed its passengers, and was at the time thoroughly under the ban of public opinion. Nevertheless, the necessary authority was granted by the legislature in 1857; and on January 8, 1858, the first car passed over the line. The omnibuses which had been in use on these streets were purchased and the road was opened to the public on January 20; passengers being conveyed the entire distance of seven and a half miles or any part thereof for five cents. Crowds availed themselves of the opportunity of taking this novel ride. The cars were 14 feet in length and seven feet wide. Each vehicle was drawn by two horses; each had two officers, a driver, and a conductor to collect the fares. The enterprise had instant success. The company's receipts, it is said, were nearly $600 a day, and capitalists were soon so eager to invest their money in horse railroads that a vast number of schemes appeared. Men crowded one another to subscribe for the stock, the legislature was besieged with applications for charters, and streets were being torn up in all directions. The West Philadelphia road, out Market street and across the bridge, was the second line to be put in run ning order, early in July, 1858. The Tenth and Eleventh streets line (Citizens' Company) followed in a few weeks. Cars were run on Race and Vine streets in September, and a little later on Spruce and Pine streets to Gray's Ferry.1 Similar enterprises, such as the Fourth and Eighth streets line to Germantown, the Ridge Avenue line to the Falls and Manayunk, the Philadelphia and Darby, the Second and Third streets, and the Green and Coates streets lines, were soon carrying passengers also. The dates upon which the various lines were opened follow : 1 The number of passengers traveling daily on the lines in 1856 was said to be : Fifth and Sixth Streets 14,000 Tenth and Eleventh Streets 8,000 Market Street 7,000 Second and Third Streets 10,000 Race and Vine Streets 7,000 Total 46,000 The rate of speed averaged six miles an hour. 328 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Fifth and Sixth streets (Frankford), January 20, 1858. Tenth and Eleventh streets, July 29, 1858. West Philadelphia (Market street), July, 1858. Race and Vine streets, September, 1858. Second and Third streets, October 27, 1858. Darby, December, 1858. Spruce and Pine streets (Gray's Ferry), December 6, 1858. Ridge avenue (Manayunk), March 14, 1859. Green and Coates streets, June 1, 1859. Arch street (Fairmount), June 23, 1859. Fourth and Eighth streets (Germantown), July 18, 1859. Hestonvilk and Mantua, August, 1859. North Philadelphia (Rising Sun, Nicetown and Germantown), November 1, 1859.1 In 1859 charges of fraud and corruption in connection with the general grant ing of these valuable franchises to speculators were frequently heard. Opposi tion was especially directed against the laying of tracks in Chestnut and Walnut streets, which was proposed. It was asserted that these streets were too nar row. They were already crowded. Carriages, upon the introduction of the cars, would be banished from the streets; real estate values would fall; the repose of the people at night would be disturbed by the ringing bells, the cracking whips and the imprecations of the drivers. The promoters of the undertaking urged, on their side, that the cars moved with so little noise that it was neces sary to place bells upon the horses to advertise their approach. The omnibus drivers often raced their horses through the city's thoroughfares, and at all times disturbed the sick. They rattled over the round cobblestones, "shaking the town to its very foundations, like the discharge of ordnance." The street car was much more humane. The omnibus horses, with their raw shoulders and crippled limbs, awakened the sympathy of every one. In the omnibus men and women were spattered with mud; they crowded over one another in going to and leav ing their seats. In the street car the passengers could read, talk, and even write lightly with a pencil, so smoothly did it glide along on the iron rails.2 The objections which were strongly felt by many persons, did not avail ; for a great crowd of men and women jostled one another in April, 1859, for the right to subscribe for stock in the Chestnut and Walnut Street Company. On Monday, May 9th, when the books of the Thirteenth and Fifteenth .Street Com pany were opened in a building in Third street, several hundred men stood in line all night waiting for "the tide which taken at the flood leads on to fortune." They had been deprived of their rights when the Chestnut and Walnut Street Company was formed, and they would not be denied on this occasion. They took up their positions in the vicinity on Sunday evening and "sustained by gin slings, cocktails, smashes" and other drinks of the day, were ready to climb in over one another's heads as soon as the door opened. Hats were crushed, coats torn off, 1 The Old Franklin Almanac for i860. 2 The Chestnut and Walnut Street Railway, 1858, a pamphlet. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 329 pockets picked, and some, after much tribulation, attained the object of their ambitions.1 Several substantial fortunes were accumulated in this business before the work of merging the companies was begun, and some of mammoth proportions have since been acquired in this field. The omnibuses were pressed out of the service, and before very long were things entirely of the past. Early in the war, when the country moved over to a paper money basis, the fare was in creased from five to seven cents because, it was deftly explained, of the "high price of horse feed." Later, the price was lowered to six cents, where all the companies kept it until 1882, when two in the southern part of the city again introduced the five-cent fare. The lines generally exchanged passengers, at first for seven cents, and during the war for nine cents. As the work of consolidation proceeded, many free transfer arrangements were effected. For several years no cars were run on Sundays. Some early efforts to do so on the Green and Coates streets line in 1859 led to excited meetings of the people, threats to tear up the company's tracks and the arrest of a driver for a breach of the peace. For this reason the managers deemed it wise to abandon their designs. At length the so-called Union Line, which ran X-like from Ken sington in the northeast to the Baltimore Depot in the southwest, and from the Navy Yard to Fairmount, placed mail boxes on their cars and then contested their rights in the case. They asserted that they were fairly engaged in the United States postal service. They got a favorable decision from the supreme court on general grounds in 1867 ,2 and Sunday cars have been run on all the lines ever since. The negroes had a long struggle for equal rights as passengers. Whenever they boarded the cars, they were ejected by the conductors. Some of them in stituted test suits, but the companies were defended in their action until after the war. A request addressed to the officers of the nineteen street railway lines in the city resulted only in a referendum. Passengers on the cars were given slips of paper and were asked to vote for or against the proposal. After two days of "tumultuous balloting" it was announced that, there was a great ma jority in the negative. At a meeting in Concert Hall on January 13, 1865, as sembled at the call of Horace Binney, Jr., William Henry Rawle, George H. Boker, Henry C. Carey, E. W. Clark, Jay Cooke, Bishop Potter, Abraham Barker, William Bacon Stevens, George H. Stuart, J. Miller McKim, T. Dewitt Talmage, Phillips Brooks, William Welsh and others, a committee was appointed to effect the object in view, but nothing came of it until the assembly legislated on the subject on March 22, 1867. The early street cars of Philadelphia resembled those of this day, except that they were of a smaller type. They had little which was artistic, or even sanitary to commend them. The floor was commonly strewn with straw from the stables, which much of the time was most unclean. Until proper health regulations were enforced, the little boxes often reeked with disease. In winter they were not ventilated, and the passengers shivered. The cracking of the whip of the driver, 1 Public Ledger, May 10, 1859. 2 Sparhawk vs. Union Pass. Railway Co. 330 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA as he yelped at the cadaverous animals, wrought upon public sympathies, and altogether the period of the horse car is one which no one would recall. The splendid park system of Philadelphia was begun in 1844 by the pur chase of the "Lemon Hill" property. This, as we have seen, was a portion of the country estate of Robert Morris, called "The Hills," where he and his fam ily had spent so many happy seasons, where from time to time he had enter tained Washington and most of the distinguished leaders of the Revolution, and where he had been taken by the sheriff after long evading the process servers, and carried away to spend more than three years in prison because of his in ability to pay his debts. Henry Pratt, a successful merchant of the early part of the nineteenth century, later established his country home here. In 1836, two years before his death, he sold the place for $225,000. The new owners man aged it for a time as a pleasure garden ; but it was soon allowed to fall into decay. The Bank of the United States received it on an unsatisfied loan. At the failure of that institution, the trustees took it over at the original purchase price of $225,000. But so greatly disturbed were values at this time that they were obliged to offer the property for sale at $130,000. Still finding no market they, in 1844, induced the city, by divers means, to buy it for $75,000, since it ad joined Fairmount, which with its environs, comprehending about twenty-four acres, had long served the purpose of a park space. The use to be made of the area, which amounted to forty-five acres, was obvious. An argument in favor of the purchase of the property was the need of protecting the water supply from the contamination which would result from the occupation of the river banks by mills, factories, and cemeteries; but it was not until September, 1855, that the Lemon Hill estate was dedicated for use as a public park. At about that time a number of citizens, headed by Alfred Cope and Henry Cope, each of whom contributed $10,000, and Matthew New kirk and Ferdinand J. Dreer, contributing $5,000 each, purchased "Sedgeley," a tract of thirty-three acres cut off of the old "Hills" estate, adjoining "Lemon Hill" on the north and running up to the Spring Garden waterworks. In 1857 they added this to the park system on condition that the city would pay the bal ance of a mortgage resting upon the property. Here the enterprise rested until after the war. In 1866 it was ascertained that the Bingham heirs in England were willing to sell the old "Lansdowne" estate, 150 acres, west of the river. The mansion had been burned as a result of the Fourth of July pranks of boys in 1854. Several citizens purchased this ground for public uses, and councils appropriated the money to bring it into the area. The work of extension now went forward actively. The Fairmount Park Commission was created. Its members for the first year, 1868, were Morton McMichael, president; General George G. Meade, vice president; N. B. Browne, James H. Castle, Theodore Cuyler, Frederick Graff, Joseph Harrison, Jr., Strick land Kneass, Joseph F. Marcer, Henry M. Phillips, Eli K. Price, J. H. Pugh, Gustavus Remak, William Sellers, William S. Stokley and John Welsh. On both banks of the river negotiations were entered into with the owners for the transfer to the city of their grounds for park purposes. In the next two or three years 263 distinct parcels, some of them the subject of tedious and complicated bargaining, were added to the area. Up to December 31, 1869, over $3,200,000 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 331 had been paid to owners by the commissioners. The acquisitions brought in such estates as "Mount Pleasant," "Ormiston," "Fountain Green," "Belleville," Rawle's "Laurel Hill," more recently the Randolph property; "Strawberry Man sion," "Woodford," "Rockland," "Solitude," "Edgeley," Judge Peters' "Bel mont," "Eaglesfield," "Sweetbrier," "Chamouni," and many more of the boasted Schuylkill country seats and their surrounding grounds. In 1867 the commis sioners were authorized to take the east bank of the Schuylkill up to the Wis sahickon and both sides of that creek for park uses. This stream, so pic turesquely embowered in firs and hemlocks, was a splendid acquisition. The drive to the Falls had long been a favorite one, and the homes on the hills over looking the Schuylkill attested to the esteem in which the beauty of the river was held. The construction of the canal and the building of the dam made changes which were not thought to be for the better, but the river banks were still singularly attractive, even after the railroads were constructed and smoky locomotives drew their trains beside the stream. The Wissahickon yet stood inviolate, though none could tell how soon its precincts might be invaded also. It was entered only by the wood roads leading down to the mills which had crowded in at an early day to make use of the water power. A writer in 1804 said: "From Peter Robeson's, where it discharges itself into the Schuylkill, to Wheeler's, a distance of about twelve miles in a direct line, there are eighteen merchant and grist mills capable of furnishing at least one hundred thousand barrels of flour per annum; but as they are not constantly provided with grain, and the water frequently fails, it is believed that they do not prepare more than sixty thousand." It was because of the great variation in the height of the stream that it was not chosen as a source of the city's water supply. Some of the mills were abandoned as better facilities for flour making presented themselves elsewhere, but several of the old dams and the buildings with their high water wheels still stood in the glen, and added indeed to its charm as park ground. At about the same time that the Wissahickon was acquired, in 1867, Jesse George and his sister, who had an old family home on what is now called George's Hill, donated eighty-three acres to the city; and with the laying out of the necessary walks and drives the system was complete. The name Fair- mount was made to cover the entire park which now became one of the largest, as it was and is, from many points of view without a question, the most beautiful in the world. Its area was 2,740 acres. The total walking or driving distance from the Callowhill street entrance to the upper boundary of the park at Chest nut Hill is thirteen miles. On the west bank of the river the park has a length of four and a half miles. In 1854, a number of citizens who had purchased the old Hunting Park race course on the York Road near Nicetown, embracing forty-five acres, presented it to the city for public uses. It remains an appreciated popular recreation ground in North Philadelphia. On March 21, 1859, the legislature chartered the Zoological Society to col lect and exhibit wild animals, and gave it the use of ground in Fairmount Park. Numbered among the incorporators were Charles N. Bancker, James Dundas, 332 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA John Grigg, William M. Meredith, Frederick Fraley, Joseph Harrison, Jr., Sam uel V. Merrick, and Morton McMichael. Dr. William Camac was elected the society's first president. Another financial panic, not unlike that of 1837, although the country more quickly recovered from its devastations, broke in 1857. On September 25, the Bank of Pennsylvania failed, the most serious shock which the financial com munity of Philadelphia had sustained since the closing of the doors of the Bank of the United States in 1841. The Bank of Pennsylvania, a few years earlier, had decided to abandon the handsome building which Latrobe had designed for it in Second street. In 1856 the directors sold the edifice to the government which at first intended to make use of it as a postoffice, and they purchased the old United States Hotel property on Chestnut street, above Fourth street, opposite the Custom House; but the failure came before the work was done and the un finished granite walls were sold at about one half of their original cost to the Philadelphia Bank which in June, 1859, moved into the structure, and con tinues to use it. A short time after the failure of this great institution was announced, sev eral other banks, including the Girard, suspended specie payments. Business of all kinds was prostrated and the people, thrown out of employment, formed idle mobs in the streets. The state legislature and city councils were appealed to for aid, and on November 12, ten thousand people met in Independence Square, and demanded that the city give them work. A number of public undertakings were embarked upon and thanks to these measures, helped by individual charity and a mild winter, the distress did not reach the proportions which had been anticipated. Signs of the recuperative power of the country appeared in the following year, and the interests of the people were turned to other things. The literary activity of the city, after 1850, was diminished both absolutely and relatively in comparison with that of New York and Boston. Yet there were movements which may not be passed unnoted in any historical account of the period. The old firm of Mathew Carey, which as Lea and Blanchard had dis tinguished itself for several years in the general book trade, passed to the publi cation of medical and other scientific works in which it has been principally engaged ever since. Henry C. Carey, at one time its chief, devoted himself to his writings in social science, a department of inquiry in which his father had made some progress. The son gave the subject deeper consideration, and framed a system- which attracted notice even when it could not be followed and respected. He boldly refuted many of the doctrines lying at the root of the economic system as it was developed by the English writers. Indeed, he es tablished a separate school of economic thought which was opposed to the inter national British free trade, whose bulwarks were set up in the colleges and uni versities of New England, and Philadelphia became and is still its home. He was at some disadvantage by reason of his faulty education, but he pursued his studies with an indomitable spirit. His writings fill a number of volumes, and until the Germans appeared with a scheme of political economy which furnished a defense for a protective tariff, Mr. Carey's system was generally relied upon by the manufacturer, the editorial writer and the congressman who were seek ing scientific support for their theories. His works have been translated into HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 333 French, German, Russian, Italian, Magyar, Portuguese, Japanese and other languages. The Japanese editions, have been numerous. As Mr. Carey's teach ings were undoubtedly of great influence upon public policy in America, before and after the war, so have they since been potential in Japan. Mr. Carey found himself the leader of a considerable body of men; none of whom, however, has ever done anything to develop or fortify his doctrines, which seem now to have been very generally discarded. For many years it was believed that they were taught at the University of Pennsylvania, but while some of Mr. Carey's principles were held there for a while, and the so-called Wharton School of Finance and Economy, was established with the tacit understanding that it should inculcate these principles, its teachers in a little time shifted their ground and chose to find their defense for protection in Germany. An active coterie of men directed the agitation in Philadelphia up to within a very few years, but it was a strife of small factions whose echoes are now heard no more. In 1859, before his departure for Europe, Mr. Carey made a tour of the eastern cities of Pennsylvania. Accompanied by Dr. William Elder, Morton McMichael and other friends, he visited the Pennsylvania coal mining towns where processions of working men were formed to escort him through the streets. He was looked upon as the author of their prosperity. In Philadelphia he was dined at the La Pierre; Mayor Henry presided and Simon Cameron and others spoke congratulating the guest upon the service he had rendered his native state. Mr. McMichael gave editorial utterance to Mr. Carey's economic views, while William D. Kelley, who came to be known as "Pig Iron" Kelley, because of his inflexible pursuit of a policy of protection for the Pennsylvania iron industry,' was a leading representative of this general class of views in Congress. It is not too much to say, however, that not more than one or two of Mr. Carey's many disciples ever read his books with any understanding, or made them selves familiar with his teachings, except as these teachings related to a pro tective tariff, — a small enough part of his or any other system of political economy. Rather severe intellectually, as Mr. Carey may have been, he had a genial side. Every Sunday afternoon a number of his friends gathered at the round table in his mansion, at 1102 Walnut street, to discuss commanding political issues. These meetings came to be called the "Carey Vespers." During and after the war Mr. Carey's house was the scene of much vigorous debate. Just prior to his death, the combined ages of himself and three others who had long met at his home — General Robert Patterson, William D. Lewis and Joseph R. Chandler — was three hundred and fifty-one years, an average of nearly eighty- eight years for each. A new and important publishing house was established in this period. John Grigg came to Philadelphia in 1816, and in a few years established what was probably the largest book distributing house in the country, if not in the world. Like Mathew Carey, he was a determined spirit, and he won success by de serving it. The firm at the time was Grigg and Elliott ; then, with Henry Grambo, Grigg, Elliott and Company; and after Mr. Grigg and Mr. Elliott sold their in terests in 1849 to Joshua Ballinger Lippincott — who in 1836 had opened a book store at Fourth and Race streets — Lippincott, Grambo and Company. In 1855 the 334 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA firm became J. B. Lippincott and Company. This house continued to do a large jobbing business, and at the same time built up an important publishing trade which is still carried on. Not many writers in the purely literary field appeared in Philadelphia after the downfall of Graham's Magazine. Its end was a catastrophe for letters in this city, if not in a larger way. Thackeray came in 1852, and again in 1855. He was taken to the "Wistar Parties," and met the principal literary figures of the day. He found a large number of persons of literary interests, but beyond Bayard Taylor, George H. Boker, Charles Godfrey Leland and T. Buchanan Read, who were coming forward in Graham's time, the group contained few productive writers. Thackeray, when he reached the city, met an earlier acquaintance in Wil liam B. Reed, at this time a man of some eminence at the Philadelphia bar, sent later upon a mission to China by President Buchanan. His brother, Henry Reed, in the light of later events in William B. Reed's life, is remembered with more favor in the community. As the Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania, he exerted a large influence in inculcating sound literary opinions. His lectures, some of which were afterward published, were much praised in discriminating circles, and he was sincerely mourned when, after a visit to his literary friends in England, the Arctic, the ship which was bearing him home in September, 1854, went down off Cape Race. The vessel collided with a French iron propeller, and sank with all on board except two or three score seamen who crowded into the little boats. Bayard Taylor is quite clearly the greatest poet and general literary figure which Pennsylvania has yet produced; but like Boker, Leland and Read, he came forward too late to find his place in Philadelphia. The literary center had already shifted to New York; and there, when he lived in this country, much of his time was spent. He was born near Kennett Square in southern Chester County in 1825. He early began to write for the Saturday Evening Post and Graham's Magazine. In 1844 he went abroad to wander over Europe. He sent back letters to the New York Tribune and other papers, brought together later in a book called Views Afoot which had much success. This was the be ginning of a connection with the Tribune which in various capacities was con tinued for many years. He wrote for newspapers and magazines, traveled widely abroad in the interest of popular lecture tours, that carried him to all parts of the United States and, as he could, paid his devoirs to literature. About i860 he built, near the place of his birth in Chester County, a handsome mansion which he called "Cedarcroft." Here he remained for several years but the house was inaccessible, and after his life in New York it seemed lonely. The expense of maintaining it grew irksome when he was deprived of some of the sources of his income, and it was leased and at length sold.1 Much of Taylor's beautiful verse was written at "Cedarcroft." The scenes of his principal novel, The Story of Kennett, were found in the neighborhood. It was to Kennett, to the Longwood meeting house grounds, that he was brought 1 Cedarcroft, after remaining without an occupant for some time, was converted a few years ago into a private school. During the summer vacation, it is used as a boarding house. y mf^ ¦ ...:P HB WmSEBKu ^jjjKP^'- ' ^^^ MASONIC TEMPLE IN CHESTNUT STREET, THIRD BUILDING JACOB TRIPLER. A TYPICAL PHIL ADELPHIA FIREMAN DR. KANE'S BODY LYING IN STATE IN INDEPENDENCE HALL HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 335 to be buried in 1878. He died while he was Minister of the United States to Germany, a post which promised him relief from many of his annoyances, and which he was for too short a time to occupy. Taylor's friend, George H. Boker, was a son of Charles S. Boker, a wealthy Philadelphian, for years president of the Girard Bank. He was graduated at Princeton, and would doubtless have been one of the most eminent of poets, if he had been thrown upon his own resources like Taylor and Lowell. Instead, he cultivated letters as a relaxation. Yet this did not prevent him from attain ing a high literary position. His verse, as Taylor's, went to Boston to be published, to so low a point had literary appreciation suddenly come in Philadelphia. Much of Boker's poetry was cast in the form of tragedy. His Francesca da Rimini is deservedly held in high regard, and some of his other plays are of the greatest excellence. Like Taylor, he served his country abroad; at first, in 1871, at Constantinople, and later in St. Petersburg. His home was at 1720 Walnut street. His fine figure — N. P. Willis once called him the handsomest man in America — was, until his death in 1890, a familiar sight upon the streets of the city. Charles Godfrey Leland was a boyhood friend of Boker. The two families were connected by marriage, and also by business ties. He also went to Prince ton and then traveled extensively in Europe, where he accumulated the in spiration for his inimitable Breitmann ballads. Leland was a born humorist, and the charm of his wit was early discovered through his contributions to Sartain's, Graham's and the Knickerbocker Magazines. Some of this and other material, all written before he was twenty-five, was brought into a volume called Meister Karl's Sketch Book, which Washington Irving and many other good judges admired. For a time he was a writer for the Evening Bulletin; he vainly tried to revive Graham's Magazine after its lips were sealed in death; and dur ing the war joined the staff of the Philadelphia Press. The first "Hans Breit mann" ballad appeared in his columns in Graham's Magazine in June, 1857. It was the ballad about the "Barty," and was set up to look like prose, as follows : "Hans Breitmann's Barty. Fuer Graham's Monatsheft. Bei Tschuperti. Hans Breitmann gife a barty — dey had biano blayin — I felled in lofe mit a Merican frau. Her name was Matilda Yane. She hat haar as prown as a pretzel bun, de eyes were himmel blue and ven she looket into mine, dey shplit mine heart in two." This was followed by other ballads, all gaining the greatest popularity. The big and bibulous German was taken through the Civil War, the Franco- Prussian War, and up and down and across this country and Europe. A remarkable lin guist, Leland jumbled French, Latin, Italian and Dutch, as well as English and German, into a most amusing jargon. He made many references to German philosophy and literature, the full meaning of which is certainly in many cases incomprehensible to any but well educated people, but the verse was carried along by other qualities. Hans appeared in costume at German balls and in street processions. He was a figure in the theatres. He gave his name to a 336 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA cigar in America, and a comic paper in London. There were no national limits to his fame. Leland himself became very much burdened by his reputation, which he sought to throw off by his interest in the gypsies, the Indians, educa tion in art and problems of sex. Upon these subjects he wrote industriously in his later years. But it is for his humor rather than for any of these services that he will be remembered. He lived until 1903. Thomas Buchanan Read, like Taylor, was born in Chester County. He had humble beginnings, and opened his artistic career as a sign painter. From this he passed to portraits, at times having his studio in Philadelphia. He also wrote verse, which was seen from time to time in the Philadelphia magazines of the '40s; but he was freely criticised as a "Laker;" that is, as a follower of Words worth — "perfumed, gloved and ladylike." As the appreciation of Wordsworth and his group increased, Read gained recognition. Art and poetry employed him in America and Italy throughout his life, and while he did not reach the first place in either, he met much popular favor, particularly because of the patriotic stand taken in his verse during the war. His poems were widely read by James E. Murdoch and others. Lincoln admired them. "Sheridan's Ride" struck a responsive chord, and the favor in which it was held was increased by Read's painting, commemorative of the stirring scene which it describes. He died at the Astor House in New York in 1872, shortly after his return from Europe, where in his later years so much of his time was spent. Walt Whitman did not come to Philadelphia until 1873. He settled in that year in Camden, to be thereafter a figure on the ferry boats and on the front platforms of Market street horse cars; hob-nobbing, as was his wont, with the drivers, peanut venders, barkeepers, and other "odd sticks" at the river side.1 A book of this time which attained a very great circulation was Dr. Kane's account of his Arctic travels. Elisha Kent Kane was a son of Judge John K. Kane. He graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1843 and then adopted the life of an explorer. He visited a number of countries as a surgeon in the navy, and on his own account. In 1850 he volunteered for the De Haven Arctic expedition, which was organized to rescue — or, failing in this, to discover the fate of — Sir John Franklin, a British polar traveler from whom nothing had been heard since he entered the ice in 1845. Upon Kane's return in 1 85 1, he persuaded Henry Grinnell, a New York merchant identified with the whaling industry, who had supported the voyage of the year before, to give him a vessel for an expedition of his own. He left New York in May, 1853, and spent the winter north of the seventy-eighth parallel. The next summer was devoted to useful exploration, but the ice around his vessel did not yield and he was left to make his way home as best he could. Great privations were endured during the second winter which the party was obliged to pass in the north. Finally, in May, 1855, they abandoned the brig and travelled over the ice to the nearest Danish settlements in Greenland, there to meet the ships sent by the United States government for their relief. They arrived in New 1 Oberholtzer, The Literary History of Philadelphia; last chapter, for Taylor, Boker, Read, Leland and Whitman. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 337 York on October n, 1855, after an absence of two years and a half, during which time world-wide anxiety was felt for their safety. The trip made Kane a hero of the first magnitude, but it hopelessly shat tered his health. He went to the West Indies to enjoy a climate which at that time was generally recommended for consumptives, but died there in February, 1857. Every attention was shown his remains by the Spanish authorities. They were taken to New Orleans, and conveyed up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to be honored at every place to which they came. On March 11 they were re ceived in Philadelphia at the Baltimore Depot by members of councils, the First City Troop and the Washington Grays. The following had been appointed to act as pall-bearers; Horace Binney, Commodore Read, Ex-Governor Pollock, George Peabody, Moses Grinnell, Prof. A. D. Bache, Major Hagner, John A. Brown, William B. Reed, Rev. H. A. Boardman, Bishop Potter, Judge Grier, Chief Justice Lewis, Dr. Dunglison, and Major C. J. Biddle. The body was escorted to Independence Hall, where it lay in state under guard of the Wash ington Grays. The funeral procession, the next day, included representatives of the state and city governments, delegates from other cities, officers, profes sors and students of colleges and schools, militia companies, civic organizations of many kinds, members of the bar, judges of the courts, clergymen and physi cians. The cortege proceeded to Laurel Hill. It was, up to that time, the most notable funeral which Philadelphia had ever given to any of its citizens, and none of so imposing a character has been seen here since. Dr. Kane had written an account of his first trip into the north with De Haven. It was published in New York. On his return from his long exile in the ice, he wrote Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, '54, '55, in two volumes, which was brought out in 1856 in Philadelphia by Childs and Peterson. The work was admirably adapted for general sale by book agents who carried it into every part of the Union, and Dr. Kane received upward of $65,000 in royalties from the publish ers in the first year. It was this undertaking which first drew attention to George ;W. Childs, a man who came later to hold a prominent place in the publishing trade of the city. He was born in Baltimore, rather obscurely, and arrived in Philadelphia as a boy of fourteen. He found his first employment in a book store. In this way he was made familiar with the trade, and having saved a few hundred dollars he, at the age of eighteen, went into business for himself in a small way, with an office in the Ledger building at Third and Chestnut streets. In 1850 he en tered the publishing business of Robert E. Peterson, whose daughter he married. It was conducted under the name of Robert E. Peterson and Company, the firm in a few years becoming Childs and Peterson. Besides the account of Kane's travels, their books included a compilation by Mr. Peterson himself called Fa miliar Science, Parson Brownlow's Book, Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Fletcher's Brazil, Lossing's Civil War, Sharswood's edition of Blackstone, and the Dic tionary of British and American Authors of S. Austin Allibone, a man of pro digious learning and extraordinary industry in literary research. These works were in general meant for what is usually called the "subscription trade," to which Mr. Childs's experience was confined. It was in this field that he continued Vol. n— 28 338 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA to be known to Philadelphians until 1864, when, in conjunction with the Drexels, who proved to have the major interest in the property though they were silent partners, he purchased the Public Ledger from Mr. Swain. Of Mr. Childs's career as a newspaper publisher, it will be more convenient to speak in connection with the daily press of Philadelphia during and after the war. The lack of an opera house in Philadelphia was coming to be seriously felt.1 Musical Fund Hall had served its own purposes very well; it would continue to do so. But it was not a suitable auditorium for anything like grand opera, which was now and then being brought to the city. Jenny Lind attracted more atten tion than any visitor since Fanny Ellsler. P. T. Barnum, the showman, upon finishing his successful exploitation of General Tom Thumb, a dwarf whom he had found in New England, resolved upon bringing the "Swedish nightingale" to the United States. She did not know very much of her worth before Ameri can audiences, nor was Barnum aware, for that matter, of what he could do in this field. It was quite new and untried for him, as may be gleaned from the, very straightforward account of the adventure in his autobiography. He sent an agent to Europe to make a contract with Miss Lind for one hundred and fifty nights at $1,000 a night, he to pay all her hotel and traveling expenses, the wages of her servants and secretaries, and provide her with horses and carriages wher ever she went. She insisted that she be accompanied on her tour by Julius Benedict, the German composer — well known at the time in London — as her musical director, and Signor Beletti, an Italian baritone. These were engaged. Then the "song bird" was told that Barnum was a "humbug," and that "for the sake of making money by the speculation he would not scruple to put her into a box and exhibit her through the country at twenty-five cents a head." 2 But this objection was also overcome. He was in his museum in Philadelphia when word reached him on February 19, 1850, that the contract had been signed. He must then find the money to meet the terms of the undertaking, $187,500, to be deposited with bankers in London not later than a certain day. Neither he nor any one whom he told of his speculation felt any degree of confidence in its success. After doing all he could to raise the necessary sum, he still lacked $5,000 which was furnished him by his friend, Rev. Abel C. Thomas, pastor of the Universalist church on Lom bard street near Fourth, in Philadelphia. Barnum began to advertise the singer in his unexampled way. She sailed from Liverpool in August, and met with a notable reception in New York, much of it contrived by the promoter of her tour. Soon there were "Jenny Lind gloves, Jenny Lind bonnets, Jenny Lind riding hats, Jenny Lind shawls, mantillas, robes, chairs, sofas, pianos — in fact, everything was Jenny Lind." 3 She was in receipt of so much attention that Barnum almost despaired of breaking in upon her time for the concerts by which he hoped to recoup himself for his investment. Feeling certain now that the tour would be very much more profitable than he had dreamed in his most hope- 1 A new opera house to cost about $500,000 and to hold 5,000 auditors, was planned as early as 1840. It was to "eclipse the San Carlo at Naples, the Scala at Milan or the King's Theatre in London." — Buckingham, Eastern and Western States, I, p. 467. 2 Life of P. T. Barnum, by himself, p. 299. 3 Ibid., p. 309. FRIENDS' ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE AT FRANKFORD PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE IN WEST PHILADELPHIA HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 339 ful hours, he altered the terms of the arrangements with Miss Lind, pledging her $1,000 a night absolutely, and one-half the receipts on all concerts which yielded more than $5,500 in gross. This increased her confidence in her man ager, and was a useful stroke of business, as well as a generous act. After New York and Boston had been visited, she came to Philadelphia, where she was to make her appearance in the Chestnut Street Theatre on the night of October 17, 1850. The first tickets were sold at auction; and, either with or without the connivance of Barnum, they brought enormous prices. The sale in Philadelphia was conducted by Moses Thomas, Washington Irving's old associate in the publication of the Analectic Magazine. The highest bidder was M. A. Root, a daguerreotypist in Chestnut street, who paid $625 for the honor. But Philadelphians always reserved their opinions; there was no wild acclama tion until they had seen and heard. Then, if their judgment approved, there could be no warmer friends. The managers were not confident of approval. They spoke of "the precise citizens of cleanly Philadelphia;" "the staid and pre cise inhabitants of the Quaker city," who formed "one of the most difficult audiences to please that could be collected on this continent." x But the ice was soon broken. Miss Lind increased her popularity by attending service in Old Swedes' Church, which served to link her happily with the people who had first settled on the shores of the Delaware. She was always making donations for charitable objects, and she contributed $3,000 for the relief of the sufferers by the great fire in Philadelphia in the preceding summer. Some later concerts were given in Musical Fund Hall, and upon her return, after her southern and Cuban tour, she appeared in Burton's old National Thea ter at Ninth and Chestnut streets, which had recently been fitted up for such uses. Miss Lind specified that she should not sing in opera while under her contract with Barnum. Her concerts consisted as a rule of selections from the operas, not more than four in an evening. She had many popular encores, such as "Comin' Thro' the Rye," "The Last Rose of Summer," "John Anderson, my Jo," and a German "Bird Song," beginning: "Birdling, why sing in the forest wide? ; Say why? Say why? Call'st thou the Bridegroom or the Bride? And why? And why? I call no Bridegroom — call no Bride — | Although I sing in the forest wide — Nor know why I am singing." It was here in Philadelphia that Miss Lind asked to be released from her contract. It was now very evident to her that Mr. Barnum had the valuable end of the arrangement, and by various forfeitures on the singer's part, the en gagement, at the end of the ninety-fifth concert, was brought to a close in this city in June, 1851. The profits were enormous. The best night of all was the first in New York, at which the total receipts were $17,864.05. The best night in Philadelphia was the first, when the yield was $9,291.25. The eight concerts 1 Jenny Lind in America, by C. G. Rosenberg, p. 68. Mr. Rosenberg was a London musical critic who accompanied her on her American tour. 340 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA given here brought in $48,884.41, an average of more than $6,000 each. The sum would have been larger, except for the lack of an auditorium to hold a greater number of people. The gross receipts for the ninety-five concerts were $712,161.54, of which Miss Lind received $176,675.09, and Mr. Barnum $535,- 486.25.1 * In 1854 Giuseppe Mario, at the time a favorite Italian opera singer, came to the United States with Signora Grisi, for a six months' tour under the manage ment of James H. Hackett. They appeared in the Walnut Street Theatre while in Philadelphia. But the house, like any other which might have been chosen, was unsuitable for the use. No hall was large enough for Jenny Lind; none sufficed for Mario and Grisi, and a number of citizens were soon led to the formation of a company to construct an Academy of Music, a sounding name, which at the time was very much liked for an opera house. A site was chosen at the southwest corner of Broad and Locust streets. Work was begun in June, 1855; the cornerstone was laid on July 26 following, and all the plans were made for opening the building with a ball on January 20, 1857. But the snow lay on the streets to such a depth at that time that all traffic was blocked and the entertainment must be postponed until January 26. The "grand ball room" was formed by flooring over the parquet and stage, as has been done so often since. The stage at top and sides was draped until it had the appearance of the interior of "an immense marquee;" artificial groves and fountains and the great chandelier overhanging the auditorium, made the scene one of new brilliancy in the history of social entertainments in Philadelphia. It is said that at one time 4,000 persons were present. "Such an array of elegantly dressed ladies" had never before been seen in the city. The whole width of the stage was one hundred and fifty feet, and the house had seats for nearly 3,000 people. It at once became the resort for all the principal opera singers who visited the city, and had much use at other times for concerts, balls, lectures and public meetings, a role which it continues to play at this day. The "star system," which, said William B. Wood, had "upon it 'the primal eldest curse,' " now showed signs of breaking down. It had wrought a good deal of ruin in the theatres. It at length made an end to itself, as Mr. Wood thought it always would. When he wrote, in 1855, Burton and Wallack in New York were leading in the reformation of the system, and two young men at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia were actively working along a similar line. "The stock system, they may depend upon it," said Mr. Wood, "is the only one, and their only policy is in a stern adherence to it. They must set their face steadily against any other. * * * Sensible actors and wisely ambitious as pirants will be happy to find a home where the manager and the public are their guardians and protectors. They will soon seek, in the settled form of stock establishments, to escape from the degradation and uncertainty to which they had been of late so much and so painfully exposed under the other system." He pleaded for the separation of the drama from the opera, which up to that time was so often given to attract audiences ; and of course strongly condemned the 1 Life of P. T. Barnum, pp. 342-43. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 341 rope dancers, negro serenaders, "model artists" and similar exhibitions so often introduced to increase the profits of the managers.1 The Arch Street Theatre, after Mr. Wood's unfortunate experience in the first year of its history, had had many managers ; among them William Forrest, who drew financial support from his brother Edwin. The latter chose its stage for many of his first performances. Metamora, The Gladiator, Aylmere, and The Broker of Bogota, were given here, and it was identified in a notable man ner with the native American drama. Various experiments with stock compa nies were tried. Burton for a time was the manager; but it was not until 1853 that a resident organization which was comparable to Warren and Wood's, made its appearance at this or indeed at any Philadelphia house. John Drew was born in Dublin. In 1850 he married Louisa Lane, who in 1836, at the age of 16 had married Henry Hunt, an English opera singer. She had separated from him and for a few months, until his death in 1848 or 1849, she had been the wife of George Mossop. Now, as Mrs. John Drew, she soon became a prominent figure on the American stage. Mr. Drew was an excellent actor, seen quite often; and Mrs. Drew had been in one or another of the Phila delphia companies of the '30 and '40s. Together they had played at the Chestnut Street Theatre in 1852, with John Sleeper Clarke, John Gilbert, Mr. Eytinge and others. The Drews left this company near the end of the season to appear in .1853 at the Arch, the lease of which was offered to Mr. Drew and William Wheatley, a name long and favorably known in the theatrical annals of Phila delphia and other cities. The two partners, "in themselves a host," drew about them a company of players of very uncommon abilities, and the house nightly attracted the finest audiences. At the end of the second season, John Sleeper Clarke took John Drew's place as Wheatky's partner, and subsequently for a time the latter conducted the house alone. It was in i8602 that the lease was offered to Mrs. John Drew, and she began an administration which was signally successful for many years. Mr. Drew made a trip around the world, receiving much appreciation wherever he played. He returned late in 1861 and appeared at his wife's theatre for one hundred nights, but died in this city in May, 1862. From time to time under her management many of the principal stars were seen at this house. Lotta appeared here for eight years with great success. But the service for which Mrs. Drew is to be remembered by Philadelphians with pecu liar gratitude is the development of an excellent stock company out of which came such actors and actresses as Louis James, Stuart Robson, Fanny Daven port, Charlotte Thompson, Robert Craig, F. F. Mackay and Georgie Drew, af terward Mrs. Barrymore. The Arch was one of the best of schools for play ers, one of the best of theatres for the public, with an interest in the drama honestly given, and an honor to Mrs. Drew and to Philadelphia. At this period the Chestnut and Walnut Street Theatres also had companies, which at times attained to a considerable degree of excellence. While their achievements seemed unimportant, in comparison with those of the Arch, they plainly profited by the example which was set for them by its manager. 1 W. B. Wood's Personal Recollections, p. 456. 2 Autobiographical Sketch of Mrs. John Drew, p. 109. 342 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The post office in 1854 was removed from the basement of the Merchants' Exchange, where it had been for twenty years, to a large granite building which had been erected by Dr. David Jayne, the successful manufacturer of patent medicines, on Dock street below Third, back of the Jayne block which faced Chestnut street. A new Masonic Hall was dedicated with a parade in the streets and other ceremonies on September 26, 1855. This occupied the old site on Chestnut street above Seventh street, on the north side, where a building had been erected in 1809-11. It was burnt in 1819 and rebuilt the next year, but for some reason was abandoned in 1835 and put to other uses. At length it was torn down, and on November 21, 1853, the Masons laid the cornerstone of a new hall,1 which continued to be their principal building in the city until the erection of the temple on Broad street in 1873. The treatment of the insane, in this period, began to evidence some awaken ing of an enlightened sentiment. It came to be understood that men and women afflicted with this, as with other diseases, required humane and intelligent care. The outrageous manner of dealing with such patients disgraced the times. Pen ning them in dungeons and massive cells underground, chained to iron hooks; dripping water upon their heads, and putting them through other courses of suffering as a 'means of exorcising the evil spirits which were supposed to have gotten possession of them, went out of vogue, just as notions not much less ab surd were being banished from the' realm of medicine generally. Crying evils were found in the manner of supporting the insane poor. Dr. D. Hayes Agnew told of conditions at the Blockley Almshouse as lately as in 1850. He pointed to the subterranean vaults. "You have but to cross the area of this enclosed square," said he in a lecture at the Philadelphia Almshouse in 1862, "to see still the iron hooks in the floor where they [the lunatics] were tied down hands and feet, the rings in an outer wall to which they were chained like wild animals when led from their gloomy abode to enjoy for a little the pure air and sunlight of heaven. There, too, may be still seen the traces of blood, and the marks of the teeth as they have in their agony, vainly endeavored to gnaw through the doors which restrained their liberty; and not the least hor rible of this inquisitorial mechanism there still stands the 'composing chair' in which the doomed lunatic was secured, his head supporting a capacious box filled with ice, which melting, poured its chilling streams adown his person for hours together." The department was visited "for the most part by sightseers, attracted by the same motives as one who visits an exhibition of animals." It was "a burning shame on the good name of this Christian community," said Dr. Agnew, "that such a cage of idleness, uncleanness and disorder should have been tolerated a moment in their midst." 2 It was about 1850 when Dorothea L. Dix made a report of her investigations to Congress. The treatment of the insane in quarters which she visited was such as to curdle the blood. She found that in many communities — and Pennsylvania 1 Further particulars respecting this subject may be found in Thompson Westcott's History of Freemasonry. 2 Lecture on the Medical History of the Philadelphia Almshouse, Oct. 15, 1862. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 343 was no exception to the rule — the keeping of the pauper insane was let out to the lowest bidder. Poor unkempt creatures, with their limbs frozen, chained in cellars, pens and cages, wrought upon her sympathies. They were without fire or clothing ; they were scarcely fed ; fetters and ropes sank into their flesh ; their beds, like the beasts of the barn, were of straw; some were confined in the jails for lack of other place.1 In 1817 the Society of Friends established an asylum for the insane at Frank ford, like the almshouse on Walnut street below Fourth street, intended princi pally for their own people. The Pennsylvania Hospital, in its excellent buildings in Spruce street, did not neglect the insane. It had been the first hospital in the United States to receive them.2 A separate building had been erected for their occupancy, and they were given as much attention as the conditions would allow. This class of unfortunates came to press upon the capacity and resources of the institution. In 1836, therefore, a farm of one hundred and eleven acres located between the West Chester and the Haverf ord Roads, in West Philadelphia, was purchased. A handsome building was erected here, and it was opened to patients at the beginning of the year 1841. Adjoining lodges were built for the violent and noisy. The grounds were laid out attractively, and opportunities for work and play were given to all whose cases admitted of these diversions. The hospital at once came under the direction of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride who iden tified himself so closely with it and the treatment accorded the patients there, that it was and is to this day popularly called "Kirkbride's." This distinguished alienist was a native of Bucks County. He graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. For a little while he was attached to the Frankford asylum, and then passed to the new institution. It was opened with only one hundred patients, but its reputation rapidly spread, and in 1856 it was necessary to be gin the erection of a supplementary building which was devoted to the uses of male patients. This structure was completed in 1859, being placed west of the older building, facing what is now Forty-ninth street. Numbers of insane paupers found accommodations in the Blockley Alms house. In 1852 there were nearly 400 in the insane department of that institution. The Preston Retreat, a lying-in hospital, was founded by Dr. Jonas Preston, who at his death left a considerable sum of money for its establishment and maintenance. He died in 1836. A fine marble building was erected at Twentieth and Hamilton streets, but the funds were largely invested in stock of the Schuylkill Navigation Company which, during the panic in 1837, almost ceased to have value. It was leased for a long time, therefore, to another charitable organization, and it was not until May 1, 1866, that the founder's wishes could be carried out. Christ Church Hospital, founded by Dr. John Kearsley, a home for aged woman rather than a hospital in the present use of that word, at first established in Arch street and after 1818 on the south side of Cherry, west of Third street, 1 Memorial of Miss Dix, House Reports of Committees, Vol. Ill, 31st Cong., 1st sess., No. 487. See also Report of Committee of House of Representatives of Pa., quoted in Combe's Notes on the United States of America, II, pp. 18-19. 2 This was in 1752. The second was at Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1773, and the third at Frankford in 181 7. 344 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA in 1857 moved into a new building in West Philadelphia, near Forty-eighth and Cumberland streets. Through the increase in the value of its property and by additions to its endowment, it was enabled greatly to augment its usefulness. St. Joseph's Hospital (Catholic), near Girard College, was founded in 1849. The hospital of the Protestant Episcopal church, at Front street and Lehigh ave nue, was established in 1852, in the Leamy family mansion which with five and a half acres of ground was presented for the use. Work upon new buildings was begun in i860. The Academy of the Fine Arts, after its destruction by fire in 1845, erected a new building upon the same site in Chestnut above Tenth street, where the Chestnut Street Opera House now stands, and remained there until 1870. The Academy of Natural Sciences, which for a long time had occupied a hall at the northeast corner of Twelfth and George (Sansom) streets, was re moved in 1842 to the northwest corner of Broad and Sansom streets, where it remained for more than thirty years. The Athenaeum, which had long been a tenant of the American Philosophical Society's hall, removed its library to its own new building, whose erection was made possible by the bequest of William Lehman. It was placed at the corner of Sixth and Adelphi streets, facing Washington Square and was at the time accounted an ornament to the city. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, then not burdened with large col lections, had also been in the Philosophical Society's hall, and elsewhere. It now removed to the third story of the Athenaeum building, remaining there until 1872, when it found a home in the Benjamin West "Picture House" at 820 Spruce street. In 1850 the School of Design for Women was established under the patron age of the excellent Franklin Institute. It was opened at 70 Walnut street (old number). The Wagner Institute, founded by William Wagner, associated in business in his youth with Stephen Girard, found a home at Thirteenth and Spring Gar den streets in 1855, being later removed to Seventeenth street and Montgomery avenue. The institution was incorporated by the legislature to take over the large collections of Mr. Wagner, including 250,000 mineralogical specimens, 250,000 geological specimens, 200,000 shells, 25,000 species of plants, and other scientific material. At first there were twelve professorships. Public lectures and private instruction were given for nominal fees. The Spring Garden Institute, with a reading room and lecture courses, was opened in a building at the northeast corner of Broad and Spring Garden streets in 1853. Medical education came to be represented by at least four new colleges; two of which survive. In 1839 Dr. George McClellan and others founded the Pennsylvania Medical College, which after 1850 occupied a building erected for its uses in Ninth below Locust street, near the Pennsylvania Hospital. About 1847 the Philadelphia College of Medicine was founded, with a building in Fifth street, a few doors below Walnut. Both these schools numbered men of HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 345 distinction among their teachers. They were merged in 1859 under the name of the Pennsylvania Medical College, which at the outbreak of the war, was closed never to re-open its doors. In 1846 the adherents of the homeopathic system established what is now Hahnemann College; and a building was constructed in Filbert street above Eleventh. In 1849 the Female Medical College of Philadelphia, afterward called the Woman's Medical College, was established, a pioneer not only in America but in the world, it is said, in furnishing medical education to women. A building was obtained in Arch street. N. R. Mosely, Abraham Livezey, Joseph S. Long shore, and Hannah E. Longshore were among the members of the faculty. Already, in its second year, the school had forty students. The first of the dental colleges, the Philadelphia College of Dental Surgery, was chartered in 1850, and began to receive students in 1852. It soon ceased to exist as such, and in 1856 gave place to the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. In 1862 another institution for the training of dentists, the Philadel phia Dental College, was established. The number of banks in the city subsequent to 1832, when so many were chartered, underwent no material increase. After the failure of the Bank of the United States, there were fifteen banks in the city, as follows : Name When founded Capital North America 1781 $1,000,000 Pennsylvania 1793 2,500,000 Philadelphia , 1804 2,000,000 Northern Liberties 1813 500,000 Schuylkill 1814 1,000,000 Commercial 1814 1,000,000 Mechanics' 1814 1,400,000 Girard 1822 5,000,000 Farmers and Mechanics' 1824 1,250,000 Southwark 1825 250,000 Penn Township 1826 250,000 Kensington 1826 250,000 Manufacturers and Mechanics' 1832 600,000 Western 1832 500,000 Moyamensing 1832 250,000 The Schuylkill Bank made a vain struggle to survive the large defalcations of one of its trusted officers, and succumbed about 1845. The Moyamensing Bank was reorganized as the Bank of Commerce, in a building in Chestnut above Second street. The number was increased by the incorporation in 1847 of a small institution called the Tradesmen's Bank, with a capital of $150,000, whose house was at Second and Spruce streets. In the '50s others followed. In this decade the Consolidation Bank (1855) on Third near Green street, the City Bank (1855) on Sixth above Market street, the Commonwealth (1857) at 410 Chest nut street, the Union (1857) at Third and Arch streets and the Corn Exchange 346 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA (1858) at Second and Chestnut streets were established. In 1858 the number of banks in the consolidated city including the Bank of Germantown, founded in 1814, was twenty.1 The old Philadelphia Saving Fund Society had existed since 1819. The Western was founded in 1847, and several other institutions ©f this kind were in corporated before the Civil War. In the consolidated city in 1858 the principal religious denominations were represented by churches as follows : Protestant Episcopal 53 Presbyterian and Reformed Presbyterian 62 Baptist 30 Methodist Episcopal : 42 Roman Catholic 28 Lutheran 15 German Reformed 5 Society of Friends 15 Jewish 6 Negro churches (mostly Methodist) 19 In this number were included the beautiful new Catholic cathedral on Eigh teenth street above Race, which was begun in 1846 and completed a few years later. Several of the new Protestant Episcopal church buildings also increased the architectural beauty of the city; notably St. Mark's on Locust above Sixteenth street, a Gothic structure which was consecrated in 1850. In 1859 St. Clement's, at the corner of Twentieth and Cherry streets, and Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square, were opened for worship. The clergy of the city during the period included Dr. W. H. Furness, the ex cellent pastor of the Unitarian church at Tenth and Locust streets ; Albert Barnes, the well known writer and preacher, at the First Presbyterian church on Wash ington Square; Phillip Brooks, from 1859 to 1869 at the church of the Advent and at Holy Trinity; William Bacon Stevens, afterward Bishop Stevens, long the rector of St. Andrew's ; Bishop Alonzo Potter, under whose general super vision so much progress was made in the development of the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia; T. Dewitt Talmage, for a time at the Second Dutch Reformed ' church; and that spiritual Methodist leader of whom Lincoln thought so much, who came here during the war, Bishop Matthew Simpson. There were upwards of 450 lawyers in Philadelphia from 1855 to i860. Many who had earned their places at the bar in earlier years continued in active prac tice. John Bannister Gibson died in 1853 '> John Sergeant in 1852 ; Richard Rush, in 1859; and George M. Dallas, in 1864. William Rawle, the younger, died in 1858; John K. Kane, in 1858; Henry D. Gilpin, in 1859; and Charles Jared In gersoll in 1862. John Meredith Read lived until 1874, and Horace Binney until. 1875 ; the ec centric but very able David Paul Brown until 1872. For much of the time in this period, William M. Meredith was regarded as the leader of the bar in Philadel- 1 One of these, of course, the Bank of Pennsylvania, was in process of liquidation. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 347 phia. He lived until 1873. John Cadwalader became judge of the United States district court in 1858 ; he died in 1879. William Henry Rawle, son of William Rawle, Jr. (1823-1889) was in the prime of his life and for intellectual attain ments had few peers. Peter McCall, like Mr. Rawle, came of an old Philadelphia family. He was born in 1809, graduated at Princeton in 1826 and was admitted to the bar in 1831. For fifty years or until his death in 1880 he was a respected figure in the ranks of the lawyers of the city. Eli K. Price was a Chester Countian who studied law in the office of John Sergeant. His services in connection with the consolidation of the city were con spicuous. He made himself an authority in some departments of the law, and was well known at the bar for many years. The two Brewsters, half-brothers, Benjamin Harris Brewster and Frederick Carroll Brewster, sons of Francis E. Brewster, were coming forward to occupy prominent positions. George Sharswood, who studied with Joseph R. Ingersoll, being admitted to practice in 1831, was well on his way to a place of distinction as a lawyer, a legal writer, and a judge. Theodore Cuyler, son of Dr. C. C. Cuyler who had come to Philadelphia in 1834 as the pastor of the Second Presbyterian church, was a student in the office of Charles Chauncey. He became well known in corporation practice. St. George Tucker Campbell, E. Spencer Miller, George M. Wharton, Henry M. Phillips, and George W. Biddle were also numbered among the able and distinguished men practicing at the Philadelphia bar in the years preceding the Civil War. Daniel Dougherty, greatly gifted as an orator, Lewis C. Cassidy, William D. Kelley, Furman Sheppard, William B. Reed, and William B. Mann, were names known to politics almost as well as to the law. There were in Philadelphia before the war nearly six hundred physicians and surgeons (about fifty of these, adherents of the homeopathic system). Old faces were disappearing. Joseph Parrish died in 1840; George McClellan in 1847; Nathaniel Chapman in 1853; John K. Mitchell in 1858; Robert Hare in 1858; Franklin Bache and George B. Wood, who with Dr. Hewson were in 1829 ap pointed to revise the first United States Pharmacopoeia of 1820, later the for tunate partners in the issue of the United States Dispensatory, in 1864 and 1879, respectively. Dr. Samuel Jackson in 1863, when beyond seventy-five, left his chair at the University of Pennsylvania. He died in 1872. The Jefferson Medical School was being advanced to a position of really en viable strength by men like Robley Dunglison, Joseph Pancoast, Jacob Da Costa and Samuel D. Gross. Dr. Dunglison, who was born in England, was induced to come to this country in 1824 by Thomas Jefferson to take a chair in the University of Virginia. In 1836 a professorship was created for him in Jefferson College. His death occurred in Philadelphia in 1869. Dr. Pancoast was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. For thirty-six years he held the chairs of surgery and anatomy in the college. Da Costa came to Philadelphia from the Danish West Indies to study medicine, and settled in the city in 1854. He was later appointed a professor at Jefferson, of which he was a graduate. Gross, the most important figure in the group, attained the widest repute. He was a native of Easton, Pa., and became professor of surgery in the school in 1856. He held this office for more than twenty-five years. 348 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA In the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania was Joseph Leidy. He joined the faculty in 1853 at which time he had already entered upon his very distinguished career as a biologist. D. Hayes Agnew, who had graduated at the university's medical school in 1838, practiced for five years in Christiana, Pa., and then for some time engaged in the iron business in Chester County. Coming to Philadelphia in 1848 to resume the practice of medicine, he became a lecturer in Jason Valentine O'Brien Lawrance's school of anatomy. He did not attach himself to the University as a teacher until 1863 when he was forty-five years of age ; while Dr. William Pepper, to whom the medical school, and the University generally, owes so great a debt, did not enter its faculty until 1868. CHAPTER XXXI. THE CIVIL WAR. The discussion between the slavery and the anti-slavery men moved on apace. Philadelphia and its neighborhood continued to be a field on which the contest was waged very actively. The new fugitive slave law of 1850 had features of greater asperity than could well be reconciled with the spirit of compromise in which it had been born. Henry Clay, the moving power behind that series of healing measures of which it was one, said afterward that he deeply regretted some of its provisions. But he was a very old man seized with a fatal disease, and the prolongation of the session late into the summer had obliged him to seek the sea-coast before the work was finished. As it was, the law needlessly exasperated the Abolitionists. Cases which were very difficult to manage at once arose under it in all parts of the North. Negroes who could not read their titles clear, fled to Canada. Others, in affright, departed also, and the man-hunters were more vigilant than ever before. The law had desig nated a number of new officers whose business it should be to see that its provi sions were carried into effect. But the Quaker Abolitionists, in Chester County and elsewhere on the lines of the Underground Railway, were undeterred. Their black cargoes, under cover of night, were forwarded from the borders of Delaware and Maryland as faithfully as before. The commissioner for this district was Edward D. Ingraham, an eccentric Philadelphia lawyer. Already in December, 1850, a negro, Adam Gibson, was brought before him to satisfy a claim of a citizen of Maryland named Knight. The man was defended by David Paul Brown and William S. Pierce, but their pleas were of no avail. Ingraham said that he was a slave, and he was bundled off to the southern railway station surrounded by police. Mr. Knight was honest enough not to receive him, saying that the negro was not and never had been his property, so amid Abolitionist ridicule he was brought back to Philadelphia. As Clay soon took occasion to say, the law had been "more than executed in Phila delphia." Zeal in the business of making it agreeable for the South had carried at least one of the commissioners to extraordinary lengths. For the next two or three years, a large number of cases came before Mr. Ingraham, who quite uniformly decided them adversely to the negroes. He was a superserviceabk advocate of the southern interest, and by his administration of the law drove the Abolitionists to still more determined efforts to circumvent its provisions. William H. Furness denounced it as "a fountain of deadly poison, blinding our understandings, hardening our hearts, searing our consciences." 349 350 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA There were scores of brave strong souls, many within the Quaker meeting and not a few without, who in spite of constables and commissioners were ready to obey Whittier's stirring command — "Stand in thy place and testify To coming ages long, — That truth is stronger than a lie, And righteousness than wrong." The most noticeable case arising under the law within the confines of Penn sylvania, came to the attention of the officers in September, 1851. A Marylander named Gorsuch and his son followed one of the Underground Railway lines up to Christiana in Lancaster County. There they found some of their slaves who were being concealed by free negroes. What was near a riot ensued. Two Quakers, Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis, interfered and were thereby held to be implicated in the case ; as they likely were, without regret to themselves, in a rather active way. The United States marshal, with some deputies and a squad of marines, were at once despatched to the scene of the disturbance, and the two Quakers with thirty or forty negroes were brought down and lodged in Moyamensing, to await their trial in the United States district court. The judge at this time was John K. Kane, the father of Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic ex plorer; which did not prevent another of his sons, Thomas L. Kane, from ten dering the prisoners a "Thanksgiving dinner" while the cases were pending. This action was very much criticised, as were all the efforts of the Abolitionists to break the force of the imprisonment of the men, by canonizing them and call ing out public sympathy in their behalf. Castner Hanway came to trial first, on November 24, 1851, the proceedings covering nearly a month. An imposing array of counsel appeared on both sides. Chief among the prosecutors was the United States district attorney for the east ern district of Pennsylvania, John W. Ashmead. On the other side were John Meredith Read, Thaddeus Stevens of Lancaster, Joseph J. Lewis of West Ches ter, and Theodore Cuyler; the ablest advocates whom the Abolitionists could produce. When the case reached the jury, they were not ten minutes in bring ing in a verdict of acquittal. One of the negroes, Samuel Williams, next came up for trial.1 In his defense David Paul Brown, William S. Pierce and Robert P. Kane — another son of Judge Kane — appeared. This prisoner was also acquitted. The rest were discharged from custody. Thus ended this notorious effort to read a lesson to the Abolitionists. In 1855 arose a case which lost rather than made friends for the cause of freedom. John H. Wheeler, of North Carolina, had been appointed United States minister to Nicaragua. He wished to embark at New York for his post of duty, and came to Philadelphia with a slave woman and her two sons who were to accompany him as servants. He met with no interference until he boarded a New York steamboat at the wharf on the Delaware. Then Pass- more Williamson, a young lawyer in the employ of several Abolitionists, stepped up and told the woman that she stood on free soil ; she and her boys had only to follow him; which, after some hesitation, they did. They were placed in a car- 1 On Jan. 12, 1852. CONTINENTAL HOTEL SOON AFTER IT WAS OPENED (ABOUT 1861) PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL, PINE STREET FRONT, 1852 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 351 riage and driven away. Mr. Wheeler interrupted his journey and put the case into the hands of Judge Kane, who denounced it as "a criminal, wanton and cruel outrage." He held that a slave owner had a perfect right to pass through Penn sylvania, or any other non-slaveholding state, with his slaves, without hazarding his property rights in them. Williamson was sent to prison on July 27, 1855, for contempt of court when he failed to produce the slaves, and remained there until November. Several others who were on the boat when the negress left her master, William Still, a colored anti-slavery leader of the city among them, were arrested and tried in the county court, but very little came of the proceed ings. All the while, bitterness was being increased. What before had been mainly a question of morals for a few, was becoming a political issue for many men. The presidential campaign of 1856 disclosed important divisions in the ranks of the old parties, — the virtual destruction of the Whig organization, and the birth of the new Republican party. Its first national convention, as has been said, was held in Philadelphia on June 16, 1856, in Musical Fund Hall. The party's state convention had met in the city on the previous day. The delegates were not drawn from the ranks of the old and distinguished families of Phil adelphia. Henry C. Carey's name was by far the best known. Several there were whose names were recognized at the time as anti-slavery pioneers; other wise, fame had dealt with them sparingly. John C. Fremont, the impulsive young explorer of the west, son-in-law of Thomas H. Benton, was nominated for president, and William L. Dayton of New Jersey for vice-president. The lat- ter's principal rival was Abraham Lincoln, whose name was urged by delegates from Illinois. The Republicans were yet so few that if they had not united their forces with the Native Americans, who had nominated Millard Fillmore for presi dent in Philadelphia on Washington's Birthday, they would have been quite lost to view. The Democrats of Pennsylvania were made very active and enthusiastic by the nomination of the state' s_ "favorite son," James Buchanan. They found an aggressive leader in John W. Forney.' He was a country editor and politician. For some time he had been the publisher of the Lancaster Intelligencer. Having been appointed to a small federal office in Philadelphia by President Polk in re turn for his services to the Democratic party in the state, he came down to the city in 1845. Here he purchased an interest in the P ennsylvanian, a paper with which James Gordon Bennett, Joseph C. Neal and others had been earlier iden tified. It took a radical part in every political controversy. No such active personal journalism on the Democratic side had been seen since the days of Duane and of John Binns. Forney played a role at this time which it will be found very difficult to reconcile with his fervid service in an opposite interest at a later day. In 185 1 he became clerk of the House of Representatives at Wash ington, and edited a Democratic newspaper at the capital. In 1856 he returned to Philadelphia and became chairman of the Democratic state committee. Forney and the P ennsylvanian were in the front of the fray. In the local field, Lewis C. Cassidy, well known as a criminal lawyer was the principal pillar of the Democracy. He was the "ruler of his party for many years" in Phila- 352 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA delphia.1 In this campaign he was the Democratic candidate for district at torney. No such political canvass had been seen since 1840 and 1844. Speakers from all parts of the Union came into the state to aid in carrying it for Buchanan. Howell Cobb and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia, John Floyd of Virginia, James B. Clay of Kentucky, a son of Henry Clay who had abandoned the faith of his father, and many more, appeared in the city. Buchanan himself visited it and spoke. Marching clubs were formed. The 17th of September, the sixty- ¦ninth anniversary of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, was made the occa sion for a great Democratic demonstration. It is said that 10,000 men partici pated in a torchlight parade on the night of that day. The Republicans brought forward such speakers as Jacob Collamer of Ver mont, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, N. P. Banks and Anson Burlingame of Mas sachusetts and other men of whom much was soon to be heard. The local leader on this side was William B. Mann, of whom A. K. McClure said a few years ago that "no man ever exercised more absolute power in the Republican party in the city." 2 Many old-line Whigs were unable to vote for Fremont, whom they regarded as a mere western adventurer; nor were they willing to endorse the Republican party's position on the slavery question. One of these was William B. Reed, who had been quite influential as a local leader. He gave his support to Buchanan and brought others with him, a service which caused him to be en trusted with a mission to China. From this time on, Reed rapidly fell in the good opinion of Philadelphians. During the war he became one of the most obnoxious of Copperheads, and passed to New York. "He could not bow to the mastery of others," says McClure, "and his impetuous temperament led him into the most ostentatious and violent hostility to the government until no man could trust him with a case in court, with all his ability at the bar, and social recognition of old- time friends was denied him." 3 The October election was close, but the Democrats carried the state by a ma jority of about 3,000, and it was seen that Pennsylvania could be kept from giv ing its vote to Buchanan only with great difficulty. The Democratic majority in the city in October was about 3,000; in November it was over 6,000 (38,222 for Buchanan, and 31,976 for the combined opposition tickets). Buchanan's ma jority over Fremont and Fillmore in the state, however, was less than 1,000. Forney, for his services to the party, deserved political advancement, but this was to be denied him. It was understood that he was to be made United States senator to succeed Richard Brodhead, whose term would expire in 1857, but the parties were so evenly balanced, and the factions to be brought into ac cord were so numerous, that the plan failed. On the other side was Simon Cameron, who himself in early life had been a country editor. He had acquired a considerable fortune. He had once before had a seat in the Senate ; and, while earlier a Democrat, had now come to favor different principles. The votes of two members from York County and one from Schuylkill County were in doubt. These three men refused to support the Democratic caucus nominee. It was freely charged that they had been purchased 1 McClure's Old-Time Notes, Vol. I, p. 295. 2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 294. 3 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 220. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 353 by the corrupt agents of Cameron. At any rate, they voted for him, and Cam eron was sent to the Senate to occupy the place which Forney so nearly gained. The three "traitors," as they came to be called, were publicly execrated in mass meetings. For years they were not received in the hotels of Harrisburg. Demo crats in Philadelphia long jeered their three odd names : Maneer, Lebo and Wagenseller. Forney now founded the Philadelphia Press. Without funds, he relied almost entirely on his own personality for the success of the paper. He purchased the type on credit and, unable to afford machinery, the printing was done in the office of the Sunday Dispatch. The first number, a four-page folio, appeared on August i, 1857. The Press was intended to serve Democratic interests, and this it did for a while with great vigor. But Forney was a Douglas man, who believed in treating the slavery question according to the principles of popular sovereignty, and when Buchanan stated it to be his intention to impose the Lecompton con stitution upon the people of Kansas in 1858, the editor showed signs of changing his allegiance. The Democratic subscribers of the paper did not know what to make of their old leader. Most of them concluded that he was directing another personal fight, and that he would soon be brought to terms by Buchanan by the tender of a lucrative office. When his attitude at length appeared to have under gone a distinct change, beyond a chance of return, many "stopped the paper." Postmasters returned it in quantities to the office. The editor received abusive letters, but he continued on his way, and soon brought himself and the Press over to the Republican party. He gained as much in the good opinion of those who loved a fearless man as he had lost in the opinion of his old associates. But a worse experience for the Democrats than any which had gone before, was the defeat of Vaux and the election of- Alexander Henry to the mayoralty in the spring of 1858. The provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law still led to frequent clashes between the southern owners and the Abolitionists. A negro, Daniel Dangerfield by name, was claimed in Virginia; and in April, 1859, he was brought before the United States commissioner who was now J. Cooke Longstreth. His counsel included such well known anti-slavery lawyers as George H. Earle, Edward Hopper and William S. Peirce. Benjamin Harris Brewster was retained by the Virginians. The trial occupied two full days and was continued into the night, with Lucre tia Mott and other Abolitionists watching the case. She and her friends re mained in the room for fourteen hours continuously. Mr. Peirce concluded his speech just as the sun was rising, and was followed by Mr. Brewster. In the afternoon, the commissioner announced, to the great delight of the Abolitionists, that the identity of the prisoner had not been established, whereupon they placed the man in a carriage and drove him through the streets. On March 27, i860, the excitement was renewed. Judge Cadwalader re manded Moses Horner, declared to be a runaway slave, to his southern owners. On his way to prison, a negro mob undertook to effect the man's rescue, and the police were barely able to drive the carriage in which they had placed him. Mr. Brewster again represented the complainants in this case. In the course of his plea, making bids for further clients of this class, he took occasion to say that "the institution of domestic servitude is a great political necessity, — politically Vol. n— 23 354 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA right, socially right and morally right," — a sentiment which would need revision ' sooner than he knew. ' The spark which exploded the magazine was, undoubtedly, as we clearly see today, the John Brown raid. The immediate effect was a revulsion of feeling in the north as well as in the south, and the impression that an unforgivable blow had been dealt the nation by the Abolitionists. Now, as earlier for some time, they had found a meeting place in National Hall, situated in Market below Thirteenth street. On December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. In Phil adelphia on that day in National Hall, the Motts, Mary Grew, Robert Purvis and other leaders held a meeting. The speakers narrowly escaped violence. Robert Purvis went so far as to say that in future years John Brown would be looked upon "as the Jesus Christ of the nineteenth century." When this state ment was made, the police were obliged to interfere in the interest of order; as they were two days later when Brown's body arrived at Broad aiid Prime streets on the way to its place of burial. Crowds entirely unsympathetic, except for a few Abolitionists and negroes, assembled to receive it. To prevent a possible outbreak, a box made to resemble a coffin was first brought out. This claimed the attention of the mob, and the opportunity for hurrying the body to the New York ferry at Walnut street wharf was then embraced. At this time there were fewer than ever to speak out for abolition. Even the Public Ledger called the leaders "fanatics" and "incendiaries." Fomenting slave insurrections and disturbing the domestic order of the south by armed invasion on the John Brown plan seemed to nearly all men too monstrous a thing to be spoken of with patience. The trade of the city with the south at this time was important and val uable. The financial and commercial supremacy of Philadelphia had been lost to New York. What of glory remained was to be guarded jealously, and the mer chants had no intention of surrendering their southern customers for the sake of a few opinions on the slavery question. Moreover, the city for many years had drawn large numbers of medical students from the south, and they were a source of wealth. Already their number had begun to diminish. These narrow and selfish interests, if we choose to call them so, actuated many, and they were now for the moment wholly in the ascendant. Men crowded one another in the effort to make their neighbors and their business friends understand, that they were quite without wish to disturb the southern people in the possession and management of their slaves. A "town meeting" was called for December 7, 1859, five days after Brown was hung, in support of "the Union and the Constitu tion." It assembled in Jayne's Hall. Joseph R. Ingersoll presided and there was a distinguished array of vice presidents and secretaries. Addresses were delivered by Mr. Ingersoll, Josiah Randall, Eli K. Price, Robert Tyler, Charles J. Ingersoll, Richard Vaux, Benjamin Harris Brewster, John C. Bullitt, James Page and others. About 20,000 people are said to have been pressed into Chest nut street near the hall and in and around Jones's Hotel where an "overflow" meeting was held. In the resolutions it was declared that "the citizens of Phila delphia disavow, as they have always done, any right or wish to interfere with the domestic institutions of their sister states." Efforts to excite servile insur rection were reprobated "in the strongest and clearest terms." There were INDEPENDENCE ROOM IN INDEPENDENCE HALL IN 1S60 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 355 "deafening groans" at the mention of the names of Wendell Phillips and J. R. Giddings, and cries of "Hang them all"— "String them up beside old John Brown." The North American said that the "ravings of a few half-insane fana tics" could in the light of this "stupendous ^demonstration" never again be mis taken as the sentiment of Pennsylvania.1 The impulse to a revulsion of sentiment on the subject of John Brown soon passed and the conviction began to settle upon the country that he had struck the first blow of a necessary war. He had done it awkwardly, but more would follow, as the young Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote, prophetically, at the time : "Old Brown, Ossawatomie Brown, May trouble you more than ever when you nail his coffin down." And so he did, a view which was a little later expressed in the most popular of war melodies : "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on." But first there would be a presidential election. What would follow would depend upon the quadrennial verdict of the people in i860. The Democrats set the date of their convention early, on April 23 in Charleston, in the capital of secession and slavery. The delegates from Pennsylvania, led by Lewis C. Cas sidy, well provided with whiskey, wine, beer and other liquors which might be needed on the way, made the journey by boat. A crowd assembled at the wharf to see them off, shouting for Stephen A. Douglas. But the "Little Giant's" friends could not nominate him. The convention broke up in confusion, agreeing to re assemble in June in Baltimore. On May 9 in that city the remnants of the old Whig and American parties nominated John Bell of Tennessee, on what they were pleased to call a Constitutional Union ticket. He was staying in Philadelphia at the time, at the La Pierre House, and when the news of his nomination was re ceived on the night of May 11, his admirers assembled in front of the hotel with a band of music to tender him a "serenade." The Republicans met at Chicago on May 16. While Lincoln was little known in Pennsylvania, it was with the aid of this state that his nomination was effected. When the delegates, or the bulk of them, had voted for Simon Cameron, accord ing to party direction, until they had satisfied the requirements of the case, they turned in strength to Lincoln, and when Seward did not win the prize Pennsyl vania was in no such disappointed frame of mind as was New York. On May 26 a Republican ratification meeting was held in Independence Square, on which occasion speeches were made by Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, John Sherman of Ohio, Galusha A. Grow of Pennsylvania, and others. On June 18 the Democrats re-assembled in Baltimore. The party divided into its northern and southern wings, one nominating Douglas and the other John C. 1 Issue of Dec. 8, 1859. 356 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Breckinridge of Kentucky. The issue was now joined, and a campaign without earlier or later counterpart in the city was begun. The first task was to elect a governor of the state in October. The Cameron element, which had reached a predominating position in the party, had met successful resistance under the leadership of Andrew G. Curtin and Alexander K. McClure; both, like Cameron himself, products of the Irish frontier. Curtin was bom in 1815 in Centre County. He was a Whig lawyer who had performed some poetical service, and in i860 was ready to be nominated for governor of the state as a candidate of the People's Party — Republicans and their allies not yet quite resolved to carry the radical name. McClure was a country editor in Chambersburg, who had later come to the bar. He too had Whig antecedents. He had been a delegate to the Chicago con vention, and was no friend of Cameron — the two men never spoke to each other except under grave necessity — and he made himself an influence at the first op portunity to turn the Pennsylvanians to Lincoln. As yet less famous than Thur- low Weed of New York, he was a man of the same omniscient type on any ques tion of practical management in politics. He was made chairman of the state committee, and came down to Philadelphia to direct the campaign for Curtin for governor in October, and for Lincoln for president in November. That he met with many difficulties, his recollections of the period very well attest. Again, as after the John Brown raid, sentiment on the subject of slavery seemed to recoil. The thought of Lincoln's election and the threatened disruption of the Union, which that event was seen to portend, awakened real alarm. So disturbed by the prospect were the business men of the city that McClure was unable to find a building on Chestnut street, from Third to Ninth streets, to which to attach a rope to hold a Lincoln and Curtin flag. Through the favor of David Jayne, he at length obtained quarters for the state committee, in the new Commonwealth Building, still standing on the north side of Chestnut street above Sixth street. The owners opposite would not accede to a request that a rope be thrown over to them. Finally, a tax commissioner of the city who one day came into McClure's office, said that he could bring about the desired result. He at once raised the assessment on these properties, and then sent out agents to negotiate with the owners on the subject of the rope. It was soon in place, and a handsome banner announcing the candidacy of Lincoln commanded Chestnut street.1 Large numbers of Republican marching clubs appeared under the general name of "Wide Awakes." There were also Douglas, Bell and Breckinridge clubs. They paraded frequently in connection with political meetings in an effort to arouse public enthusiasm, for their favorite candidates. As the campaign ad vanced great bitterness came into it. Many of the clubs fell to fighting when they met in the streets. The Democrats stoned the "Black Republicans," which led to response in kind — clashes which were, as it proved, but preludes of much worse to come. In the October election, Curtin was given a majority of more than 30,000 in the state. The next step was easily taken. In November Lincoln polled 39,223 1 McClure's Old-Time Notes of Pennsylvania, II, p. 413. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 357 votes in the city, a majority of over 2,000 (Bell had but 7,131 and Douglas and Breckinridge together 30,053), while the plurality in the state was about 90,ooo.1 Again the people were frightened as they pondered, and on December 13, i860, a great meeting was called in Independence Square by Mayor Henry at the re quest of councils, which feared that there was "serious peril of the dissolution of the union of these states, under whose protection we have grown to be a great and prosperous nation." This meeting would be convened, therefore, "to counsel to gether to avert the danger which threatens our country." Perhaps 50,000 people attended. Distinguished citizens served as vice-presidents and secretaries. May or Henry occupied the chair; Bishop Potter prayed; Joseph R. Ingersoll, Theo dore Cuyler, Supreme Court Justice George W. Woodward and others spoke in recommendation of compromise. John B. Myers read the resolutions, which pro posed a searching of the statute books of the state for, and the repeal of "every statute" which "in the slightest degree" invaded "the constitutional rights of citizens of a sister state ;" a new law awarding damages out of county funds to the owner who shall discover his slave in that county ; a cheerful submission to the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott and other cases ; a frowning upon "all denunciations of slavery" since they were "inconsistent with the spirit of brotherhood and kindness." The new Continental Hotel at Ninth and Chestnut streets was now the pride of the city. Its architect was John McArthur, Jr., and it was opened on February 16, i860. It was the largest hotel in the United States, its principal rivals being the Revere in Boston and the Fifth Avenue in New York. It was recommended as a house affording "every essential comfort in the highest perfection," while food of every variety was "served at all hours within the twenty- four except an interval at night of six hours." It was so large a hotel that its failure was proph esied. To the Continental all prominent visitors came. Thither they were es corted ; there they were visited and serenaded. Among its earliest guests were the members of the first Japanese embassy, who attracted great attention upon their arrival in the city on June, i860. It is be lieved that a half million people crowded the streets to see the odd visitors from the east. Mayor Henry and other city officials to the number of several score, and two thousand cavalry and infantry led by General Patterson, repaired to the Baltimore Depot to meet the train, the engine of which was wrapped in the Jap anese and United States flags. The guests were escorted to the hotel. During their sojourn of a week they were the "rage" of the town. They visited Girard College, the mint, the gas works, the water works and many of the city's leading industrial establishments. They departed loaded down with saws, hatchets, a sew ing machine, false teeth and many other "samples of American originality, skill and enterprise." 2 In October the Prince of Wales, afterward King Edward VII of England, came to the city. He also was lodged at the Continental. The dis tinguished and the would-be-distinguished alike stayed here, to the great disad vantage of the keepers of the older hotels. 1 The vote in Pennsylvania for Lincoln was 268,030; for Breckinridge and a fusion ticket, 178,871; for Douglas, 16,785; for Bell, 12,776. 2 Patterson Dubois, The Great Japanese Embassy of i860. 358 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The front of the building now exhibited a motto, "Concession before Seces sion." This was the spirit actuating all but a few. The entire city exhibited flags. They appeared on stores, dwelling houses, horses attached to the street-cars. All spoke for union at any fair price. The secession convention was meeting in South Carolina, and news of what Philadelphia had done was immediately sent to Charleston. George William Curtis was a popular lecturer. He had come to National Hall in 1859, and with the aid of a force of several hundred policemen, although brick bats and bottles of oil of vitriol were thrown through the windows, he had been able to make his address. This year, however, at Concert Hall on the evening of December 13, when he was to speak upon "The Policy of Honesty" before a literary society, Mayor Henry recommended the owner to cancel the engage ment, which he accordingly did.1 All this truculent surrendering of principle in Philadelphia had little enough influence on the hot-headed people of South Caro lina. A week after the great meeting in Independence Square they voted the state out of the Union, and the long-threatened rupture was begun. The course of events was followed with the greatest interest. The situation of Major Anderson at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor awakened the deepest anxiety, and the desire to conciliate the southern people was disappearing. In its place came a determination to resist all attempts to dismember the Union, which increased steadily as the true nature of the plan was unfolded. Many meetings were held for many purposes, but they in general evidenced a more vigorous tone. In the board of trade rooms at 505 Chestnut street, on January 3, 1861, in re sponse to a call signed- by Henry C. Carey, Morton McMichael, C. G. Childs, William D. Lewis, Daniel Dougherty, Ellis Lewis, Lewis C. Cassidy, Charles Gil pin and others, a considerable number of prominent citizens assembled to discuss the situation. Many ideas were advanced, but the spirit of the meeting was that resistance to federal laws was treason. The next day, January 4, was a fast day appointed by President Buchanan, and it was generally observed in Philadelphia. Churches were opened and stores were closed; some prayed, and some fired salutes. The following day, Saturday, January 5, National Hall was crowded. Thousands had come, many of them unable to enter the building, to pledge their support to Major Anderson in a post constantly becoming less tenable. John W. Forney read an imposing list of officers. William D. Lewis presided. The aged Commodore Charles Stewart, usually called "Old Ironsides," the hero of the "Constitution," headed the list of vice-presidents. Thus the days passed, not without some utterances by little groups of "anti- coercionists," as they desired to be called, as well as by those who advocated the suppression of all evidences of disloyalty with a strong hand, until Lincoln came to the city on February 21. A committee of councils had been sent west, to ask the president-elect to visit Philadelphia on his way to the national capital to be inaugurated, and they accomplished the object of their journey. He came from Trenton where he had addressed both houses of the New Jersey legislature. He arrived at the Kensington Depot in the afternoon, and was met by a considerable number of mounted police in command of Chief Ruggles, and a numerous body of 'Jenkins, p. 515. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 359 public officials and citizens. Lincoln was placed in a barouche drawn by four white horses, and a cavalcade was formed to escort him through the decorated city to the quarters which had been reserved for him at the Continental Hotel. The procession traversed a circuitous route; and the way was at places densely crowded. The distinguished guest was loudly cheered as his carriage passed along. Now and then he rose from his seat and bowed in the awkward way which characterized him. Flowers were thrown into the barouche. It was with great difficulty that he could enter the hotel, where a band played in the balcony and a host had assembled to see Mayor Henry welcome the president-elect. This ceremony ended, Lincoln was enabled to retire to his apartments, which he did not leave again until evening, when he appeared for a while at the head of the stairway in order that the crowd might have the satisfaction of a view of his face. Outside, in Chestnut street, an arch bore the words, in letters of fire, "ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE WHOLE UNION." The next day was the anniversary of the day of Washington's birth. The president-soon-to-be was awakened at sunrise by the firing of the national salute. At seven o'clock a committee of councils waited upon him, escorting him to In dependence Hall where he was to raise an American flag. The town was gener ally adorned with red, white and blue emblems, and there were everywhere evi dences of the people's patriotism. A platform had been set up on Chestnut street in front of the State House, and to this place, after he had been formally received in the hall and had been shown its collections, he was taken. Loud cheering greeted his appearance. The Scott Legion formed a guard around the stand. Lincoln, at the proper time, made a brief address ; then drew upon the rope and the flag which, until it reached the top of the staff, had been rolled in a ball, was unfurled amid the strains of "The Star Spangled Banner." It was a flag of thirty-four stars, a new one having just been added in honor of the admission of Kansas. Lincoln must now soon continue his journey. Returning to the hotel, he was ready at 8 :30 a. m. to enter a barouche to be driven to West Philadelphia to board the train which left an hour later for Harrisburg. The movement was known to few, but late that night he suddenly returned to the city. News came to his friends of a plot against his life in Baltimore; and instead of proceeding thither directly, according to the published plan, upon the advice of the Pinkerton detec tives he, in company with Ward Lamon, his Illinois friend of gigantic frame who was to be his faithful body-guard throughout the war, boarded a sleeping coach on the night of the 22d at Broad and Prime streets. They reached Washington before daylight the next morning, while all but the president's closest friends still believed that he had not yet passed through Baltimore, and were soon safely quartered in Willard's Hotel. The inauguration came ; the south continued on its rash course in spite of the efforts which were made to apply a last remedy and restore the sections to some basis of harmony. The attitude of the north was one of waiting until Lincoln developed his policy concerning Fort Sumter, and the fate of the garrison was known. When it was fired upon by the South Carolinians on April 12, men 360 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA began to understand that the issue which had long been feared was at last at hand. The telegraph now bore the news from place to place, and the long delays in receiving it which had marked the country's earlier wars would not be known in this one. The people of Philadelphia were informed of the event in Char leston bay on the evening of the same day, but as it was late in coming In the tidings reached most people in their morning newspapers on April 13. The signal had been given. The president called for 75,000 men for three months, and convened Congress in extra session. His measures were loyally seconded in the state by Governor Curtin who had taken office at Harrisburg in December, i860, and in the city by Mayor Henry, lately entered upon his second term. The legislature passed a bill appropriating $500,000 for war pur poses, and Major General Robert Patterson issued orders for the enlistment of, the troops. Eight regiments were made up during April and May in Phila delphia. The city now began to take on the appearance of a great armed camp, a character which it was destined to retain for more than four years, though no one yet had the slightest knowledge of the gravity and duration of the impend ing struggle. The men who enlisted believed that their trip into the south would be a frolic. There was as much contempt for the southern fighting man as he in turn expressed, when he boasted that he could whip two or three times his weight in Yankees and would therefore soon have an independence which he was glad to liken to that proclaimed by his ancestors in Philadelphia in 1776. That the war would be lengthy or serious, no person whose sentiments were loyal to the north allowed himself to believe. Indeed, it was often a test of loyalty to suppress the conclusions of a temperate judgment, and to declare that the victory would soon be won. In all of this, was there to be disappointment again and again. The streets became the scene of many animated gatherings, and careful watch was begun for evidences of sympathy for the secessionists. Those who expressed favor for the south, in the execution of its design to disrupt the union, were made to feel the force of popular disapproval. As early as on March 26, 1861, a southern flag was seen at a pole in front of the Jolly Post tavern in Frankford. A crowd assembled and tore it down. On April 15 the office of a secessionist newspaper called The Palmetto Flag, at 337 Chestnut street, was surrounded by a mob. Several men attempted to mount the stairway. Only the sight of Mayor Henry at one of the upper story windows, waving the stars and stripes, availed to restrain the people. They still refused to disperse until the pub lishers promised to print no more numbers of the paper, and a large American flag was unfurled from the building. The stars and stripes became more than ever dear to the people. The flag was the badge of national devotion and loyalty, and the man who would not hang it out fared badly, just as his ancestor had suffered reproach, during the Revolu tion, when he would not place candles in his windows at the request of the mob. Francis S. Key's old song, "The Star Spangled Banner," written in 1814 during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, suddenly gained a popularity which it had never had before; and public buildings, shops, hotels and private dwelling houses were soon decked in the stars and stripes, to carry them constantly until the end of the war. Manufacturers who were suspected of furnishing war material to JAY COOKE From a photograph by Mary Carnell HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 361 the south were visited and their premises were searched. Such articles, found at the boat landings and railway stations, as well as flour and provisions intended for the south, were seized. To any friend of secession, Philadelphia was a far from pleasant home, and he might well have left it now, as many did, without more ado. The enlistment of volunteers proceeded actively. The streets were filled with marching men who came to join the local regiments, and by commands from the north and east which were transhipped here on their way to Washington. The sound of the fife and drum was heard everywhere. The public squares and the floors of the armory buildings were full of soldiers who were receiving their first lessons from the drill-masters. Learning the business of war occupied the atten tion of the recruits. Everywhere, young fellows could be seen shooting at tar gets. On the outskirts of the city, the men were assembled in tents in camps, awaiting orders which would carry them to the front. To provide uniforms for so many in so short a time was no simple under taking. Sewing women were employed, and thousands of ladies, many of them drawn from the city's most fashionable families, proffered their services gratu itously. The Girard House at the time was without a tenant, finding competition with the new Continental Hotel across the street very difficult, and the women occupied its rooms. The Schuylkill Arsenal, on the Gray's Ferry Road, was de voted to a similar use. Other women sewed in their own homes. Flannel gar ments, socks, handkerchiefs, lint, many things that were valuable and others that were quite useless, were prepared for the departing troops. The wagon-makers, the cloth manufacturers, the gun and powder manufacturers and many other in dustries were soon busily turning out military supplies. The preachers were blessing regimental colors. Women, weeping, saw the recruits to the railway stations, and they began that notable philanthropy which made Philadelphia famous till the end of the war — the furnishing of refreshments to the soldiers as they passed through the city on the way to the field. In order to save the men from a march in the streets, a depot was established at the foot of Washington street. They were landed there from the New York boats, and taken up to Broad and Prime streets and on directly to the south. At first the women seemed to act individually, without organization, giving the soldiers coffee, sandwiches, etc. When troops were expected, guns were fired; the number of shots indicating the hour of arrival. This charity on the part of a few ladies led to the establishment of the two great refreshment sa loons — the Union Volunteer, at the corner of Delaware and Washington avenues, and the Cooper Shop on Otsego street near Washington avenue. Both were opened as early as in May, 1861, and began a rivalry in a good work, which hun dreds of thousands of soldiers had reason to remember gratefully before the war had come to an end. All the Pennsylvania troops were put under the command of Major-General Patterson, while the Philadelphia brigades stood under the immediate direction of General Cadwalader. Patterson was now a man nearly seventy years of age. He was a native of County Tyrone, Ireland, and belonged to that generation of military men which boasted of General Scott, under whose superintendency the first battles were to be fought. He had served in the War of 1812, and again in 362 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the Mexican War. His position for many years at the head of the state militia marked him as a soldier of eminence. Aside from this, he was a successful busi ness man. A wholesale grocer, a cotton merchant and then an extensive cotton manufacturer, with mills in Delaware County and at Manayunk, he amassed a considerable fortune. For 47 years he resided at Thirteenth and Locust streets in the house which was subsequently long used by the Historical Society of Penn sylvania. In politics he was a Democrat, and bringing him forward at this time destroyed the illusion, if it had lodgment in any mind, that this was to be a Repub lican war. If the issue were to be favorable to the north, as Lincoln in his shrewd and calculating way quite well understood, it must be no war of party, of anti-slavery upon slavery, of the white man for the negro, but a war of all lovers of the Union for the preservation of the Union. With this and other good ends in view, General Patterson's appointment to the place at the head of the state's troops, was soon supplemented by a federal appointment to the command of the military department of the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. On June 15, 1861, he and his men crossed the Potomac into Virginia. Grim evidences of the conflict soon began to present themselves to Philadelphians. At three o'clock on the morning of April 19, a week after Sumter was fired upon, the Sixth Massachusetts regiment and several companies of Philadelphia troops left the Broad and Prime street station for Washington. In all, there were about 1,800 men. The Massachusetts regiment was uniformed and well-armed. It reached Baltimore first. It was necessary for the soldiers to march through the city from one depot to another, and their passage was obstructed by a mob. In the melee, four of them were killed and thirty or forty wounded. The soldiers, returning the fire, killed a number of citizens. They finally reached their train and passed on south. The Philadelphia troops were not well accoutred ; many of them were without arms of any kind. They were stoned in the railway cars ; and the chief of police, to avoid further disorder, urged their return to Philadelphia, where they arrived late in the evening of the same day, April 19. This outrage greatly incensed the people. Councils passed ordinances ap propriating money for the "Home Guards," and for other military purposes. It was feared that Philadelphia might be attacked if the secessionists had such strength in a city so near its doors. A considerable number of Unionists left Baltimore after the riot, and came north. Several of the refugees addressed a crowd in front of the Continental Hotel, in a patriotic strain. Meetings were called to devise means of relieving the immediate wants of the families which had taken shelter in Philadelphia. On April 25 the Buena Vista Guards, one of the city companies which had been attacked in Baltimore, presented to councils a 'rebel" flag captured in the riot. The northern soldiers were now sent around Baltimore, and the greatest ac tivity was shown in the movement. Washington was virtually besieged. The capital might be cut off from the rest of the Union before the volunteers whom Lincoln had called for could reach the scene. The troops were taken to Havre de Grace and then sent to Annapolis in the hope that they could better get into Washington over that route. Some went down the river in boats, seeking a way across the eastern shore. The Eighth Massachusetts and the Seventh New York which came into Philadelphia on the 19th and 20th of April immediately after the HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 363 riots, went on at once over the new lines of travel and succeeded in reaching the capital on the 25th, amid universal rejoicing on the part of all loyal people. Matthias W. Baldwin's firm built a car of boiler iron fitted up with port-holes. A cannon inside, set on a pivot, commanded the surrounding country. It was, in truth, a mounted battery to be carried along in front of a locomotive and was im mediately put into service on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Rail road. Armed men were stationed on the line of this road. A fleet of vessels was gathered in Chesapeake Bay to carry troops to Annapolis ; the railroad south from that point was in possession of the government, as the Baltimore line soon would be also. The north again breathed more easily. A month later the excitement was renewed because of the shooting of young Ellsworth, the leader of the Zouaves, who had visited the city and attracted much attention by reason of their novel but wholly impracticable uniforms in the previous year. He had gone out to remove a southern flag on a tavern in Alex andria, which President Lincoln could see from the White House windows. He was shot and killed in the effort. His remains came to Philadelphia on the eve ning of May 25th. The body was carried through the city from the Baltimore to the Kensington Depot. Every head was uncovered as the cortege passed along. The early victims of the war seemed very precious to the people; one now was mourned as thousands were not as the war advanced, and its grim sacrifices were multiplied. On June 12 the remains of Lieutenant Greble of Philadelphia, who was killed in the action at Big Bethel, reached the city. He was treated to a funeral in In dependence Hall, and had as an escort a number of militia companies. Major- generals were soon to be buried with far less ceremony. Hospitals were being opened for the wounded of the war; women were volunteering their services as nurses ; young men came forward as surgeons. In this field was begun an activity which would not cease for four years. The war also had its living heroes, and the quality of their service was not too narrowly considered. Major Anderson of Fort Sumter arrived in the city quietly on May 3, en route to Washington. A week later, on May 10, he came again, this time with Mrs. Lincoln who was on her way to Boston. The mayor and councils embraced the occasion to give him a reception in Independence Hall. Hd passed through the streets as Lincoln had done in February, in an open barouche drawn by four white steeds, amid loud popular cheering. He was accorded an impressive military escort, and councils voted him a sword with amethysts and diamonds set in the handle. The scabbard was of solid silver, and bore the words, "The City of Philadelphia to Robert Anderson, U. S. A., May 22, 1861. A loyal city to a loyal soldier — the hero of Fort Sumter." Lieutenant Slemmer, who had held Fort Pickens until reinforced, received his friends in Independence Hall on June 11. He was driven through the streets, and addressed by the mayor as Major Anderson had been. The money affairs of the country were naturally subjected to great disturb ance by reason of the events of the war. Blow upon blow fell to prostrate public and private credit — Lincoln's election, secession, the firing upon Fort Sumter, the isolation and threatened capture of Washington. Mr. Lincoln had chosen for his secretary of the treasury Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, an anti-slavery leader of 364 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA many years standing. Of a sturdy Puritan type which gave him a high reputa tion for frankness and honesty, he was singled out rather naturally for the posi tion. He came from Ohio, of which state he had recently been the governor. When we last heard of Jay Cooke, he was a young partner in the firm of E. W. Clark and Company, a prominent banking house in Philadelphia which had conducted some of the government's financial operations in connection with the Mexican War. Cooke had left the firm after the panic of 1857, and on January 1, 1861, formed with his brother-in-law, William G. Moorhead, who had had more prosperous ventures since his packet line of 1838, the firm of Jay Cooke and Com pany. Mr. Cooke was a frank, generous, single-hearted man, who on August 10th next would be forty years of age. He was a native of Sandusky in Ohio; and kept up his connections with that state by frequent visits to members of his family, and by vacations spent in hunting and fishing on the Lake Erie islands. He had two brothers, Pitt and Henry D. Cooke. The latter was calculated to make himself a social favorite, but he lacked business judgment, and had not the virtue of providence. Going to California with the gold-hunters, he was in a little while heavily in debt, which obliged him to leave the Pacific coast. His brother Jay established him in the newspaper business at Columbus, the Ohio state capital, where he made the acquaintance of Governor Chase and other political leaders. This ripened into friendship in so far as a man of Chase's austere nature could have friends. The governor's two daughters — one of them the famous beauty of the Lincoln administration, Kate Chase, who was afterward the imperious and unhappy wife of Senator Sprague of Rhode Island — and the members of Henry Cooke's family were on intimate terms. Henry Cooke went on to' Washington to report the inauguration of Lincoln for his newspaper, and to obtain a contract for the public printing. While he was there, he told the new secretary of the treasury of his brother's banking firm in Philadelphia, and Jay Cooke exerted himself to sell some of Chase's earliest loans. The treasury had been left in a very depleted condition ; the situation of the coun try financially was seldom, if ever, worse, and whoever promised to be of assist ance in the work in hand — which gave every evidence of assuming unheard-of proportions — was entitled to a hearing. On April 20, 1861, Chase wrote to Jay Cooke, offering him the place as as sistant treasurer of the United States, at Philadelphia. For such an appointment the banker had no wish. His object was to sell government notes and bonds ; a work for which the energy and enthusiasm of his nature, his unfailing optimism and his business capacity qualified him in a remarkable way. He observed that the banking capital of Philadelphia was now only $11,000,000, while New York's was $66,000,000 and Boston's $30,ooo,ooo,1 which serves but to emphasize the magnitude of what he later achieved in the city. Once, not so many years ago, it had been the financial centre of the country. Now it occupied relatively a quite in significant place. The first large undertaking of Mr. Cooke's was his sale of a Pennsylvania state loan of $3,000,000. The legislature on May 15, 1861, hastily assembled in extra session, passed an act creating a body of "Reserves" to number 10,000 men, and authorizing a loan of $3,000,000 at six per cent. The '¦Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 136. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 365 credit of the state was far from high. Money had been expended recklessly for internal improvements, and it had barely escaped the odium of repudiation. Sydney Smith, in his tirades, drew public attention at home and abroad to the unfortunate situation of the commonwealth. "I never meet a Pennsylvanian," said he, "without feeling a disposition to seize and divide him ; to allot his beaver to one sufferer and his coat to another ; to appropriate his pocket-handkerchief to the orphan, and to comfort the widow with his silver watch. How such a man can set himself down at an English table without feeling that he owes two or three pounds to every man in company, I am at a loss to conceive ; he has no more right to eat with honest men than a leper Has to eat with clean men," etc, etc. It was asserted that the loan could not be sold at par, which was a condition of the negotiation. The bankers generally said that it would not bring more than seventy-five or eighty cents on the dollar, and a motion was being made to amend the law. Mr. Cooke entered the discussion at this point and declared his willing ness to sell the loan at par. He staked his word of honor upon his ability to do this, and Governor Curtin on May 28, 1861, commissioned his firm and Drexel and Company to direct the work. The practical head of the Drexel house at this time was the son of the founder, Anthony J. Drexel, whom Mr. Cooke knew well. They were "Jay" and "Tony" to each other, and were working together in these early days of the war in the sale of government loans, but in very different ways ; Cooke boldly and enthusiastically, Drexel rather cautiously. The laboring oar, now, in the sale of the state loan was taken by Cooke. He did not spare him self. He lived an open air life which gave him vigor and strength. He loved his fellowmen. He went to church, and trusted in God, who to him was as real a friend as though He were a figure to be seen and felt in this visible world. The young broker entered upon the negotiation of this loan, as of loans hundreds of times larger later in the war, with unfaltering faith. In a fortnight he had oversold it to banks, firms and individual citizens, by a sweeping appeal to their patriotism. The entire sum was taken at par, to the surprise of the banking community and to the great gratification of Governor Curtin. The news was carried to Secretary Chase, to several southern leaders and to the London Times; and the achievement gave proof of a determination on the northern side to fight the war in the counting house as well as in the field. Thus the war stood when a great blow was administered to northern con fidence and Union hopes. The states were organizing their finances; Secretary Chase was quietly selling his national loans ; the three months' men had crossed into Virginia. Philadelphia had its "Home Guards;" and volunteers for whom there was yet no place in the Federal service, since President Lincoln's requisi tion had been fully met, were formed into a state reserve force. Scott was too infirm to lead the troops in person, and they were put under the direct command of General McDowell. They met the Confederates on the field of Manassas on Sunday, July 21. This was the battle of Bull Run, and it was a terrible awakening for the north. The people of Washington had gone out to view the engagement as though it were a game. The soldiers had light spirits ; it was a pleasure trip into Virginia. Because of their inexperience, coupled with a good deal of mismanagement and some bad luck, they were soon throwing away 366 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA their guns and other impedimenta and running back to Washington in wildest flight. Many were stopped in their course and re-formed, but others did not break their pace until they reached their homes, and as the three months for which they had enlisted had about expired they felt themselves released from further obligation to serve their country. General Patterson and the Pennsyl vania volunteers did not get into the action. The old general awaited orders which never came, and ventured nothing on his own account. The news of the disaster was brought to Philadelphia by a young man from West Chester, Pa., who had gone out with the army for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the confusion, he found himself inside the Confederate lines. Feign ing service as a hospital attendant, he escaped capture. At the first opportunity he caught a wounded army horse running in the wood, and, mounting it, made his way to Washington. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who was reporting the movements of the war for the New York World, joined him and they together reached Washington at daybreak on Monday morning. In spite of the tire of the ride, Painter pushed on to Philadelphia. His news of the disaster met dis believing men in the Inquirer office, until he assured them of the truth of all that he said. Bulletins were posted in front of the building and "extras" were issued. Indignant crowds collected, threatening to wreck the office of the paper for publishing "copperhead" news, but Painter's account was soon abundantly confirmed.1 The people now understood that they were in the midst of a grave and tedious war, and that they were face to' face with problems of financial, political and military management such as they had never known before. At first the volunteers showed a disposition to gather in small companies bearing distinctive names, and wearing distinctive uniforms. This had been the custom among the militiamen. The organization was not close, and it was satisfying to local and personal pride for bands of young men to group themselves in this way. A militia company, like a fire company, served the purposes of a club; practical results were often an incidental consideration. It would take some hard discipline to break this custom down — to form regiments bearing numbers which meant no more to any one than the Nineteenth Ward of a city, or the Seventh National Bank in the new banking system which Secretary Chase was soon to organize. To be sure, companies bearing their own names could be gathered into the new regiments and could continue to use their names, among themselves in any case. Some of the regiments, indeed, were commonly designated by names instead of their proper numbers ; as for instance, Colonel Baker's "California Regiment," the "Pennsylvania Legion," the "Fire Zouaves," "Rush's Lancers," the "Buck- tails," the "Corn Exchange Regiment," and the "Union League" Regi ments. At first, gray cloth was used for the uniforms, but when it was seen that the Confederates were to fight in that color, blue came into use. The change was gradual in 1861, but complete, and the "boys in blue" soon became but another name for the Union army. Yet there were still exceptions ; as for the four Philadelphia Zouave regiments, Baxter's— made up largely of firemen, — Collis's, Gosline's and Birney's. An 'Life of Jay Cooke, I, pp. 146-47; Harper's Magazine, May, 1910. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 367 impulse was given to the adoption of this dress by Ellsworth's company and the memory of his tragic death, but the red Turkish trousers and the accompany ing garments were found to be quite unsuitable for use on the battlefield, and these regiments soon passed to the regulation blue army suit. "Rush's Lancers" also had a characteristic and fantastic uniform, which was abandoned very early in its history in favor of a more practical dress. Many of the three months' men re-enlisted after Bull Run, when recruiting went forward more actively than before. No more soldiers for short terms were required. They must enter the service now for "three years or the war." Independent companies were gathered together into regiments. The Pennsyl vania Reserves were mustered into the Federal service. It is computed that Philadelphia sent 40,000 men into the field before the end of 1861. Those regiments which were formed after the city's eight regiments of three months men (number 17 to 24 inclusive) came home, and which were made up entirely or in large part of Philadelphians, numbered forty-two, and were as follows : 23d P. V.— "Birney's Zouaves;" Colonels David B. Birney, Thomas H. Neill, John Ely, John F. Glenn. Three months' men reorganized under the old number. 26th P. V. — Made up of many of the men who were attacked in Baltimore while on their way to Washington with the Sixth Massachusetts; Colonels, W. F. Small, B. C. Tilghman, Robert L. Bodine. 27th P. V. — Colonels, Max Einstein, Adolph Bushbeck. 28th P. V. — Colonels, John W. Geary, G. de Korponay, Thomas J. Ahl, John Flynn. 29th P. V. — At first known as the Jackson Regiment; Colonels, John K. Murphy, William Rickards, Jr., S. M. Zulick. 31st P. V. — Originally Pennsylvania Reserves; Colonels, William B. Mann, William McCandless. 32d P. V. — Also Reserves ; Colonel, Horatio G. Sickel. 33d P. V. — Also Reserves; Colonels, Robert G. March, A. L. Magilton, R. H. Woolworth. 36th P. V.— Also Reserves ; Colonels, E. B. Harvey, H. C. Bolinger. 41st P. V.— Also Reserves; Colonels, John H. Taggart, Martin D. Hardin. 43d P. V.— First Artillery; Colonels, Charles T. Campbell, Robert M. West, R. Bruce Ricketts. 56th P. V.— Colonels, S. A. Meredith, J. William Hofmann, Henry A. Lay- cock. 58th P. V.— Colonel, J. Richter Jones. 59th P. V.— Second Cavalry; Colonel, R. Butler Price. 60th P. V.— Third Cavalry; Colonels, W. W. Averill, John B. Mcintosh. 61st P. V.-— Colonels, O. H. Rippey, George C. Spear, George F. Smith, Robert L. Orr. 65th P. V. — Fifth Cavalry; Colonels, Max Friedman, David Campbell, Robert M. West. 66th P. V.— Colonel, Alfred Chantry. 67th P. V. — Colonels, John F. Staunton, John C. Carpenter. 68th P. V.— "Scott Legion;" Colonel, A. H. Tippen. 368 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 69th P. V.— -Three months' men reorganized; Colonels, J. T. Owen, Dennis O'Kane. 70th P. V.— Sixth Cavalry ("Rush's Lancers") ; Colonels, Richard H. Rush, Charles R. Smith, Charles L. Leiper. 71st P. V.— Senator Baker's "California Regiment;" Colonels, E. D. Baker, Isaac J. Wistar, R. Penn Smith. 72d P. V.— "Baxter's Fire Zouaves;" Colonel, D. W. C. Baxter. 73d P. V. — Otherwise known as the "Pennsylvania Legion;" Colonels, John A. Koltes, G. A. Muhleck, William Moore. 75th P. V.— Colonels, Henry Bohlen, Philip T. Schopp, Francis Mahler. 81 st P. V.— Colonels, James Miller, Charles F. Johnson, H. Boyd McKeen, William Wilson. 82d P. V.— Colonels, David H. Williams, I. C. Basset. 88th P. V. — Colonels, George P. McLean, George W. Gile, Louis Wagner. 89th P. V. — Eighth Cavalry; Colonels, E. G. Chorman, D. McM. Gregg, Pennock Huey. 90th P. V. — Three months' men reorganized; Colonel, Peter Lyle. 91st P. V. — Colonel, Edgar M. Gregory. 95th P. V. — "Gosline's Zouaves ;" Colonels, John M. Gosline, Gustavus W. Town. 98th P. V. — Three months' men reorganized; Colonels, John F. Ballier, Adolph Mehler. 99th P. V. — Also three months' men ; Colonels, Thomas W. Sweeney, Peter Fritz, Asher S. Leidy, Edwin R. Biles. 106th P. V. — Also three months' men ; Colonel, Turner G. Morehead. 108th P. V. — Eleventh Cavalry; Colonels, Josiah Harlan, Samuel P. Spear, Frank A. Stratton. 109th P. V. — Colonels, Henry J. Stainrook, Lewis W. Ralston. 110th P. V. — Colonels, William D. Lewis, Jr., James Crowther. 1 1 2th P. V. — Second Heavy Artillery; Colonels, Charles Angeroth, August A. Gibson, W. M. McClure, S. D. Strawbridge. 113th P. V. — Twelfth Cavalry; Colonels, William Frishmuth, Lewis B. Pierce, Marcus A. Reno. 114th P. V.— "Collis's Zouaves;" Colonel, C. H. T. Collis. The enormous cost of keeping an army of this size in the field led to financial operations which tested public power and ingenuity to the last degree. Lincoln allowed a great deal of latitude to the heads of departments. He called men of talent and ability to his cabinet, and he hedged them about with no small restric tions. While each was made to feel the authority of one in a higher place when ever the need arose, it was left to Mr. Chase in the treasury department, as to Mr. Seward in the state department and Mr. Stanton in the war department to develop his own line of policies. Jay Cooke anticipated Mr. Chase's needs on many occasions, sometimes to receive expressions of gratitude on the secretary's part and sometimes, as appears from the written records, to be dealt with rather cavalierly. On the morning of July 22, as soon as he received news of the rout at Bull Run, Cooke paid a visit to the bankers of Philadelphia. He had drawn largely HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 369 upon their resources in the sale of the state loan in May. Then the leading banks had subscribed as follows : Farmers and Mechanics', $300,000 Philadelphia, 180,000 Girard, 125,000 Mechanics', 100,000 North America, 100,000 He now went out again, and received promises on the part of these and other institutions to advance sums to the government for sixty days. The principal subscribers were: Pennsylvania Company for Insurances on Lives, etc $300,000 Farmers and Mechanics' Bank 200,000 Philadelphia 150,000 Commercial • . . 125,000 North America, 100,000 Bank of Northern Liberties 100,000 In all, $1,737,500 were pledged on this paper either on the 22d or on the two or three days following. If the lenders were willing, their loans would be returned to them, not in specie but in seven-thirty notes. These were treasury notes to run for three years with interest at the rate of seven and three-tenths per cent per annum, or $7.30 a year on each one hundred dollars, which was just two cents a day, — the earliest seven-thirties, an issue which Jay Cooke later advertised into great notoriety. It is likely that his activity in borrowing money from the banks of Philadelphia on the security of these notes, led to Chase's immediate determina tion to use the banks of New York and Boston in the same way. The two men were now frequently in consultation. Chase came to Phila delphia. They together went to New York. Cooke visited the secretary in Washington. As a result of these conferences, the "Associated Banks" of New York, Philadelphia and Boston on August 14th contracted to advance $50,000,000 to Chase on his warrants at once, to be followed — if the rebellion were not sooner suppressed — by a like sum in October and again in December, in all $150,000,000. Meanwhile, the secretary would open a popular loan and, through agents, appeal to the country for subscriptions to the seven-thirty notes. If they were not freely taken, the banks would be repaid in the notes which were made con vertible at the expiration of three years into six per cent long bonds. It seemed like an operation of enormous magnitude, even to the boldest financiers. The three cities were to contribute in proportion to their banking capital, and the first call meant $35,000,000 from New York, $10,000,000 from Boston and $5,000,000 from Philadelphia. The bank presidents, like many other men, be lieved that the war would soon be over. Few of them had any thought that they would be called upon for more than the first $50,000,000, and presumed to tell Mr. Chase how he should use the money. He must husband what they had advanced to him so generously, knowing how very difficult it would be for Vol. n— 24 370 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA them to respond to the second and third calls, if the first $50,000,000 should be spent before the war was brought to an end.1 Mr. Chase established his popular agencies in all parts of the north, and he visited the eastern cities in order to lend vigor to the movement. On Septem ber 4th he was at the Continental where Mr. Cooke introduced him to many of the bankers of the city at a reception in the parlors of the hotel. The next day Jay Cooke and Company opened their agency at the office of the firm in Third street, just above the Girard Bank. Each agent was allowed but $150 to ad vertise the seven-thirties in his territory, and one-eighth of one per cent as a commission; but Cooke took no account of the appropriation and advanced a large sum from his own pocket for bringing the loan to the attention of the public. He hung a large American flag bearing the words, "United States Sub scription Agency for the National Loan" in front of his bank. To his counters came "a continual stream — clergy, draymen, merchants, girls, boys and all kinds of men and women." 2 On Monday evenings the office was open until nine o'clock at night that workingmen might subscribe. He published the names of his subscribers, and the sums taken, each day in the newspapers. By these means he succeeded in selling $4,224,050 of the notes, and indirectly drew a large number of customers to the sub-treasury, where the sale was going on also. For this work he received $6,680.06 in commissions and $150 for advertising pur poses. He expended more than these combined amounts — he himself said in later life, as much as $10,000 — in his campaign of publicity without which he might have done as little business as many of the other agents ; and that is, just none at all. In a number of the offices the books for subscriptions were not even opened. Cooke had sold about one-fourth of all the notes that were sold outside of the sub-treasuries in all parts of the north, and his methods gave Mr. Chase a vision of what might be expected of such energetic management if larger powers should be conferred upon the Philadelphia financier. Not quite enough of the notes had been distributed to the people to recoup the bankers for the $50,000,000 which they had advanced. The dimensions of the war were constantly growing, and further sums were necessary. The banks with difficulty kept their agreement to pay the secretary $50,000,000 more; and in December, when the time came for taking the third lot of the notes, the whole money system broke down. Specie payments were suspended and the country was face to face with an era replete with the evils and dangers of large emis sions of paper. From the day of taking office in March to November 30, 1861, Mr. Chase had borrowed nearly $200,000,000, and the next step led him — rightly or wrongly, at any rate, it is believed, necessarily — to the greenback. The disaster at Bull Run pointed inevitably to two conclusions : first, that the south was in earnest in its determination to establish a separate government, and that it meant to fight to effect its ends ; second, that younger and more skill ful generals must be found to direct the movements of the Union troops. The man suitable to lead the northern armies was thought to have been found in George Brinton McClellan, son of Dr. George McClellan, the founder of the 1 Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 153. 2 His report to Chase, Ibid., p. 159. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 371 Jefferson Medical College. He was born at the southwest corner of Seventh and Walnut streets in 1826. He was educated at West Point for a soldier's career, but had passed to the business of railway engineering. At the outbreak of the war he at once returned to the United States service. He had had some successes in western Virginia, which resulted in keeping the mountain counties in the Union, and as these had been almost the only actions favorable to the north thus far, they assumed an importance in the popular view beyond their due. To McClellan the most extraordinary powers were at once attributed. Na poleon and the Duke of Wellington seemed no greater persons. His own bear ing encouraged the popular disposition to endow him with almost god-like quali ties, and he went out to the field to take his place at the head of the troops amid a general feeling of confidence that he would enter Richmond and bring the rebellion to an end in ninety days at the uttermost. He arrived in Philadelphia from Pittsburg, on July 25th. Mayor Henry met him at the Pennsylvania Rail road depot, at Eleventh and Market streets. Vast crowds surrounded his car riage as he was driven to the residence of his brother, Dr. John H. Brinton Mc Clellan, at Eleventh and Walnut streets. Here he was obliged to speak to the people in response to loud cries for him to appear. He soon passed on to Wash ington to assume active command, though not before councils had resolved to purchase and present him with a sword. The blade, which was set with dia monds and pearls, bearing on its handle a figure of an eagle attacked by a ser pent, was finished and placed in his hands in September, 1861. It soon appeared that, while he was beyond any question a capable engineer and a careful drill master, he would be slow to move to the great military tasks which confronted him. Popular and official impatience grew, but he still com plained that his force was insufficient and his supplies inadequate for that expe dition directed against Richmond which every one wished to see begun. At last, after repeated urging on the part of Lincoln and Stanton, who had suc ceeded Cameron as secretary of war, the troops were in motion; but the only result was the unsuccessful Peninsular campaign. Many who had looked upon McClellan with great favor, and then indulgently, now felt that there should be a change of commanders. Pope, a "hero" of the west, was brought on to Vir ginia, but all that came of this movement was another humiliating defeat on the field of Manassas in the summer of 1862. McClellan, who still had the most de voted friends, both in and out of the army, was practically reinstated after this disaster. The situation was one well calculated to cause the greatest alarm. While the defeated Union troops were pressing back upon Washington, Lee planned an invasion of Maryland which might extend to Pennsylvania and up to the gates of Philadelphia, where the people were in great affright. On the night of September 11, Governor Curtin informed Mayor Henry that the Confederate army was on its way to Harrisburg. Troops were asked for at once. Councils were called in extra meeting. Minute men were assembled. The workingmen in many of the factories of the city offered themselves in a body for military service. While the news became somewhat more reassuring, soldiers were moved to the state capital steadily for four days. By the 16th, 372 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the result of the battle of Antietam was known, and Lee's return to the soil of Virginia caused great rejoicing. The second battle of Bull Run and the battle of Antietam claimed a terrible toll of death and injury. Thousands of the wounded were brought up to the hospitals of the city for the care of the nurses and physicians. Many of them were placed upon transports and hospital ships and came in by sea. McCkllan's tedious and fruitless campaign in the Peninsula had yielded many patients afflicted with fevers and other camp diseases. These were to be cared for. The remains of the slain were constantly received in the city also. The body of Colonel E. D. Baker, who went out at the head of the "California Regiment," and at the news of whose death Lincoln wept, came on November 7, 1861. He had been killed at Ball's Bluff. An imposing funeral procession was formed at the railway station. Thousands of persons viewed the face in Independence Hall before the body, on November 9th, was taken on to New York. Little gayety marked the life of the city. Month by month and year by year the wounded, the dying and the dead made demands upon the care and sympathy of the people. Confederate prisoners passed north to the forts and jails. Confederate prizes came up to the wharves. At the refreshment saloons, new regiments going out to the field, old ones returning at the end of their terms of service, soldiers moving to and fro on furloughs, were furnished with whole some food. All the while, recruiting went forward. When no more volunteers were to be had, drafts were made until the able-bodied population, falling within the age limits set by the law, was well drained. Those who still remained at home did not know when they might be called upon for the defence of the city and the state, if not to carry forward the work of the armies in Virginia and in the west. All had acquaintances and friends in the service, and public feel ing was wrought upon day by day by the news from the front. Little disloyalty marked the people of the city, though it was not without its "Copperheads." The drafts did not lead to serious riots as in New York. The merchants, who had held back because of their commercial connections with the south before the outbreak of the war, had changed their opinions except in a rare case. Very powerful in supporting and strengthening loyal feeling was the Union League, which was organized in 1862. It was a depressing hour. The year went out in general gloom. The movement originated among a number of men who met at the residence of Benjamin Gerhard at 226 South Fourth street on No vember 15, 1862. One week later they met again at the home of George H. Boker, the poet, at 1720 Walnut street, and formed what they at first called the Union Club. The membership was limited to fifty, and included in the num ber were Morton McMichael, A. E. Borie, John Meredith Read, Henry C. Carey, William Henry Rawle, Frederick Fraley, E. Spencer Miller, John Ashhurst, Daniel Dougherty, Fairman Rogers, Ferdinand J. Dreer, Clar ence H. Clark, Edwin M. Lewis, James L. Claghorn, William D. Lewis, J. B. Lippincott, J. Gillingham Fell, A. J. Antelo, Thomas A. Biddle, John Rus sell Young, S. V. Merrick, General George Cadwalader, J. I. C. Hare, William Sellers, Abraham Barker, Dr. John F. Meigs, Horace Binney, Jr., Joseph Har rison, Jr., and James W. Paul. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 373 On December 27, 1862, at Dr. Meigs's house at 1208 Walnut street, it was decided to enlarge the scope of the organization and call it the Union League of Philadelphia. It fixed its home in the Kuhn mansion at 11 18 Chestnut street with William M. Meredith as president, George H. Boker secretary, and James L. Claghorn, treasurer. No partisan politics found its way into the club. Republicans and Democrats alike would be accepted into its fold. The only con dition was "unqualified loyalty to the government of the United States, and un wavering support of its efforts for the suppression of the rebellion." At the end of the first year the club had nearly 1,000 members, and Union Leagues, follow ing Philadelphia's example, were being formed in all loyal parts of the country. The activity of this organization at once took a great variety of forms. Aiding returned soldiers to secure employment, circulating patriotic documents, raising money for the equipment of regiments (it sent out no less than nine), occupied its attention until the end of the war. The sound of fife and drum and of marching feet filled the entire city. The camps in the public squares and on the outskirts made war seem very near. The successive calls for troops reached a great aggregate. 600,000 men were asked for in 1862; 700,000 in 1863 and 1864. In addition to the forty-two regiments which have been named as made up in whole or in part of Philadelphians at the end of 1861, practically all ready to take the field for three years, there were twenty-seven more to come out of the city before the war was done. These were: 115th P. V. — Colonels, Robert E. Patterson and Frank A. Lancaster. 116th P. V. — Colonels, Dennis Heenan and St. Clair A. Mulholland. 117th P. V. — Thirteenth Cavalry — Colonels, James A. Galligher and Michael Kerwin. 118th P. V. — "Corn Exchange Regiment" — Colonels, Charles M. Prevost and James Gwyn. 119th P. V. — "Gray Reserves" — Colonels, Peter C. Ellmaker and Gideon Clark. 121st P. V. — Colonels, Chapman Biddle and Alexander Biddle. 147th P. V. — Colonel, Ario Pardee, Jr. 150th P. V. — "Bucktails" — Colonels, Langhorne Wistar and H. S. Huide- koper. I52d P. V. — Third Artillery — Colonel, Joseph Roberts. 153d P. V. — Not fully organized. 157th P. V. — Lieutenant-Colonel, Edmund T. Tiers. 160th P. V.— "Anderson Cavalry"— Colonel, W. J. Palmer. 161st P. V. — Sixteenth Cavalry — Colonel, J. Irvin Gregg. 163d P. V. — Eighteenth Cavalry — Colonels, T. M. Bryan, Jr., and T. F. Rodenbough. 180th P. V. — Nineteenth Cavalry — Colonel, Alexander Cummings. 181st P. V. — Twentieth Cavalry — Colonel, John E. Wynkoop. 183d P. V. — "Fourth Union League" (The first three Union League regi ments entered the emergency service of 1863 just before the battle of Gettys burg) — Colonels, George P. McLean, James C. Lynch and George T. Egbert. 1 86th P. V.— Colonel, Henry A. Frink. 374 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA i92d P. V.— Colonel, William B. Thomas. 196th P. V. — "Fifth Union League" — Colonel, Harmanus Neff. 197th P. V.— Colonel, John R. Haslett. 198th P. V.— "Sixth Union League"— Colonel, Horatio G. Sickel. 199th P. V. — Colonel, James C. Briscoe. 203d P. V. — Colonels, John W. Moore, Oliver P. Harding and Amos W. Buchanan. 213th P. V. — "Seventh Union League" — Colonel, John A. Gorgas. 214th P. V. — "Eighth Union League" — Colonel, David B. McKibbin. 215th P. V. — "Ninth Union League" — Colonel, Francis Wister.1 These regiments were not only to be filled; they must be kept filled. For the places of the dead and wounded there must be recruits. Moreover, there were a number of independent companies and batteries not included in the regi mental lists of the Pennsylvania line. Militia regiments were formed for the emergency service in 1862 and 1863. There were many organizations for home defense and several regiments of colored men. Few enough were left to carry on the regular work of the city, which was artificially stimulated by continuous demands for war purposes upon the Navy Yard, the private shipyards and the manufacturers. Uniforms, knapsacks, cavalry spurs, belt plates, tent cloth, guns and bayonets, powder, projectiles, provisions and many other articles needed for the regular prosecution of the war, were produced in the factories of Philadel phia and its neighborhood. Meanwhile, Jay Cooke continued to make his demands upon the people for their gains and savings. The country early in 1862 had gone over to a paper money basis, with the result that prices were greatly increased. As the green backs became more and more plentiful and the inflation was extended, the finan cial situation caused alarm to many thoughtful observers. But the step had seemed inevitable, and once it had been taken it was difficult to determine at what point the movement should stop. Chase's second feat as a public financier, and it was the most striking achieve ment of his administration, was the sale of the "five-twenties." These were bonds which might be redeemed in five, and must be redeemed in twenty years, bearing interest at six per cent in gold. In common with all the loans effected by the government from this time on, they were offered at par in greenbacks which meant only forty to ninety cents in gold, according to the ruling premium upon that metal. Mr. Chase at first despaired of selling the five-twenties. He had tried every means known to the treasury department and had succeeded in disposing of only about $20,000,000 worth, when, in October, 1862, he made Jay Cooke the sole national agent and authorized him to complete the operation. This indefatigable man, now pursued in a larger field and on a greater scale the methods he had employed in 1861. He sent agents all over the country. He devised original and successful advertising methods. Such an impulse did he give to the work that surprising results were very soon secured. At the end of March, 1863, subscriptions were being received at the rate of about $1,000,000 1 There is confusion of authority respecting these lists ; I have taken those given by Mr. Jenkins as most likely to be reliable. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 375 daily. For the week ending April 25, they were $10,147,100. This rate was considerably increased in May. By June 30, 1862, the end of the fiscal year, the sales of five-twenties had reached a total of $189,000,000, about three-fourths of which had been made by Jay Cooke. A large part of the remainder, sold for the most part through the sub-treasuries, had been distributed as a result of his advertising campaign. It was decided to close the loan at $500,000,000, and Jan uary 21, 1864, was set as the day when it was believed that the total would be reached. So great was the pressure to subscribe at the end, however, that $511,- 000,000 were taken before the machinery which Cooke had created could be brought to a standstill. The bonds were soon quoted at a considerable premium. For this great service the Philadelphia banker received very small commissions because of the peculiar watchfulness of Secretary Chase, who was in constant fear of unfavorable criticism. When the scene was closed, Cooke wrote to Chase : "I have the honor to state that, after deducting from my commission for negotiating $361,952,950 of the five-twenty loan, the amount expended by me in promoting the success of the loan, over and above the amount allowed me for that purpose, and deducting also $48,000 bonds lost in transit and otherwise un accounted for (a portion of which I hope to recover) I find my actual net com mission reduced to $220,054.49, which is somewhat less than one-sixteenth of one per cent on the whole amount of subscriptions obtained by me." x The military situation, while the five-twenties were in course of sale, under went material improvement. The battle of Antietam was followed by the re tirement of the Confederates into their old ground in Virginia, and by President Lincoln's long-contemplated proclamation making the slaves in all the seceded states free. General McClellan was relieved from duty as the commander of the Army of the Potomac in November, 1862. Lincoln had measured popular feeling with an accurate sense. He felt that at this time he would be more criticised for retaining the general than for dismissing him. Strong as Mc- Ckllan's admirers were in their friendship, there could now be little real cause for complaint. He had been tried in the Peninsular campaign very patiently. He was returned to command amid the severe condemnation of the administration just before the battle of Antietam. He had had the honor, such as it was, of compelling the enemy to cross the Potomac into his "own country" — now other generals would be given the opportunity of seeing how they could meet the strategy of Lee and Jackson, and solve the problem of reaching Richmond. Not much except more disaster came of it until the summer of 1863. McCkllan's friends were numerous and active, and the anti-war party saw in him a figure around whom they could congregate. His disappointed ambitions and his habit of severely criticising Lincoln's conduct, even while he was still commander-in- chief, caused him to give an eager ear to the blandishments of those who would have him enter politics. When he was expected in Philadelphia on his way from Washington, in No vember, large crowds gathered in the streets and at the railway station, hoping to make a demonstration in his favor. Resolutions were passed commending him 1 Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 325. 376 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA for his military course and, as the other generals following him soon proved to be no more skilful in winning victories, his friends increased in number. They were reinforced by many who drew back in horror at the sight of the enormous expense and slaughter of the conflict. They demanded arbitration and peace at any price. In the state elections in 1863 this issue absorbed popular attention. At no previous time had the Copperheads been so outspoken. A careful watch was instituted for men or newspapers promising to injure the Union. As early as on August 19, 1861, Pierce Butler was arrested at his home in Walnut street and sent to a fort in New York. It was asserted that he had left the south after the firing upon Fort Sumter and came here in order to obtain aid for the Confederacy. Charles Ingersoll, a speaker at a Democratic mass meeting in In dependence Square on August 23, 1862, to denounce the censorship of speech and press, the abolition of the right of habeas corpus, and other policies of the government, was arrested for these words: "The despotism of the old world can furnish no parallel to the corruptions of the administration of Abraham Lincoln." After a few days, the proceedings against him came to an end. His brother Edward, later in the war, was accused of using language offensive to northern sentiments. He was attacked by a mob, upon which he drew a pistol. Then he was arrested for assault and battery as well as for his treasonable utterances, and taken to Moyamensing prison. Charles, who was present, was also attacked by the crowd and bruised. Such incidents were of frequent occurrence, though none assumed important dimensions. Men who discouraged the enlistment of troops, with the purpose of making difficult the work of the recruiting officers, men whose political opinions in hostility to the war were conscientiously ex pressed to their friends and in public places, as well as mere braggarts given to glib abuse, were subjects for the corrective processes of the law. Some fled to more favorable ground in New York. A few probably made their way through the lines to join their friends, the people of the south. Men who wished to avoid military duty were stopped at the wharves, as they were about to embark for foreign countries. The most drastic supervision, however, was reserved for the newspapers. Their utterances were a matter of record and could be care fully reviewed. On August 22, 1 86 1, the United States marshal in Philadelphia seized copies of the Christian Observer, published in this city, and three newspapers, including the Journal of Commerce, published in New York. The New York newspapers were taken out of the bundles at Walnut street wharf on their arrival on the boat, and confiscated. On January 28, 1863, the editor of a Copperhead paper in Philadelphia called the Evening Journal, was seized and carried to Fort Mc- Henry at Baltimore. The edition, which contained an article on a message of Jefferson Davis, eulogizing it at the expense of Lincoln's state papers, was sup pressed. The most troublesome of the Copperhead gazettes, however, was The Age, whose first number appeared on March 25, 1863. Among its editors were Francis J. Grund, William H. Welsh and Charles J. Biddle. It was aggressive in its attacks upon the administration. Its office at 430 Chestnut street was often surrounded by angry mobs, and its writers and printers led a troubled ca reer. The paper seems for the most part to have been so cleverly managed that HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 377 it was able to evade the penalties of the law. Its influence was considerable in the campaigns of 1863 and 1864, though it worked upon ground which was very unfavorable to success. The principal Copperhead of the period was Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio. He and another Ohio Democrat, "Gentleman George" Pendleton, visited Philadelphia on March 6, 1863. They were serenaded at the Girard House, and amid many interruptions Vallandigham made a speech. He was nominated for governor by the Democrats of Ohio, after he had been arrested, court-martialed and exiled for his treasonable course by the United States government. In Philadelphia the response to the federal proceedings against him was a great meeting of so-called "Peace Democrats" in Independence Square on June 1, 1863. Judge Ellis Lewis, whose judicial career had culminated in his enjoyment of the office of chief justice of Pennsylvania in 1854-57, now a resident of Philadelphia, was called to the chair, and speeches bitterly assailing the govern ment for action which was declared to be entirely subversive of the constitution, were made by Charles J. Biddle, Ex-Governor William Bigler, Peter McCall and George W. Biddle. The Pennsylvania Democrats in this year presented the name of Judge George W. Woodward as their candidate against Curtin, whom the Union party re nominated. Woodward's place upon the supreme bench of the state made him a figure of prominence. He was a man of determination and vigor, and had come out on the side of concession in i860. In 1861 he was charged with say ing that, if the Union were to be divided, he would have the line "run north of Pennsylvania." The convention which nominated him met in Harrisburg at the very moment when something was about to occur that would be a principal influence to make his campaign an entirely fruitless one. Burnside, who had suffered a great defeat at Fredericksburg, was succeeded by Hooker. His failures in turn were conspicuous at Chancellorsvilk. Lee, given the courage in the summer of 1863, for another invasion of the north, crossed the Potomac and almost before the people were aware of it, his advance posts were set in southern Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac started off in pursuit, and just prior to the engagement which would decide whether the Confederates should return into the south or pursue their course to inflict fur ther damage upon the north, Hooker was set aside in favor of General George G. Meade. He was a Pennsylvanian, and this thought had not been out of mind at the time of his appointment. The fact that he was acting in defense of his own state, it was believed, would lend vigor to his movements ; and in addition to all this he was an excellent soldier, as his career both earlier and afterward gave abundant proof. He chanced to have been born in Cadiz, Spain, where his father, Richard W. Meade of Philadelphia, was at the time (1815) consul of the United States. A West Point graduate, he had served gallantly in Mexico. He was modest, retiring and careful in whatever he did, but at the same time fearless. If his sudden elevation aroused no great degree of enthusiasm, the army responded unquestioningly to his command, and went on its way to Gettys burg. The city had known no such excitement before. On the strength of urgent telegrams received from Governor Curtin, the State House bell rang a general 378 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA alarm at three o'clock on the afternoon of June 15. In a few minutes Chestnut street was packed with people. Addresses were made by a number of speakers who stood upon a large table in front of Independence Hall. "Emergency men" were called for, and were quickly formed into regiments. Mayor Henry urged the business men of the city to close their stores and factories, and enroll them selves and their employees for home defense. This was generally done. Regu lar pursuits of all kinds were suspended. Many sent their families north. Specie, plate and treasure were buried or carried away to places of safety. Day after day the excitement continued. News from the two armies which must soon inevitably clash, was awaited with the greatest anxiety. The Penn sylvania Railroad Company hurried all its rolling stock to Philadelphia. Troops were despatched to Harrisburg day and night. Fortifications which would have been of slight use during the Revolution, to say naught of this later time, were thrown up to guard the northern and western approaches to the city. Governor Curtin himself came on July 1, and spoke from the balcony of the Continental Hotel. His vigorous words and inspiring presence led to the enlistment on that day of over 5,000 men to be brought into the conflict, if Lee's army, defeating the Army of the Potomac, had continued its advance. Soon rumors of the battle, at first vague and indecisive, began to arrive. The Fourth of July came, and there was yet no known cause for celebration. On the next day, however, official despatches put all doubt at rest. The southern army was in retreat, and the city could again breathe freely. Now the wounded were coming in. General Hancock, who had been severely injured in the fighting of the third day, arrived, and hundreds and thousands followed him. Halls, engine houses, churches and other buildings were put to temporary use as hospitals. The satisfaction of the victory was mingled with sorrow which came home to many — indeed, to most families — in a very personal way, as the great lists of dead and wounded were scanned. News of another victory, Grant's capture of Vicksburg on the Fourth of July, was received on the seventh. It was understood now that a turning point in the rebellion had come at last, and rejoicing, in spite of the many reminders of the war's great cost, was not to be longer delayed. At two o'clock on the afternoon of the seventh, the State House bell was rung, salutes were fired, whistles were blown and the rest of the day was given up to congratulation. At five o'clock, 500 members of the Union League, headed by a band, marched to Independence Square. There the Rev. Dr. Boardman made a prayer and Charles Gibbons addressed a large crowd assembled from all quarters of the city. The band by some happy thought was stationed in the steeple of Independ ence Hall, where it played "Old Hundred," the people taking up the strain, "Praise God from all blessings flow ; Praise Him all creatures here below," with impressive effect. In the evening many buildings were illuminated. The war would yet have nearly two more weary years to run, but it was rightly felt that the Union cause had been distinctly set forward by Meade at Gettysburg and Grant at Vicksburg. The political campaign of the summer and fall by the Peace Democrats, was destined to cause less anxiety. Nevertheless, in a state which had so long been CATAFALQUE ON WHICH LINCOLN'S REMAINS RESTED IN PHILADELPHIA IX 1865 UNION VOLUNTEER REFRESHMENT SALOON, 1865 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 379 Democratic, no one could be at all certain of the result. The very sanguinary character of the victory at Gettysburg caused many in real humanity to wish for peace, even though the fate of the Union should be jeoparded thereby. The majority for Curtin was not large. It was only about 15,000 in a total vote of more than a half million (Curtin, 269,496; Woodward, 254,171). The vote in Philadelphia was: Curtin, 44,274; Woodward, 37,193. The next year's campaign involved the election of a president. Should Lin coln's policies be endorsed, or should the war, unfinished, be committed to some other hand. Chase, who had remained in the cabinet, constantly protesting against Lincoln's refusal to consult him upon any subjects, except those which con cerned the treasury department, left it at the end of June, 1864, an acknowledged candidate for the presidency. Jay Cooke, in friendship, and others espoused his cause, but they were a mere "corporal's guard" and his pretensions to a Republican nomination were disposed of with small difficulty. The Democrats, the Copperheads and the "peace" men fixed upon General McClellan as their candidate. It seems to have been his hope to make himself a principal character in the government while he was yet commander-in-chief ; and this ambition, fed by the representations of his attached friends, still had a strong hold upon him. Grant had been called from the west to take general command, and to give his personal direction to the operations of the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. His bloody battles gave pause to many who had hitherto been irrevocable advo cates of the vigorous prosecution of the war. Lincoln was renominated with virtually no opposition in the Republican convention in Baltimore in June. Mc Clellan was nominated in Chicago in August on a platform which was said to have been the work of Vallandigham. In this statement of principles it was said : "That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the 'American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of a military necessity or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down * * * justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable mo ment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the states." In the summer of 1864, there were fresh rumors of a Confederate invasion, followed by the depredations of daring bands of guerrillas in Ohio, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania. They cut the telegraph poles and tore up sections of the railroad track between Philadelphia and Washington. A great war meeting was held in Independence Square on July 12, and many new recruits were enrolled for home defence. In August, Governor Curtin, alarmed by the burning of Chambersburg and by other depredations committed by Confederate raiders on the borders of the state, called out 30,000 militiamen. But it was soon seen that the movement was not in force, and that it was merely an effort on the part of Lee to relieve the pressure upon his army and turn Grant away, if possible, from the object which he was pursuing so relentlessly. If a few months could be gained, the result of the elections would be known. The accession of Mc Clellan to the presidency could greatly alter the situation of the south. 380 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The campaign was actively directed in Philadelphia. Each party held mass meetings in Independence Square to ratify the nominations; the Republicans on September 10, and the Democrats on September 17. Many well known men spoke at these and other political meetings in the course of the campaign. The Wide Awakes and similar marching clubs, appeared in torchlight processions, stoning one another when they met in the rowdy wards, as they had done four years before. A very large Democratic procession, said to be six or seven miles in length, passed through the streets on the night of October 29. The situation caused the Republicans a great deal of anxiety. So excellent a political observer as Thurlow Weed thought Lincoln would be beaten; but as the campaign progressed, the aspect of affairs began to improve. The state elections on October 11 had been quite favorable to the Union candidates; the city giving them a majority of about 9,000 votes, after the soldiers were polled and the returns from the field received. Again, the course of military events favored the Unionists. Sherman, on his way to the sea, had reached Atlanta on September 5, 1864. Grant's campaign in Virginia seemed by no means so hopeless as earlier. The majorities of Oc tober were increased in November. Counting the soldiers, the majority for the Lincoln electors in the city was 11,762. In the state, however, as in 1863, the parties were better matched, and the majority was even smaller than in that year. Lincoln's home vote was 269,679 to. which there was to be added 26,712 for the army, making a total of 296,391. McClellan had a home vote of 263,- 967 and an army vote of 12,349, in all 276,316. Lincoln's majority, therefore, on the home vote, was only 5,712. His total majority was 20,075. The war was now proceeding to its end. A service different from the Union League's, yet distinctly useful to the government in another way, was per formed by the Sanitary Commission. It was founded as early as in June,.i86i, for the purpose of supporting the hospital organization. A national body, its work in the various neighborhoods was carried on by local branches.1 Funds were collected in various ways ; in none more effectively than by great fairs, to which men and women contributed their services freely. By this means Chi cago had raised $60,000, Boston $150,000, Cincinnati over $200,000, and in the spring of 1864 a similar movement was instituted in Philadelphia. John Welsh, the banker, was elected chairman of the executive committee; Caleb Cope, treasurer; C. J. Stifle corresponding secretary; and Horace Howard Furness, recording secretary. The other members were: W. H. Ashhurst, Horace Binney, Jr., Adolph E. Borie, N. B. Browne, John C. Cresson, D. B. Cummins, Theodore Cuyler, Frederick Graff, Joseph C. Grubb, Joseph Harrison, Jr., R. M. Lewis, S. V. Merrick, Bloomfield H. Moore, J. H. Orne, John Robbins, William Struthers, William M. Tilghman, George Trott, Thomas Webster, George Whitney, George A. Wood, and George W. Childs. Later other names were added; among them, A. J. Antelo, John Dev- 1 Of the branch in Philadelphia, Horace Binney, Jr., was the president and William Piatt, Jr., until his death of disease contracted while in the service of the commission, the general agent. On the Ladies' Committee, Mrs. M. B. Grier and Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore were very active. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 381 ereux, Frederick Fraley, William V. Keating, John Rice and Charles Macalester. Of the ladies' committee, Mrs. John Sergeant was the president and Mrs. George Plitt, secretary. It was called the "Great Central Fair for the Sanitary Commission," and remarkable activity was shown in making it ready. It was to be held from June 7 to June 28, 1864, in Logan Square. The people not only of Philadelphia, but also of the interior parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware contrib uted articles of various kinds for exhibition and sale. Great numbers of people attended to see what had been gathered together, for social reasons, and with an honest wish to aid the benevolent undertaking. A number of connected structures of tent cloth and of wood were hastily placed in the square, fronting the handsome new Catholic cathedral. The means were found in the contribu tions of business houses, the street car companies and individuals, many of whom donated "one day's receipts" for the purpose. The buildings were reared in forty working days. The principal structure was 540 feet long and 60 feet wide. The aggregate length of all the buildings was 6,500 feet, or more than a mile, thus giving a large amount of corridor space for exhibition purposes. The governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware visited the fair on its opening day, as did justices of the supreme court, and Mayor Henry. John C. Cresson, chairman of the committee on arrangements, formerly transferred the buildings to the executive committee, whose chairman was John Welsh. Theodore Cuyler, on behalf of the latter, made the speech of acceptance, and in turn transferred them to Bishop Simpson, who had been delegated by Presi dent Lincoln as his representative on the occasion. President and Mrs. Lincoln came on June 16th and were greeted by such crowds that it was well nigh im possible for them to pass through the fair.1 What was not otherwise sold was put up at auction. Over one million dollars were raised for the work of the Com mission by the managers of this successful undertaking.2 This was by far the most productive enterprise of the Philadelphia agency, whose contributions to the organization up to January 1, 1866, reached a total of $i,565,377-IS- More than $300,000 of this amount was used in forwarding the hospital service in and around Philadelphia, while the rest was employed in the general work of the Commission. In still another way were the loyalty and the philanthropy of the people of the city manifested, and this was by the liberal support extended to the work of the Christian Commission, formed through the agencies of the Young Men's Christian Asssociation at a convention held in New York on November, 1861. George H. Stuart was elected chairman of the executive committee, while John Wanamaker, Joseph Patterson and Jay Cooke were among other Philadelphians who at once, or very soon, took an active interest in the work. Mr. Stuart furnished office and store room to the Commission free of expense. Its object 1 They remained at the Continental Hotel over night and returned to Washington earlv on the morning of June 17th. 2 See the Memorial volumes of John Welsh, presented by his son, Herbert Welsh to the Pennsylvania Historical Society, including a volume of minutes of the committee in Dr. Furness' handwriting; also the Sanitary Commission of the U. S. Army officially pub lished m New York, 1864; and C. J. Stille's History of the U. S. Sanitary Commission. 382 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA was to supply soldiers and sailors with clothing, food, hospital stores, testaments, hymn and prayer books, newspapers, magazines, etc. Its delegates worked upon the battlefield, visiting the sick and wounded, attending the dying with prayers and burying the dead with Christian rites. During the war its receipts in money and goods reached a total of $6,291,107, to which sum Philadelphia made large contributions.1 The reelection of Lincoln dispirited the Confederates, whose strength was now being worn down rapidly in the gruelling contest with Grant in Virginia, and by Sherman, who had run the iron through the very heart of the south. At length, at eleven o'clock on the morning of April 3, 1865, a dispatch came to Philadelphia containing the brief announcement, "Richmond is ours." The bul letin was posted at a newspaper office in Third street. Cheer after cheer rose in the crowd and surged on up Chestnut street. Men in joy clasped the hands of strangers standing beside them. There were cheers in the court rooms, and jurymen, witnesses and attorneys at once ran into the street, leaving the judges to adjourn the proceedings in whatever way they chose. Everywhere flags were brought out and displayed. At noon Mayor Henry received a confirmatory dis patch from Secretary Stanton. The State House bell was rung. This was a signal for the ringing of all the other bells of the city. The demonstration reached its greatest height at Independence Hall. "Those who witnessed the excitement attendant on the announcement of the capture of Vicksburg," said a newspaper account, "can form some idea of the scene; but the crowd and the demonstrations of joy at this time exceeded any former occasion. Cheer after cheer went up from the people on the sidewalks." Ladies gathered at the windows in the neighborhood and waved their handker chiefs and small flags. An officer at the sheriff's office came out with a dinner bell and gravely asked for bids on the Southern Confederacy. A placard an nounced that four cents a pound would be paid for Confederate bonds. The excitement was continued without abatement for more than two hours. The fire companies dashed to the scene, ringing their bells and blowing their whistles on their engines. Cannon boomed above the din. A great gun on top of the Evening Bulletin2 building fired salutes throughout the day. Processions were formed and passed through the streets accompanied by bands of music. All regu lar business was suspended. In the evening the city was generally illuminated. A new impulse was given to the spirit of celebration by the news of the sur render of Lee's army, which reached the city about nine o'clock on the morning of Sunday, April 9. The police telegraph served now to make easy the distribu tion of information of this kind to all parts of the city. In many of the churches the news was announced from the pulpit. It formed a theme for the sermon and gave direction to the choice of the song. The scenes of the Monday before were repeated in front of the State House, and a great uproar prevailed until long after midnight. Chestnut street was jammed with the throngs which pressed 1 Annals of the U. S. Christian Commission by Lemuel Moss; Life of Jay Cooke, II, P- 499- 2 This paper had sold 93,000 copies of its issue of April 3d, the day Richmond fell, not withstanding the fact that there were other evening papers, and "extras" during the day of the morning newspapers. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 383 in from all parts of the city. Bonfires were kindled; Grant and Meade were cheered everywhere. The next day, Monday, the demonstration was continued. The whole city was given up to the merry makers. By speech in public meet ings, through the tongues of bells and the throats of cannon and guns, the joy of the people was proclaimed. Meanwhile for several months another movement in connection with the war, one which was fraught with the greatest meaning to Lincoln as well as the men who served in the field, was in progress in Philadelphia. This activity cen tered in the office of Jay Cooke and Company, in Third street, just above the Girard Bank. The head of the firm had not ceased to exert himself in behalf of the sale of the government loans at the departure of Mr. Chase from the treasury department. For a little while from July, 1864, until March, 1865, William Pitt Fessenden, who had been for several years a United States sen ator from Maine, was secretary of the treasury ; and then the place was taken by Hugh McCulloch of Indiana. Fessenden, like Chase, at first gave a rather narrow examination to Cooke's operations, largely in response to Copperhead criticisms loudly directed against the treasury, and also because of the representations of rival and jealous inter ests in banking circles, especially in New York, although the Drexel firm in Philadelphia lost no opportunity to assail the neighbor with whom it had had some association in the sale of the first war loans. But Fessenden, after trying other measures, found that he must return to the plan of a subscription agency with Cooke at its head. The Philadelphian was able to make very much more generous, and on that account more effective arrangements with the new sec retary than with Chase, though the latter was accounted a personal friend. It is to be noted, of course, that the need was now greater. The loss of one life early in the war was more mourned than a thousand lives were later on. One million dollars seemed as large a sum in 1861 as $100,000,000 in 1864. War had become a business to be prosecuted on a great scale. Larger and bolder measures could now be taken without the opposition which they would have received earlier. Cooke was just the man for such an emergency. The ten-forty loan which the treasury department had endeavored to negotiate through its own agencies, had failed and its attention had been turned to a three-year treasury note loan bearing interest at seven and three-tenths per cent, in paper currency. Fessenden delayed placing these seven-thirties in Cooke's hands until he was nearly ready to leave his office. In seven months, working through the banks, he had sold only $133,000,000 worth of the notes and the condition of the government im peratively demanded a larger income. Even the soldiers in the field were not being paid promptly and regularly. Finally, on January 28, 1865, Cooke again' became the fiscal agent of the treasury department. In his letter of appointment, Secretary Fessenden wrote: "Your success in popularizing what was known as the five-twenty loan, prompts me to take advantage of the same machinery to bring before the people the advantages of the seven-thirty loan. The treasury must be supplied, and the demands upon it are of so imperious a nature as to forbid further delay or fur ther experiments." 384 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Mr. Fessenden needed $2,000,000 a day, and so quickly was the impulse of Cooke's management felt that in the first week he set the required pace for the loan. On February 6 the subscriptions amounted to more than $3,000,000; on February 15 to more than $8,000,000. Mr. McCulloch, who entered upon his duties as secretary of the treasury in March, continued the agency and found his way made easy by the enormous sales effected through Cooke's remarkable organization. In February, 1862, Jay Cooke and Company had opened a branch house in Washington, where Mr. Cooke's brother, Chase's friend, was in charge. This house was the subscription agent's point of contact with the treasury depart ment. In March, 1866, a branch was opened in New York under the direction of Harris C. Fahnestock, a young man whom Mr. Cooke had taken out of a bank in Harrisburg, and who had been very active in the Washington office during the five-twenty campaign. The center of the organization remained, of course, in Philadelphia under the control of Jay Cooke himself. The bank in Third street at this time was the busiest of places. Here the remarkable advertising campaigns were planned and directed. From this point the traveling agents were despatched to all parts of the country in the interest of the loan. Here sub-agents were appointed, subscriptions were received, orders were forwarded to Washington, and the many details in connection with the most daring and successful public financiering, which has ever been seen in America, were worked out under Mr. Cooke's own eyes. The agency covered a period which was greatly disturbed. Under some cir cumstances, the coming to an end of the war would have sensibly improved the financial position of the country. But business had so long been conducted on a paper money basis, and speculation had been carried to such a point, that good as well as bad news was likely to overset the entire structure and send it tum bling to the ground. Gold had become a commodity to be bid up and down by gamblers in terms of greenbacks. There was a little gold exchange in Phila delphia, but the principal seat for this kind of speculation was in New York city. Manipulation was open and flagrant, and Mr. Cooke at the direction of the secretary of the treasury, had conducted several campaigns against this mis chievous cabal. The price of gold reached its greatest height in July, 1864, when it was bid up to 280 and 285. Even when it was well below 200, as it usually was, it seemed to be a reproach upon the greenback, government bonds, treasury notes and public credit generally. As was freely said by Cooke in his attacks upon the gold room, the speculators were largely sympathizers with the south, who operated for sentimental effect as well as for their own profit. They had a wholesome fear of him for good reasons, and to "bear" the market it was only necessary to circulate a story that he had boarded a train for New York. Upon his return to the service of the treasury department as its agent, he again as sumed control of the stock market. His powerful connections enabled him to hold up the prices of government securities in the severest panics. The ap proaching collapse of the Confederacy, as Grant pressed Lee closer and closer upon Richmond, was very disturbing to paper money values. Cooke suc cessfully intervened to steady public credit. Now a still heavier blow was to fall upon the house of cards. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 385 On the morning of Saturday, April 15, news was received of the assassina tion of President Lincoln. Little more than a month had passed since his sec ond term was begun. Lee had surrendered only a week before. The horror, the grief, the indignation of the people were inexpressible, and it was feared that public feeling would take some violent form. Mr. Cooke heard the shocking news while driving with his son from his country home to the railway station to board a train for Philadelphia. He at once telegraphed to his agents in New York to support the market at whatever cost, and himself took the first train thither to be on the scene in person. On that day, however, the Stock Exchange did not open. Meanwhile Secretary McCulloch gave Cooke "carte blanche to manage the market" as he should deem best. In all, Mr. Cooke's agents, who were some of the most skillful stock brokerage firms in New York city, were compelled to purchase less than $20,000,000 worth of bonds to hold the market firm, and in a few days the country had regained its equilibrium. In that time, Andrew Johnson had been sworn in as Lincoln's successor, and the body of the slain president had been taken to his home in Springfield, 111., for burial. Philadelphia, which had been so gaily decorated in honor of the capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee, now wore sable ornaments. Public and private buildings were shrouded and draped. Services Were held in churches ; resolutions were passed by public and private bodies. April 19th, the day of the funeral services in Washington, was devoted in Philadelphia, as throughout the country, to meditation and prayer. All business was suspended. For two hours even the street cars ceased their motion. The day was opened and closed by military salutes. On Saturday afternoon, April 22, a week after the president's death, the corse reached Philadelphia on its way to Springfield. The scene was one of great solemnity. An enormous crowd filled the streets ; the tolling of bells and the booming of minute guns signalled the approach of the train from the south. It was met at the Baltimore Depot by military bodies, and a great civic proces sion several miles in length. The hearse was escorted through the city to In dependence Hall, which it reached at 8 o'clock. From 10 o'clock until midnight the hall was open to those who had tickets entitling them to enter, and the next day, Sunday, the public generally was at liberty to view the remains. As early as at half past four in the morning, a crowd filled Chestnut street, although the doors were not to be opened until six 9'clock. An uninterrupted line of people, estimated to number in all not less than 85,000, filed into the old building from that hour until after midnight. At one time in the afternoon it was necessary to summon the military to clear the street in front of the State House. The next (Monday) morning, at a little before three o'clock, the body was again placed in the funeral car and conveyed to the Kensington Depot under a numerous escort for its journey to New York. During these days the country continued to buy seven-thirty notes, thus in dicating the people's unshaken confidence in the strength of the government. Jay Cooke's sales on April 15 were $3,710,250, and on April 17 and 18, Monday and Tuesday, the days preceding the funeral in Washington, more than $2,500,- 000. On no day in April after the 22d, when the remains arrived in Philadel phia, was the total less than $4,000,000. The desire to subscribe for government Vol. n— 25 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA notes in May became a scramble. On the 13th of that month the subscriptions reached their highest mark, $30,451,950. For the week ending on that day, the total was $98,834,650. The entire second series of the issue, $300,000,000, was taken by the people in thirty working days. The last note of the seven-thirty loan of $830,000,000 was sold by Jay Cooke on July 26, 1865, in less than six months after his appointment as the fiscal agent of the government. During the war, Jay Cooke distributed about fifteen hundred millions of dollars worth of notes and bonds for the treasury department, through his house in Third street. The seven-thirty loan closed the war on its financial side ; it came to an end on its military side by the return of the soldiers to their homes. The Sixty- second New York passed through the city on May 10, but most of the regiments did not arrive until after the grand review in Washington on May 23d and 24th. The first Philadelphia organization to reach the city was Collis's Zouaves (114th Regiment). On June 10, so many had come that the troops under com mand of General Meade paraded through the city. On the reviewing stand, which was set up in Penn Square, were Governor Curtin, Mayor Henry, and many army and navy officers of distinction. Meade and his staff, who led the line, were escorted by the First City Troop. In spite of an almost torrential rain, the men proceeded over some distance, disbanding at the Union Volunteer Re freshment Saloon. Throughout June and July the passage of the troops north to the points of dismissal continued. On August 28, 1865, the two refreshment saloons were formally closed. After four years and three months their work was done. The occasion was marked by a crowded meeting at the Academy of Music. The Union saloon had fed 800,000 men during the war ; sometimes, in need, as many as 15,000 in a single day. Its founder and general financial agent was Samuel B. Fales, who generously gave his time and money to the work. In connection with the saloon a hospital was established. It was under the direction of Dr. Eliab Ward who, like Mr. Fales, contributed his services free of charge. In this hospital during the war 11,000 sick and wounded soldiers were sheltered and nursed. Twenty thousand more had their wounds dressed here as they passed through the city. The Cooper Shop Saloon, fitted up by William M. Cooper and his partner, H. W. Pearce, whose business had been the manufacture of shooks for the West India sugar trade, fed over 600,000 men during the war. This saloon also had its hospital, which was situated at the northwest corner of Race and Crown streets.1 The buildings were kept open for the use of transient soldiers until December 1, 1865, and were finally sold on the 21st of that month. The Union League, which had done yeoman service for the country, opened its new building at Broad and Sansom streets on May 11, 1865, and on June 24. General Grant was tendered a formal reception by the club. For three hours he shook the hands of the Philadelphians who pressed in to greet him and con gratulate him upon the conclusion of his successful campaign. 1 Scharf & Westcott, Vol. I, pp. 831-32. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 387 The end of the war was fittingly signalized by a great military parade on July 4, 1866. On this occasion, the flags "carried thousands of miles by her sons, and always borne side by side with the foremost in the strife," to quote the Public Ledger, "were returned to the state to remain as glorious memorials of Pennsylvania's devotion to the Union." The city was crowded with people who had come from every part of Pennsylvania, and from neighboring states, to wit ness the pageant. The streets and buildings were gaily decorated. The proces sion was led by General Hancock and his staff. It was composed of seven divi sions, commanded by General J. S. Negley, General Robert Patterson, General Charles T. Campbell, General D. McM. Gregg, General John W. Geary, General S. W. Crawford and General John R. Brooke. The parade was one of great length and deeply impressed all who witnessed it. The ceremony of transferring the flags was performed in Independence Square. They were presented by Gen eral Meade and received by Governor Curtin. This was the last scene of the war in Philadelphia. Nothing remained but its heritage of debt, of wounded and broken soldiers, of bereaved families and of political animosity; and all these we would have for more than a score of years to come. CHAPTER XXXII. THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION. The war having come to an end, the people turned eagerly to commercial pursuits. Its contracts had resulted in the establishment of large private for tunes, many of them corruptly gained. Families which had counted for nothing in the community before this time were elevated to wealth through hay, mules, gun barrels and army uniforms. The speculation in gold, in government paper and in private company securities during and just subsequent to the war, was immense. The discovery of petroleum along Oil Creek, near Titusvilk, in western Penn sylvania, tended to a great increase in the financial excitement. For many years the presence of oil on the ponds and streams of this locality caused men to won der about its source. A few quarts were now and then skimmed off and burnt in lamps or used to lubricate rheumatic joints. In 1859 a Yankee named Drake appeared at Titusvilk, and announced that he would bore for minerals. He "struck ile" and soon had a well which was flowing at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day. The ignorant excitement which this incident aroused passed all reasonable bounds. There were comical theories about the origin of the oil; some thought it the fat of prehistoric whales ; others that it came from a burial ground of a lot of Indian warriors long ago interred in the neighborhood. It. looked like molasses, and wags told the story that the people thereabouts were using it on their buckwheat cakes.1 Incidentally, men from Philadelphia and every other place very soon began to invade the region, and much stock in ex isting and prospective companies was offered for sale. The war corning on, the craze did not immediately reach the height which it might have attained, but it made headway fast. On forty acres of land on Oil Creek which were purchased in 1861 for $2,600, 32 wells were drilled before 1865. One of these yielded 900 barrels a day; another 640; and two more 300 barrels each.2 In 1859 the out put was 1,873 barrels, worth about $20 each; in i860, 547,439 barrels, valued at $9.60 each. In 1861 the price had fallen to ten cents ; the production was over two million barrels. There were as yet no railroads, and the oil could not be gotten to market except in wagons over bad roads and by boats on uncertain streams.8 As soon as methods of distribution were devised, and a foreign trade through Philadelphia and other ports was opened up, the prices rose. 1 The Oil Bubble, by S. P. Irvin. 2 Petrolia, or The Oil Regions of the United States, by F. B. Wilkie, pp. 28, 29. 3 McClure's Old-Time Notes, Vol. II, p. 468. 388 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The speculation, after the war was at an end, reached great proportions. When Jay Cooke's seven-thirty agents visited the country in the spring of 1865, they found the towns so full of adventurers who had come to explore and bore for oil that lodgings were not to be had at any price. "The people through this country," said one of them, "can't talk connectedly about anything but oil. They Jackie me with oil talk, and I give them seven-thirty, but they can't understand it. The bankers are all the same. No matter what you say to them, it winds around to oil." 1 Soon the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks were filled with trains of tank cars. Philadelphia became a center for the refineries, from which the product was carried in ships to all parts of the world. The place of the tank cars was taken at a later day by a pipe laid under the ground through which, in winter and summer, the oil silently and steadily flows to the gateway of the sea. Another industry which underwent a large and a rapid development after the war, chiefly through the improvement of manufacturing processes, was the iron and steel industry. The most revolutionary of these improvements was the introduction of the Bessemer system. Such steel as had been in use in this country previously was imported from England. Steel making in America by the cementation and crucible processes had never gained any headway. The first patent covering the Bessemer process dates from 1855, though it was not until 1866 that it was put to practical use in this country, and then in the western part of the state. In 1868 the manufacture of steel by the Siemens-Martin, or open hearth system was introduced into the United States. Railroad trains had been running upon iron rails. The increase in the volume and weight of the traffic called for steel rails, and the reduction in the price of steel, following the introduction of improved methods of manufacture, made the change feasible.2 The industry in all of its departments was put upon a new and a sounder basis. The old mills in and around the city were enlarged, and new mills were estab lished. Such large industrial plants as the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Cramp's Shipyard (founded in 1830 by William Cramp who had learned the business under Samuel Grice) and Disston's Saw Works (founded in 1843 by Henry Disston, a young Englishman with a capital of $350, in a small shop at Second and Arch streets), enjoyed a rapid growth in this period. In many branches of manufacturing the city gained a preeminence which it held for many years, and still holds at this day. On October 26, 1861, the first telegraphic despatch from San Francisco was received in Philadelphia. The new line by way of Salt Lake had just been com pleted, and it was to be of the greatest service in tying the Pacific coast to the Union during the Civil War. The region beyond the Rocky Mountains was still, in a sense, semi-independent of the east. Its bankers did not use the greenback, except at a depreciated rate. California continued to transact business on a specie basis. Jay Cooke found out how separate, and yet how devoted to the Union the people of California were during the war, when he undertook to sell 1 Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. I, p. 615. 2 Progressive Pennsylvania, by J. M. Swank. 390 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA them government bonds. Mayor Henry's response to the mayor of San Fran cisco on October 26, 1861, was as follows : "Philadelphia reciprocates the kindly greetings of San Francisco. May the Pacific Telegraph ever interchange between the two cities messages of loyalty and good will." The war at an end, speculators immediately plunged into the business of stringing wires in every direction. Many companies were formed, and all the ends of the country were brought into communication by electricity. On May 22, 1873, the "Pennsylvania," the first vessel of the new American Steamship Company, left Philadelphia for Liverpool. The ships of this line bore the American flag. They were built at Cramps, and were four in number; the other three were the "Ohio," the "Indiana," and the "Illinois." They com pleted the voyage in about ten days. For ten years the owners made regular sailings between Philadelphia and Liverpool, but in 1883 were compelled to abandon them. The first Red Star Line steamer in a new service between Philadelphia and Antwerp, the "Vaderland," arrived in the Delaware on February 17, 1873. The British steamship "Pernambuco" of the Blue Cross Line, inaugurated a service between this port and Liverpool, when it sailed up the Delaware on the same day. Industrial and other forms of speculation were supplemented by un precedented excitement on the subject of new railroads. Many of the com panies were in receipt of or had the hope of receiving from Congress, grants of land adjoining their tracks, and the mania included all kinds of schemes for exploring and civilizing untrodden wilds. Prices were still inflated by the use of greenbacks, and there seemed no sincere desire on the part of any but a few to return to a specie basis. Jay Cooke made a number of suggestions which were not accepted by the treasury department, and offered to bring about the desired result through the agencies of his firm. On the other hand, men went so far as to propose to redeem the bonds of the United States in greenbacks, a scheme which John Sherman was brought to favor and which aroused Cooke to vehement protest. He had sold them to the people with the understanding that they were to be paid in gold, and he lost no occasion to combat the dishonest suggestion. Until there should be a return to specie payments, the dangers of the financial situation would be great. The spirit of speculation, unless it could be checked, would sooner or later prostrate business of all kinds. Nearly all the banks of the country had now become national banks, under a plan which was proposed by Mr. Chase. Cooke gave his sanction to the measure rather reluctantly, but once he was brought to its support he urged it with his characteristic energy. The secretary of the treasury saw in the plan an opportunity to distribute considerable quantities of five-twenty bonds to the institutions organized under the law, since by its provisions they must purchase government securities to support their note issues. It was also believed that the new national banks would become fiscal agencies for the government, calculated to be vastly useful in the distribution of future loans. It was through these banks that Secretary Fessenden operated, with more or less success, to effect the sale of the seven-thirties in 1864, before the work was assigned to Jay Cooke. The HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 391 law met with powerful opposition. The entire state banking interest antagonized its enactment, and afterward sought to make difficult the execution of its pro visions. The fate of the new banking system seemed doubtful, until Mr. Cooke put all his agencies behind it. His touch was irresistible. His agents, as they travelled over the country selling bonds, urged the establishment of national banks. The newspapers, upon which he exerted so much influence advocated the system. The bill had scarcely become a law, on February 25, 1863, when Cooke had two associations ready to be organized under it. The earliest to be in corporated anywhere was the First National Bank of Philadelphia, which re ceived a charter on June 20, through the comptroller of the currency, the new office created by the act and lately bestowed upon Hugh McCulloch, later secre tary of the treasury, after having been offered to Joseph Patterson of Philadel phia, and other men in the east. On March 25, 1863, the articles of association of the First National Bank of Washington were filed at the treasury department, but they must be with drawn because of some irregularity in the procedure; and it was not until July 16 that it could receive its charter, by which time twenty-four other banks had been established under the law, — nine in Ohio, three in Indiana, three in small towns in Pennsylvania, two in Iowa, two in Connecticut, one in New York, one in Massachusetts, one in Illinois (Chicago), one in New Hampshire and one in Michigan. The firms of Jay Cooke and Company and E. W. Clark and Company furnished most of the capital for the First National Bank of Philadelphia. Henry D. Cooke was the president of the First National Bank of Washington ; and this institution, for all practical purposes, was a branch house of Jay Cooke and Company. New York was the seat of the principal hostility to the national banking system, as of many other movements designed for the advantage of the Union. Jay Cooke, in his daring way, decided with Chase's support, to establish a large national bank in that city. Three little banks capitalized at from $100,000 to $300,000, had been started. .Cooke determined to found the Fourth National Bank, with a capital of $5,000,000. The enterprise had lagged for some time. While in Washington, the Philadelphia financier spoke to Chase and McCulloch on the subject, and told them that he would go to New York on the following Monday, and within three days secure the necessary capital. He subscribed $100,000 in the name of his own firm, and carried with him large subscriptions by other Philadelphians. He personally called upon a number of New York capitalists, and set his agents to work actively. At a meeting on the third day, $4,300,000 were at hand. Cooke offered to subscribe $100,000 on his own be half to complete the sum, if others would do likewise, assuring them that by the next day enough subscriptions would be received by mail to relieve them from these additional obligations. This proved to be the case, and the capital could have been made much greater if necessary. Cooke reported his success triumph antly by telegraph to Washington, and called in the money editors of the New York papers to inspire them with a sense of the importance of what had been done.1 '¦Life of Jay Cooke, I, pp. 344-49. 392 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA When Chase made his report to Congress in December, 1863, 134 national banking associations, of which Philadelphia had "number one," were already organized with an aggregate capital of $16,081,200. One ground for opposition to the national banking system in New York and in the east generally, was the arrangement of Mr. Chase requiring them to bear numbers. Their names were valuable, and endeared to them by long asso ciation. It was too much to expect that they would abandon them. The Ameri can Exchange or the Chemical Bank in New York, the Bank of North America or the Girard Bank in Philadelphia, had no wish to become the Seventh or Tenth National Bank. The law was amended in several regards, and very shortly the system came to include practically all the old institutions, as well as many new ones. Thus, under a broad plea of necessity in the exercise of the war power, was done that which must have signally failed at any other time. Thus were the 1600 state "shinplaster shops" swept out of existence in favor of a respected banking system, for all practical purposes the same which is in suc cessful operation at this day. Mr. Cooke's relations with these banks, as the founder of many of them, in creased his sense of strength as a financier at the end of the war. His operations for the government had been so successful that he was emboldened to under take a great private financial operation, the construction of a railway from the head of the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. The offices of bankers were swarming with schemes for the sale of bonds and stocks, as Congress swarmed with lobbyists paid to obtain legislative favors for this or that company of speculators. Mr. Cooke pursued his way warily. He chided his partners when they made investments of doubtful worth, and was in general stubbornly opposed to the entire speculative tendency of the era. He at first refused to have any connection with the Northern Pacific promoters, but finally — in large degree, it would seem, because of his brother Henry's interest in the enterprise, — was brought to investigate the scheme. It had been before the country for many years, and the route had had its advocates as long ago as in the time of Thomas H. Benton, who knew that the northwest was a rich region because it was the feeding ground of the buffalo. Yet after the war, when a railroad to the Pacific was seen to be a necessity, the government chose to favor the line from Omaha to San Francisco, across an arid waste which could yield almost no local traffic to the company. The Northern Pacific promoters had secured a charter on July 2, 1864. The company's land grant called for 12,800 acres in the states and 25,600 in the territories for each mile of railroad, a vast area computed to amount to 47,- 360,000 acres. Ohio and Indiana combined could not boast of a greater super ficial expanse. In size it equalled the six New England states and Maryland. The charter had been several times amended, extending the time when work might be begun, and in other respects. The promoters were largely New Eng- landers, and they first made their advances to Jay Cooke through his Wash ington house in 1866. He rebuffed them, as he did the president of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, which was to run from St. Paul to Duluth, a new town at the head of Lake Superior, to connect the navigation of the Mis sissippi with that of the Great Lakes, soon destined to become an important HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 393 allied line. This smaller road, however, Mr. Cooke was making up his mind to befriend. He sent agents to Minnesota to pick up town and farming lands, water-power rights and pineries, and in June, 1868, he himself made a voyage to the head of the Jake in a boat from Detroit. Duluth as yet was a place of only six or eight frame houses. Superior nearby, which before the war, had been a summer resort for several Southern families was a larger place, though at the time in an only half-tenanted condition. Upon his return, the Civil War financier joined his friends, the Clarks, in the purchase of a large lot of the bonds of the Lake Superior and Mississippi road. Two men who had been active in Cooke's press bureau during the seven-thirty campaign — Samuel Wilke- son, of the New York Tribune, and John Russell Young — were employed to paint the charms of Minnesota, and the sales were soon proceeding at a fine rate. On one day in the middle of March, 1869, more than $1,000,000 of the bonds were distributed, recalling the active days of the house during the war. Such success encouraged Mr. Cooke to greater things. His visit to Duluth, his holdings of real estate in the city and its neighborhood, and what he had done so victoriously in reference to the St. Paul Railroad, led him to say in May, 1869, that he would become the financial agent of the Northern Pacific line, if, after an examination of the route by experienced persons, their report favored the enterprise. Accordingly, one party started out through the luxuriant fields of Minnesota to Dakota Territory. Another, led by W. Milnor Roberts, a well known engineer, went west by way of the Union and Central Pacific lines to San Francisco. They journeyed up the coast in stage wagons to Portland. From that city they made their way to Puget Sound for an inspection of Seattle, the proposed western terminus of the line. Returning to Portland, they ascended the Columbia river to Walla- Walla, where they took horses and pressed into the heart of the -Rockies to examine the mountain passes with a view to finding an available crossing for the rails. From day to day, Mr. Cooke was advised by mail in detail concerning the journey, by no member so enthusiastically as Samuel Wilkeson, his old advertising agent, a wag, whose exaggerations were so wild as to be distinctly comical. While they could not be taken at their face value by any one, they undoubtedly had an influence in causing Mr. Cooke to regard the coun try as something like the "banana belt" which it was later in derision commonly declared to be. The party came back in September. The war had scarcely ended when Mr. Cooke began the construction of a very handsome country home, just west of the Old York Road, near Shoemakertown. The work was undertaken in part to give employment to the returning soldiers, and before it was finished, in 1867, about a million dollars had been expended upon it. The place was called "Ogontz," in honor of an Indian chieftain, upon whose shoulders Mr. Cooke had ridden as a boy in Ohio. To this home General Grant, S. P. Chase (now Chief Justice of the United States) and large numbers of distinguished people repeatedly came to visit its generous owner. In this fine new house Roberts was given a room to prepare his report of his trip of inspection. It proved to be quite favorable. The engineering difficulties were nowhere such that they could not be surmounted. The estimated cost was less than that given by engineers of the company based upon earlier surveys. The country which the 394 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA road would penetrate was the subject of much praise. The streams, the forests, the fertility of the soil, were remarked upon and in every way made the route seem greatly superior to that running west from Omaha. Finally, in December, 1869, Mr. Cooke, though he had but the half-hearted sympathy of two or three of his partners, definitely decided that he would accept the agency for the sale of the company's bonds. About one third of the road between Duluth and St. Paul, which he had befriended, was now complete, and the entire line would soon be open for traffic. He was ready for new triumphs. The Northern Pacific scheme was wrought out very carefully. A well equipped advertising bureau was opened, agents were appointed in all parts of the country, and a campaign similar to that by which the war loans were sold, was inaugurated. On February 15 ground was broken near Duluth, and the work of construction was begun. While many distinguished people were brought into the enterprise on the liberal terms which Mr. Cooke offered them, the sales were at once disappointing. An alliance was effected with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Its president, J. Edgar Thomson, and Jay Cooke were named as the trustees of the first mortgage bondholders, and Thomas A1. Scott was financially interested in the company. It was confidently expected that a large amount of European capital would be secured for the undertaking. Mr. Moorhead, Mr. Cooke's partner, approached the Rothschilds and other large houses on the subject while he was traveling in the summer of 1869, but without success. Now an agent named Sargent was sent abroad on this particular mission, probably an unwise choice; and Mr. Cooke, further to advance his plans, opened a branch house in London. He had been contemplating this step for several years, and he only awaited the appearance of a suitable man to stand at its head. Clarence H. Clark of Philadelphia and George C. Thomas, a young partner in the Phila delphia house, among others, had been suggested. Now Hugh McCulloch, who had retired from the treasury department, was obtained for the service. He, with John H. Pukston and Frank H. Evans, both of whom afterward attained prominent places in England and were knighted by the queen, were the resident London partners of the firm, established and known as Jay Cooke, McCulloch and Company.1 A bank building was secured at the corner of Lombard and Grace Church streets, and on January 1, 1871, the house opened its doors. Mr. McCulloch, on account of his long connection with the treasury department at Washington, was accorded a gratifying social recognition in England, and the firm began a career all too inglorious and brief. The negotiation for the sale of Northern Pacific bonds in Europe seems to have failed because of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. That frightened capital, as did unfortunate experiences by European investors with a number of dishonest American railway enterprises, and hope in this quarter must be given up. Mr. Cooke also encountered hurtful opposition at home. The Drexel firm had been gaining in strength as his own firm increased its wealth and influence. 1 Evans and Puleston both died recently. Since the death, still more recently, of George C. Thomas, H. C. Fahnestock — long the head of the New York house — and Jay Cooke, Jr., of Philadelphia, are the only surviving members of Jay Cooke's various firms. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 395 F. M. Drexel, the founder of the house, had been run over by a railway train on June 5, 1863. Even before this time, its virtual head was his son, Anthony J. Drexel. For some reason, an intense jealousy of Mr. Cooke existed on the part of Mr. Drexel and his associates. The New York and the foreign Drexel connections openly antagonized Cooke's enterprises. Probably no man was so free of antipathies as the war financier; none forgave more quickly and gen erously, but when a systematic onslaught was begun upon the Northern Pacific Railroad by Mr. Drexel's various agencies, it was very harmful and very anger ing to the victim of the attack. Moreover, this feeling and other untoward circumstances contributed to cool the natures and diminish the faith of some of Mr. Cooke's own partners. The chief of these, Mr. Moorhead, had been a Copperhead during the war, and was held in place only by the great fervor of his associate in the opposite direction. He had the greatest distrust of the Northern Pacific enterprise, and was prone to express his opinions almost publicly. Among discouragements of all kinds, however, Mr. Cooke went on doggedly. The railroad was a project calculated to appeal strongly to one of his enterprising spirit. It was a great public im provement, capable of conferring national benefits. It was right and feasible. He had undertaken the work after due examination ; it commended itself to the judgment of engineers and others in whose reports he had faith; he had given his pledge in speech and in print and by the sale of bonds to men of every rank, that the railroad would be built, and in so far as it lay in him to effect this object, the pledge should be fulfilled. A systematic effort was made, both in the east and in Europe, to colonize the country on the line of the track. This department of the work was taken up actively, and many thriving towns in Minnesota were founded. Duluth grew; Tacoma was cut out of an evergreen forest on the shores of Puget Sound for a western terminus. A section of track was put under contract between the Sound and the Columbia river, which was to be navigated into the heart of the Rockies, to meet the railhead from the east until arrangements could be made for the completion of the line. The track in the east soon reached the Red river, and finally on June 3, 1873, trains were run to the Missouri to connect with the navigation of that stream. The crossing place was named Bismarck, in defer ence to the Germans who were colonizing the region in considerable numbers. Beyond lay the Sioux Indian country. The surveyors, though they had the escort of United States troops, now and then had fatal encounters with parties of the savages. "Supposing," said George Alfred Townsend, "that the road should go no far ther," and it did go no farther at this time, "it has at any rate cloven four hundred and fifty-two miles of what else must have remained a solitude, tapped naviga tion on the Red River of the North, neutralized nearly a thousand miles of monotonous navigation on the upper Missouri, and here it is to the west of the furthest settlements of Kansas and Texas and past the western line of longitude of the Indian Territory." 1 'Life of Jay Cooke, II, p. 340. 396 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA At another time, despite the obstructions in his way, Mr. Cooke would cer tainly have succeeded. Two or three years earlier the financial situation was better and the fever of speculation had not so nearly spent itself. Although the construction of a railway in such a wilderness might then have been still more premature, it is likely that enough money could have been obtained to complete the road. Failure would have come later when the traffic was found to be in sufficient to support the undertaking. If the work had been postponed until after the resumption of specie payments, and affairs which had been so greatly disorganized by the war had been readjusted, success might have been rather easily attained. As it was, Mr. Cooke and his railroad became the sparks to start a fire which swept the entire country, and several years passed before the damage could be repaired. The situation in the money markets, for two or three years, had been such that artificial support must be given by the govern ment. During Grant's second campaign, in 1872, it was deemed necessary for treasury agents to intervene lest a panic should occur to endanger his prospects. Jobbery of all kinds in western railroads and in other forms of company promo tion filled the newspapers, to frighten the people. The Credit Mobilier scandals, public debauchery in the reconstructed southern states, proven corruption in many private walks of life, characterized the times; and Mr. Cooke could not hope to survive the general storm of distrust and retribution. He was a great figure struggling to escape his fate ; but on the morning of Thursday, September 18, 1873, the blow fell. President Grant had spent the previous night at "Ogontz." Neither to him nor to any one else did the financier speak of failure. It was not among the possibilities in his mind, in spite of all that he had passed through. When he reached his office, despatches from New York announced the dis tress of Jay Cooke and Company in that city. The head of the firm replied that he would do what he could to give them relief, but it was not long before a telegram was received saying that they had closed their doors. Overwhelmed as he was, he was obliged to order his own bank in Third street to close also ; and an hour later, when the word reached Washington, the office and the First National Bank in that city announced their suspension. The excitement in Philadelphia was intense. The members of the stock board, upon receipt of the news, ran out into Third street. A crowd soon gath ered around the bank. The word was carried up Chestnut street and to all parts of the city, to occasion expressions of the greatest astonishment. The Inquirer said that no one could have been more surprised "if snow had fallen amid the sunshine of a summer noon." E. W. Clark and Company soon announced their suspension, and smaller firms followed both in Philadelphia and New York. The crash came next day which was a Friday, suggestive of many ominous things in the history of finance. Then there was general collapse. A score of firms succumbed in New York, and a dozen in Philadelphia. President Grant and his secretary of the treasury, Richardson, went in person to New York to direct the movement to restore order, but the whole situation was so ripe for a panic that it was nearly hopeless. The New York Stock Exchange was closed and remained so for seven and a half days. In Philadelphia nothing was done but to discuss the calamity, which rapidly spread to include the industries. &?&¦ j. ,, -¦"'< ff „. j,oJU fr*^\> i*m« ijstH GIRARD AVENUE BRIDGE ABOUT 1875 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 397 Factories were shut up, men thrown out of work, women and children left to suffer from hunger in a winter that was as joyless in Philadelphia as in any other American city. Pennsylvania may not have participated in the riotous corruption of the post- bellum period in such a degree as some other states of the Union, but the foun dations were laid for conditions which have long been a cause for general re proach. When Curtin's two terms as governor came to an end in 1866, John W. Geary was elected to the office. The rule of Simon Cameron, which had been opposed by Curtin, now became absolute. The shoddy makers and other manu facturers who, aided by a high tariff, had defrauded the government during the war, came to look upon a continuance of these favors as their right. They were justified in thinking and saying that their mills, in the manner in which they managed them, could not be kept open without the assistance of Congress. Free competition with Europe, Asia or any other part of the world would have led to the undoing of such manufacturers as many of Philadelphia's were during and after the war. When their processes were improved and they were able and fit to carry on business in an intelligent way, the increased profits which would accrue to them from high duties made them put forth determined efforts to keep up the tariff wall. This was the basis of Cameron's power and the ex planation of the development of the Republican dynasty in Pennsylvania. A shrewd leader, he went to the manufacturers and bankers, and exchanged votes in support of a protective tariff in Congress for money to conduct his campaigns. The administrations of General Grant gave national encouragement -to this form of electoral corruption. Nominated and elected to the presidency in 1868, the leading figure of the war was confronted by tasks for which he proved to have no marked fitness. The convention which renominated him was held in the Academy of Music in June, 1872. In Grant's contests, the sums gained from the business men of the country attained enormous proportions. Requests often took the form of demands, and the burden became very onerous. The attacks made upon Jay Cooke in 1872 were as insolent as though he were in some way owned by the politicians, and he was in such a situation — by reason of his con nection with the Northern Pacific Railroad — that he could not escape.1 In the city itself politics became a trade. They had almost reached this posi tion through the fire companies before the war, when such leaders as "Bill" McMullen, in Moyamensing, came forward and made the assembling of votes a dishonest vocation. As soon as the negroes were enfranchised, they became a purchasable element in the electorate, and their manipulation in the down-town wards was systematically begun. The fire companies were eliminated from the situation in 1871, and their place was taken by an efficient and regularly disci plined paid fire department.2 They resisted the change through all their political influences, as great now as formerly. They had corrupted the Sunday papers with the advertisements of their balls, and laid tribute upon the entire com munity. When they exhausted their powers along other lines, they resorted to riots. -Their turbulence was such that they must be restrained by the police, 1 Life of Jay Cooke, II, p. 352. 2 Ordinance of Dec. 29, 1870. 398 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA whom for this reason they regarded with great antipathy. Like the consolida tion of the city and the establishment of an efficient police system, the organiza tion of a good fire department, to take the place of the rowdy volunteers, had been too long delayed. Their companies continued for a time to be social clubs, but their great parades, the ringing of their bells, the whistling of their engines, their scuffles and fights, happily disappeared out of municipal history. Their wickedness had contributed to this period in Philadelphia's career, an element of picturesqueness, but the time for it was gone. The removal of so disturbing a factor in the city's social life was of much immediate value, though some years would pass before there was a complete restoration of order. The spirit of dis respect of authority and of general unruliness, born of Andrew Jackson's time, in a city constantly growing in population could not be suppressed quickly. The elections after the war were generally accompanied by riots. To call a man a "Copperhead" or a "rebel" at this time was as effective as it had been to call him a "Tory" in the years following the Revolution. The name was no more liked by him to whom it was applied. It was fatal to the prospects of a candi date for office. Charles Godfrey Leland, who was one of the editors of the Press from 1866 to 1869, says in his Memoirs: "I have known fights, night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to the second, when I was literally so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the fun." 1 Forney was in the middle of every fracas. He was now the editor of "two papers, both daily," as was generally explained — the Philadelphia Press and the Washington Chronicle. Once, while he was speaking to a Republican crowd in front of his office, a Democrat on the opposite pavement interrupted the speech with the cry of "dead duck !" These were fighting words when applied to For ney. It was Andrew Johnson who had addressed them to him. In a speech in which he had demolished Horace Greeley, some one had shouted, "Now, give us John Forney!" With much contempt the president replied: "I don't waste my powder on dead ducks." That fixed the place of Forney and his friends in opposition to Johnson, and whenever the Democrats repeated the name it was the signal for a fight. This night in front of the Press office the Republicans at once flourished their revolvers, and the Democrats, to the music of discharging weapons, scurried down Seventh street. A mob returned to burn the office, but a hundred and fifty policemen were stationed outside, and after much shooting it dispersed.2 Many classes of Philadelphians, including the editors of the Press, seem to have carried pistols habitually. Leland, hating "impedimenta in his pockets," did not follow the general custom of his colleagues. "All of us in the office," the humorist relates, "hung up our coats in a dark place outside. Whenever I sent an assistant to get some papers from mine, he said that he always knew my coat because there was no pistol in it." A stuffed dead duck was made the gonfalon of the Republican clubs. One 1 Memoirs, p. 338. 2 Ibid., p. 339. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 399 morning there came into the Press office a pitiful-looking object. "His face was all swathed and hidden in bloody bandages," says Leland ; "he was tattered, and limped, and had his arm in a sling." "In the name of Heaven, who and what are you?" asked the author of the Breitmann ballads. "And who has been passing you through a bark mill that you look so ground up ?" In a sepulchral voice he replied, "I'm Blank, and last night I carried the dead duck." On March 21, 1861, the municipal elections, which had been held on the second Tuesday in May, were changed and were hereafter to occur on the sec ond Tuesday of October; city, county, and state officers were now elected on the same day. At this time, too, the term of the mayor was extended from two to three years. When Alexander Henry was elected for the third term, there fore, in 1862, by a majority of about 5,000 over the Democratic candidate, Daniel M. Fox, a conveyancer in the Northern Liberties, it was for three years, a period which brought the war to an end. The candidates in October, 1865, were Morton McMichael, Union, and Daniel M. Fox, Democrat. McMichael's ma jority was nearly 6,000. The Democrats in 1867 elected their entire city ticket, headed by Peter Lyk for sheriff, a rather unexpected and to them very gratify ing victory. This success strengthened the party for the contest of the next year in which a successor to Andrew Johnson was to be chosen. Brawling and disorder were at their height. It was Grant's first campaign. General Mc Clellan came to speak for Horatio Seymour, the Democratic candidate, who him self a little later addressed a meeting in the Academy of Music. The Democratic candidate for mayor this year, as in 1862 and 1865, was Daniel M. Fox, while the Republicans nominated Hector Tyndale. The city and the state were made the scene of a fierce struggle at the October pollings. As usual, in order to in fluence the vote in November, colonized vagabonds, false personators and ruf fians from New York, Baltimore and Washington were brought in to swell the majorities. Sheriff Lyk swore in a large posse of bartenders, brothel keepers and proprietors of rat and dog pits to guard the peace. During the day and night of Tuesday, October 13, no less than forty-two of these men were put under arrest for murders, assaults and rioting. Blackjacks and flashing revolvers disgraced the polling places, and yet the newspapers, while giving an account of the outrages, said : "The election for the city of Philadelphia yesterday passed off quietly. There were a few instances of disorder in some of the election precincts, but no general disturbance which prevented the electors from exercising their rights." 1 Fox, at his third attempt, was elected by a majority of 2,143. His adminis tration of three years was marked by notorious scandals. Riots and murderous assaults followed one another with shocking frequency. A prominent figure among this turmoil was William S. Stokley. Born in 1823, he was early forced by the death of his father to go into business for the support of his mother, a brother and a sister. He established a confectionery shop and an ice cream "saloon." He prospered. In i860 he entered common council, of which, five '¦Inquirer, October 14, 1868. 400 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA years later, he became the president. In 1867 he was sent to select council, and in the following year was elected to the presidency of that body. In 1870 he led the attack upon the volunteer fire companies. The galleries were "literally packed with the champion roughs, rowdies and blackguards of the city's slums." "Catcalls, curses, howls, hoots, groans, growls, yells and shrieks" rent the air and made "the old cradle of liberty tremble." 1 Stokley denounced such be havior in ringing tones. Every one said, "That's the last of Stokley," but it was not; and he next directed a campaign against the "gas trust." The gas works were, and unfortunately remained "the cornerstone of the citadel of bossism." It will be remembered that these works were established in 1835. They had been extended repeatedly. For a long time they were directed by a man of scientific education and personal competency, John C. Cresson. He acted under a board of trustees of twelve members, two of whom were elected each year for a term of three years by councils. The early boards were com posed of such excellent men as Alexander Dallas Bache, W. H. Keating, Benja min W. Richards, John Price Wetherill, Frederick Fraley, Matthias W. Bald win, Dr. John K. Mitchell, Joseph S. Lovering and Charles Gilpin. These times were past. The trustees now were James McManes, William R. Leeds, and their satellites. The chief engineer had no qualification for his office beyond a knowl edge of how "to lay the pipes through which the gas flows and in his past serv ices as an active ward politician." His first assistant was an "umbrella maker." 2 In 1866 select council appointed a committee to investigate the affairs of the gas works.3 So much corruption had crept into their management that the people were eager to have the city take possession of the property, as it had a right to do under the terms of the ordinance of 1835. In 1868 Stokley led this contest successfully. Councils passed the bill, and the mayor signed it.4 The works were to be transferred to the municipality under the control of a "gas department." But the trustees took their case to the supreme court and it was decided that the city could not interfere with the operations of this local "oli garchy." 5 The man who had dared the fire companies and the "gas trust" was marked as a candidate for mayor in 1871. Stokley was nominated by the Republicans to run against James S. Biddle, and was elected by a majority of 9,080, amid the usual riotous scenes. In the fourth and fifth wards two men were killed and seventeen wounded. The militia were ordered to hold themselves in readiness for service, but the disturbances were fortunately quelled by the police. Mr. Stokky's administration was begun in the next January, by a strengthening of the police force. Whether or not it be agreed that during Fox's term of office "wrong was rampant, vice flourished, riot ruled, lawlessness raged and crime held high carnival" 6 — a partisan description of conditions at the day — they were by all accounts sufficiently bad. 1 The Report of a Committee of One on William S. Stokley, p. 708. 2 Common Sense about the Gas Trust. 8 The Fall of Bossism, by George Vickers, p. 32. 4 February 1, 1868, Ordinances, p. 29. 5 Report of Committee of One, p. 10. 6 Ibid., p. 13. HORTICULTURAL HALL AND ACADEMY OF MUSIC IN BROAD STREET, 1876 V Bljfc -IngiffffrS Emm~ POST OFFICE, ADJOINING UNITED STATES BANK, CHESTNUT STREET, BELOW EIFTH STREET ON SITE OF PRESENT DREXEL BUILDING MAIN BUILDING OF CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION, 1876 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 401 Stokley was a firm and a courageous man. His police force in 1872, the first year of his administration, numbered 1,092 men. In that year 40,368 persons were arrested by the police department; a total which, under the im provement of moral conditions, sank in the following year to 30,400. This aggregate was not again reached until the Centennial year, and then with all the pressure of imported disorder and crime, was little exceeded. In June, 1872, less than six months after his inauguration, the stokers and helpers employed by the gas trust demanded higher wages. Four hundred in the service at the Market street works set themselves in motion and marched upon the Callowhill street plant. Stokley put himself in person at the head of a posse of police, and stopped their progress. The ringleaders were arrested, and under the mayor's protection new men were installed in the places of the strikers. Such activity instilled a wholesome dread of him in the minds of rioters and evil-doers of every description. If his, Stokky's, administration at length became insufferably corrupt, it at any rate inspired respect in its first years and put law and order on a plane which it had not lately occupied. Whatever his native strength, he had little enough polish, and was repeatedly refused membership in the Union League.1 He believed in party rule. He gave contracts to favorites, and defended "counting in" and "counting out" processes in elections. He was renominated in 1874, and the independent voters of the city, knowing that the coming term would embrace the Centennial year, strenuously opposed him. They nominated Alexander K. McClure, now quietly practising law, but by a skilful use of stuffed ballot boxes which were exchanged for those in which the votes had been fairly cast, Stokley was re-elected by a majority of about io,ooo.2 In this election the voting for municipal officials took place for the first time in February. At the October elections in 1872, the people of Pennsyl vania chose delegates to a convention to revise the constitution of the state which with occasional amendment, had been in force since 1838. After a few preliminary sessions, in Harrisburg, for the purpose of organization, they met in Philadelphia on January 7, 1873, in the Sixth Presbyterian church on Spruce below Sixth street. Among the delegates from Philadelphia were William M. Meredith, J. Gillingham Fell, Henry C. Carey, Edward C. Knight, John Price Wetherill, Lewis C. Cassidy, James H. Heverin, Theodore Cuyler, George W. Biddle, John Bardsky, Franklin B. Gowen, George M. Dallas, William B. Hanna and J. R. Read. William M. Meredith, who was regarded as the dean of the Philadelphia bar, was elected president. The sessions continued until Novem ber 3, when it was resolved to submit the completed draft to popular vote on December 16th following. This instrument was adopted by the people. Among the new provisions was one abolishing the October elections. The state and city elections were again divided. State and county officers would be chosen hereafter in November at the same time as presidential electors; city officers on the third Tuesday in 1 McClure's Old-Time Notes, II, p. 364. 2 Ibid., II, p. 375. Vol. n— 26 402 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA February. In February, 1877, Mr. Stokley was again elected mayor, and entered upon his third term on January i, 1878. The approach of the one hundredth anniversary of the events of the Revolu tion led to much preparation for celebrations in the city. The centennial of the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor was the occasion for a "tea party" at the Academy of Music on December 17, 1873. On September 5, 1874, one hundred years having passed since the first Continental Congress met in Carpen ters' Hall, Henry Armitt Brown, a brilliant young orator, a kinsman of Charles Brockden Brown, the novelist, delivered an address in that building. The First City Troop celebrated its centennial anniversary in November of the same year. But the principal event of this nature was the great exposition, or world's fair, arranged for 1876 in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the Declara tion of Independence. As early as 1870 the subject of a centennial exposition began to receive discussion in the press. The United States had not yet made a large display of its arts and manufactures. In 185 1 London had had her first large exposition. Another followed in 1862 under the patronage of Prince Albert. France began her series in 1855; she had had another exposition in 1867. Vienna would have one in 1873, and it was desired that something of a similar character should be organized in Philadelphia for the centennial year. Other cities of the Union were suggested, but that one which had been the first capital of the country, and which was filled with Revolutionary associations, was wisely chosen. On March 3, 1871, Congress authorized the appointment of a Centennial Com mission, consisting of two members from each state and territory, a body in all of ninety-four members. But there was no money to pay the traveling expenses of the commissioners to and from Philadelphia, until councils in October, 1871, made an appropriation of $25,000 for the purposes of organization. Thirty-two members, representing twenty-eight states and territories came together on March 4, 1872, and elected Major-General Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut, president, and Daniel J. Morrell, of Pennsylvania, chairman, of an executive committee of seven members. At a subsequent meeting in May, 1873, Alfred T. Goshorn, a commissioner from Ohio, was elected director general of the exposition. As arrangements must be speedily made to finance the enterprise, and the commission was without resources of any kind — lacking the means, as has been said, even to convene its own members — it was determined to create a centennial board of finance. Hundreds of prominent men in various parts of the Union joined in petitioning Congress for an act of incorporation. This was passed on June 1, 1872. It was given power to sell stock and to make such other pecuniary arrangements as seemed to be expedient. The corporators and stockholders were invited to meet at Concert Hall on March 10, 1873, for the purpose of electing a board of directors of twenty-four members. Some who were chosen declined to serve. The board was organized as follows : President, John Welsh, of Philadelphia; vice presidents, William Sellers, of Philadelphia and John S. Barbour, of Virginia; secretary and treasurer, Frederick Fraley, of Philadelphia; auditor, H. Seymour Lansing, of Philadelphia. The other directors were Joseph Patterson, D. M. Fox, E. H. Fitler, Thomas Cochran, N. P. Shortridge, J. N. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 403 Robb, E. T. Steel, C. M. Biddle, John Wanamaker, J. P. Wetherill, Fairman Rogers and Henry Winsor, all of Philadelphia; C. W. Cooper and S. M. Felton, of Pennsylvania; J. Cummings, of Massachusetts; J. Gorham, of Rhode Island; A. S. Hewitt and T. H. Dudley, of New Jersey; R. M. Patton, of Alabama; and B. F. Allen, of Iowa. Meanwhile, much had been done unofficially. On Washington's Birthday, 1873, at an enthusiastic meeting in the Academy of Music, Senator Simon Cam eron presiding, it was announced that no less than $1,784,320 had been pledged to the undertaking. President Grant on July 3, 1873, proclaimed "an interna tional exhibition of arts, manufactures and products of the soil and mine." "In the interests of peace, civilization and domestic and international friendship and intercourse" said he, "I commend the celebration and exhibition to the people of the United States, and in behalf of this government and people I cordially com mend them to all nations who may be pleased to take part therein." The burdens of the undertaking were chiefly borne by the board of finance, and particularly by John Welsh, its president. He was at this time a man be yond sixty-five (born in 1805). For years he had been a leading merchant and banker of the city. His interest in public movements was conspicuous. He had been chairman of the executive committee of the Great Central Fair of the Sanitary Commission in Logan Square in 1864, and was marked out for this new office if he would agree to accept it. The Fairmount Park Commission gave the Centennial authorities the use of 450 acres of land in the West Park, covering the "Lansdowne" and "Belmont" estates, and the work of making ready the grounds and buildings was pushed forward rapidly. The city at once began to take itself more seriously. It was put upon its dignity in many particulars, and determined to present as favorable an appearance as possible in the sight of the rest of the country and of the world. Material improvements of many kinds were projected and completed. The population of the city in i860 had been 565,529. The interruption in its growth occasioned by the war was great, but it, nevertheless, made very con siderable gains in the ensuing decade. In 1870 its inhabitants numbered 674,022. The necessity of a new city hall had been felt even before consolidation. After that event, the need became greater and at length imperious. As early as in 1838 the subject was under agitation. Some wished the building to be placed on the site of the Walnut Street Prison. As the city was moving west, others recom mended one of the squares in the quadrangle formed by running Market and Broad streets through Penn Square. Moreover, this Centre Square had been designated by Penn as a site for public buildings, and sentimental as well as practical reasons favored its choice. These suggestions proved to be entirely premature. In i860 the question was again earnestly discussed. The west and the east again contended for the site, but the war put an end to the movement and the city must continue to conduct the public business in the State House, supplemented by some rented buildings inadequate for the purpose. Finally, 404 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA in 1870, a vote was taken to decide the question of a choice of site.1 The peo ple's representatives, themselves unwilling to assume the responsibility, deter mined upon a referendum, a favorite contrivance in such a case. Should the building be placed on Penn Square or on Washington Square? If the eastern site were chosen the four Penn squares should be assigned to the use of the following institutions: the Academy of the Fine Arts, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin Institute, and the Philadelphia Library. The vote for Penn Square was 51,623 and for Washington Square, 32,825; so the western site was selected. The work of construction was put into the hands of a commission, consist ing of Theodore Cuyler, John Rice, Samuel C. Perkins, John Price Wetherill, Lewis C. Cassidy, Henry M. Phillips, William Devine, the mayor of the city, and the presidents of select and common councils. Some favored the placing of separate buildings on the quadrangles, while others wished Broad and Market streets to be carried around a structure to cover the entire space. The latter plan was adopted. The ground was broken on August 16, 1871 ; and the corner stone was laid on July 4, 1874, with Masonic ceremonies. An oration was de livered by Benjamin Harris Brewster. Exclusive of the courtyard, he said, the building would cover nearly four and a half acres. He thought that it would be larger than any other single building in America. Its cost, it was computed, would be $10,000,000, and it would be completed in ten years; that is, in 1881. A tower carrying a large statue of William Penn would crown the structure. This building was still in a very incomplete state in the Centennial year. The railroads, understanding that their capacity would be taxed to a high degree while the exposition was in progress, strengthened their lines. Tracks were increased, stations enlarged and arrangements changed for the better gen erally. The Pennsylvania Railroad built a connecting railroad bridge over the Schuylkill near the old Columbia bridge in order to secure direct lines to the north and east, and abandoned the custom of bringing its passenger trains across the Market street bridge. The preparations for the erection of the public build ings in Penn Square made it impossible longer to come below Broad street. The passenger station at Eleventh street was closed during the war and had gone first to a building on Market street west of Broad street, and then to a station located at about Thirtieth and Market streets. The terminus was now fixed in a new building at Thirty-second and Market streets, whither the West Chester Depot which had stood at Eighteenth and Market streets was taken also. Similarly the freight station at Thirteenth and Market streets was also aban doned. This building was used in the autumn of 1874 by the Franklin Institute for a local industrial exposition, and during the winter of 1875-76 for the revival meetings of Moody and Sankey, two evangelists, who at the time attracted great public attention. The auditorium held nearly 12,000 people and it was packed daily and nightly for several weeks. In all 210 meetings were held, at which there was an attendance of more than 1,000,000 persons. The building had been purchased by John Wanamaker, and in it he soon established a department 1 Under authority of an act of legislature of April, 1870, approved by the governor August 1870. MEMORIAL HALL, CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION, 1876 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 405 store which, by later acquisitions of ground, came to cover the entire block. The freight station, when it left Thirteenth and Market streets, was taken to Six teenth and Market streets, ground occupied by the company's present terminal buildings. A bridge over the Schuylkill river at Chestnut street had been needed for some years, to relieve the strain of traffic on the Market street bridge, increased by the trains of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the street cars. Events during the war caused the progress of the work to be very slow; and it was June 23, 1866, before it was finished. On that day the new bridge was formally opened by Mayor McMichael and city councils. On the evening of November 20, 1875, the Market street bridge, which had been widened and rebuilt in 1850, was burned. The railway company at once threw a light temporary bridge across the river, and trains were running over it nine days after the fire. On December 2d the company obtained authority from councils to erect a substantial new bridge at this point. Work was begun immediately and it was finished in the space of twenty-one days. The suspen sion bridge at Callowhill street, usually called the "wire bridge," evidencing signs of decay, it was replaced in 1875 by a double-decked iron bridge which was very much admired. A drawbridge of stone and iron was begun at South street in 1870, finished in 1875, and formally opened in February, 1876. The finest of all the new bridges, however, was that which was swung across the Schuylkill at Girard avenue, to take the place of a wooden bridge dating from about 1840, now falling into decay. It was made in the mills in Phoenix vilk, Pa., and cost upwards of $1,000,000. It had a width of one hundred feet, with ample sidewalks, and served a very important purpose during the Centen nial year, as it led almost directly to the exposition grounds. The work was begun in 1872, and was finished ready to be formally opened to the public on July 4, 1874. The Zoological Society, which had been formed before the war, had made lit tle progress with its arrangements in June, 1873, when the Park Commission as signed it the "Solitude" grounds on the west bank of the Schuylkill for its gar dens. Buildings costing $150,000 were erected before 1876. The grounds were opened to the public for the first time on July 1, 1874. On May 1, 1855, the curtain fell forever on the stage of the old Chestnut Street Theatre, above Sixth street. There was a "farewell to old Drury" and the proceeds of the performance were devoted to the relief of the poor. The build ing soon fell a prey to the workmen who were set to the task of demolishing it to make a place for clothing, boot and book stores. Rush's wooden figures of tragedy and comedy on the facade of the house, were purchased by Edwin For rest. At first placed in the picture room of his Broad street mansion, they were later removed to his home for actors and actresses, which was established near Holmesburg, in October, 1876. This opened the way for a new Chestnut Street Theatre between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, which was used for the first time on January 26, 1863, when Forrest appeared in Virginius. The house was crowded and premiums were paid for seats. In this theatre, after the war, an excellent stock company appeared and while it was not so notable an organiza- 406 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA tion as Mrs. Drew's, at the Arch Street Theatre, it enjoyed an enviable reputa tion for many years. For a long time William Wheatley, earlier of the Arch, was its manager. The Chestnut Street Opera House, at first known as Fox's American Theatre, appeared upon the site of the building which had long served the uses of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The house was burnt in 1877 and re built. It was sold by the sheriff in 1878, and was re-furnished and re-opened under its present name on September 20, 1880. The Academy of the Fine Arts, after selling its property in 1870 to Mr. Fox, on December 7, 1872, laid with ceremonies the corner-stone of a much larger building and one much better suited for its purposes, that which it now occupies at the corner of Broad and Cherry streets. It was opened for use on April 22, 1876, at which time James L. Clag horn was the president of the institution. A new post-office building, the first which the government had owned in the city, was opened in 1863. For many years, from 1834 the office was fixed in the basement of the Merchants' Exchange. In 1855 the postmaster moved his quar ters to Jayne's granite building on the north side of Dock street, but the arrange ment was recognized to be merely temporary and a site for a separate new edifice to be devoted especially to post-office uses was sought. The Bank of Penn sylvania, housed in the beautiful building designed by Latrobe in Second street, was sold to the government in 1856 and it purchased the old United States Hotel property opposite the State House. There, as we have seen, a new bank was under construction when the panic of 1857 brought the institution to its end, and the marble walls were acquired by the Philadelphia Bank. The post-office department did not make use of the building in Second street. Politicians with instincts of vandalism, tore it down and erected in its place a brick government warehouse, still standing on the site. For post-office uses a brick building faced with marble was erected on Chest nut below Fifth street, on the south side west of the Custom House. The post master-general, Montgomery Blair, Governor Curtin and other distinguished guests, were present at the opening ceremonies on Washington's Birthday in 1863. Even this much larger building soon proved to be inadequate for the purposes of the department, and the ground occupied by the University of Pennsylvania at Ninth and Chestnut streets was purchased by the United States government. The University now betook itself across the Schuylkill. While Charles J. Stille was provost, plans were made for a removal to West Philadelphia. Land was secured at Thirty-fourth and Locust streets and the corner-stone of what is known as the "college building" was laid on June 15, 1871. It was finished and opened for use at the beginning of the college year in October, 1872. Congress appropriated $4,000,000 for the construction of' a fine new post- office to stand where the University buildings had stood. It was ready for oc cupancy in 1884. Letter boxes had come to be affixed to the lamp posts every where. Post-wagons conveyed the carriers and their sacks and pouches from one part of the city to another. There were seventeen sub-post-offices in Philadelphia County in 1876. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 407 The principal commercial establishment in Philadelphia before the war was the Merchants' Exchange, set in the triangle formed by Walnut, Third and Dock streets, and owned by the Philadelphia Exchange Company. Here the Board of Brokers had a room in which money and stocks were bought and sold. The pro duce merchants also met here until they formed the Corn Exchange Association, and leased the second story of a building at the southwest corner of Second and Gold streets, where the old Merchants' Coffee House had been. The members of the association formed a Chamber of Commerce for the purpose of erecting a building nearby, at the southeast corner of Second and Gothic streets, on the site of the historic "Slate Roof House." After undergoing a variety of uses in the hands of many different tenants, this old building was purchased from the Norris heirs, who still held it, together with some adjoining structures, all of which were razed to the ground. A large hall, now occupied by a telephone company, was built for the corn merchants. It was dedicated on March I, 1869, and was for many years, while the grain trade was of importance in Phila delphia, the scene of great business activity. The United States Signal Service established a weather observation agency in a cupola on top of the building. One of the handsomest structures in Philadelphia, the Masonic Temple, at Broad and Filbert streets, was dedicated with many impressive rites, including a large street procession, in September, 1873. It had been in course of construction for five years, and its cost was more than $1,500,000. Until it was overshadowed by the Public Buildings, it was regarded, as it still may be, one of the real archi tectural ornaments of the city. Horticultural Hall was built on the corner of Broad and what was then called Lardner street, below the Academy of Music, in 1867. The Pennsylvania Hor ticultural Society was founded in 1827. It had been holding its meetings and exhibitions at various places, — in the Chinese Museum, the Sansom Street Hall, the Assembly Building, Concert Hall, etc. It now had a home of its own. The edifice was burned in 1881, to be at once rebuilt. In 1893 fire destroyed the new building, whereupon the handsome structure at present occupying the site and bearing the old name, was erected. The Mercantile Library on July 15, 1869, removed from its building at Fifth and Library streets to a large structure designed for a market house, on the west side of Tenth street above Chestnut street, opposite St. Stephen's church. The Philadelphia Library remained at Fifth and Library streets adjoining the Mercantile Library, on a part of the site now occupied by the Drexel Building. As early as 1857, the directors instituted a movement for the erection of a struc ture more nearly fireproof and in 1870 a piece of ground was purchased at the corner of Locust and Juniper streets, opposite the building of the Protestant Episcopal Academy, lately reorganized by Bishop Potter. Nothing for some time was done toward the construction of the new library, however, since a con troversy was precipitated concerning the acceptance of a bequest by Dr. James Rush. Dr. Rush was a son of Dr. Benjamin Rush; the sage and the friend of the sages of the Revolutionary time. He had practiced his profession in his youth, but later in life devoted himself to literary and scientific pursuits. He married a young Philadelphia belle, Phoebe Ann Ridgway, the daughter of Jacob Ridg way, the rich merchant of Girard's day, who for a time was the consul of the 408 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA United States at Antwerp. She had accompanied her father to Europe where she enjoyed unusual opportunities which she well knew how to embrace, and as "Madame" Rush she became Philadelphia's social leader. No other held such sway. Mr. Ridgway died in 1843 and she inherited a great fortune. Her large and handsomely furnished mansion on Chestnut street, where the Aldine Hotel now stands, was the gathering place for beauty and fashion, for wit and wealth, for many years. She was an accomplished linguist. The brilliant Nicholas Bid dle found great pleasure in her society, and at her receptions and balls the dis tinguished of Philadelphia as well as of other cities were liberally represented. Approval, expressed in an invitation to her home, was generally sought. "The fact is, this city is a peculiar one," said a contemporary in her defense, "and can not get along without a ruler. Other cities are governed by an oligarchy, and matters of etiquette are put to a vote. This community requires absolute despot ism to move it from its frigidity. There must be one sovereign — one, and one only, the appointed of fashion, the layer-down of law." When Nicholas Biddle was deposed by misfortune, there was an interregnum, "but after an interval — partly from charity, partly from ambition — this large-hearted and energetic woman took in her own hands the reins of government, and has shown herself a second Semiramis." 1 Her appearance, especially in her later years, was very disappointing. A young woman who attended one of her balls and met her for the first time, wrote: "There seemed a fitness wanting between that hard-featured, homely face, suf fused with purple and bearing the lion's mark almost in its deeply traced lines, and that huge ungraceful figure of which the mottled arms and neck were exposed in youthful fashion, — between these and the superb dress of Genoa velvet and lace, and exquisite gems that adorned her person, there seemed a strange dis crepancy. Feathers drooped from her hair, and she bore in her hand a fan made of plumes of the richest dye, ornamented with a bird of paradise with diamond eyes and claws set with rubies." But the secret of her spell was soon revealed when she began to converse with her guest. Her husband cared so little for the social life which she so brilliantly led, that he was likely to be found among his books while a ball went forward gaily in another part of the house. Mrs. Rush had a long illness, and died in October, 1857, at Saratoga Springs, whither she regularly went for the waters. She left no children ; and her hus band, surviving her, in the desire to perpetuate her name by the use of the money which she had brought him, resolved upon the construction of a building for the Philadelphia Library. Dr. Rush died in 1869. Jacob Ridgway's accumulations included a square of ground at Broad and Christian streets. Dr. Rush had not specified in writing that the building should be erected at this place, but after ward his executor, Henry J. Williams, stated that this was the wish which the testator had verbally expressed to him. The directors of the Library Company protested that the site was too distant. If the building were erected here, it would ?? ^r*611" pUrposes- No ^presentation would avail, and in 1871, seeing that Mr Williams was going forward without regard to their wishes, the directors took steps legally to restrain him from expending the money in this way. In 1 Westcott's Biographies of Philadelphians, Vol. II, pt. 2, p. 319. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 409 1873 the supreme court of the state dismissed the bill, and the work proceeded. Mr. Williams stated that when the building was done, if the Philadelphia Library Company would not accept it, it should be opened as a free library to be known as the Ridgway Library. More than $1,000,000 were available for the use, and a beautiful granite edi fice was reared upon the ground. Finally, when the work was finished, the Lib rary Company agreed to take the building, and to open it as its "Ridgway Branch." Many of the books not frequently used by the readers of the library, are stored in the building which, as was predicted, remains as silent as a tomb. Architecturally, it is all that could be wished, but its situation makes it little more than a monument to the family whose name it bears. Meanwhile, the directors of the Philadelphia Library Company went forward with their plans for a building on the lot at the corner of Locust and Juniper streets, realizing that the Ridgway Library could not be made to serve their pur poses except in a very subsidiary way. Those who used its collections, as stock holders, now almost never went to Fifth street except upon business. Earlier it had been within convenient reach of the fashionable residence district around Third and Spruce streets. Now, this district had gone up to and beyond Broad street on the same latitudinal lines. The corner-stone of the Locust street build ing was laid in 1879, and in the next year such part of the books as had not been taken to the Ridgway Branch were placed here. The street car lines in 1876 were charging a seven-cent fare; exchange tickets were sold for nine cents. On some of the roads there were night cars on which the fare was ten cents. The lines all had their colors: for example, the Ridge avenue cars were yellow, with red lights; Frankford, white cars, green lights; Manayunk, yellow cars, yellow lights; Green and Coates streets, green cars, red lights; Germantown (Fourth and Eighth streets), yellow cars, green lights. In day-time, some of the lines carried distinguishing flags. The cars were mostly drawn by two horses. A few lines, however, in portions of the city in which the traffic was not heavy, had one-horse cars. The activity at the Navy Yard in Southwark was now so great that plans were laid for its removal to League island. This site was offered to the city by the Pennsylvania Company for Insurances on Lives and another owner, for $310,000, and councils resolved to purchase and present it to the United States government. The situation was in many ways admirable. The island has a length from east to west of about two miles, and a width of from a quarter to a half mile. The work of moving the yard to this place was begun after the war. It was not com pleted until 1876. Upon the death of Mr. Simmons, the firm which published the Public Ledger became Swain and Abell. The active work of direction fell to Mr. Swain, his partner continuing to edit the Sun in Baltimore. The Ledger had been a pioneer in penny journalism, and the war made necessary an increase of price. This prospect was quite displeasing to Mr. Swain, and in December, 1864, the paper was sold to George W. Childs. The Ledger now became a two-cent paper, and gained a high reputation for the conservative authority of its news and as a medium for advertisers. Mr. Childs, after Mr. Peterson had retired from the book-publishing partnership, carried on the business for a time by himself. In 410 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA the purchase of the Ledger, he was known to have the support of the Drexels, though to how great an extent was a matter of information to few until his death thirty years later. The old offices at Third and Chestnut streets were too narrow, and he and his partners resolved upon the erection of a new building at Sixth and Chestnut streets. Work was begun upon this brown-stone structure on May i, 1866. It was formally opened on June 20, 1867, on whioh occasion Mr. Childs tendered a dinner to several hundred guests at the Continental Hotel, the be ginning of his distinguished career as a host. The Jayne building, on Chestnut below Third street, with a cupola towering above every other building around it was ten years before (1856) regarded as one of Philadelphia's principal sights.1 Now, the Ledger building seemed to be the finest edifice in the city and no visitor from afar returned to his home without viewing it. The principal newspapers, at the outbreak of the war, were McMichael's North American, Forney's Press, the Public Ledger, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Evening Bulletin; and a flourishing German morning journal, the Phila delphia Demokrat. On January 4, 1864, another paper, the Telegraph, began to appear at 108 South Third street, just north of Jay Cooke's bank. Its projec tors were Charles E. Warburton and J. Barclay Harding, a son of Jesper Hard ing and brother of W. W. Harding of the Inquirer. Under good editorial man agement, it became a very prosperous newspaper. The Evening Star, a small afternoon paper which enjoyed much favor for many years, began to appear in 1866. The Record, issued first as the Public Record, was established by William J. Swain, a son of William M. Swain, of the Ledger, on May 14, 1870. This was a morning paper, as was also the Times, whose first number appeared on March *3, 1875. The latter enterprise was originated by Alexander K. McClure and Frank McLaughlin, the former the editor and the latter the publisher of the paper. Mr. McClure, since his management of the Lincoln and Curtin campaign of i860, had held one or two political offices and had occupied himself with the practice of the law. He had practically purchased the Press from Mr Forney but the transfer was not effected.2 He then determined to establish a journal of his own. Needing a news franchise he bought out the Age, at the time in com plete desuetude with only 500 subscribers, and the Times at once became a vig orous factor m state and city politics. McClure Forney and McMichael were the last representatives of that jour- £r«£ T T ^ T- m°re ^ thG Papen The* Personalities dominated tZ^rZf Cf mnS;, f^r61™ ^ so bold that what they wrote was oTc ude the H g I" ^ abOUt ThC idea °f "news" had «* ^ «>™ uprthe Vr,atg 7 1 mf°rmatlon' much <>f * sensational and untrue, bearing paper The w " 1 "**?? fo Whkh €xpression is «™ P*» in tie news k syndicate dk noM * .^"^^tches by telegraph through monopolist ic syndicates did not forbid the establishment of rival journals though success ^newspaper publication had come to mean the investment of a mTch g^ the uS^t^^L^J?^ a"d M°St ifflP°^ 6difiCe * *° ki"d !" 2 Old-Time Notes, Vol. II, p. 400. CITY HALL GIRARD COLLEGE HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 411 sum of money than at any earlier time. There was as yet no Sunday edition of a daily paper. The Sunday papers, like the Dispatch, Republic, Taggart's Times, Transcript and Mercury, which had come into favor before the war, had held this field alone. The Times, often called McClure's Times to distinguish it from Taggart's Times, began to issue a Sunday edition in 1878, being followed by the Press three or four years later, and by the other morning newspapers. The Centennial grounds and buildings were made ready under the general direction of John Welsh and the citizens associated with him. Few more beauti ful sites could have been found for an exposition ; none more beautiful, certainly, in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. The scene, with the Schuylkill winding its way among the foliage, was the same which Judge Peters had viewed when he looked out from "Belmont," the same which the John Penns, the Binghams, Joseph Bonaparte and the other notable tenants of "Lansdowne" had so often looked upon. Only the city beyond, in the east, had changed to make the setting in that direction less sylvan. Five principal buildings were planned ; the Main Building, devoted to mining, manufactures, science and education, covering about twenty-one and a half acres ; Machinery Hall, covering fourteen acres; the Agricultural Building, having a floor space of ten acres ; the Art Gallery (now Memorial Hall) ; and the Horti cultural Building (preserved as Horticultural Hall). The Art Gallery, which was the most imposing of the structures, was built by the state and the city at a cost of $1,500,000, with the intention of permanence. When it had served its uses in 1876, it was to remain as a kind of South Kensington Museum, a place which it now creditably fills under the name of the Pennsylvania Museum. Besides these main buildings, there were many subsidiary and special struc tures: the United States Government Building, on George's Hill; the Woman's Building ; various state buildings ; the buildings erected by foreign governments ; special trade buildings; — numbering in all about one hundred and ninety. The plan of the grounds embraced seven miles of roads and footways, a number of bridges and pavilions, and a complete drainage system. On July 4, 1874, ground was broken for the large series of buildings which the board of finance and the centennial commission had projected. The citizens of Philadelphia, seeing that outside aid would be delayed, pledged the money and assumed the responsibility. In no other way could the result have been at tained. Soon the enthusiasm spread. On July 4, 1875, fully 200,000 persons con gregated in Fairmount Park. Militiamen paraded, the sites of Jewish and Italian statues were dedicated, the figure of Columbia, surmounting Memorial Hall, was unveiled. Mayor Stokley broke the ground for the Agricultural Building. The reading of the Declaration of Independence, orations, and fireworks made the day the most memorable in the recent history of Philadelphia. So great an interest was expressed in the exposition that the original arrange ments for fifty acres of buildings, giving 2,107,000 square feet of surface to ex hibitors, had to be extended considerably. On December 18, President Grant, members of his cabinet and many senators and congressmen were brought to the city to inspect the work with a view to obtaining greater consideration from the government for the undertaking. Finally, on February 11, 1876, $1,500,000 were 412 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA appropriated, but it was held afterward by the supreme court of the United States that this was only a loan, and it was necessary for the management to return the sum. All that the exposition cost the United States, therefore, was what the government expended in arranging its own exhibits. Visitors were drawn from every part of the world. Hotels and boarding- houses increased their number, and the city wore holiday garb throughout the year. 1876 was ushered in by a general illumination, cannonading, the huzzas of the populace, and the ringing of the new State House bell. The old bell had been cracked while being tolled at John Marshall's death in 1835. Its services had been supplemented even before that time by a series of bells cast by John Wiltbank for the new steeple. The third of his making held the place for 45 years. It had rung the fire and riot calls through the middle of the century, but during the Civil War a subscription had been started for another. Abraham Lincoln was numbered among the contributors to the fund, though the cost was principally defrayed by Henry Seybert. The metal was 78 per cent, copper and 22 per cent, tin, with which was fused 100 pounds from each of four historic cannon, two used on opposite sides in the War of Independence at the battle of Saratoga, and two used by the opposing armies at Gettysburg in the Civil War.1 This bell was ready to ring in the Centennial year. Foreign exhibits were already arriving, most of them by ships sailing directly for the Delaware. The people who came with them in strange dress, speaking strange languages, were soon seen in the streets and gave Philadelphia such a cosmopolitan appearance as it had not had since Washington was president. On May 10th the exhibition was opened, though it was not in all particulars completed. President Grant was escorted to the grounds by 4,000 local militia men, the City Troop surrounding him as a body-guard. It was estimated that 110,000 people were crowded around the staging within hearing distance, and vast numbers surged back and forth beyond. Theodore Thomas's orchestra played various national airs and Richard Wagner's "Centennial Inauguration March." Bishop Simpson made a prayer. A grand chorus sang Whittier's "Centennial Hymn," beginning "Our fathers' God, from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand; We meet today, united free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done And trust Thee for the opening one." The buildings were transferred to the Centennial Commission by John Welsh, the president of the Centennial board of finance, and a cantata, the words of which were written by Sidney Lanier, followed. General Hawley, of Connecti cut, president of the Centennial commission, formally presented the buildings to the president of the United States, who accepted them. He declared the exposi tion open and a little later set in motion the large Corliss engine in Machinery Hall which was viewed with the greatest curiosity by the visitors until the clos ing day. The occasion drew to the grounds thousands of distinguished guests. ^he Wiltbank bell was re-erected in the steeple of the town hall in Germantown. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 413 Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, came with the Empress, to take a part in the festival, and there were many other well known representatives of foreign nations, as well as of the American federal, state and city governments. On the 4th of July the celebration reached its height. The outpouring of enthusiasm began the night before with a great torchlight procession. When the State House bell struck twelve and the day of independence began, the crowded streets broke out into shouts and there was slight diminution in the excitement until in bodily weariness the people, late in the night, went to their homes for a little rest in preparation for the day which was soon to break. There were notable ceremonies in Independence Square. In President Grant's absence, Senator Thomas W. Ferry, acting vice-president of the United States, took the chair. Bishop Stevens delivered the prayer. A hymn whose words had been written by Oliver Wendell Holmes was sung ; the Declaration of Independence was read from the original (framed) manuscript by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia; Bayard Taylor read a national ode and William M. Evarts of New York delivered an eloquent oration. Among the guests on the platform on this occasion were the Emperor of Brazil ; the British minister, Sir Edward Thornton ; General William T. Sherman, and General Philip H. Sheridan. A military parade filled the streets, and night fell upon a people quite exhausted by their prolonged rejoicing. Such heat as was its lot during the summer of 1876 the city had almost never experienced. Always an unsuitable neighborhood for Fourth of July cele brations on account of its high average of temperature in the summer months, the climate in honor of the occasion surpassed all its usual records. For more than a month, from June 17 to July 20, the thermometer hovered around ninety degrees. On July 9 it reached a height of 102 degrees. These conditions tended to keep down the attendance at the exposition. During the first three months the average number of visitors passing through the gates was not more than 25,000, but in September it rose to 60,000 and in October to 88,000. Throughout the summer conventions and congresses of various kinds were held in the city, and it was a rare day, from the opening of the exposition until its close, that some special feature of interest was not announced at the Centen nial grounds. The "state days" drew the greatest crowds. "Pennsylvania Day," September 28, yielded a jostling mass of 275,000 people attracted by cheap railway fares on excursion trains, special exercises and some considera tions of local pride. The exposition was closed quietly on November 10. The night before, General Hawky's Centennial Commission and the board of finance united in tendering a farewell banquet to the foreign commissioners and judges of awards, in St. George's Hall in Arch street. The chief justice and the asso ciate justices of the supreme court, and several members of the cabinet, includ ing the secretary of state, the governors of four states, the mayor of the city and many others honored the occasion by their presence. At the closing cere monies the next day there was music by Theodore Thomas's orchestra and by a chorus, while addresses were delivered by John Welsh, General Hawley and Di rector-General Goshorn. At the conclusion of the exercises, held in the "Judges' Hall" because of. rain which prevented the carrying out of the elaborate arrange ments for an open air celebration, the machinery instantly came to a standstill. 414 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The exhibits were removed, the buildings dismantled and such as were to be sold were sold at auction on December i, 1876. The structures were torn down and the materials removed, while the "Lansdowne" estate was restored as quickly as possible to its original condition, barring the Art Gallery, Horticultural Hall, some asphalt walks, a few gardens and other traces of vanished glories which were permitted to remain ; but which probably tell to few today the story of the scenes enacted in and around them during this memorable year. The total number of paid admissions to the exposition was 8,004,274. The gate receipts were $3,834,290. The income on all other accounts, including the sale of capital stock, the Pennsylvania state appropriation of $1,000,000, the city appropriation of $1,500,000, and the United States government appropriation of $1,500,000, which was afterward returned, brought the total receipts up to $11,161,611.55. The principal items in the expense account were Memorial Hall, (city and state) $1,564,398 Machinery Hall (city) 634,863 Horticultural Hall (city) 367>°73 Main Building 1,763,600 Other buildings 912,360 Grounds, grading and drainage 640,980 The sale of the buildings at the close of the exposition yielded $294,245, of which $250,000 represented the price bid by a Permanent Exhibition Company for the Main Building.1 The considerable deficit which remained was charged to the stockholders, who appeared therefore in the light of subscribers, a not unexpected result, especially when the government of the United States called for the sum it had advanced to the undertaking. The effects of the exposition were in the highest degree wholesome, socially and politically. It reawakened, after the season of sectional division, a national feeling. It gave inspiration to art, invention and industry. In his report to the commission at its final meeting at the Continental Hotel on January 15, 1879, the chairman, General Hawley, said : "The improvement in taste during the two years since it closed has been clear and considerable. It is made known in all the directions I have indicated. There is a strong demand for more skill and elegance in the forms of decorations of pottery and porcelains and furniture, a better judgment in the fine arts and in architecture. This is recognized by the manufacturers, and the supply is answer ing the demand. The study of the arts of design has received a great impetus. The American people were greatly instructed in a knowledge of the progress and condition of the arts and manufactures of their own country, and the extent and value of its agricultural and mining resources. They assuredly underestimated the former. Notwithstanding the triumphs gained in previous exhibitions, the majority of our people were not prepared for the high praise bestowed upon the ingenuity and effectiveness of American machinery and implements and the variety and excellence of American manufactures by foreign judges. And these 1 The enterprise failed. In 1881 this structure, too, was sold to the wreckers for $97,000 and soon entirely disappeared. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 415 opinions have been justified by the subsequent increase in the quantity and variety of our exports." General Hawley further remarked that although 62,333 persons, on an average, entered the gates daily, "there was never an instance of riotous or tumultuous conduct or even, it may be said, of noisy or angry talk, and the few arrests for petty offenses are unmentionable when their proportion to the ten mil lions of entrances is considered." Orderly behavior, patience, courtesy and good humor were the characteristics of the multitude on the most crowded days. John Welsh, who had carried the burdens of management so generously and competently, was made the mark for much popular appreciation. On July 4, 1876, the directors presented him with a gold medal, and began to assemble a fund of $50,000 with which to endow, in his honor, the "John Welsh Centennial Professorship of History and English Literature" in the University of Pennsyl vania. The presentation was made on Washington's Birthday, 1877, when ad dresses were delivered by Governor Hartranft, Morton McMichael, Provost Charles J. Stifle and others. Later in the year, in recognition of his services to the nation, President Hayes appointed Mr. Welsh minister to England. On November 28, 1877, just before his departure, he was tendered a testimonial dinner at the Aldine Hotel by his fellow-citizens, at which time the speakers were Morton McMichael, Joseph Patterson, Dr. William Pepper, Craig Biddle, John W. Forney, Daniel Dougherty, Daniel J. Morrell and Frederick Fraley. Mr. Welsh, while not a brilliant ornament to the diplomatic service, created a pleasing impression upon the nation to which he was accredited. He remained in London for less than two years. He resigned his post and returned to his home in the summer of 1879. The election of Mr. Hayes to the presidency had come as the result of a bit terly contested campaign which covered the Centennial year. He twice visited the city, on July 4 and on October 26 (Ohio Day), while the exposition was in progress. His opponent, Samuel J. Tilden of New York, the Democratic can didate, came on September 21 (New York Day). The Hayes electors swept the city and the state, but the result was so confused in the nation at large that it was impossible for weeks and months to determine it. Only by the creation of an unusual body and by much, as it is believed, partisan manipulation, was a deci sion favorable to Hayes obtained, and this came only on the eve of inauguration day. On May 15, 1877, two months after completing his eight years of office, Presi dent Grant embarked on the steamship "Indiana" at a wharf on the Delaware for a trip around the world. This was one of several vessels built at the Cramp yards for the American Steamship Company. They carried the American flag, as few did then or have done since; and Grant, in making choice of this line, touched the chords of national sentiment. The day before his departure he was tendered a reception in Independence Hall, the beginning of a wonderful round of attentions from which there would be no relief for more than two years. He arrived in Philadelphia again on December 16, 1879, on a train frorn the west. A great procession met him at the Germantown Junction station (now North Philadelphia), of the Pennsylvania 416 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Railroad It was thought that 40,000 men were in line. They were marshalled by Colonel A. Loudon Snowden. It was some time before the enthusiasm sub sided, kept alive as it was by a definitely organized movement which Grant him self was brought to favor, to make him president again in 1880. Mayor Stokley had been re-elected for his third term in February, 1877, largely because of what he had done in the suppression of riots. He had brought the police service to a high state of efficiency, and always acted vigorously on the side of civil order. He had need for all his skill in the summer of 1877. Labor disturbances among railway employees began at Pittsburg in July. General John F. Hartranft, of Norristown, who had had an excellent record in the Civil War, was elected governor of the state in 1872. He himself led the militia in quelling the riots in the western part of the state. The troops from the city par ticipated in several sanguinary engagements. Meantime, Philadelphia was in fested by thousands of strikers and "tramps," and it was feared that they would precipitate similar scenes of disorder and bloodshed. Mayor Stokley had brought his police force up to about 1,200 men. Sunday, July 22, was a day of great anxiety. The mayor issued a proclamation declaring that he would main tain the peace at any cost, and he established his headquarters at the Pennsyl vania Railroad depot in West Philadelphia. All western traffic was interfered with. Freight trains were entirely idle, while passenger travel was highly dan gerous. It was the hope of the men and their sympathizers to destroy the com pany's property in Philadelphia. On Monday, July 23, they set fire to an oil train on a siding near the Blockley Almshouse, with a view to turning the attention of the police in that direction. Then they would descend upon the depot. The device failed. In the evening the men swarmed over the company's tracks, threat ening to tear them up, but Stokky's force, by the free use of clubs, prevented more serious rioting. Next day, four hundred marines from Baltimore and a detail of regulars under General Hancock, entered the city. Further trouble was avoided by this vigorous action on Mayor Stokky's part, and Philadelphia fairly accounted itself fortunate in possessing such a vigorous executive at this critical time. Dissatisfaction, however, had been growing, and the very agencies by which he suppressed riots, the policemen, were declared — with the gas trust — to be a corrupt source of political power. Stokley had been opposed in 1874 by Colonel A. K. McClure, as an Independent and Democratic candidate, who after his de feat established the Times to continue the combat. In 1877 his opponent was Joseph L. Caven who had similar support, but he was firmly entrenched in his office, and to dislodge him required extraordinary effort. Behind him stood a number of the most expert political bosses which the city had yet known; at their head, James McManes and William R. Leeds. Both were trustees of the gas works. McManes was the leading spirit and exercised a control over the Republican party which was arbitrary to the last degree. A dishonest fee system prevailed, and the bosses placed their friends in the offices which enjoyed these perquisites. Before the constitution was revised in 1873, the yearly income of the recorder of deeds was said to be $80,000; receiver of taxes, $85,000; clerk of the court of quarter sessions, $35,000; prothonotary of the district court, VIEW OF PHILADELPHIA. FROM A POINT ABOVE GIRARD COLLEGE (Taken from a balloon one mile high) HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 417 $15,000; city commissioner, $8,000. Five officers annually put into their pockets $223,ooo.1 Though salaries after 1873 generally took the place of fees the old conditions continued to prevail in the office of the receiver of taxes, which yielded in 1881 about $200,000 a year. The immense sum came through the collector of delinquent taxes, and was divided among less than a score of ringsters.2 "The city was filled with men in shining silk hats, wearing heavy jewelry. They toiled not, neither did they spin. They drove behind fast horses. Suddenly men were changed from life in a dingy tenement in an alley to brownstone or marble man sions on Spring Garden or Green street." 3 All public business was badly cared for. The streets were not cleaned. John Walter, of the London Times, visited Philadelphia in 1881 as the guest of George W. Childs. The walls of the Public Buildings which he was taken to see, looked down, he said, "upon the dirtiest streets that the sun ever shone upon." 4 The business of manufacturing gas seemed to be entirely subordinated to po litical considerations. The employees were herded at the polls, the city was colonized by rowdies from other cities just prior to the elections, Republican bosses consorted and made bargains for their mutual advantage with Democratic bosses, policemen were used at the polls in the interest of "King" McManes's can didates. "Artful in politics as a Machiavelli," said one writer, "his name was synonymous with all that an autocratic and unscrupulous control of political machinery and methods could imply." He had converted his office as a gas trustee "into a veritable fortress for purposes offensive and defensive." 5 This was the man, it was charged, who held sway over Stokley "as an imperious and exacting taskmaster." For several years Henry C. Lea, George H. Earle, T. Morris Perot and others had been active in the Citizens' Municipal Reform Association, formed in 1871 to improve the condition of Philadelphia's politics. A striking reform victory was won by quiet means in 1877, when Robert E. Pattison, a young lawyer as yet but little known, was elected controller of the city by a small majority, at a time when the Republican pluralities were normally large.6 Several strong reform leaders were sent to councils. Mr. Pattison revealed conditions in the financial administration of the city which formed the basis for his re-elec tion in 1880 by a majority of 13,000, when the other Democratic candidates were defeated by majorities of more than 20,000 ; and which directly led to the forma tion of a committee of one hundred citizens, the most successful as well as the most famous reform organization in the history of Philadelphia. Steps to create this committee were taken on November 15, 1880, a few days after the election of President Garfield, a campaign marked by great excite- 1 The Fall of Bossism, a History of the Committee of One Hundred, by George Vick- ers, p. 63. 2 Ibid., p. 69. 3 Ibid., p. 17. 4 Ibid., p. 19. 5 Vickers. 6 Hartranft's majority in the city for governor in 1875 was 18,000 ; Hayes's, in 1876, 15,000. Vol. II — 27 418 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ment, largely because of the partisan feeling aroused by what was regarded as the "counting out" of Tilden in 1876. E. Dunbar Lockwood, a manufacturer of envelopes and other paper supplies, in business on South Third street, called a meeting. Amos R. Little, a dry goods dealer, presided and he, with the advice of Joel J. Baily, Joshua L. Baily and others formed the Committee of One Hun dred, which was composed as follows : George N. Allen, merchant; William Allen, manufacturer; J. T. Auden- ried, coal operator; William Arrott, manufacturer; Charles B. Adamson, manu facturer ; Joel J. Baily, merchant ; Alexander Brown, banker ; William B. Bement, manufacturer; William Brockie, shipping merchant; Joshua L. Baily, merchant; H. W. Bartol, sugar refiner; Henry C. Butcher, merchant; John T. Bailey, manufacturer; James Bonbright, merchant; Charles H. Biles, cashier; Rudolph Blankenburg, manufacturer and importer; George L. Buzby, secretary of board of trade; David Branson, coal merchant; Robert R. Corson, secretary; E. R. Cope, manufacturer; B. B. Comegys, banker; John F. Craig, broker; George V. Cresson, machinery maker; Matthew H. Crawford, gentleman; Charles J. Cohen, manufacturer; Henry T. Coates, publisher; Lemuel Coffin, merchant; Samuel Croft, manufacturer; Edward H. Coates, merchant; A. A. Catanach, builder; Thomas T. Child, jeweler; James Dobson, manufacturer; A. J. Drexel, banker; William P. Ellison, merchant; George H. Earle, lawyer; Oliver Evans, merchant; George W. Farr, jeweler; Clayton French, wholesale druggist; John Field, merchant; W. W. Frazier, Jr., sugar refiner; Philip C. Garrett, retired manufacturer; Jabez Gates, merchant; R. H. Griffith, farmer; D. R. Garrison, lumber merchant; James Graham, merchant; John E. Graeff, coal operator; Henry C. Gibson, merchant; Thomas Hart, lawyer; F. Oden Horstmann, manu facturer; Thomas S. Harrison, manufacturer; Samuel Hecht, merchant; R. E. Hastings, manufacturer; Theodore Justice, merchant; N. E. Janney, real estate agent; William H. Jenks, merchant; Eben C. Jayne, wholesale druggist; Charles O. Knight, merchant ; Godfrey Keebler, baker ; Henry C. Lea, publisher ; Edward Longstreth, manufacturer; Henry Lewis, merchant; Amos R. Little, merchant; E. Dunbar Lockwood, manufacturer; J. Frederick Loeble, manufacturer; Louis C. Madeira, insurance agent; Thomas G. Morton, surgeon; James S. Mason, manufacturer; Theodore Megargee, manufacturer; George D. McCreary, coal operator; John McLaughlin, merchant; Acquila Nebeker, physician; Morris Newburger, manufacturer ; H. M. Oliver, manufacturer, T. Morris Perot, malt ster; James Peters, merchant; Joseph Parrish, lawyer; H. W. Pitkin, manufac turer; Thomas Potter, Jr., manufacturer; Charles Roberts, manufacturer; Charles H. Rogers, banker; Francis B. Reeves, merchant; Charles Spencer, manufacturer; David Scull, Jr., merchant; William Sellers, manufacturer- B H Shoemaker, importer; F. R. Shelton, banker; James Spear, merchant; Seville Scofield, manufacturer; Samuel G. Scott, merchant; Justus C. Strawbridge, merchant; Alexander Simpson, Jr., lawyer; Oswald Seidensticker, teacher- Wil liam Henry Trotter, importer; A. C. Thomas, importer; John P. Verree manu facturer; Charles Wheeler, manufacturer; George Whitney, manufacturer; George Watson, builder; John Wanamaker, merchant; Edward S Whekn banker; John C. Watt, manufacturer; Ellis D. Williams, lawyer; James A Wright, shipping merchant; William Wood, manufacturer; Henry Winsor ship- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 419 ping merchant; Alexander Whilldin, merchant; E. R. Wood, manufacturer; Christopher Wetherill, wholesale druggist.1 Mr. Little was entrusted to appoint "not less than one hundred business men ;" he appointed one hundred and eight. Some changes in the personnel of the committee were made later, but these were in the main the citizens who directed its successful movements. Its first meeting was held in the Board of Trade rooms on December 3, 1880. Philip C. Garrett was elected chairman ; James A. Wright and Francis B. Reeves, vice-chairmen; A. J. Drexel, treasurer; George W. Farr, secretary; Robert R. Corson and Charles B. Adamson, assistant secretaries. The following chairmen of standing committees were appointed : Amos R. Little, executive committee ; Joel J. Baily, finance committee; Edward R. Wood, legislative committee; John McLaughlin, ward organization committee; H. W. Bartol, committee on public meetings. A campaign committee was afterward appointed, of which John Field became the efficient chairman. It was believed, at first, that the Committee of One Hundred would favor the candidacy of Mayor Stokley for a fourth term, and strenuous efforts were made to bring about this result. Several questions touching upon his course were pro pounded to him. In the belief of a controlling number of members of the Com mittee, they were not answered satisfactorily, and other arrangements for the campaign were made. A sturdy figure in councils, who had acted consistently in the interest of the people was Samuel G. King. He was a native of the city, son of a coppersmith. He had entered select council in 1861, and had served in that body more than twenty years. He was now nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for mayor to oppose Mr. Stokley in the election of February, 1881. Most important, too, was the office of receiver of taxes, for which the Republicans had nominated George G. Pierie. The reform element selected John Hunter, a Republican manufacturer with a good record in councils. Mr. King insisted that the Democrats should add Mr. Hunter's name to the ticket, but ex-Mayor Richard Vaux and other advocates of unalterable party fealty, objected to a coalition of this kind. At length, the views of the fusionists were made to prevail. The Committee of One Hundred had directed the nominations; they now entered the campaign actively on the side of King and Hunter. By their vigorous tactics, King was elected by a majority of 5,787, and Hunter by a majority of 26,586. Astute management had characterized the Committee and with the prestige of a great victory, it continued to be a wholesome power in municipal politics for a number of years. 1 Vickers, Fall of Bossism, p. 81. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MODERN CITY. The population of the city which was 674,022 in 1870 had increased in 1880 to 847,170. Ten years later the total was 1,046,964. Long the first city in the country in point of size, it had now ceased to be the second, since Chicago's great recent growth had caused that rival to pass Philadelphia and to hold a lead of about 50,000 persons. Philadelphia's population in 1900 had increased to 1,293,697 (New York's had been but 1,206,209 in 1880) and in 1910 to i,549.oo8. The number of wards which had been 24 at the consolidation, is now 47. The northern and western movement of the population has led to the thick settle ment of portions of the county which 30 or even 20 years ago were grazing grounds, brick fields, and kitchen gardens. Germantown, Frankford, Rox borough, Hestonvilk, and Haddington, villages which stood alone on the boun daries of the county, are now integral parts of a closely built-up metropolitan area. Through its building associations Philadelphia has come fairly to earn its name — the "city of homes." The taste which the factory employee, or the clerk, or the mechanic has expressed for his own separate house, has led to the con struction of rows upon rows of brick dwellings. A family which in another American city would be settled in apartments, or suites of rooms upon a single floor here occupies an entire building which it controls from the cellar to the roof. Further to satisfy this desire for private and independent existence inside of four walls, the lines of settlement have been extended far outside the limits of the county, along the arteries of cheap and rapid passenger transportation. Camden and the towns of New Jersey pour their plenty into Philadelphia each morning and receive it back again at night. On the main line of the Pennsylvania Rail road, north and south and west on all the railway lines, old towns have increased in size and new ones have appeared. Incidentally, families of wealth have estab lished country homes which, if earlier merely supplementary to city residences, are now likely to be occupied throughout the year. Thus it is that with a vast increase in the number of families belonging to our rich and fashionable classes, the area "south of Market street" in which they can comfortably dwell, has undergone no material enlargement. Indeed it has been invaded at some points by the negro and foreign elements whose quarters abut upon the hallowed pre cincts of aristocracy, and by the shopkeepers. It is likely that the entourage of no city in the world, whatever its size, will on inspection yield such suburban i 420 ' ' HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 421 and country estates as those which adorn the roadside in all directions around Philadelphia. Thus, in several ways, the census belittles the importance of Philadelphia. Just as it was necessary before 1854 to add the population of several outlying dis tricts to that of the old city in order to know its real size, so now no fair notion of its magnitude can be obtained without a study of the census statistics of adjoin ing territory. This result has been achieved very largely by the extension of, and the im provement of the service on the steam railroads.1 The rate of speed of locomo tives has been very much increased. Coal instead of wood came into use as fuel. Heavier rails were laid upon the tracks, steel supplanted iron, and in a number of regards railways and their running equipment were made to conform to better engineering standards. It was announced on November 12, 1874, that a Penn sylvania Railroad train had made the journey from Jersey City to Philadelphia, including two stops, in one hour- and forty-seven minutes. At the same time a train covered the distance between Philadelphia and Baltimore in two hours and fifteen minutes. On June 11, 1877, a new fast train made the trip from Chicago to Philadelphia in twenty-three hours and forty minutes. In August, 1881, a passenger train passed between Camden and Atlantic City in 76 minutes. The terminal arrangements also underwent much improvement. On March 6, 1876, the Delaware and Bound Brook road ran its first trains into Philadelphia, thus opening a second railway line to New York. In 1879 the Bound Brook and the North Penn roads were leased to the Philadelphia and Reading Company, and trains from New York and from the Lehigh Valley were henceforward run into the old Germantown station at Ninth and Green streets. This was one of the fruits of the administration of Franklin B. Gowen, which began in 1869 when he was 33 years old. Mr. Gowen was the son of an Irishman. He was born in Philadelphia County in 1836. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in May, i860. Very able and fluent as a public speaker, skilful in argument and cool in debate, he soon rose to distinction. His touch, as the president of the railway which connected Philadelphia with the anthracite coal regions, was sure. His ambitions for the company were large and his course was always forward and confident. In 1870 the Schuylkill Navigation Company was leased for 999 years. Two years later the Schuylkill and Susquehanna line running west from Reading, once of so much importance as a route to the west, was leased on similar terms. At first used to supplement the long trains of cars upon the railroad, the boats on the Schuyl kill river were gradually withdrawn as coal carriers. There are yet a few boats in the hands of private owners, but for several years they have been almost never seen at the locks which they once passed so frequently. In 1871 a subsidiary company, the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, was incor porated for the purpose of purchasing, controlling, and operating mines, and an extensive territory underlaid with valuable coal measures was acquired, the basis for that rich inheritance into which the stockholders of the company are coming 1 The motor vehicle is at work now toward the same end. No less than 6,000 automobiles were registered in Philadelphia in 1909. 422 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA at this day. First, however, there were to be years of doubt, criticism, and tribulation. .<¦,«. , The coal regions in the decade from 1865 to 1876 were infested by what James Ford Rhodes calls a "hidebound secret order" of Irish Catholics— the Molly Maguires. They were organized for the purpose of doing violence and of wreaking revenge, and their operations were particularly directed against mine bosses and superintendents. Incidentally, they made themselves a force in poli tics and acquired control of the local governments. The constabulary, the elec tion boards, the schools were at the service of this organization dedicated to mur der. Few arrests were made. There were still fewer trials of offenders and no convictions of murder in the first degree. The "Mollies" were at the height of their power in 1874 when Mr. Gowen appealed to Allan Pinkerton, the detective, whose agency assigned an Irishman named James McParlen to the service. This man had been a teamster, a deckhand, a woodcutter, a coachman, a policeman, and a liquor dealer in and around Chicago. For two or three years he had been in the employ of Pinkerton and was now entrusted with a work, the truthful account of which exceeds the wildest chapters in fiction. After gaining the con fidence of the leaders as a "broth of a boy" who could sing a song, dance a jig, pass a rough joke and take his full portion of whiskey, he was initiated into the order. For two years he kept up his disguise, but at length was suspected and marked for death. He escaped by a miracle and with the aid of Gowen and the bar of Schuylkill and the neighboring counties, the trials and convictions were begun. On one day in June, 1877, four "Mollies" were hanged at Mauch Chunk. Six paid the death penalty at Pottsville, and three at Bloomsburg. In 1878 Jack Kehoe, a chief of the gang, mounted the scaffold at Pottsville. In all there were nineteen executions and many imprisonments. At length under Gowen's persist ent and energetic direction the organization was stamped out and the business of mining anthracite coal again pursued its peaceful course.1 By reason of its many obligations as a borrower, and the general state of the times the "Reading Railroad" on May 21, 1880, defaulted its interest payments, and it went into the hands of receivers, — Edwin M. Lewis, Franklin B. Gowen, and Stephen A. Caldwell. The company was now destined to pass through a long and tedious process of reorganization. Gowen resigned the presidency in 1884 and was succeeded by George deB. Keim. He was followed after two years by Austin Corbin, a New York railway man. The receivership was brought to an end in 1888 and in June, 1890, the company came under the presidency of A. A. McLeod, who had been its vice president and general manager. Mr. McLeod began an administra tion of expansion. In July, 1889, President Corbin had announced the com pany's intention of extending its tracks on an elevated structure from Ninth and Green to Twelfth and Market streets. The right to make this improvement was contested, but in December, 1890, councils passed the Reading Terminal bill, the old market houses and other buildings were torn down and the handsome and ' J. F. Rhodes, in Am. Hist. Review, XV, p. 547. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 423 commodious station with its large train shed was finished during the next two years. Mr. McLeod and his advisers in February, 1892, announced the lease of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey, thereby form ing a great transportation system; but on February 20, 1893, the road again passed into the hands of receivers, — Chief Justice Paxson, who retired from the supreme court to accept this post, A. A. McLeod, president of the Reading Railroad and Elisha P. Wilbur, president of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Mr. McLeod was succeeded in the presidency in April, 1893, by Joseph S. Harris, who had been president of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, and he in turn was followed in 1901 by George F. Baer. The subway, introducing to the Market street terminal the trains which formerly stopped at Thirteenth and Callowhill streets, was completed in 1899 and steps were taken to effect an arrangement with the city for sharing the cost of the work of elevating the tracks on Ninth street from Spring Garden street north to Wayne Junction. This vast and necessary improvement is at this writing on a fair way toward completion. The Pennsylvania Railroad, meantime, had built a large terminal passenger station at Broad and Filbert streets, facing the west side of that great mass of stone which was taking shape as a city hall. When J. Edgar Thomson ceased to be the president of the company at his death in 1874, his associate Thomas A. Scott was raised to the position. Under his administration which was bold and ambitious, the road made many notable advances. Its lines were lengthened ; its connections were multiplied, especially in the west to make it a main artery of commerce between the Mississippi valley and the Atlantic seaboard. The purchase of a controlling interest in the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Balti more railroad in 1881 opened the way for bringing the Baltimore and Washing ton as well as the New York and the western trains into a common terminal building. In 1880 the company, which continued to use its station at Thirty- second and Market streets, bought properties on the south side of Filbert street, running from the Schuylkill east to Broad street, for the erection of an elevated. railroad and a passenger depot. On February 16, 1881, the first train came into the new Broad Street Station which was formally opened on December 5, fol lowing. With later enlargements it is practically the building which continues to serve the company's large uses at this day. At Mr. Scott's death in 1881, George B. Roberts became the president of the road. He was followed in 1897 by Frank Thomson who died two years later. Mr. Thomson was succeeded by A. J. Cassatt, whose ambition led to nothing less than a proposal for tunnels under the Hudson river and a terminal depot in the heart of New York city. He announced his plans in 1901. They were rapidly perfected and trains in 1910 were taken under the river into the new station. Meanwhile at Mr. Cassatt's death the presidency of the company passed to James McCrea. The Pennsylvania Railroad secured control of the old Camden and Amboy Railroad, the Camden and Atlantic Railroad, the West Jersey Railroad (to Cape May and Atlantic City), and in 1882 sought to purchase the "narrow gauge," a third railroad to Atlantic City. They were prevented by law from gaining 424 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA possession of the last named property on the ground that it was a parallel line, and in 1884 it fell into the hands of the Philadelphia and Reading Company. Early in the '80s, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad sought an entrance to Philadelphia on its way to New York. A branch line was constructed north from Baltimore. Many difficulties were put in the way of the company in the ac complishment of its purpose by hostile interests, but it was enabled to open a station at Twenty-fourth and Chestnut streets and make connections by a line constructed along the bank of the Schuylkill river with the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad over which it finds a route to New York. The work was so far advanced by May 11, 1886, that the president and other officers of the com pany passed over the road from Baltimore up to the western abutment of an uncompleted bridge below Gray's Ferry. Transportation in the streets also underwent many changes and improve ments. As early as in 1859 there was a board of presidents of city passenger railway companies in the interest of unity of policy.1 By entering into leasing arrangements, before 1883, the Union Passenger Railway Company had come to control 70 miles and the Peoples' Company 44 miles out of a total of 288. In that year P. A. B. Widener and W. L. Elkins organized a syndicate to operate street railway systems in this as well as in other cities. They formed the Phila delphia Traction Company. In 1885 they had 116 miles of track under their management. Their first material change in the direction of an improved service was the introduction of the cable system on the Market street line and its con nections. Chicago and some other cities were making use of cars with clutches which, passing through a slot, seized a cable moving on the endless chain prin ciple in a tube set beneath the street level. This system was employed on Market street with not too much success until electric traction was introduced in 1893 and 1894. On March 7, 1887, the fare on all the lines was reduced to five cents. The Philadelphia Traction Company of Mr. Widener and Mr. Elkins be came the basis of a more comprehensive consolidation. Before June 30, 1895, all the lines of the city except the Hestonvilk, Mantua and Fairmount Railroad with 24 miles of track, were included in one or another of three corporations ; — the Philadelphia Traction Company, which now operated 203 miles, the Electric Traction Company with 130 miles, and the Peoples' Traction Company in con trol of 73 miles of track. "The expected happened." In September, 1895, the Union Traction Company was formed. The three large companies were joined and only the Hestonvilk line remained outside. It, subsequently, was admitted to the all comprehending organization.2 Thus the street railway system with some later changes in its corporate shapes and forms, has remained up to the present year of grace. There are now 625 miles of street railroad in operation in Philadelphia. The company's most recent achievement has been the erection of an elevated structure on Market street, west of the Schuylkill river, and a subway on that street east of the river to the Delaware wharves, as a means of making more 1 Speirs, Street Railway System in Phila., p. 29. 2 Ibid., p. 35- VIEW OF THE SCHUYLKILL IN FAIRMOUNT PARK (Taken from a balloon) HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 425 easy the movement of the crowds which for several years have taxed the capacity of the West Philadelphia lines. Not less noteworthy, from another point of view, has been the laying down of tracks on the Old York Road to Willow Grove where in 1895 a handsome pleasure park was established. For a low fare thou sands of persons are transported daily in summer time over this fine route. In the park, which has enjoyed excellent management, concerts by the best Ameri can orchestras and brass bands are heard free of cost, a piece of corporate benev olence which has sensibly raised the level of musical appreciation in the community. The change of the system under which gas was manufactured for the city and for the citizens came with the new charter. The series of men of an in different order who had been serving the city in the mayor's office since Alex ander Henry's and Morton McMichael's day, under the charter which Phila delphia had had since the consolidation, came to an end with William B. Smith. He was elected in February, 1884, over Samuel G. King, who had held the office for three years and who was the candidate of the Democrats and the Commit tee of One Hundred for re-election. Smith's vote was 79,552 and King's 70,440. The successful candidate came from the ranks of the small tradesmen. By his fine bearing when in uniform in the militia and as marshal of a campaign march ing club — the Republican Invincibles, — helped by his being a "hail fellow well met" in political assemblages, he was sent to councils. Before any one quite knew how or why it was done, he was the mayor of the city. Dapper in ap pearance he was not unfittingly denominated the "Dandy Mayor," a name which if it was first applied to him in affection came to be spoken with ridicule by his foes. In the Times, Colonel A. K. McClure, who made himself the vindictive enemy of many men in public life, pursued Smith unremittingly. Councils ap pointed a committee to investigate the charges against the mayor, which it did at much length. His impeachment was proposed, but the proceedings fell through. The Times was sued for libel and a verdict favorable to the complainant was obtained. Large damages were awarded Smith, but the tricks and confusions of the law saved the newspaper from paying them. For some time reform associations and other influences had been at work to give another shape to the system of city government. It was conceived that if the mayor's hands were strengthened, if he with executive powers should be separated from the legislature and the legislature with legislative powers should keep to its separate field, if he were put into office with cabinet officers around him, entrenched in a position in some way analogous to that of the president of the United States or the governor of a state, the community would rise to an under standing of the need of electing men of more capacity to the place. A good many changes in the character of the government had been effected in the new constitution of 1874. As has been related, the term of the mayor was ex tended from two to three years and the elections were set forward to February. The aldermen then disappeared out of the scheme. Since 1854 they had been elected by wards. Their place was taken by magistrates at the rate of one for every 3,000 people, chosen on a general ticket. The ancient office of recorder, shorn of most of its powers, lingered until 1883, when by a special act of as sembly, it was entirely abolished. In 1876, pursuant to recommendations of 426 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Governor Hartranft, the legislature authorized him to appoint a commission of eleven members to devise a plan for the government of the cities of the state. The commissioners were named and a "uniform code" was proposed, though nothing came of the suggestion for several years. In 1882 "an act to provide for the better government of cities of the first class in this commonwealth," that is for Philadelphia, since no other city in the state met the conditions which were prescribed for admission to this "first class," was prepared by several persons interested in the subject. Among the num ber were John C. Bullitt, a prominent lawyer of Philadelphia, who had been a member of Governor Hartranft's commission ; Henry C. Lea, publisher, historian, and inflexible political reformer; and E. Dunbar Lockwood. Much advice was taken. The various points at issue were carefully considered. Councils ap pointed a committee which debated the subject for several months. Mr. Pattir son, who had been so successful in the work of reform in Philadelphia, had been called to> a greater field. He was now governor of the state, ready to use his agencies in behalf of the proposal which was now generally known as the "Bullitt Bill." Prominent citizens appealed in petitions for its enactment into law. Taxes were too heavy to be borne. The streets were "a reproach and a disgrace" to civilization. The water was not only unfit to drink; it was offensive in the bath tub. The sewerage system was "notoriously bad." Public work was done so wretchedly that structures fell down. Others were being permitted after "enormous expense * * * to fall to decay without completion." If some of the trouble were due to the failure of the people "to elect good men to office," more cause could be found "in the system of government itself." There fore, this bill proposed an entirely new scheme and its passage was urged. The legislature gave its approval in 1885 and the measure was to go into effect on April 1, 1887. By this charter, the mayor, as has been indicated, was put into a place of power and dignity. His term was extended to four years and he was made ineligible for re-election. He was to conduct himself in reference to councils much as a president does in relation to Congress, and was given the headship of a number of executive 'departments. Prior to the passage of the Bullitt Bill, there had been some 25 separate bureaus. These were consolidated and in cluded under nine new departments: public safety, public works, receiver of taxes, city treasurer, city controller, law, education, charities and correction, and sinking fund commission. The department of public safety covered the direction of the police, building inspection, and at first, until a separate department was formed, attention to the public health. The chief of the department of public safety was to be known as the director of public safety. The department of public works, also under a director, was given the care of the water supply; the construction, repair, light ing, and cleaning of the streets; the maintenance of bridges, public squares, public buildings, the sewerage and drainage system, docks, dredging, etc. The plan of holding the gas-works under a board of trustees which had long and rightly created so much dissatisfaction, was brought to an end, and the business was placed under the control of this department. Both the director of public HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 427 safety and the director of public works were appointees of the mayor. The re ceiver of taxes was made elective by the people for a term of three years, as were the city treasurer and the city controller, two other financial officers. The depart ment of law was put in charge of a city solicitor, chosen for three years. The de partment of education was entrusted to the agencies formerly directing it; and the department of charities and correction, controlling the almshouses, hospitals, reformatory institutions, etc., came under the management of a president and four directors appointed by the mayor. The sinking fund commission, remained under its existing organization.1 While the mayor was being kept free from legislative duties councils were also put into their separate place. This body was to consist of two branches as before, but its powers were greatly diminished. All the new and improved theories regarding city government were supposed to be incorporated in this charter, and the reformers looked forward expectantly to April i, 1887, when the time should be at hand to put the scheme into effect. On January 19, 1886, the Committee of One Hundred was disbanded. It had lost its fight against the "Dandy Mayor" and the hour was come when in the belief of many, its services would no longer be required. The Republicans chose as their candidate for the first mayor under the Bullitt Bill, Edwin H. Fitler, a successful manufacturer of cordage; the Democrats, George deB. Keim. Both nominations marked something like a return to old conditions in respect of this office. Both were respected and excellent men of affairs of that type which it is always a pleasure for right-thinking citizens to welcome into public life. Mr. Fitler was elected by a vote of 90,211 against 62,263 Ior Mr. Keim, and in April he was inducted into office. William S. Stokley was appointed director of public safety and Louis Wagner, director of public works. While in some respects distinctly a disappointment to those who had put their faith in him as an apostle of much better things, Mr. Fitler in no way deserved the assault which was begun upon his administration by Colonel McClure. Ridi culed as the "Lord Mayor," and in other particulars daily set forth as an absurd personage, he finished his term without discredit. In 1891, Edwin S. Stuart who later became the governor of the state, succeeded Mr. Fitler in the office. He in turn in 1895 was succeeded by Charles F. Warwick. In 1899 Samuel H. Ashbridge, in 1903, John Weaver, and in 1907, John E. Reyburn were elected to the post. It is not the part of a discreet historian to enter upon any dis cussion, or to express his judgments concerning a period in which we are still living and this task must be reserved for some writer who shall stand at a greater distance from the scene. The transfer of the gas works from the custody of "Jim" McManes and his trustees, to a bureau of gas under the superintendency of the director of public works, made an end to this prolific source of scandal, at any rate in its old form. McManes died in 1899, leaving a personal estate valued at more than $2,40o,ooo.2 The city manufactured gas under a system of direct control for a few years until the works were leased to a private corporation. Proposals 1 Allinson and Penrose, Philadelphia, 1681-1887. 2 Public Ledger Almanac for 1902, p. 48. 428 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA for their lease or sale were frequently made, but none availed until 1897 when councils voted to transfer the property to the United Gas Improvement Company amid vigorous public protests.1 Meantime a new lighting agent had appeared in the field — electricity. Seen as a great curiosity, burning under water, at the Centennial Exposition in 1876, it was soon in practical use in business houses in the city. On December 3, 1 88 1, the electric light had reached such a point of development that 49 lamps were placed in Chestnut street between the Delaware and the Schuylkill rivers. From this time forward the extension of the service in both public and private fields of use was rapid. Wires of the electric light companies were strung in the streets. The telephone added to the blotting and disfigurement of the city landscape, once so much admired by visitors. Telegraph, telephone, overhead electric traction, and electric light poles and wires filled the air, covered buildings, led to the partial or complete destruction of trees and brought a new danger to man and beast in time of storm when the lines were beaten down into the streets, and will continue to do so until those who have control of these subjects make it obligatory to place these offenses under ground. The electrical arts and sciences had made so much progress and were viewed with so much interest by such large bodies of people, that in 1884 an electrical exposition was opened under the auspices of the Franklin Institute in a building erected near the old Pennsylvania Railroad station in West Philadelphia, attracting much more than local notice while it was in progress. The question of the paving of the streets also received attention. The round water-washed cobble stones, over which the stage coaches and omnibuses had rattled for many years, and through which the street car companies had laid their rails, gradually yielded to asphalt, stone blocks, bricks, wood, and other material better calculated to achieve the end in view. In this way the city has become quieter as a place of residence. Passengers in carriages are driven about more comfortably. Burdens are borne from place to place more easily. At the same time the task of keeping the streets clean has been very much simplified. Only an alley in some obscure corner of the city serves today to give us a view of the pavement which was known in Philadelphia in the youth of men not yet old. The condition of the water supply of the city, because of the Schuylkill's source in the coal regions, the manufactories upon its banks which discharged their liquors into the stream, and the Sewage swept into it by many towns re gardless of the interests of the more than a million people settled at its mouth, at length became so vile that in 1899 a water committee was appointed. Various plans which embraced a proposal to seek a purer and more distant source were suggested, but the recommendations finally took the form of sand filter beds for the Schuylkill and Delaware. Nearly $30,000,000 have already been expended upon the plants. At Belmont, which supplies West Philadelphia, there are eight een .7 acre filters; at Roxborough, five .53 acre filters; while at Torresdak, on the Delaware, a very extensive series of beds have been built and are being 1 Mayor Warwick signed the bill on November 12, 1897. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 429 brought into use. There are seven pumps here each with a capacity of 40,- 000,000 gallons a day. The city today employs 2,100 persons in its water department, 3,492 policemen and 1,012 firemen. While reforms were going forward in other directions, the temperance senti ment of the city succeeded in making itself felt to the extent of securing the enactment of a high license law. The local optionists and the state-wide prohi bitionists professed to see no good in the policy. It was pandering to evil even to recognize the distilling or brewing industries, and the sale to the people of in toxicating liquors. To drink a beverage containing as much as one or two per cent of alcohol was a kind of sin. Of course, these views could not be made to prevail. At the time considerable faith was expressed in the plan to levy much higher taxes upon liquor dealers and to examine more narrowly into the character of those to whom licenses to sell were granted. In places where four or five grog shops had been offending the moral sense of the com munity, one of a better type, able to pay a high license fee was set up, abating former nuisances while still satisfying popular needs. This was the theory underlying the Brooks' Law, which was signed by Governor Beaver on May 13, 1887. Hereafter the prices of retail liquor licenses would be as follows : In cities of the first, second and third classes, $500 In other cities, j 300 In boroughs, 150 In townships, 75 Applicants should be citizens of the United States "of temperate habits and good moral character," an inconceivable thing said the prohibitionists in the case of any liquor dealer. Those who wished to qualify for the business under the law were required to make their appeal to the court of quarter sessions. Each applicant's petition should contain the names of at least twelve reputable electors, resident in the neighborhood of the saloon, testifying to his ability to carry on his business in a proper way. He must provide himself also with sureties. The judges would set a time for hearing the petitions for, and also the remon strances against the applicant, should there be any, and in their discretion would grant the license for one year. At the end of that time the process should be repeated. Saloons must be closed on election days and on Sundays. No liquor should be sold to minors or to persons of known intemperate habits at any time. Sales should not be made on credit or in trade for "goods, wares, mer chandise, or provisions." Violations of the law led to forfeiture and fine. Those who should attempt to sell liquor without licenses were marked for severe punishment. A high license law for wholesalers was enacted a week or two later, on May 24th, 1887. The passage of these measures created a great pother. Many of the smaller dealers at once abandoned any intention of longer carrying on their business. There had been 5,573 licensed retail liquor dealers in Philadelphia County in 1887. But 3,431 retailers made application for licenses in 1888 under the Brooks' law. Of this number the judges granted 1,343, only a few more than one-third. 457 out of 517 applicants for wholesale licenses were successful. In 1889 the 430 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA number was still further reduced. Only 1,205 out of 3,214 applications were granted.1 Much illicit selling went on in "speak easies" and "blind tigers" in spite of the law, but it is doubtful whether this evil was greater, if as glaring, as it had been before. The reduction in the number of selling places had a wholesome effect. Saloons were driven out of residential neighborhoods where they were distasteful to the people. Saloons which adjoined, or which were in close proximity to one another, were weeded out on the ground that so many were not "necessary for the accommodation of the public." Dirty little counters in sheds and tents entirely disappeared. The provisions of the law have been enforced by the courts with a reason able degree of attention to the best interests of the city ever since. To satisfy the temperance advocates for whom this measure was too mild, the legislature submitted to the people on June 18, 1889, a constitutional amendment prohibit ing the liquor trade throughout the state. Of 145,43! votes cast in Philadelphia 26,468 were for and 118,963 against the proposal, an adverse majority of 92,495. The majority against the amendment in the state at large reached the large total of 189,000. It had been stated when the work upon the City Hall was begun that it would be completed in ten years, that is in 1881, at a cost of $10,000,000. Year after year the commission which had the undertaking in hand, called for appropriations of money. Parts of the marble surface early put in place were so blackened with smoke that they must be cleaned before the building was yet complete. The conduct of the operations awakened many expressions of dissatisfaction, both because of the character of the building from an architectural point of view and the great amount of time and money which were being consumed in its con struction. Unsuccessful attempts were made to take the work out of the hands of the commission, and turn it over to the regularly established agents of the city.2 John McArthur, Jr., the architect, died on January 8, 1890. He was succeeded by John Ord, who in turn made way for W. Bleddyn Powell. The chambers of councils were so far finished in April, 1895, that these bodies were able to occupy them. The tower kept many workmen busy for a num ber of years. Preparations were made to surmount it with a statue of Will iam Penn for which some historical investigations in the field of costume were instituted. It was completed in November, 1894, and stood for some time in the court yard below, where citizens marvelled at its size. Its weight was 53,348 pounds; its height 37 feet. The hat of the Quaker founder was nine feet in diameter and 23 feet around the rim. Diligent statisticians fur ther found that the buttons on his coat had a diameter of six inches, that his finger nails were three inches long and the calf of his leg more than eight feet. in circumference. A great clock which was ordered in 1898, at a cost of $27,960, was put in place at the end of that year, and began keeping time at midnight, December 31st, the beginning of the new year 1899. The diameter of the dial is 26 feet. The minute hand is 10 feet 8 inches, the hour hand 9 feet long. On November 15, 1899, the architect estimated that $2,883,365 would yet be needed 1 Ledger Almanac for 1890, p. 59. 2 See for instance Act of Assembly of May 24, 1893 in Laws of Pa., p. 124. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 431 to complete the buildings. On July i, 1901, they were formally transferred by the commission to the city the work practically, though not yet quite done. To finish it had required thirty instead of ten years and $25,000,000 instead of $10,- 000,000. The total expenditures during the period that the commission was in control were $24,344,355.48. Subsequent expenses aggregated $297,410.29, making a total of $24,641,765.77. Some $5,000,000 of this amount were used for fitting and furnishing the building, and for maintenance while it was in partial use by the city departments. The City Hall has a length from north to south of 486 feet ; from east to west, of 470 feet. Its total area of floor space is I4>4 acres. It contains 634 separate rooms. The distance from the ground to the center of the clock dial on the tower is 361 feet, to the crown of Penn's hat, 548 feet, which is only two feet less than the height of the Washington Monument. The lights upon the tower can be seen for 25 or 30 miles. Eighty million bricks were used in the con struction of the building and 730,000 cubic feet of marble. A good deal of the unsuccess of the structure from an architectural point of view, is due to the fact that it is ill situated. A visitor a few years ago in describing Philadelphia, wrote of the "brutal mass of marble dumped in the center of it called the Public Buildings." It destroyed "the symmetry of everything about," and the things about, it can well be added, now destroy whatever symmetry the Hall itself could be held to possess, if it were set in another place. In another location it could likely be extended to accommodate the growing needs of the city for public office room, which is even now, not yet ten years subsequent to its completion, inconveniently taxed. The new post-office building at Ninth and Chestnut streets was opened for use on January 21, 1884. On December 4, 1886, Anthony J. Drexel, the banker, purchased the old post-office on Chestnut street above the Custom House, for $413,000. He also acquired the structure on Fifth street, in use until 1880 by the Philadelphia Library, when it removed to its new home at Juniper and Locust streets, and one or two other properties. On the site he projected a large office building called the Drexel Building, the first of the large modern type with wide open corridors, an abundant supply of elevators passing from floor to floor and other improvements and conveniences. As the Jayne Building had been super seded by the Ledger Building, so now the Drexel Building became one of the sights of the town. It was completed in 1888 and the Stock Exchange which had found its quarters for so many years in the fine old Merchants' Exchange at Third and Dock streets and since 1876 in a building at the rear of the Girard Bank, removed to a hall which was fitted up for it by Mr. Drexel. "Third street" which had been Philadelphia's "Wall street" for so many years, a synonym for the money market, lost its meaning and dropped out of our local speech. About 1892, George E. Bartol, after visiting the bourses of Europe, formed a plan for bringing all the exchanges of Philadelphia together at a similar center. A company was founded, a large rectangular building was erected in the centre of the block running from Fourth to Fifth streets, between Market and Chest nut streets. It was completed and opened for use in 1895. The Commercial Exchange was lured from the old Corn Exchange building on Second street, 432 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA which was placed where the "Slate Roof House" had stood, and two or three minor exchanges moved to the Bourse, but the managers of the Stock Exchange would not join the movement and have lately returned to their old quarters in the Merchants' Exchange building. Institutions were enlarged and extended and new ones appeared. The Uni versity of Pennsylvania which had removed to West Philadelphia in 1872-4, underwent a rapid development, after 1881, when Dr. William Pepper was elected to the provostship. His position as a scholar, his great energy, the catho licity of his views on the subject of education, his social and political influence, greatly redounded to the advantage of the institution. Buildings were multiplied, the space around them enlarged, new schools created and old schools strengthened. The University, under his administration, it is not too much to say, was made to stand for the first time beside the first institutions of higher learning in the land. The development which he began was continued and furthered by the devoted hands of Charles Custis Harrison, who followed Dr. Pepper in the service in 1894. The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, combining in one institution an exhibition of ceramics and other art objects with a school for in troducing the art idea into various branches of industry, was an outgrowth of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. The state had made its building in the park of a permanent character, and it has come to bear the name of Memorial Hall, a memorial of the Centennial year. The museum and school were incorporated on February 26, 1876; and a sum of money was raised to purchase some of the Centennial exhibits. These were placed in the hall and it was opened to the public. Founded upon the lines of the South Kensington Museum, the collections have grown until they have come to possess a great deal of interest. The hous ing in the same hall of a valuable collection of pictures bequeathed, with a sum of money to increase it, to the city on March 1, 1892, by the will of Mrs. Anna H. Wilstach, has added to its attractions. The classes in industrial art were soon opened also, at first at 312 North Broad street, then in Chestnut street, and later at 1336 Spring Garden street. Drawing, plastic modeling, wood carving, wall decoration, frescoing, art needlework, weaving and color harmony in manu facturing were taught by competent instructors. The weaving school developed such strength and occupied so much space that it was necessary for it to find separate quarters on Buttonwood street. In 1893, the schools were re-united by the purchase of the property of the Pennsylvania Institute for the Deaf and Dumb at Broad and Pine streets. William Weightman offered to give $100,- 000 if the same amount were collected from other sources. These efforts were 2 Z ' J TT u Paid $S4°'°50 f°r the fine buildinS and ^e industrial Dumb TnS r ^ I"3" ^ thdr h°me here ever since- The Deaf and Germant" p", f/df * ^ buildin«8 in handsome 8™"* «* the O-ermantown Road near Mount Airy. The School of Design for Women was founded in 1847 by Mrs Peter the wife of he British consul in Philadelphia. It was incorporated ^n 1853 to ^importance has been gained in large degree since the Centennial year In 1880 Edwin Forrest's mansion at Broad and Master streets, was p^ha^ 4^ HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 433 and enlarged for the use of the school. A fine institution with similar purposes in view, was established by Anthony J. Drexel in West Philadelphia. He an nounced the benefaction in 1889. A handsome building was erected, and on December 17, 1891, the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry was dedi cated. The Academy of Natural Sciences, which since 1842 had occupied its hall at Broad and Sansom streets, removed about 1876 to a fine new building on Race street facing Logan Square where with some additions to its space, its collections still rest. In 1884, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania removed its collections from the building on Spruce street to the old mansion of General Patterson at Thir teenth and Locust streets. During the time its president, Samuel W. Penny- packer, was governor of the state, an appropriation was secured from the legis lature. This sum supplemented by other gifts, led to the erection of a large fireproof building where the old house had been. It was formally opened in 1910, At about the same time the College of Physicians, so long located at the north east corner of Thirteenth and Locust streets, removed to its fine new building on Twenty-second street above Chestnut. A number of new institutions were established on the outskirts of the city. In 1869, Swarthmore College in Delaware County was opened under the aus pices of the Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends. In 1884 Bryn Mawr College, an excellent higher school for girls, under the management of the Or thodox Friends, was established at Bryn Mawr. Jay Cooke's large home out the York Road, "Ogontz," after the rehabilitation of his finances, was repur chased by the old financier and converted into a fashionable girl's school. Isaiah V. Williamson left a large sum of money to establish a trades' school for boys. The trustees purchased 205 acres in Delaware County in 1889, and then set about the work of erecting buildings and of carrying out the terms of the bequest. The board of controllers, which was in charge of the public school system of the city, became the board of public education of the first school district of Pennsylvania in 1870. Several fine new school buildings were erected. In 1876, the Girls' Normal School at Seventeenth and Spring Garden streets, now the Girls' High School was built. In 1893, the new Normal School for Girls at Thirteenth and Spring Garden streets was completed. The Central High School, at the southeast corner of Broad and Green streets, outgrew its walls and in 1894 the cornerstone of a new building was laid at the southwest corner of Broad and Green streets. It was dedicated in 1902 with interesting ceremonies. President Roosevelt was in attendance and delivered an address. The presi dents of the school have been seven in number, — Alexander Dallas Bache, John Seely Hart, Nicholas H. Maguire, George Inman Riche, Franklin Taylor, Henry Clark Johnson, and Robert Ellis Thompson, who assumed office in 1893. In 1885, the first manual training school in connection with the system of public education, called the Central Manual Training School, was established in a build ing at Seventeenth and Wood streets. The Northeast School was opened in Kensington in 1890 and the Southern on lower Broad street, in 1907. There are now 235 public schools in Philadelphia in which 4,812 teachers give in- 434 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA struction to 181,012 children. In addition it is computed that there are about 80,000 children in private and parochial schools in the city. The board of education for many years was a body made up of one mem ber from each ward or section ; appointed by the judges of the court of common pleas. By act of assembly of 1905 the board became a body of twenty-one members appointed at large, instead of by wards, by the judges. Each ward or section, the unit in the scheme, has its own local board for the control of school matters. The whole system, since 1883, has been under the direction of a superintendent. The first incumbent was James MacAlister. When the latter passed to the Drexel Institute in 1891, Edward Brooks was elected to the office. He was succeeded in 1906 by Martin G. Brumbaugh. The United States Mint which had stood for so many years on Chestnut street at the corner of Juniper street, was removed to a new building at Sixteenth and Spring Garden streets in 1901. This marble pillared monument of Strick land's designing, was torn down to make way for an inartistic store and office building. The number of hospitals, schools, and charitable institutions was very much increased. Under the title of "hospitals, asylums, dispensaries and homes" 300 organizations are named in the latest city directory, any one of which in the eighteenth century would have been entitled to the historian's notice. A Commercial Museum, founded upon the lines of such museums in Europe, a Society for the Extension of University Teaching through popular lecture courses at organized centers, and a comprehensive free library system, with one main library and some 20 branches in different parts of the city, materially aided subsequently by gifts of money from Andrew Carnegie, were among the fruits of the later years of Dr. William. Pepper's busy and public-spirited life, which came to an end in July, 1898. The multiplication of churches in Philadelphia had proceeded so far in 1910 that the directory names 103 Episcopal, no Presbyterian, 97 Catholic, 109 Baptist, and 143 Methodist churches. The city has come to have 33 national banks of a total capital of $22,655,000, with deposits at the end of the year 1910 of about $170,000,000. There are in addition 71 trust companies and sav ings banks with deposits in 1910 of about $350,000,000. A single institution, the old Philadelphia Saving Fund Society held about $100,000,000 for its depositors. Some of these companies administer large estates. The Pennsylvania Company, for Insurances on Lives administers trust funds amounting to $166,000,000, the Fidelity Trust Company, $117,000,000 and the Girard Trust Company $110,- 000,000. The city has a score of theatres the oldest of which, the Walnut Street Theatre, recently celebrated its centennial. The famous Arch Street Theatre, when Mrs. Drew concluded her period of management, was put to very indif ferent uses as a playhouse, and it continues to lead this career. Theatrical neighborhoods have moved westward with the residential districts, and it has be come difficult to entice amusement lovers in the evening east of Broad street. A new era in hotel building also dawned. The Continental, the La Pierre, which enlarged became the Lafayette, on Broad street, the Colonnade at Fif- HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 435 teenth and Chestnut streets, were surpassed in their appointments in 1896 when the Walton was erected at the southeast corner of Broad and Locust streets It in turn lost its pre-eminence in 1904 when George C. Boldt, who had con trolled the Bellevue and the Stratford on the opposite western corners of Broad and Walnut streets, opened a splendid edifice which he had built where the Strat ford had been. Twenty stories in height it has continued to be the first hotel of the city. In the same way the office building type underwent a change. The Drexel Building, which was the pioneer of its class, was improved upon. The develop ment of the use of steel made it feasible for builders to rear their structures to a great height. The Girard Trust Building, now called the Franklin Bank Build ing at the northeast corner of Broad and Chestnut streets, and the Betz Building beside it, led the movement in the direction of high buildings in the vicinity of the City Hall. Then followed the Real Estate Trust Building at the southeast cor ner of Broad and Chestnut streets, the North American Building of 21 stories adjoining it, and the Land Title Building, 22 stories in height, on the site of the Lafayette Hotel, — the property of a Widener-Elkins syndicate. These are but a few of many edifices of this class which have lately made their appearance in Philadelphia. The rich Girard estate has also built several high structures for office uses. In 1885, John Wanamaker acquired the last lot in the block bounded by Market and Chestnut, and Thirteenth and Juniper streets. He cov ered the space with a great department store, which has recently been entirely rebuilt. A fine structure eleven stories in height now graces the site. A pleasant departure from the usually quite inartistic standards set by such edifices, was effected by the Girard Trust Company at the northwest corner of Broad and Chestnut streets, when it erected a marble building, whose form was suggested by the Pantheon in Rome. The morning newspapers of the city, — the Public Ledger, the Press, the Inquirer, the Record and the Times, and the evening papers the Bulletin and the Telegraph continued to exist, enjoying a varying amount of prosperity under varying managements. The Times was the first and has been the only one of the number to disappear. After Colonel McClure left it, it was turned to an advocacy of Mr. Bryan's election to the presidency in 1900, a very unpopular proceeding in a community like Philadelphia. A ruined property it was soon sold to the owners of the New York Times who after striving for a time to re instate it in favor, in July, 1902, purchased the Public Ledger and combined the two papers, which amounted, however, to the virtual and soon to the total ex tinguishment of the weaker one. Mr. Childs died in 1894.1 The paper was then seen to be the property of the Drexels. Anthony J. Drexel's son, George W. Childs Drexel, assumed the direction, but he had achieved no great success and to the surprise of the old householders of the town, who had been reading it since their childhood, it was now to pass under new and different control. The price of the paper was reduced to one cent, a step which forced rivals to the same course, and established the press of the city on a penny basis. 1 Anthony J. Drexel's death occurred seven months before in 1893. 436 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA The North American, under Morton McMichael's sons, at Seventh and Chestnut streets declined greatly in influence and in 1899 it was sold to Thomas B. Wanamaker. After the erection of the North American Building on Broad street, the editorial and publication offices were removed there. The Inquirer, which continued its intermittent life on Chestnut street, under the ownership of members of the Harding family, was sold in 1889 to James Elverson. He soon housed the paper in a building in Market street, adjoining the Reading Terminal. John W. Forney sold the Press in the late '70s and in two or three years it fell into the hands of a Pittsburg capitalist. Its editor became Charles Emory Smith who gifted as an orator, made himself an influence in the counsels of the Republican party. He received a diplomatic appointment, and was the postmaster-general of the United States in President McKinky's cabinet. The Record, under William M. Singerly, moved into a handsome building adjoining the new post-office in Chestnut street and with skilful management became very profitable, in spite of the curious fact that it was a Democratic free-trade paper, published in a strongly Republican and protectionist community. After Mr. Singerly 's death in 1898 and the unfortunate entanglement of his affairs it was sold by the receivers in 1902 to a syndicate of capitalists, whose names are not publicly known. The field of evening journalism was enlivened by the change of ownership of the Bulletin, for some time moribund. William L. Mc Lean took over the management of this paper in 1895, reduced its price from two cents to one cent and introduced many innovations which soon yielded fruit. The Telegraph, which had suffered by the death of its owner, Charles E. War- burton, changed its price from three cents to one cent, lest it be pressed from the field. The little evening journals in Seventh street, which were without Associated Press franchises and which had hitherto held the penny paper field, at once discontinued publication. On October 22, 1882, the city began a festival week in honor of the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of William Penn. In September, 1887, one hundred years having elapsed since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, this centennial anniversary was celebrated with notable ceremonies, which at tracted crowds of people to the city. A "Peace Jubilee" which followed the Spanish war in October, 1898, comprised a naval parade on the Delaware, a military and naval review on the streets in the presence of President McKinky, and a civic procession. In October, 1908, somewhat similar parades, which included a pageant of costumed people, representing the principal episodes in the history of the city, were seen. The celebration was arranged under the name of "Founder's Week," 225 years having passed since 1683 when Penn was here laying the foundations of the city. Fairmount Park, the noblest open space of which any large city in the world can boast, has by later accretions come to cover an area of 3,448 acres. The West Park consists of 1,343 acres; the Wissahickon of 1,068 acres. Besides this great pleasure ground there is Hunting Park on the Old York Road, which has been enlarged until it covers 86 acres. Nearly 1,000 acres are included in parks and squares in other portions of the city, and the space is being increased from time to time by purchase and private bequest. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 437 The Schuylkill is crossed by ten city bridges, a total which excludes the railway bridges. A very high concrete arched bridge was built over the Wissa hickon at Walnut Lane to connect Germantown and Roxborough in 1906-8. The city has 1,834 miles of streets, of which 1,434 miles are paved. The finest of these is Broad street, eleven and a half miles long of which nine miles are paved. Philadelphia was lighted in 1910 by 23,126 gas lamps and 13,285 arc lamps. There are in use in the outskirts of the city, 17,100 gasoline lamps. The city's commercial position is relatively not so high as it should be. Its imports in 1909 reached a value of $78,001,864; its exports $80,503,245. En trances and clearances of vessels at the port in 1909 were: Sail Steam Entered — American vessels 44 71 Foreign vessels 65 1019 Cleared — American vessels 40 33 Foreign vessels 61 960 In all 2,450,705 tons of shipping entered and 2,226,296 tons cleared from the port in 1909. The great preponderance of foreign over American shipping is seen when it is known that Philadelphia's $80,503,245 worth of exports were carried away as follows: In American sailing vessels $ 478,547 In American steam vessels 141,139 In foreign sailing vessels 1,364,1 16 In foreign steam vessels 78,519,443 Philadelphia's failure to make the progress of some other cities is due to that circumstance which led to New York's passing it in the first instance. A situa tion up a tortuous channel a distance of nearly 90 miles from the sea, complicated at some seasons by ice, is far from tempting to vessel-men. When ships were small and drew but little water the disadvantage was not so great as at this day. Large sums of money have been expended upon the Delaware by the federal, state, and city governments in the past few years in order that modern steamers might not be barred from wharves to which their predecessors freely came. Windmill Island, lying athwart the way to Camden, was entirely removed in the nineties, and other large and important engineering operations have been carried out between the city and the bay until vessels drawing 25.5 feet of water can now pass in safety at low tide over Schooner Ledge, the shallowest point upon the course. At some places the depth is 30 feet, a standard to which it is desired to set the work from the port to the sea. The city has a total frontage on the two rivers of 33 miles, open to vessels drawing 18 feet or more. From the mouth of the Schuylkill to Point Breeze there is a depth of 25 feet ; from Point Breeze to Walnut street, 18 feet. For 15 miles north of the city, the Delaware is naviga ble for vessels of a draft not in excess of 15 feet. More than 25 per cent of Philadelphia's exports find their way out of the port through the Schuylkill, a total to which the petroleum shipments from Point Breeze make a material con tribution. 438 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA Despite all the progress which Philadelphia has enjoyed there has been a wish that it might go forward more rapidly. It has achieved much, yet its position in finance, commerce and industry, in art, science and letters, and in nearly all other departments of activity is relatively lower than at an earlier period in its history. With this loss of power has developed a civic characteristic which has been of no advantage to the community. For various reasons New York has distanced it in many fields, and a spirit which was not known to the city when it held a pre-eminent place has come to be prevalent. The habit has long been condemned, but its force has diminished very little. It cannot be fairly urged that the people of any city should defend or even look with unconcern and patience upon mediocrity and dishonesty. To boast of that which is not praiseworthy is without excuse. It leads to the development of wrong ideals. But on the other hand to oversmirch the evil, and even positively to belittle that which is good is a trait to be treated not more tolerantly. For many years this tendency has been remarked. Our political conditions have been not what they should have been, yet this history will perhaps show that we are a long way in advance of the time when the fire companies controlled the elections; or of that somewhat later period when the "Gas Trust" directed our destinies. Race, firemen's and election riots are all in the past. Good police men, well lighted and well-paved streets, clean and disease-free water have come to us through recent city governments. That our artists, our scientists, our poets and novelists, our lawyers and physicians, our financiers are not the equal of those in other cities, we would sometimes be led to believe. A well-known writer of the younger generation in Philadelphia, once illustrated the spirit of the city as compared with that of Boston by this anecdote. A new name will reach distinction in letters in Boston and every one will say "naturally." In the same case in Philadelphia the comment will be "Is it possible?" In one city all the geese are swans; in the other, only geese if not birds of a worse species. The city, as Horace Binney used to say, lacks "a family unity or identity." She does not take satisfaction "in habitually honoring her distinguished men as her men, as men of her own family." Mr. Binney thought that the characteristic was due to her Quaker origin. It was in harmony with such a source "to put nothing more striking than a drab-colored dress upon the men who have done their best for her." l He suggested, too, as Sydney George Fisher has since, that this quality might be attributable to the variety of races which settled the city and the state. It has been said in reply to this theory, that there was a time, while Philadel phia was the capital of the Union and afterward for 30 or 40 years, when this "civic personality" did exist. The fault is of later growth, though it seem to conform with the idea of a village, rather than of a large modern city. It be longs to a spirit which places its fashionables in one small neighborhood, and bars them from crossing fixed geographical boundaries. Not to know the name of a family which does not belong to a definite social group, and to fail to welcome outsiders to the company of those longer established in their position, no matter what their talents or accomplishments, are symptoms of conditions which are 1 Leaders of the Old Bar. HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 439 essentially unsound. To set a higher value upon birth than upon achievement introduces a kind of snobbery which is destructive to the growth of any proper civic sentiments. That the condition will now soon pass and the situation improve, seems probable. Barriers are already being broken down. The growth of the city has proceeded so far that such a spirit cannot very much longer intervene to retard the development of better views. To help rather than to hinder, to build up rather than to throw down, to receive and welcome rather than to cast out, while at the same time maintaining our standards and defending our ideals should be the common object of the people. When this shall be the civic purpose to a greater extent than today, Philadelphia will return to the position which she once held in her own sight and in the sight of the rest of the world. THE MAYORS OF PHILADELPHIA. Humphrey Morrey, named in the charter of 1691. Edward Shippen, named in the charter of 1701, Anthony Morris, elected by common council, 1703. Griffith Jones, elected by common council, 1704. Joseph Wilcox, elected by common council, 1705. Nathan Stanbury, elected by common council, 1706. Thomas Masters, elected by common council, 1707. Richard Hill, elected by common council, 1709. William Carter, elected by common council, 1710. Samuel Preston, elected by common council, 171 1. Jonathan Dickinson, elected by common council, 1712. George Roche, elected by common council, 1713. Richard Hill, elected by common council, 1714. Jonathan Dickinson, elected by common council, 1717. William Fishbourn, elected by common council, 17 19. James Logan, elected by common council, 1722. Clement Plumsted, elected by common council, 1723. Isaac Norris, elected by common council, 1724. William Hudson, elected by common council, 1725. Charles Read, elected by common council, 1726. Thomas Lawrence, elected by common council, 1727. Thomas Griffitts, elected by common council, 1729. Samuel Hasell, elected by common council, 1731. Thomas Griffitts, elected by common council, 1733. Thomas Lawrence, elected by common council, 1734. William Allen, elected by common council, 1735. Clement Plumsted, elected by common council, 1736. Thomas Griffitts, elected by common council, 1737. Anthony Morris (the younger), elected by common council, 1738. Edward Roberts, elected by common council, 1739. Samuel Hasell, elected by common council, 1740. Clement Plumsted, elected by common council, 1741. William Till, elected by common council, 1742. Benjamin Shoemaker, elected by common council, 1743. Edward Shippen (the younger), elected by common council, 1744. James Hamilton, elected by common council, 1745. 440 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA 441 William Attwood, elected by common council, 1746. Charles Willing, elected by common council, 1748. Thomas Lawrence, elected by common council, 1749. William Plumsted, elected by common council, 1750. Robert Strettell, elected by common council, 1751. Benjamin Shoemaker, elected by common council, 1752. *Thomas Lawrence, elected by common council, 1753. ?Charles Willing, elected by common council, 1754. William Plumsted, elected by common council, 1754. Attwood Shute, elected by common council, 1756. Thomas Lawrence (the younger), elected by common council, 1758. John Stamper, elected by common council, 1759. Benjamin Shoemaker, elected by common council, 1760. Jacob Duche, elected by common council, 1761. Henry Harrison, elected by common council, 1762. Thomas Willing, elected by common council, 1763. Thomas Lawrence, elected by common council, 1764. John Lawrence, elected by common council, 1765. Isaac Jones, elected by common council, 1767. Samuel Shoemaker, elected by common council, 1769. John Gibson, elected by common council, 1771. William Fisher, elected by common council, 1773. Samuel Rhoads, elected by common council, 1774. Samuel Powel, elected by common council, 1775. The Revolution, office vacant, 1776- 1789. Samuel Powel, elected by councils in 1789. Samuel Miles, elected by councils in 1790. John Barclay, elected by councils in 1791. Matthew Clarkson, elected by councils in 1792. Hilary Baker, elected by councils in 1796. Robert Wharton, elected by councils in 1798. John Inskeep, elected by councils in 1800. Matthew Lawler, elected by councils in 1801. John Inskeep, elected by councils in 1804. Robert Wharton, elected by councils in 1806. John Barker, elected by councils in 1808. Robert Wharton, elected by councils in 1810. Michael Keppele, elected by councils in 181 1. John Barker, elected by councils in 1812. John Geyer, elected by councils in 1813. Robert Wharton, elected by councils in 1814. James N. Barker, elected by councils in 1819. Robert Wharton, elected by councils in 1820. Joseph Watson, elected by councils in 1824. *Died in office. 442 HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA ?George M. Dallas, elected by councils in 1828. Benjamin W. Richards, elected by councils in 1829. W'illiam Milnor, elected by councils in 1829. Benjamin W. Richards, elected by councils in 1830. John Swift, elected by councils in 1832. Isaac Roach, elected by councils in 1838. John Swift, elected by councils in 1839. John M. Scott, elected by the people in 1841. Peter McCall, elected by the people in 1844. John Swift, elected by the people in 1845. Joel Jones, elected by the people in 1849. Charles Gilpin, elected by the people in 1850. Robert T. Conrad, elected by the people in 1854. Richard Vaux, elected by the people in 1856. Alexander Henry, elected by the people in 1858. Morton McMichael, elected by the people in 1865. Daniel M. Fox, elected by the people in 1868. William S. Stokley, elected by the people in 1871. Samuel G. King, elected by the people in 1881. William B. Smith, elected by the people in 1884. Edwin H. Fitler, elected by the people in 1887. Edwin S. Stuart, elected by the people in 1891. Charles F. Warwick, elected by the people in 1895. Samuel H. Ashbridge, elected by the people in 1899. John Weaver, elected by the people in 1903. John E. Reyburn, elected by the people in 1907. ?Resigned in April, 1829. INDEX Abell, A. S., II. 213-4, 401. Abercrombie, Rev. James, I. 419, 424-5. Abington, meeting at, I. 63; road to, 230. Abolitionists, Quakers active as, II. 268-9; new methods of, 272-3; blamed for negro riots, 275; attend opening of Pennsylvania Hall, 276-7; un moved, 279-80; defy Fugitive Slave Law, 341-3, 345 ; glorify Brown, 346; denounced, 346-47. Absecon Island, II. 228. Academy of Fine Arts, see Pennsylvania Academy. Academy of Music, built,_ II. 332. Academy of Natural Sciences, formed, II. 68-9, 108; offices of, 121; removed to Broad Street, 336; site for at Penn Square, 396; new building for, 425. Academy of Philadelphia, see University of Penn sylvania. Acadian Exiles, I. 197-8. Act of Settlement, I. 33. "Active," sloop, case of, II. 3-4. Adams, John, at Pa. Hospital, I. 227; in Philadel phia homes, 236-7; on Jacob Duche, 238; at sec ond Congress, 241 ; seconds Declaration of In dependence, 250, 251; visits soldiers' graves, 255; description of Francis Hopkinson, 326; vice-pres ident, 337; lives at Bush Hill, 341; honors Franklin, 345; aristocrat, 348; opposes French folly* 352» 355» 361; hated by democrats, 366; elected President, 368; inaugurated, 369; resi dence, 370; refuses Ninth street house, 370; at tacked by Bache, 370; mob threatens, 372; Wash ington dines with, 373; pardons leaders of Fries' rebellion, 373 ; alien and sedition laws, 373 ; escapes yellow fever, 376 ; leader of a party, 379; hears funeral oration, 380; goes to Washing ton, 381; at Francis's house, 396; witnesses launch, 411 ; on death of French leaders, 415; "Aurora" libels, 415 ; returns to Massachusetts, 416; death of, II. 251-2. Adams, Mrs. John, at Bush Hill, I. 341; postpones reception, 380; in White House, 381; on high prices, 400. Adams, John Quincy, I. 420; II. 25, 105, 125, 130, 132, 172, 257-8, 318. Adams, Samuel, I. 241, 291. Adams Express Company, II. 231-2. Adelphi School, I. 426, 428; II. 65. Adet, Citizen, I. 366, 371. Adriani, Count, I. 366, 371. "Age, The," II. 368-9, 402. Agnew, D. Hayes, II. 334, 340. Aitken, Robert, I. 326-7. Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, I. 175. Alburger, W. B., II. 206. Alcott, Amos Bronson, II. 221-2. Alcott, Louisa May, II. 221-2. Alexander, Charles, II. 104. "Alfred, The," I. 243- AHen and Sedition Laws, I. 373- Alison, Rev. Francis, I. 179, 180. Allen, Andrew, I. 217, 252-3, 259, 282, 342. Allen, James, I. 217, 235, 244, 254, 258, 260, 276, 282. Allen, John, I. 217, 259, 282. Allen, William, mayor, I. 139; sells site for State House, 140 ; his connection with riot, 149 ; at "Mount Airy," 162; manages a lottery, 174; a founder of University, 178 ; house of used by University, 179; chief justice, 217; Englisht sym pathies of, 247; goes to England, 260; attainted, 282. Allen, William, Jr., I. 268, 282. "Alliance," I. 315. Allibone, S. Austin, II. 329. Almanacs, I. 157. Almshouses, see Poor. Amboy, I. 159; II. 62, 149. Ambroise & Co. I. 392. American Anti-Slavery Society, formed, II. 272. American Colonization Society, II. 270. "American Daily Advertiser," I. 328, 368. 400- II 23, 105, 211. -i*». "American Magazine," Smith's, I. 205-6. "American Magazine," Bradford's, I 206 'American Magazine," Nicola's, I. 327. American Medical Society, I. 414. "American Museum," I. 328. American Philosophical Society, formed, I. 177; revived, 234; erects building, 313; Fitch's models at, 316; Peale uses rooms of, 392; later presi dents of, 414; mentioned, II. 24, 66, 67, 107 121, 131- "American Quarterly Review," II. 23. American Steamship Company, II, 382, 407. American Sunday School Union, II. 122. American Theatre, see Walnut Street Theatre. "American Weekly Mercury," I. 128, 130, 158, 159. Anabaptists, I. 107. "Analectic Magazine," II. 26-7. Anderson. Major, II. 350, 355. Andre, John, I. 273-7. Andrews, Rev. Jedediah, I. 152. Anne, Queen, I. 90, 102, 111, 125. Anti- Federalists, I. 333-4, 336. Anti-treaty party, I, 368. Antietam, battle of, II. 363, 367. Apprentices' Library, II. 66, 121. Aramingo, II. 302. Arcade, built, II, 190. Arcade Hotel, II. 248. Arch street, laid out, I, 30; Quaker families in, II. 94, 267; named, 309; street cars in, 320. Arch Street Meeting, burial ground at, I. 79; house built, 119; yearly meeting at, 267-8. Arch street prison, work on begun, I. 433 ; com pleted, II, 59 ; sold and torn down, 167 ; cholera in, 175. Arch Street Theatre, built, II. 182-3; Burton at, 190; stock company at, 332-3; Mrs. Drew at, 333, 426. Archer, Joseph, II. 251. Archer, Samuel, I. 437. Arctic Expedition, Swaine's I. 210; Kane's, II. 328-9. "Argo," I. 210. Armstrong, Secretary of War, II. 8. Arnold, Benedict, in command, I. 282; residences of. 284, 340; treason of, 299; property of, seized, 300. Arsenals, see Schuylkill and Frankford. Arthur, T. S., II. 209. Artie les of Confederation, adopted, I. 293 ; inef ficiency of, 294, 308-9, 330. Asbestos, discovery of, I. 71. Ashbridge, Samuel H., II. 4*9- Ashburton, Lord, I. 385. Asheton, William. I. 1 18. Ashhurst. John, II. 364. Ashmcad, Tohn W.. II. 342. Assembly Balls, see Dancing Assembly. Assembly Building, II. 297. Associators, I. 75. *75. ^95. 240. 247. 443 444 INDEX Associated Banks, war loan of, II. 361-2. Association Battery, built, I. 174; purchased for navy yard, 432. Astor, J. J., II. 17, 18. Asylum, I. 355. Athenaeum, II, 66, 67, 121, 336. Atkins, Samuel, I. 56. Atlantic Cable, laying of, II. 238. Atlantic City, beginnings of, II. 228-30. Attwood, William, mayor, I. 139. Aubrey, William, I. 101, no. Audubon, J. J., II 108. Auren, Jonas, I. 67. "Aurora," established, I. 353-4; attacks Washington, 354. 367; libels of, 375; Duane acquires, 415; at tacks Adams, 370, 415-6; loses influence, II. 105; disappears, 213. Automobiles, II. 413. Avery, pirate, I. 80. Ayres, Captain, I. 223-4. Bache, A. D., II. 165, 222, 329, 392, 425. Bache, B. F., I. 353-4, 367, 37o, 374, 41 5> Bache, Franklin, II. 121, 339. Bache, Richard, first, I. 335. Bache, Richard, second, II. 11, 31. Bache, Mrs. Richard, I. 285, 291, 292, 344. Baer, George F., II. 415. Bailey, Francis, I, 301, 326, 327. Bainbridge, Captain William, II. 14. Baird, Patrick, I. 115. 130. Baird, William M., II, 237. Baker, Colonel, II. 358, 360. Baker, Hilary, mayor, I. 378. Baldwin, M. W., II. 69, 152, 392. Baldwin Locomotive Works, II. 152, 355, 381. Balloon ascensions, I. 316, 392; II. 37-8. Baltimore, Lord, I. ig, 25, 46, 47. Baltimore, trade diverted to, I. 229; Congress goes to, 254-5; stages to, 311-12, 402; bars Phila delphians, 358; road to, 446; British advance on, II. n-12; packets and steamboats to, 61-2, 106; trip to over Chesapeake Canal, 136; trains to, 230; riots in, 354. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, first tracks of, II. 150; line to Pittsburg. 225; enters Phila., 416. Bancker, Charles N., IL 323. Bank of Commerce, II, 337. Bank of Germantown, II. 21. Bank of North America, established, I. 295-6, 346; II. 15; attack on feared, I. 310; charter with drawn, 320-21; taken to Germantown, 377; men. tioned, II. 16, 122, 361. Bank of Northern Liberties, II. 21, 122, 361. Bank of Penn Township, II. 176. Bank of Pennsylvania, first, I. 295. Bank of Pennsylvania, second, I. chartered, 346; robbed and goes to Germantown, 377; Latrobe's building for, 408-9; protests a rival, 444; failure of, II. 324; building razed, 398; mentioned, 16, 122. Bank of United States, first, established, I. 346; goes to Germantown. 377; building for, 409; re newal of charter refused, II. 15; closing of, 20. Bank of United States, second, chartered, II. 21 ; building of, 22; president of, 122; overthrow of, 172-4, 213, 322. Bank Meeting House, I. 43, 63. Banks, of city, II. 176, 337, 356, 361, 382-3. "Banana Belt," II. 382. Baptists, I. 69, 152, 167, 182. Bar, increase in membership of, I. 412, 413; new admissions, II. in, 338. Babadoes distemper, see yellow fever. Barbe-Marbois, I. 342-3. Barber surgeons, I. 143. Barclay, John, I. 346, 356; II. 9, 122. Bardsley, John, II. 393. Baring, Alexander, I. 385; II. 42-3. Baring, Henry, I. 385. Barker, Abraham, II. 321, 364. Barker, Jacob, II. 18-20. Barker, James N., II. 34, 36, 131. Barker, John, I. 424; II. 1, 2, 4, 9, 36. Barlow, Joel, I. 422. Barnes, Rev. Albert, II. 177, 338. Barney, Joshua, I. 304-5, 306. Barnum, P. T., museum of, II. 192, 297-8; man ages Jenny Lind, 330-2. Barracks, built, I. 200; Highlanders in, 201, 222; Indians in, 203; improved, 223; American re cruits in, 253; mutineers in, 309; end of, 312. Barry, Commodore, I. 244, 315; II. 54. Barrymore, Georgie Drew, II. 333. Bartol, George E., II. 423. Barton, B. S„ I. 414; II. 106, 108. Barton, Dr. J. Rhea, II. 107, 120, 250. Barton, W. P. C, II. 68, 106, 119. Bartram, John, I. 177. Bartram, Win., I. 393. Bartram's Garden, I. 393; II. 152. Bastille, Fall of, I. 349. Bath, in Northern Liberties, I. 207. Bath, near Bristol, II. 41. Baths, Swaim's, II. 97. Baxter's Zouaves, II. 358, 360. Bayard, Andrew, II. 122. Beasley, Provost, II. 119. Beaumais, I. 385. Beaumarchais, I. 288. Beck, H. P., II. 251. Beck, Paul, Jr., I. 438, 442; II. 14, 130, 133, 250. Bedford County, I. 247, 248. Bedford Springs, II. 41. Beissel, Conrad, I. 159. Bell, John, II. 347, 349. Bell, Robert, I. 248, 326-7. "Belleville," in Park, IL 323. Bellevue-Stratford, II. 427. "Belmont," Peters's, I. 161, 237; II. 54, 143, 145, 323- Belmont, district of, incorporated, II. 302. Benefit of clergy, I. 118-9. Benezet, Anthony, I. 197, 233. Benezet, John Stephen, I. 233. Bennett, James Gordon, II. 213, 215, 141. Beresford, Sir John, II. 7. J J Berkeley, Lord, I. 16. Berks County, I. 183, 190, 195, 247. Bethlehem, I. 156, 230, 254; II. 40. Bettering House, built, I. 227; wounded in, 253, 267; battle of Brandywine heard at, 262; step ping mill in, II, 168; abandoned, 168. Betz Building, II. 427. Bible, Bradford's, I. 57; Sower's, 160; Carey's. Bi-centennial Celebration, II. 428. Bickley, Abraham, I. 112. Biddle, Chapman, II. 303. Biddle, Charles, I. 321, 341, 344, 350, 390, 401; II. 9. Biddle, Charles J., II. 329, 368, 360. Biddle, • Craig, II., 407. Biddle, Edward, I. 238. I-jj!6' George W., II. 303, 339, 369, 393- Biddle, James C, II. 254. Biddle, James S., II. 392. Biddle, John G., II. 11. Biddle, Nicholas, naval officer, I. 243. Biddle, Nicholas, at bar, I. 413; editor, 420; pres ident Bank of U. S., II. 21, 122; in Wistar Party, 24; his opinion of Girard, 161; designs Girard College, 165; leads campaign for re-charter, 172; Jackson proscribes, 176; deposits in his bank removed, 178-9; state charter, 179; failure of bank, 179-80; death, 180; mentioned, 119, 131, 253, 400. Biddle, Owen, I. 291; II. 164. Bigler, Governor, II. 307. Billeting of troops, I. 200, 215. Bingham, Tames I. 383. Bingham, Wm. I. 312 332, 348, 373, 383, 384, 385. 386, 388-9, 390, 398, 410; II. 42-3, 95. Bingham, Mrs. Wm., I. 385, 584. ¦>&< Bingham, Wm., Jr., II. 35. Binney, Horace, I. 217, 413, 419; n. 24, 66, 112-3, 119, 120, 125, 132, 143, 221, 250, 258, 269, 286, 291, 303, 321, 329, 338, 430. Binns, John, I. 417; II. 8, 14, 49, 10s, 126, 213, 343. Bioren, John, I. 422. Biork, Eric, I. 67, 68. Birch, Thomas, I. 414; II. 116. Birch, William, I. 414; II. n(. Bird, Dr. R. M. II. 188, 200, 204, 212, 215. Birney's Zouaves, II. 358-9. Black, William, I. 172, 183. "Black Hawk," locomotive, II. 145. Black Hawk, Indian, II. 178. "Black Laws," I. 93-4, 120-21, 304. "Black Watch," I. 222, 265. Blackbeard, pirate, I. 80, 122. Blackbirds, I. 98. Blackburn, Alex. W., II. 314. Blackwell, Governor, I. 52, 53, 56. Bladensbung, battle of, II. 81. INDEX 445 Blair, Rev. Samuel, I. 154. Blanchard, balloon ascension of, I. 392. Blisset, Francis, I. 391; II. 29. Blockley Almshouse, established, II. 168-9; cholera in, 176; insane in, 334. Blockley Township, II. 71, 300, 302. Blodgett, Samuel, I. 409. Blood's Penny Post, II. 234. Bloodgood, J. B., I. 149. "Bloody Election," I. 149. Bloomfield, General, II. 8, 10-n. Blue Anchor Inn, I. 22, 41, 70. Blue Bell Tavern, I. 98. Blue Cross Line, II. 382. Blunston, John, I. 87. Boardman, Rev. Dr., II. 370. Boebm, J. P., I. 156. Bohlen, John, I. 438; II. 250. Boker, Charles S., II. 327. Boker, George H., II. 200, 321, 327, 364, 365. Boldt, George C, II. 427. Bolivar House, II. 173. Bollman, Dr. E., I. 385; II, 124, 132. Bompard, Citizen, I. 350. Bonaparte, Charles Lucien, II, 26. Bonaparte, Joseph, II. 26, 162. Bonapartist exiles, II. 26. Bond, Dr. Phineas, I. 177, 178, 180, 181. Bond, Phineas, Tory, I. 177, 178, .259, 343. Bond, Dr. Thomas, I. 177, 178, 180, 181. Bond, Williamina, I. 275. Bonsall, E. H., II. 146, 147. Book trade sales, II. 194. Booth, J. B., II. 29, 184. Borden, Joseph, I. 159, 218. Borie, A. E., II. 364, 372. Boston, founded, I. 9; tea party, 224; closing of port, 225-6; sympathy for, 226, 238; extrava gance in, 287. Boudinot, Elias, I. 272. Bound Brook Railroad, II. 413. Bourne, O., I. 175. Bourse, II. 423-4. Bouvier, John, I. 379; II. 113. Bowers, shipbuilders, II. 64. Bownas, Samuel, I. 152. Boxall's Accomodation Stage, II. 218. Brackenridge, H. H., I. 327. Braddock, General, I. 193. Bradford, Andrew, I. 128, 129, 135, 158, 159. Bradford, Samuel F., II. 116. Bradford, Wm., first, I. 55, 56-7, 58, 105, 128. Bradford, Wm., second, I. 159, 168, 206, 216; II. 104. Bradford, book publishing house of, I. 422; II. 116. Braintree, Duke of, name given to Adams, I. 370. Branchtown, I. 60, 72. Brandywine, ferries over, I. 40; asbestos found on, 71; battle of, 262-3; canal, 405; Lafayette on field of, II. 133. Bread, assizing of, I. 99-100, 117. Breck, Samuel, his impressions of city, I. 382; criticizes Binghams, 384; on social display, 398; on roads north, 402, 446; Federalist, II, 8-9; offers straw to .troops, 10; meets Joseph Bona parte, 26; sees Kean, 32; seat of, 54; on mineral springs, 64; hires servants, 100, 101; on rail roads, 159; estate of, 251; mentioned, 131, 256, 258. Breckenridge, John C, II. 348, 349. Breintnall, Joseph, I. 176. Breitmann, Hans, II. 327-8. Brenner, Fredrika, II. 166, 203. Brewster, B. H., II. 258, 303, 339. 345, 346, 396. Brewster, F. C, II, 339- Bridesburg, II. 60, 302. Bridesburg Arsenal, II, 169. Bright, Michael, II. 1, 4- Bristol Township, I. 33. 301, 3°2- Britannia Fire Company, I. 146. Broad Street Station, II. 415- Brockden, Charles I. 140. Broglie, Prince de, I. 387. Bronson, Enos, II. 27, 105. Brooke, General John R., II. 379- Brooks, Edward, II. 426. Brooks, Phillips, II. 321, 338. Brooks, High License Law, II. 421-2. Brotherhood of the Union, II. 210. Brown, C. B., I. 358, 401, 421-2; II. 40, 223. Brown, D. P., II. 69, 121, 190, 252, 256, 258, 274. 338, 34i. 342- Brown, David S., II. 250. Brown, Frederick, II. 223. Brown, Henry Armitt, II. 223. Brown, General Jacob, II. 14. Brown, John, British emissary, I. 277-8. Brown, John, raid of, II. 346, 347. Brown, John A., II. 250, 329. Browne, N. B., II. 372. Browne, P. A., II. 11, 69, 113, 121, 190, 258, 274. Brumbaugh, M. G., II. 426. Bryan, George, I. 219, 249, 255, 286, 302-3, 312. Bryn Mawr College, II. 425. Bryson, James, I. 311. Buchanan, James, II. 236, 238, 310, 343, 344, 350. Buckingham, J. S., impressions of, II. 22, 167, 191, 242, 244, 245. Bucks County, I. 33, 71, 124, 183. Buckshot War, II. 282-3. Bucktails, II. 358. Budden, Richard, I. 186, 187. Bull Run, first battle of, II. 357; news of, 358, 360-61; second battle of, 363. Bullitt Bill, II. 417-9. Bullitt, John C, II. 346, 418. Bulow, D. von, I. 387, 388. Burd, Edward, II. 54, 119. Burgoyne, surrender of, I. 271, 280. Burke, Mrs., II. 28, 183. Burleigh, C. C, II. 275. Burleigh, W. H., II. 275. Burr, Aaron, I. 368, 417. Burton, Wm. E., II. 184, 189-90, 199, 332. "Bush Hill," I. 161, 192, 236, 271, 341, 357; II. 92, 151. Butchers' Parades, II. 77. Butler, Pierce, first, I. 331; II, 270. Butler, Pierce, second, II. 209, 368. Butler, Mrs. Pierce, see Fanny Kemble. Byberry, I. 33, 62, 63. Byrd, Mrs. I. 235, 236. Cadwalder, General George, II. 112, 260, 286, 287, 353, 364- Cadwalader, John, "schoolmaster," I. 181. Cadwalader, General John, I. 236, 240, 288, 301, 320; II. 112, 119, 120, 127, 130, 133. Cadwalader, Judge John, II. 112, 262, 303, 339. Cadwalader, Dr. Thomas, I. 176, 1S1, 208, 218. Cadwalader, General Thomas, I. 413, 419; II. 9, n, 24. Caldwell, Dr. Charles, I. 420; II, 68, 106. Caldwell, S. A., II. 414. Calendar, change of, I. 192. Calhoun, J. C, II. 19, 254. California Regiment, li. 358, 360, 364 Callowhill, Hannah, I. 77. Callowhill, town of, projected, I. 312. Callowhill Street, laid out, I. 312; market, II. 76-7. Callowhill Street Bridge, burnt, II. 220, new wire bridge, 220-1; new iron bridge, 397. See also Upper Ferry Bridge. Camac, Turner, II. 70, 74. Camac, Dr. William, II. 32-34. Camden and Amboy Railroad, II. 149, 151, 152, 225, 317, 3'9, 415- Camden and Atlantic Railroad, II. 228, 415. Cameron, Simon, II. 262, 325, 344-5, 348, 363, 389, 395- Campbell, George, II, 121. Campbell, Captain Robert, I. 290. Campbell, St. George Tucker, II. 303, 339. Campington, I. 223. Canada, expedition to, I. 173. Canal Commissioners, state, II. 138. Cannon, James, I. 249. Cape Breton, I. 200. Cape May, I. 395; II. 41-2. 6s. 229. Capital Punishment, I. 1 18-19, 323- Carey, Edward L., II. 193, '94, 195- Carey, Henry C, I. 318, 425; II. 11, 193, 194, 254, 321, 324, 343, 350, 364, 393- Carey, Mathew, I. 318, 327-8, 356, 359, 374, 379, 422-3, 442-3; II. 24, 102, 121, 133, 193, 194, 221, 222, 254. Carey and Hart, II. 194-5- Carey and Lea, II. 194-5. Carey Vespers, II. 325. Carlisle, packhorses at, I. 212, 213. Carlisle, Abraham, I. 283. Carlisle, High Constable, I. 390; II. 34- Carnegie, A., II. 426. Carnes, balloon ascension of, I. 316. 446 INDEX Carpenter, Joshua, I. 86, 236; IL 190-91. Carpenter, Samuel, I. 55, 70, 78, 87, 123, 134. Carpenter, S. C, II. 30. Carpenters' Company, I. 168. Carpenters* Hall, conferences in, I. 226, 249 ; Con gress meets in, 226, 238, library in, 238, 409; banks in, II. 15, 21; mentioned, 66, 69, 100. Carr, Benjamin, II. 100. Carroll, Charles, II. 25, 253. Carson, Joseph, II. 107. Carter Wm., I. 86, 105. Carteret, Sir George, I. 16. Cash, A. D., II, 224. "Casket," II. 196-7, 199, 200. "Caspipena, Tamoc," I. 206. Cassatt, A. J., II. 415. Cassidy, Lewis C, II. 299, 311, 339, 343, 347, 350, 393, 396. Castle, James H., II. 322. Cathcart, Lord, I. 274. Catholics, in Maryland, I. 19; James II favors, 46; under suspicion, 53; oaths to bar, 94-5; teachers, 178; church house threatened, 194; hate for, 196-8; altered view of, 286-7, 299; French strengthen, 355; new churches of, II. 118; their position in Native American riots, 283-8; cathedral of, 336. Caven, Joseph L., II. 408. Caves, early settlers in, I, 31, 65. Cedar Street, see South Street. "Cedarcroft," II. 326. Celeste, II. 184. Centennial Exposition, II. 394-5, 403, 404-7. Central High School, established, II. 222-3; freight station on site of, 227, new building for, 425. Central Railroad of New Jersey, II, 415. Centre Square, laid out, I. 30; mentioned, 43, 63, 168, 210, 362-3, 383, 407-8; II. 52, 53, 79, 92, n6, 395- See also Penn Square. Ceracchi, I. 415. Chains erected by churches removed, II. 220. Chalkley, Thomas, I. 105-6. Chamber of Commerce, I. 439; II. 2, 121, 131, Chambers, Benjamin, I. 11. "Chamouni," II. 54, 323. Chancellor, Wm., I. 113, 136. Chandler, J. R., II. 105, 200, 201, 212, 215, 325. Chapman, Nathaniel, I. 414, 419; II. 24, 93, 106, 108, 119, 120, 131, 176, 221, 258, 339. Chapman, Samuel, II. 184. Charcoal man, cries of, II. 85-6. Charity School, of College, I. 166, 178-80, 190. Charles, Robert, I. 186. Charles II, I. 16, 19-20, 46-7. Charles XI of Sweden, I. 67. Charleston, refugees from, I. 300. Chase, Kate, II. 356. Chase, S. P., sells loans, IL 355-6; Cooke aids, 356, 360-62; sells 5-20S, 366-7; resigns, 371; suc cessors of, 375; proposes national banking system, 382-84; visits Cooke, 385. Chastellux, Marquis de, I. 294. Chateaubriand, I, 385. Chauncey, Charles, I. 413; II. 112-3, 119, 122, 133, 221. Chauncey. Elihu, II. 105. Cherry Hill Penitentiary, II. 166-7. "Chesapeake," fired on, II. 1. Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company, II. 123. Cheltenham and Willow Grove Turnpike Co., It. 123. Chester, I. 15, 21, 40. Chester County, I. 33, 124, 148, 401; II. 71. Chestnut Street, laid out, I. 30 ; spelling of, changed, II. 309; street cars on, 320. Chestnut Street Bridge built, II. 397. Chestnut Street Theatre, fiist, built, I. 390-91; under Warren and Wood, II. 28-36; gas plant in, 58, 217; burning of, 31. 55, 82; Wemyss on new building, 34; discipline in, 36; ball in, 131; downfall of, 1S2; threatened by fire, 297; Jenny Lind at, 331; finally closed, 422; third house of the name, 423. Chestnut Street Opera House, II. 398. Cheves, Langdon, II. 21, 24, 172. Chew, Benjamin, I. 217, 236, 247, 260, 276, 297, 332, 401, 412; II. 119, 123. "Chew House," I. 217, 236, 266, 297; II. 133. Childs, C. G., II. 350. Childs, George W., II. 211, 329-30, 372, 401-2, 409, 427. Childs and Peterson, II. 329. Chimney money, I. 102, 112. Chimney sweeps, I. 113, 146; II. 84-5. China, early voyages to, I. 315; vessels in trade with, 439. Chincoteague ponies, I. 117. Chinese Museum, II. 191-3, 221, 260, 298, 307. Chinese Pagoda, II, 190. Cholera, in city, II. 174-6. Chovet, Dr. A., I. 209, 314. Christ Church, erection of, I. 68; silver service for,. 111; Keith in, in; new building for, 151; steeple on, 187; lottery for, 187, igo; growth of, 188; bells of, 216, 226, 263, 333, 334, 417; medal lion on torn down, 362; architecture of, 408; Lafayette attends, 130. Christ Church Hospital, I. 228; IL 120, 335. Christiana Creek, I. 12, 40. Christina, Queen of Sweden, I. 12. Christinahamn, I. 12, 13, 25. Christian Commission, II. 373. "Church Burners," see Native Americans. Circuses, I. 133; II- 3*2, 189. Citizens' Municipal Reform Association, II. 409. Citizens' Street Car Co., II. 3 ig-20. City Bank, II. 337. City Hall, at State House built, 313-4, 342; at Penn Square, II. 395, 422-3. City Hospital in "Wigwam," I. 375; new build ing for, 429. City Hotel, II. 6, 17, 99; in Third street, II, 177, 248, 253. City Tavern, I, 225, 258, 283, 338, 396; II. 5, 99- City Theatre, II. 37- City Troop. Sec First City Troop. Claghorn, James L., II. 364, 365. Clapier, Louis, II. 121, 131, 435, 438. Clark, Clarence H., II. 364, 386. Clark, E. W., II. 181, 321. Clark, E. W. & Co., II. 181, 259, 356, 383, 385, 388. Clark, Wm., I. 87. Clark, W. G., II. 200, 208. Clarke, John S., II. 333. Clarke, T. C, II. 196, 207. Clarkson, Matthew, I. 213, 356, 358. Clay, Henry, I. 443; II. 6, 14, 21, 26, 171, 172-4,. 178, 253, 255, 256-7, 258, 260-61, 262, 270-71, 341- Claypoole, D. C, I. 328, 368, 390; II. 105, 211. Claypoole. James, I. 52. Clifton, Wm., I. 326. Clayton, Rev. Thomas, I. 69. "Cliffs, The," II. 54. Clinton, Sir Henry, I. 273, 274, 280. Clinton, De Witt, II. 45. 69. Clitherall, Dr. James, I. 251. "Cliveden," see Chew House. Clubs, early, I. 168-9, 172. Clymer, George, I. 236, 250, 252, 290, 295, 320, 330, 333, 335, 337, 433', II. 2, 116, 297- Coal, used at water works, II. 48; anthracite dis covered, 48-9; efforts to introduce, 49-50; arrives over canals, 137. Coates, Dr. B. H-, II. 67, no. Coates, Reynell, II. 200, 203. Coates, Samuel, I. 438; II. 119. Cobbett, Wm., I. 374-5, 414, 417. Cockades, I. 361-2, 371; II. 126. Coffee Houses, early, I, 106, 168. "Coffin Handbills," II. 105. Cohocksink, I. 62; creek, 405; depot, IL 318. Cohoquinoque. I. 17. Coleman, William, I. 176, 177, 179; II. 54. College of Philadelphia, beginning of, I. 177-80, 187, ^ lottery for, 190; early graduates' of, 205-7; medical school of, 209; soldiers quartered in, 253, 259; Congress meets in, 281; authority of suspended, 282; restored to rights, 320; rep resented at Franklin's funeral, 345. College of Physicians, I. 336, 345, 376, 414; H- 425- Colles, Christopher, I. 234. Collin, Nicholas, I. 24; II. 118. Collins, Zaccheus, II. 24, 119, 121, 221. Collis's Zouaves. II. 358, 360, 378. Collot Victor, I. 385. Colonial Union proposed, I. 193. Colonnade, Hotel, IL 426. Colony in Schuylkill. I. 1 Schuylkill. 69. See also State in Colton, Walter, II. 208. Columbia Railroad, see Philadelphia and Columbia. "Columbian Magazine," I. 328. INDEX 447 Columbian Society of Artists, II. 114. Columbus Tavern, II. 60. Combe, George, II. 25, 26, 158, 166, 168, 191, 245, 293- Commercial Bank, II. 21, 122, 361. Commercial Museum, II. 426. Committee of One Hundred, II. 409-11, 417, 419. Commonwealth Bank, II. 337. Commonwealth Building, II. 173. Concert Hall, II. 221. Conestoga Wagons, I. 194, 212, 450-51; II. 83-4, 135- Congress Hall, I. 342, 381 ; II. 55. Congress Hall Hotel, II. 181, 247, 248. Connelly, John, II. 143. Conrad, Robert T., I. 422; II. 187, 188, 200, 204, 211-2, 215, 258, 275, 307-10, 312. Consolidation, need for, II. 273-4; effected, 300-7; problems raised by, 307-9. Consolidation Bank, II. 337. Constables, duties of early, I. 121-22. Constitution of Pa. (1776) adopted, 249-50; steps taken to change, 253; in operation, 255; con tinued opposition to, 255-6; defense of, 288; founded in delusion, 321; overthrow of, 332-4; changed, 343; (1789) adopted, 343; (1838) adopted, II. 255; (1873) adopted, 393. Constitution of United States, framing and adop tion of, I. 330-4; efforts to amend, 336. Constitutional Union party, II. 347. Constitutionalists, I. 256, 288, 290, 302-3, 320, 332-4, 343, 349-50. Continental Congress, first, meets, I. 226, 238; im pressions of delegates, 235-7; acts of first, 238-9; second, 241 ; elects Washington, 241 ; receives first prisoners, 244; penalty for libelling, 245-6; urged to a Declaration of Independence, 248; resolution of, 249; Pennsylvania's delegates to, 252-3; flees to Baltimore, 254; returns to Phila delphia, 255; commissions Lafayette, 261; orders flag, 262; returns to city from York, 281; re ceives French Minister, 286; appoints Morris, 292 ; receives flags from Yorktown, 297 ; at tempt to steal records 'of, 300-1 ; flees before mutinous soldiers, 309-10; meeting places after 1783, 310. Continental Hotel, II. 249, 349, 350, 351, 362. Continental paper money, issue of, I. 256; compul sory acceptance of, 256, 258, 260; collapse pt, 285, 287, 292; source of every vice, 289; high prices created by, 291-2. Cook, A., I. 51, 52. Cooke, G. F., II. 29-30, 116. Cooke, Henry D., II. 356, 376, 383, 384. Cooke, Jay, in packet office, II. I54'5, 226; with Clarks, 181; on Chinese Museum, 191; Graham's appeal to, 205; writes money articles, 216; at a hotel, 248-9; sees Pa. Hall bum, 277; on negro riots, 279; complains of noise of fifemen, 293; forms firm, 356; sells state loan, 356-7; collects money after Bull Run, 360-1; sells 7-30S, 361-2; sells 5-20S, 366-7; supports Chase for President, 371; in Christian Commission, 373; sells 7-30S, 375-6; manages stock market, 376-8; closes 7-30 loan, 377-8; agents in oil regions, 381; opposes greenbackers, 382; establishes na tional banks, 382-3; finances Northern Pacific, 384; builds "Ogontz," 385; opens London branch. 386; political demands on, 389. Cooke, Jay & Co., firm of formed, II. 356; open agency, 362; 7-30S sold by, 375; Washington branch of, 376; New York branch of, 376; Lon don branch of, 386; in First National Bank, 383; failure of, 388. Cooke's Circus, II. 189. Cooley, Ariel, II. 48, 52. Coombe, Rev. Thomas. I. 259-60. Cooper, Dr. Thomas, I. 420; II. 68, 106. Cooper, T. A., II. 29, 182. Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloon, II. 353, 378. Cooperis Ferry, I. 113, 212, 232; II. 42. Cope, Alfred, II. 322. Cope, Henry, II. 322. Cope, Thomas P., I. 435, 437; II- 45, 64, 119, 121, 164, 226. 237, 250. Copley, John Singleton, I. 386. Copperheads, II. 344, 352, 364, 368-9, 390. Corbin. Austin, II. 414. Corn Exchange, regiment of. II. 358, 365; new building for, 399; moves to Bourse, 423. Corn Exchange Bank, II. 337. Cornplanter, I. 365. Cornwallis, Lord, I. 264, 266, 293. Correa da Serra, II. 25, 107, 120. Corsica, I. 221. Coultas, James, I. 175, 190. Council of Censors, I, 250, 321. Counterfeit Detectors, II. 180. Court House, in Market Street, built, I. 103; too small, 139; elections at, 148-9; Whitefield preaches at, 154; belfry on, 187; at State House, built, 313-4; given to Congress, 342; re turned to county, 381. Coxe, Brinton, II. 311. Coxe, John Redman, I. 414, 433; II. 106, 108, 109, no, 119. Coxe, Tench, I. 283, 443. Craig, John, I. 438. Craig, Robert II. 333. Craige, Seth, I. 441. Cramond, Wm., I, 438; II. 54. Cramp, Wm., II. 381, 407. Crefeld, I. 38-9- Cresheim, I. 39. 59. Cresson, John C, II. 372, 373, 392. Crime, early penalties for, I. 34-5, 74-5, 9 1-2, no, 150-51. Crooked Billet, I. 447- Crosby, Joshua, I. 180. Cross, Benjamin, II. 100. Cruikshank, Joseph, II. 120, 122. Cuba, expedition to, I. 170, 173. Cumberland County, formed, I. 183; representation of, 195, 247. Cumberland Road, II. 133- Cummins, D. B., II. 372. Cummings, Alexander. II, 211-12, 214 304. Cummings, Rev. Archibald, I. 151. Curtin, A. G., II. 348, 357, 363, 369, 37L 379, 389, 398. Curtis, G. W., II. 350. Cushing, Thomas, I. 241. Cushman, Charlotte, II. 184, 185, 186, 190. Custom House, see Bank of United States. Cutler, Manasseh, I. 277, 325, 339, 344, 3g2, 383, 393, 394, 396, 398-9- Cuyler, Theodore, II. 303, 322, 339, 342, 349, 372, 373, 393, 396. Da Costa, Dr., II. 339- "Daily Chronicle," II. 213, 216. "Daily Courier," II. 213. "Daily Transcript," II. 213. Dale, Richard, I. 243; II. 2, 125, 132. Dallas, G. M., II. 112, 131, 177- 256, 338, 393. Dallas, A. J., I. 350, 412, 413; II- 2, 21. Dancing, I. 136, 163-4, 388; II. 99. See also Dancing Assembly. Dancing Assembly, I. 164-5, 395, 397- Daniel, the Whipper, I. 184. Darby. I. 62; II. 319-20. Dare, Wm., I. 22. Darley, F. O. C, II. 207. Darley, John, I. 391; II- 28, 129. Darlington. Dr. Wm., II. 107, 315-6. Darragh, Lydia. I. 271-2. Dartmouth, Earl of, I. 225. Daughters of Liberty, I. 219. Dauphin, birth of celebrated, I. 298-9. Dauphin County formed, I. 3"- Davenport, Fanny, II. 333. Davenport, James, I. 410. 44i- Davis, John, impressions of, I. 354, 378, 419, 421. Deaf and Dumb Schools, II. 120. Deane, Silas, I. 289. De Benneville, Dr. George, II. 107. Debtors, imprisonment of, I. 228. Decatur, Stephen, I. 243, 411; II- '3- Decimal system of numbering houses, II. 309. Declaration of Anti-Slavery Sentiments, II. 272. Declaration of Independence, I. 251, 252-3. Deer, protection of, I. 116, 147. De Haven arctic expedition, II. 328. De Kalb, Baron, I. 261. Delancey, Captain Oliver, I. 275. Delany, Sharp, I. 290. De La Warr, Lord, I. 10. Delaware, three counties, I. 25, 33, 83-4, 331, 332. Delaware Avenue, II. 163. Delaware County, formed, I. 401. Delaware River, Dutch and Swedes in, I. n-16; English arrive in, 16; frozen in winter, 29, 141; ferries over, 40, 113; quarantine arrangements in, 78; pirates in, 80, 122; forts on, 243; che- vaux de frise in, 242, 253, 306; British seize, 448 INDEX 267; Barney's fight in, 304; plans to improve, 310; scenes on wharves of, 436, 4 37, steam boats on, 441; defence of in War of 1812, II. 10; wood brought in on, 85; bathing in, 97; skating on, 97; ice in, 98, 317; timber rafts on, 139; breakwater, 139-40; depth of, 429. Delaware Township, II. 303. Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad, II. 4 1 3. Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, I. 229, 234, 405; II, 45, 136, 150. Delaware and Raritan Canal, II. 137, 138. Delaware and Schuylkill Canal, I. 347. 376, 401, 407; II. 45, 143- Democratic Party, formed and led by Jackson, IL 1 7 1-2. "Democratic Press," Binns', I. 417; II. 105, 213. Dennie, Toseph, I. 418-20, 421 ; II. 23. Denny, Governor, I. 200, 201. Dentistry, crude state of, II. 110-11. D'Estaing, fleet of, I. 285, 288. De Tocqueville, II. 166. De Vries, D. P., I. 11, 14. Dewces, Wm. P., II. 24, 100, 107, 122. Dickens, Charles, in America, II. 155-7, *96, 247, 259- Dickins, Asbury, I. 418, 419. Dickins, John, I. 418. Dickinson, John, I. 218, 219, 220-21, 226, 238, 240, 250, 252-3, 301, 306, 331, 333. Dickinson, Jonathan, I. 78, 97, 105, 115, 133. Diggs, Ann, I. 1 1 1. Directory, first, I. 314. Disston, Henry, II. 229. Divorce, I. 388-9. Dix, Dorothea, L., II. 334. Dobson, Thomas, encyclopedia of, I. 422. Dock Creek, Penn arrives in, I. 21-2; bridges over, 115; tanyards on, 144; plans to close up, 144-5; arched over, 20S ; culverted and filled in, 312, 355- Dodge, Edward, II. 181. Dog tax, I. 231. Dolby, Joseph, I. 285. "Dollar Newspaper," II. 214. Dom Pedro, II. 405. Dorsey, John, I. 433, 443. Dorsey, Dr. J. S., II. 106. Dougherty, Daniel, II. 311, 339, 350, 364, 407. Douglas, S. A., II. 347, 348, 349. Douglass, David, I. 166-7. Douglass, Major, II. 143. Dove, D. J., I. 179, 210. Drawbridge, (over Dock Creek) I. 116, 183. Dreer, F. J., II. 322, 364. Drew, Mr. and Mrs. John, II. 332-3. Drexel, A. J., II. 357, 387, 410, 423, 425, 427. Drexel, F. M., II. 115. 387. Drexel & Co. IL 330, 357, 386-7, 402. Drexel Building, II. 423, 427. Drexel Institute, II. 425, 426. Drinker, Elizabeth, I. 260, 296. Drinker, Henry. I. 223, 259, 260. Drinker, John, I. 32, 296. Duane, Wm., I. 379, 415, 416, 417, 418; II. 32, 105, 343- Duane, Wm. J., II. 111-12, 258. Dublin Township, I. 33, 62; II. 301. Duche, Anthonv, I. 236. Duche, Jacob, first, I. 186, 187. Duche, Jacob, second, I. 205, 206, 238, 277, 282, 326. Ducking stool, I. 121. Duel, penalties for the, I. 34; Quakers oppose the, 65; preachers renounce the, 417. Duer, Wm. A., I. 369. Duffield, Benjamin, I. 414. Duffield, Samuel, I. 4 14. Dugan, Joseph, II. 92, 250. Duluth, Cooke at, II. 385, 386, 387. Dundas, James, II. 250, 323. Dunglison, Dr., II. 329, 339. Dunkers, I. 107, 124, 159. Dunlap, John, I. 220, 328, 454; II. 37, 105, 221. Dunlap, Thomas, II. 66. Dunlap, Wm., I. 328. Dunn, Nathan, II. 191-2, 223. Duponcean, P. S., I. 24, 350, 412, 413; II. 24, 25, 93, 100, 119, 121, 125, 126, 253. DuPont de Nemours, arrives, I. 379; powder works of, II. 10. DuSolIe, J. S., II. 215. Dutch, in Delaware, I. 10; first settlements of, 11- 12; attacked by Swedes, 14; turn upon Swedes, 14-15; English overcome, 16; their peaceful rela tions with Indians, 24; geographical position of, 25; Pastorius' view of, 44; dykes of, 191. Dutch East India Co., I. 10. Dutch West India Co., I. 11, 12, 14, 15. Dwyer, John, II. 29. Dyott, T. W., II. 170. "Eaglesfield," I. 169 ; II. 54, 323. Earle, George H., II. 345, 409. Earle's Picture Gallery, II. 117. East India Company, ships tea, I. 223. East Indies, trade with, I. 437, 439. Eastern Penitentiary, established, II. 166-7 Eastern Shore, emigration from, IL 111. Eastwick, Andrew M., II. 151, 153- Eberle, Dr. John, II. 68, 107, 108, 121. Eckley, John, I. 52. Eckstein, John, II. 116. "Edgeley," II. 54, 323. Edinburgh, doctors educated at, I. 208. Edwards, G. W., II. 249-50. Edwin, David, I. 415. Egyptian Hall, II, 221. Eichholtz, Jacob, II._ 116. Eighth Street, shopping street, II. 95. Elder, Dr. Wm., II. 262, 303, 325. Elections, at county towns, I. 98; at court house, 148; riots at, 148-9; separated, 231; places of holding changed, II. 71-2; scenes at, 72-3; riots at, 280, 282-3; new windows for, 302. Electric Traction Co., II. 416. Electric^ lighting, II. 428. Electricity, Franklin experiments with, I. 177; Hop- kinson's experiments with, 177; Kinnersley, 179; kite experiment with, 187; used for public light ing, II. 428. Elkins, W. L., II. 416. Ellery, Wm., I. 270, 29 1. Ellsler, Fanny, II. 184, 330. Ellsworth, E. E., II. 355. Ellsworth, Oliver, I. 331, 369. Elverson, James, II. 428. Emancipation Proclamation, II. 367. Embargoes, in War of 1812, II. 2. Emlen, Samuel, I. 197, 259. Emlen, Dr. Samuel, Jr., II. 107, 120. Encyclopedia Britannica, I. 422. England, her wars with France(> I. 52, 75, 90, 102; with Spain, 102, 169; with France again, 169-70, 172-6; expedition under Braddock, 193-4; declares war, 190; treaty of peace, 20 1 ; hampers American manufacturers, 2 14-1 5 ; imports from, to stop, 238; American inde pendence of declared, 251; peace with, 306; an other war with urged, 352; Jay's treaty with, 366; second war with, II. 1-14. England, Philip, I. 72, 97, 114. English, Thomas Dunn, II. 200, 207-8. English Revolution, I. 48, 52. Engrossers, see Forestallers. Ephrata, press at, I. 159-60. Episcopal Academy, I. 326, 396; II. 399. Episcopal Church, first congregations of, I. 66, 68-9; extension of, 151-2, 188; further growth of, II. 1 17-8, 338. Erie Canal, I. 405; II. 45, 133, 138, 139. 225. Esling, Mrs., II. 201. "Essex," II. 7. "Evangeline," I. 198. Evans, Cadwalader, I. 209; II. 48, 123. Evans, Rev. Evan, I. 69. Evans, John, I. 89, 90. Evans, Joseph R., IL 251. Evans, Nathaniel, I. 205, 206. Evans, Oliver, I. 316. 439-40; II. 141-2. "Evening Bulletin," II. 214-5, 327, 374, 402, 428. "Evening Journal," II. 368. "Evening Star," II. 40.?. "Evening Telegraph," II. 402, 428. "Evergreen," I. 161. Everly. Adam. II. 250. Eves, Joseph Bennett. I. 426. Ewing, Samuel, I. 419; II. 93- Ewing, Provost, 419. 421. Exchange Coffee House, II. 5. Eyre, Manuel, I. 242, 438; II. 9, 64, 121. Fabritius, Rev. Jacob, I. 67. Fahnestork, H. C, II. 376, 386. "Fairhill," I. 161, 236, 270. Fairhill Meeting, I. 161. INDEX 449 Fairman, Thomas, I. 31, 134. Fairmount, I. 62; water works at, II. 52-3; com merce at, 134-6, 138; street cars to, 320. Fairmount Dam, II. 169. Fairmount Park, grove of oaks in, II. 107; Wash ington monument in, 253; creation of, 322-3; Cen tennial in, 395; zoological garden in, 397; exten sion of, 428; mentioned, 233, 236, 237. Fairs, at Centre Square, I. 43; attractions at, 133, 165, 211-17; proclamation of, 211; nuisances, 229; revived, 229. "Fairy Hill," II. 54. 224. Fales, S. B., II. 378. Falls of Delaware, I. 26, 32, 40, 63. Falls of the Ohio, II. 138. Falls of Schuylkill, I. 38, 168, 190; II. 46, 51-2. Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank, I. 445; II. 16, 122, 361. Fauchet, Citizen, I. 361, 363. Federal Convention, members of ride in Fitch's steamboat, I. 317; frame and adopt constitution of the U. S., 330, "et seq. "Federal Gazette, I. 105. "Federal March," I. 371. Federal Procession, I. 334-6. Federalists, principles of, I. 332; triumph of in Pa., 333-4; plan pageant, 334-6; a political party, 368; newspapers of, 373-4; overthrow of, 380-1; bells tolled for, 415; oppose War of 1812, II. 2, 6, 8-9; secretly buy bonds, 18; ridicule Jacob Barker, 19; decline of, 171. Fell, Jonathan, II, 122, 123. Fellowship Fire Company, I. 145. Female Hospitable Society, II. 122. Female Society for Relief of Poor, II. 122. Fennell, James, I. 391; II. 29. Fenno, John, I. 373-4; II. 27, 417. Ferguson, Elizabeth Graeme, I. 205, 206, 262, 277, 326. Ferries, rates on, I. 40, 113-4, 230. Fessenden, W. P., II. 375, 376, 382. Feu de joie at Valley Forge, I. 278. Fidelity Trust Co., II. 426. "Fighting Church," see Old Pine Street. "Fighting Quakers," see Free Quakers. Fillmore, Millard, II. 261, 310, 343, 344. Findley, Wm., I. 333. Finney, Samuel, I. 87. Fire, early steps: to prevent, I. 72-3, 100; engine to put out, 112; regulations to prevent, 112-3; most serious, 145; extinguishing apparatus from Eng land, 145; companies to fight, 145-6; new com panies, 234; water to prevent, 431; property de stroyed by, 432; II. 55-6; further destruction by, 296-8; detectives to prevent, 313-4. Fire Companies, first formed, I. 145-6; later, 231, 406; number in 1818, II. 57; frolics of, 80-2; ap pliances and uniforms of, 82-3; escort returning soldiers, 260; in Clay's funeral procession, 262; at Pa. Hall and other places, 278, 279, 280, 281; outrages committed by, 292-3; alarms for, 292; parades of, 294-5; number of, 295, 300; dis ciplined, 295; efforts to abolish, 298; political influence of, 298-9; purchase steam engines, 299- 300; abolished, 389-90; Stokley's attack on, 392. Fire Insurance Company, first, I. 231. First City Troop, formed, I. 240; escorts Washing ton, 241, 290, 338, 373; escorts captured flags, 297; escorts Luzerne, 298; in Federal procession, 335; escorts John Marshall, 371; in Washington's funeral procession, 380; in War of 1812, II. 11; welcomes and escorts Lafayette, 124, 127, 130, 132;- escorts Jackson, 177; escorts Kossuth, 261; in Clay's funeral procession, 262 ; mobilized - for riots; 274; receives Kane's remains, 329; in Native American riots, 286; escorts Meade, 378; cen tennial of, 394. First National Bank, II. 383- First Presbyterian Church, I. 69, 152, 189, 267; II. 117, 118. Fishbourn, Wm., I. 115, 123, 138. Fisher, Daniel, I. 149- Fisher, J. Francis, I. 24. Fisher, James C, II. 123, 170. Fisher, Joshua, & Sons, I. 257. Fisher, Miers, I. 259, 412. Fisher, S. G., II. 303- Fisher, Wm., I. 226. Fishing Clubs, I. 168-9. Fitch, John, steamboats of, I. 3r6-7- Fitler, E. H., II. 394, 4i9- TT Fitzsimmons, Thomas, I. 310, 330, 335, 337. 39o; 11. 2. Vol. 11—29 Five-twenties, Cooke sells, II. 366-7, 182. Flat-Rock, II. 48, 53, 148. Flax, attempts to raise, I. 59, 112. Fleeson, Plunket, I. 328. Fletcher, Governor, I. 54, 55, 58, 75, 79, 86. Florence, Jacob I., II. 250. Florence, Thomas B., II. 298-9. Flour, high price of, I. 288, 289. Flower, Enoch, I. 41. "Flying machine," Barnhill's, I. 212. Fonciu, Colonel, II. 10. "Fonthill," II. 54. Forbes, General, I. 201. Ford, who cheated Penn, I. 91. Forest, Sieur de la, I. 350. Forestalled, mobs attack, I. 256-8. Forney, John W., II. 215, 343, 344, 345, 3So, 390-1, 402, 407, 428. Forrest, Edwin, II. 32, 33, 34, 182, 183, 184, 186-7, 188-9, 250, 333, 397, 424-5. Forrest, Wm., II. 184, 333. Fort Casimer, I. 14, 15. Fort Christina, I. 12, 15. Fort Elsingborg, I. 13. Fort Island, I. 242, 312. Fort McHenry, II. 11, 352. Fort Mercer, I. 267. Fort Mifflin, I. 242, 267; II. 7. Fort Nassau, I. n, 12. Fort New Gottenburg, I. 13, 15. Fort Pickens, II. 355. Fort Pitt, I. 213. "Fort Rittenhouse," II. 3, 4. Fort St. Davids, I. 169, 190. Fort Sumter, II. 350, 351, 354, 355. Fort Trinity, see Fort Casimer. "Fort Wilson," I. 290-91. Forten, James, II. 271-2. Forty-second Highlanders, I. 222, 265. Foster, "Gaslight," II. 212. Fothergill, Dr., I. 181. Founders' Week, II. 428. "Fountain Green," I. 233; II. 54, 323. Fourth of July, I. 251. Fourth National Bank, II. 383. Fox, D. M., II. 391, 392, 394. Fox, George, I. 17, 18, 26, 49, 56. Fox, Gilbert, I. 371, 372. Fox, Joseph, I. 259. Fox's American Theatre, II. 398. Fox hunting, I. 211; II. 91. Fraley, Frederick, II. 69, 286, 324, 364, 373, 392, 394, 407- Frame, Richard, I. 60. Frampton, Wm., I. 42. France, war with England, I. 52, 75, 90, 102, 170, 172-6; claims Mississippi Valley, 193; new war with, 199; peace with 201; American alliance, 278; motives for alliance, 280; value of to America, 292; her troops in Phila., 293-4; revolution in, 349; American sympathy for, 349-55, 361-3; refu gees from, 355; rupture of relations with, 370; insults John Marshall, 371; embargoes against, II. 2; new refugees from, 25-6. Francis, John, I. 370, 381, 396. Francis, Tench, first, I. 178, 217. Francis, Tench, second, I. .295, 373; II. 60. Francis, T. W., I. 438. Francis, Wm., I. 391; II. 29. Francisville, il. 60. Frankford, I. 62, 103; II. 302, 319. Frankford Arsenal, II. 127, 169. Frankford Road, traffic on, I. 229; piked, 445. Frankfort Land Company, I. 37, 38, 39, 61. Franklin, Benjamin, in London, I. 32; his allusions to Keimer, 129; arrives, 134-5; forms fire com pany, 145; buys Gazette, 157; dissolves partner ship, 158; in firm with Hall, 159; common sense of, 163; satisfies Quaker conscience, 173; writes "Plain Truth," 174; in Junto, 176; in Phila. Li brary, 176; American Philosophical Society, 177; experiments with electricity, 177; college started, 177-80; founds hospital, 180-81; changes street lamps, 185; experiment with kite, 187; plan for Colonial union, 193; collects wagons, 194; leaves troops, 199; goes to England, 204; his magazine, 206; on Stamp Act, 215; toast to; 220; Governor Hutchinson, 225; almanacs subsidized, 233; presi dent of Philosophical Society, 234;- house of, 235; welcomed home in 1775, 241; in Congress, 241; on Committee of Safety, 242; supports Paine, 248; in Pa. convention, 249; on Declaration committee, 251; votes for Declaration, 252-3; in France, 450 INDEX 280; abolitionist, 304; returns from France, 313; appropriates Fitch's ideas, 316; president of state, 321-2; in Federal Convention, 330; Washington dines with, 332; on Anti-Federalist ticket, 333; death of, 343-4; burial of, 345; his sedan chair, 344; his legacy to city, 345-6; Cobbett's attack on, 374; school in house of, 424. Franklin, Deborah, death of, I. 344; grave of, 345. Franklin Bank Building, II. 427. Franklin Hotel, II. 126, 133. Franklin Institute, II. 69-70, 108, 121, 396, 420. Franklin Square, I. 30, 383; II. 69, 78-9, 220. Franklin stove, I. 177. Franks, David, I. 198; II. 54, Franks, Jacob, I. 198. Franks, Rebecca, I. 198. 385. Freame; Thomas, I. 1 37, * 70. Free Library, II. 221, 426. Free negroes, position of, I. 120-21. Free Quakers, society formed, I. 244-5; burying ground of, 245; house of, II. 66. Freedoms, sale of, I. 102, 103, 119. "Freeman's Journal," I. 301, 327. Fremont, John C, II. 310, 343, 344. French and Indian Wars, I. 52-3, 75, 79, 169-70. French philosophy in Pa., I. 233, 234, 248, 256, 280, 302, 303, 332. Frenchtown, II. 61, 1 50. Freneau, Philip, I. 302, 327, 354, 356, 362. Friedlander, J. R., II. 166. Friends, see Quakers. Friends' Public School, see Penn Charter School, Friendship Fire Company, I. 146. Fries' Rebellion, I. 373. "Frolic," II. 13. Frost, John, II. 200, 222. Fuel Savings Society, II. 122. Fugitive Slave Law, II. 270, 281, 341-3, 345. Fulton, Robert, I. 317, 433. Funerals, early, I. 7g, Furly, Benj amin, I. 33, 37. Furness, H. H., 372, 373. Furness, Rev. W. H., II. 118, 222, 280, 338, 341. Fry, William, II. 23, 105. Gage, General, I. 222. Gaines, General, II. 12, 13. Gallatin, Albert, II. 410, 411. Galloway, Joseph, I. 218, 235, 238, 241, 259, 265, 268, 282, 340; II. 54. Gardette, James, II. no, Garrett, Philip C, II. 410, 411. Garrick, David, I. 154, 166. Garrison, W. L., II. 272, 273. Gas, plans for manufacturing, II. 57-8; city works built, 217-8; in hands of a "trust," 299; works at time of consolidation, 308; mismanagement of works, 392 ; strike in works, 393 ; taken on by city. 417, 419-20; leased, 420. Gas Trust, II. 299, 392. Gates, General, I. 271. "Gazette of United States," see "United States Gazette." Geary, J. W., IL 379- "General Magazine," Franklin's, I. 206. "General Monk," I. 304-5. Genet, Citizen, arrives, I. 3 50-51 ; recalled, 3 52 ; finds a friend in Jefferson, 353-4; remains in America, 361. "Genius of Universal Emancipation," II. 271. "Gentleman's Magazine," II. 199-200. George I., I. 102, 136. George II., I. 136, 201, 362, George III., I. 201, 219, 251, 268. George, Jesse, II. 323. George's Hill, II. 323. Gerard, first French minister, I. 285-6. Gerhard, Benjamin, II. 364. German Reformed Church, I. 1 24, 1 56, 187 ; II. ri8. German Society, II. 68, 122. Germans, arrive, I. 33; increased immigration of, 107 ; sufferings of on ships, 107 ; deception of, 124-7; Logan alarmed by, 126; strength of in prov ince, 182; laws to protect, from shipmasters, 182*3; in "Bloody Election," 148-9; establish a press, 1 59 ; shoot out old year, 167 ; non-re sistants, 1 74 ; some Romanists among, 196 ; con front Indians, 202. Germantown, founding of, I. 33, 39; growth of, 59; industries of, 59-6o; anti-slaverv movement in, 60-61; capital for Germans, 124; Sower's press in, 159-60; early descriptions of, 162; "Paxton Boys" in, 203; stage to, 213; woolen stockings of, 214; Howe encamped in, 266; battle of, 266-7; influence of battle on French, 280; stockings and wagons of, 319; plan to establish capital in, 339; Washington in, 357; pike to, 401, 445; industries of, 445 ; voting place in, 71 ; railroad to, II. 146-7; locomotive runs to, 152; area of, 301; oldest borough, 302; township of, 302. Germantown Academy, I. 209-10, 225, 377, 424. Germantown and Perkiomen Turnpike Co., II. 123. Gerry, Ellridge, I. 331, 370. Gettysburg, battle of, II. 369-70. Geyer, John, II. 9. Gibson, John, I. 226. Gibson, Chief Justice John Bannister, II. 113, 183, .258, 338. Gibson, William, II. 24, 119, 120. Gillingham, Joseph, II, 46. Gilpin, Charles, II. 236, 350, 392. Gilpin, Henry D., II. 226, 303, 338. Gilpin, Thomas, I. 259, 260. Girard, John, II. 162. Girard, Stephen, yellow fever nurse, I. 357, 358, 375; arrival of, 435; character of, 436; ransoms his ship, II. 7-8; sends goods to Reading, II. 9; buys United States Bank stock, 16; buys govern ment bonds, 17-8 ; rents house to Joseph Bon aparte, 26; aids Schuylkill canal, 48; helps Sully, 115; incorporator of Pennsylvania R. R., 143; death, funeral and will of, 161-6; college of, 163-6; trustee, 170; value of estate of, 250; frees a slave woman, 264. Girard Avenue Bridge, built, II. 220. Girard Bank, I. 409; II. 16, 176, 324, 361. Girard College, II, 163-6. Girard House, II. 247, 249, 353. Girard Trust Co., II. 426, 427. Globe Mill, I. 410, 441; II. 170. Gloria Dei, see Swedes' Church. Gloucester Fox Hunting Club, I, 211; II. 91, Gnadenhutten, I. 199. Goddard, Wm., I. 220. Godey, L. A., II. 193, 197-8, 281. "Godey's Lady's Book," II. 197-8. Godfrey, Thomas, I. 176, 177. Godfrey, Thomas, Jr., I. 205, 206. Godman, Dr. John, D-, II. 107. Gold, speculation in, II. 376. Golden Books, I. 125. Golden Horse Tavern, II. 315. Gooch, General, I. 173. - Gookin, governor, I. 91, 100, 102, 108. Gordon, Governor Patrick, I. 130, 136-7, 138, 164. Gorsuch case, II. 342. Goshorn, A. T., II. 394, 405. Gosline's Zouaves, II. 358, 360. "Governor's Mill," I. 410, 441. Gowen, F. B., II, 393, 413, 414. Grace, Robert, I. 176. Graeme, Dr. Thomas, I. in, 143-4, 181, 206. "Graeme Park," I. in. Graff, Frederick, II. 52, 322, 372. Graham, George R., II. 193, 196, 199-205, 206, 211-12, 214, 281. "Graham's Magazine," II. 199-203, 327. Grand State Lottery, scandals of, II, 45, 93. "Grange. The," II. 101. Grant, General, II. 370, 371, 374, 375, 378, 385, „ 388, 389, 395. Grasse, Count de, I. 294. Gratz, Barnard, I. 198, 199; II. 27. Gratz, Hyman, II. 27. Gratz, Jacob, II. 27, 120. Gratz, Joseph, II. 27. Gratz, Michael, I. 198, 199, 437; II. 27. Gratz, Rebecca, II. 27-8, 121. Gray, George, I. 190, 312. Gray's Gardens, I. 338, 339, 340, 394, 395; IL 37- Grays Ferry, I. 32, 72, 114, 229, 271, 337, 338, 446; II. 10, 51, 151, 227, 319-20. Graydon, Alexander, I. 259. Great Meeting House, I. 63, 77, 152, 188, 193; IL 119. Greaton, Father, I. 1 96. Greble, Lieutenant, I. 355. Green, Jacob, II. 68, 121. Greenbacks, issued, II. 361; values in, 376, 382. Greene, General, I. 287, 309. Greenleaf, James, II. 54. Greenwood, Grace, II. 204, 28 1. Gregorian calendar adopted, I. 192. Grew, Mary, II. 275, 346. Grew, Theophilus, I. 179. INDEX 451 Grices, shipbuilders, II. 61, 64. Griffith, R. E„ II. 54. Griffitts, Dr. S. P., I. 357, 413; II. 120. Griffitts, Thomas, mayor, I. 138, 139. Grigg, John, II. 324, 325. Grigg and Elliott, II. 251, 325. Grimke, Angelina, II. 276, 277. Grinnell, Henry, II. 328. Grinnell, Moses, II. 328. Grisi, Sig., II. 332. Griswold, Rufus W., II. 196, 200, 207. Gross, Samuel D., II. 339. Grout, Jonathan, I. 441. Growdon, Joseph, I. 218. Grube, B. A., I. 202. "Grumblethorpe," I. 161. Grund, F. J., II. 368. Guest, John, I. 87, 437. Guille, balloonist, I. 38. Gurney, Francis, I. 438, 454. Gurney, J. J., II. 156. Gustavus Adolphus, I. 12. Haddington, II. 60. Hadley, quadrant maker, I. 177, Hagner, Charles V., II. 53. Hahnemann College, II. 337. Haigue, Wm., I. 85. "Hail Columbia," origin of, I. 371-2; singing of, 416. Haines, Reuben, I. 431; II. 24, 121, 221, 222. Haines and Vaughan, shipbuilders, II. 64. Hale, Sara J., II. 189, 197, 204. "Half Moon," I. 10. Hall, David, I. 159, 220. Hall, John E., I. 421. Hall & Atkinson, II. 104. Hall & Sellers, II. 104. Hallam, Lewis, I. 166, 167, 329, 389. Halleek, Fitz Greene, II. 19. Hamilton, Alexander, advises Morris, I. 310; Fed eralist 330, 332, 333; at Federal Convention, 331; his bargain with the South, 339; secretary of treasury, 342; establishes bank, 346; opposes French follies, 352; accused by Genet, 353; an tagonizes Jefferson, 354; down with fever, 358; accompanies Washington, 364; hated by Demo crats, 366; dinner to, 368; death in duel, 417. Hamilton, Andrew, Postmaster General, I. 75; Governor, 87; death of, 88; opposes Penn, 90. Hamilton, Andrew, first, lawyer and leader in the Assembly, arrival of, I. 134; architect of State House, 140; retirement of, 148; his mansions, 161-62; Assembly meets in house of, 164. Hamilton, Andrew, second, I. 198-9, 393. Hamilton, James, mayor, I. 139; at Bush Hill, 161; opens ball, 164, licenses theatre, 166; gives to Christ Church, 187; governor, 192; retires, 193; governor again, 201; relieved of duty, 204; in Philosophical Society, 234; recollections of, 235; on parole, 260. Hamilton, Philip, I. 419. Hamilton, Wm., at fairs, I. 212; highwayman attack, 324; Washington dines with, 332: de scribe Lancaster Road, 348; gardens of, 393-4; servants of, 398; at Saratoga, II. 41 ; introduces poplars, 95. Hamiltonville, II. 60, 302. Hammond, George, British Minister, I. 342, 366. Hancock, General, II. 370, 379, 408. Hancock, John, I. 241, 286. Hand-in-hand Fire Co., I. 145. Handelian Society, II. 99. Hanover, Elector of, I. 102. Hanway, Castner, IL 402. Harding, J. Barclay, II. 402. Harding, Jesper, II. 213, 402. Harding. W. W., II. 402, 428. Hare, Charles W., II. 2, 113, 119- Hare, Robert, II. 24, 106, 119, 303. 339- Harlan, Dr. Richard, II. 107, 175, 176. "Harleigh," II. 54, 224. Harmonic Society, II. 99. Harris, John, I. 310-11. Harris, Joseph S., II. 41 5- Harrisburg, I. 311; II. 78. Harrison, -Benjamin, I. 287. Harrison, C. C., II. 424. Harrison, Henry, I. 186. Harrison, James, I. 41, 48, 49, 51, 81. Harrison, Joseph, Jr., II. 151, 193, 322, 324, 3°4- 372. Harrison, Richard, I. 225-6. Harrx^riT # Vs: dedine o£' n- »¦ ¥?«• J°h" S., II. 203, 222, 425. Hartford Convention, II. 2 Hartranft, Governor, II. 407, 408, 4,8. Harlshorne, Dr. Joseph, II. ,07 Hasell, Samuel, mayor, I. 138, i1Q Hatboro, I. 230. Hauto, G. F. A., II. 49. Haverford, I. 36, 63. Haviland, John, II. 117, 118 120 Hawley, Joseph R II. 394, 404, 4o5) 406-7. Haydn Society, II. 99. -».,<¦» / Hayes, President, II. 407. Hays, Isaac, II. 106, 108, 121. Hazard, Erskine, II, 46, 48, 49. Hazard, Samuel, I. 180. Hazlehurst, Isaac, II. 226. Head, Joseph II 6, 17, 116, 126, 133, 246-7. Healy, Joseph, II. 275. Heat in city, II, 244. Heart-in-hand Fire Co., I. 145.6 Helm, Peter, I. 357, 358, 375. Hemp, attempts to raise, I. 132. Hempfield Railroad, II. 309. Hendricksen, Cornells, I. 10. Henfrey, Benjamin, I. 440. Henry, Alexander, first, II. 122, 251. Henry, Alexander, second, elected mayor, II. 331; police of, 313, 314, 315, 3I6; mentioned, 325, 345, 349, 35J, 363, 370, 373, 378, 391. Henry, John, I. 389. Hermits of the Ridge, I. 61, 62. Heron's Lines, II. 237. Hessians, I. 254-5, 265, 279. Hestonville, II. 60. Hestonville & Mantua street car line, II. 320, 416. Hewson, T. T., II. 107, 119, 120, 339. Hibernia Fire Company, I. 146; II. 300. Hicks, Elias, I. 57; II. 265-7. Hicksite Friends, II. 265-7, 268, 275. High License Law, II. 421-2. High School, first, II. 222-3; new, 425. High Street, see Market Street. High Street Ferry, see Middle Ferry. Highfield cocoonery, I. 146. Highlanders in French War, I. 200, 201 ; in Rev olution, 265. Hill, Captain Joseph, II. 288. Hill, Richard, I. 102, 105. Hill, Wm., I. 103. Hill Meeting, I. 188, 266, 268. "Hills, The," seat of Robert Morris, I. 236, 339, 399; II. 54, 322. Hirst, H. B., II. 200, 207, 208. Hirst, W. L., II. 303. Historical Society of Pa., II. 67, 336, 354, 425. Hockley, Richard, I. 149, 196. Hodgkinson, Tohn, II. 29, 182. Hoffman, J. O., II. 27. Hoffman, Matilda, II. 27. Hog Island, I. 312. Holahan, Amos, I. 73. Holker, John, I. 288, 340. Hollandaer, Peter, I. 13. Hollow School, see Adelphi School. Holme, John, I. 59, 71. Holme, Thomas, I. 30, 85. Holmesburg, II. 60. Hominy man, cries of, II. 87. Hope and Company, bankers, I. 385; II. 17. Hope and Company, lottery agents, II. 92. Hopkins, Ezek., I. 243. Hopkinson, Frances, I. 205, 206, 209, 218, 326. Hopkinson, Joseph, I. 371-2; 413, 419, 433; II. 1, 24, 93, 111, 116, 119, 221. Hopkinson, Thomas, I. 174, 176, 178. Hopper, Edward, II. 345- Hopper, Isaac T., I-I. 270. Horner, Wm. E., II. 107, no, 176. Horse Boats, I. 45 1- Horse Racing, I. 65, 210, 434. Horsham, I. in. Horticultural Hall, Broad Street, II. 399- Horticultural Hall, Fairmount Park, II. 403, 406. "Hot Water War," II. 373- Houdon, I. 415- , , „ House of Refuge, II. 167-8. Howe, Lord, I. 275, 277, 281, 282 Howe, Sir Wm., I. 253, 254, 259, 262, 264. 265-6. 267, 268, 270, 273-77, 278, 280, 282, 340. 452 INDEX Huber, Jacob, I. 278. Hudson, Edward, II. no. Hudson, Henry, I. 9-10. Hudson, Wm., I. 138. Hue and Cry, I. 75, 158. Huger, F. K., II. 124. Hughes, John, I. 21 5-6. Huguenots, I. 37. Humphreys, Charles, I. 238, 252. Humphreys, David, I. 443. Humphreys, James, Jr., I. 220, 267, 283. Humphreys, Joshua, I. 410-1 r, 432; II. 2. Humphries, Samuel, II. 176. Hunt, Isaac, I. 245-6. Hunt, John, I. 2 59-60. Hunt, Leigh, I. 245. Hunter, John, II. 411. Hunting Park, I. 343; II. 252, 323, 428. Hupfeld, Charles, II. 100. Hutchinson, Governor, I. 225. Hutchinson, Dr. James, I. 350, 415. Immigration, German, I. 124-7; Scotch Irish, 127-8; tax on, 141; sweeps west, 147, 182; laws to reg ulate, 182. Inclined Plane at Belmont, II. 143. Indentured Servants, I, 42, 107, 119, 124-7. Independence Day, I. 251. Independence Square, new name for State House yard, II. 79. See State House yard. "Independent Gazetteer," I. 301, 327. India, I. 10. Indian King, I. 149. Indian Queen, I. 210, 332, 396; II. 89. Indians, attack Dutch, I. 12; Penn meets, 22; treaty under elm with, 24-5 ; sell game, 32; Penn goes among, 81; enslavement of, 120; selling drink to, 122; Scotch Irish excite, 128; depredations on frontier, 170; trade with, 193; re wards for heads of, 195 ; outrages of, 199, 202 ; attacked by "Paxton Boys," 202-4; bounties for scalps of, 203; use of tea by, 222; serve in army, 279; visit city, 365; II. 83. Ingersoll, Charles, II. 368. Ingersoll, C. J., I. 413, 419; II. 24, 112, 133, 224, 338, 346- Ingersoll, Edward, II. 112, 192, 368. Ingersoll, Jared, first, I. 217, 260. Ingersoll, Jared, second, I. 330, 335, 412; II. 9, 112. Ingersoll, Joseph R., II. 24, 112, 119, 131, 133, 252, 346, 349- Inglis, John, I. 164-5, ^75, 178. Ingraham, Edward D., II. 341. Inoculation for smallpox, I. 207-8; IL iog. "Inquirer," see "Philadelphia 'Inquirer." Insane, treatment of, I. 227 ; II. 334-5. Inskeep, John, I. 424; II. 116. Insurance Company of North America, II. 122. Ireland, immigration from, I. 127-8, 148, 182, 196, 367; II. 6, 283-8. Iron, discovery of, I. 71, 132-3; England tries to throttle industry, 214-5 ; development of in dustry, II. 381. Iroquois, in Continental Army, I. 279. Irving, Washington, II. 26-8, 93. "Ivanhoe," The Rebecca of, II. 28. Jackson, Andrew, II. 14, 105, 112, 170-2, 172-4, 177, 178-9, 232, 254, 281. Jackson, Paul, I. 205. Jackson, Dr. Samuel, II. 68, 107, 120, 174, 176. 254, 339- Jackson, Wm., I. 331, 339, 373, 380; II. 125, 132. Jacobin Clubs, I. 350. James, Abel, I. 223, 259, 283. James, John, I. 259. James, Louis, II. 333. James, Thomas, C, I. 413, 433; II. 24, 106, 119. James II, I. 46, 47, 48. See also Duke of York. James III, I. 52. Jansen, Reynier, I. 105, 128. Tanson, describes American stage wagons, I. 403. Japanese Embassy, II. 349. Jay, John, negotiates English treaty, I. 366; burned in effigy, 366. Jayne, Dr. David, II. 334, 348, 402. Tefferson, Charles Burke, II. 28. Jefferson, John, II. 28, 183. Jefferson, Joseph, first, IT. 28, i2g, 183. Jefferson, Joseph, second, II. 28, 183. Jefferson, Joseph, third, II. 183. Jefferson, Thomas, actor, II. 28. Jefferson Thomas, statesman, in Philosophical So ciety, I. 234; frames Declaration of Independ ence, 251; Secretary of State, 342; supports- Genet, 353-4; antipathy to Hamilton, 354; at tends inauguration, 369; letter to, from Adams, 372; leader of a party, 379; hears funeral ora tion, 380; President Philosophical Society, 414; grateful to Duane, 415; elected President, 415. Jefferson Medical College, II. 67-8, 108, 121, 339. Jenkins, H. M., II. 205. Jenny, T., I. 51. "Jersey Market," I. 184. Jews, arrival of, in city, I. 198; synagogues of, II. 119. Jewish Burying Ground, I. 199. Jockey Club, I. 211. Johnson, Andrew, IL 377, 390. Johnson, Frank, band of, II. 132, 193, 254. Johnson, Henry Clark, II. 425. Johnson, General, I. 1 94. Johnstone, Governor, I. 277. Jolly Post Boy Tavern, I. 229; II. 98, 352. Tones, Griffith, I. 53, 86, 104, 105, 134. Jones, Isaac, I. 226. Jones, General Jacob, II. 13. Tones, John, Jr., I. 176. Jones, Paul, L, 243, 293, 315. Jones, William, II. 21, 172. Jones's Hotel, II. 247-8. Judd's Hotel, II. n, 89, 247. Julian Calendar changed, I. 192. Juniata Canal, II. 138, 1 56-7, 225-6. Junto, Franklin's, I. 176. Kalm, Peter, I. 152, 156. Kane, EHsha Kent, II. 328-9. Kane, John K., II. roo, 113, 131, 258, 262, 286. 305, 328, 338, 342, 343. Kane, Robert P., II. 342. Kane, T. L., II. 342. Kean, Edmund, IL 29, 32, 35, 184. Kearsley, Dr. John, I. trustee, 140; architect of Christ Church, 140, 151, 187; pupils of, 143, 181, 208 ; a lottery managed by, 1 74 ; founds Christ Church Hospital, 228; II. 120; mentioned, 208, 335. Kearsley, Dr. John, Jr., Tory, I. 246. Keating, W. H., II. 69, 119, 121, 373, 392. Keim, G. de B., II. 414, 419. Keimer, Samuel, I. 129-30, 135, 157. Keith, George, I. 55, 57-58, 68, 69, 79; II. 265. Keith, Governor Wm., I. 108-9, no-ii, 122, 124, 130, 131, 135. Kelley, Wm. D., II. 236, 262, 325, 339. Kelly, Lydia, II. 29. Kelpias, John, I. 61, 62. Kemble, Charles, II. 29. Kemble, Fanny, II. 29, 36, 55, 91, 94, no, 159- 60, 174. 208-9, 235, 241, 244, 245, 246. Kempton Robbery, II. 315. Kendall E. Otis, II. 222. "Kenderton," IL 306. Kennedy, Robert, II. 46, 47, 51. Kensington, I. 162, 424; II. 60, 64, 72, 149, 225, 283, 289 ; district of, 30 1 ; wards of, 302 ; water works of, 307; debt of, 308; street cars to, 321. Kensington Bank, II. 176. Kent, Duke of, I. 386. Keppele, Michael, I. 424. Key, John, I, 32. Keystone State, origin of name, II. 128. Kidd, Captain, I. 80. "Killers," II. 295-6, 312-3. King Rufus, I. 331. King, Samuel G., II. 411, 417. King Street. See Water Street. Kingsessing, 26, 62, 68, 71; II. 118, 300, 302. Kinnarsley, Rev. E., I. 179. Kinsey, John, I. 161. Kintzing, A., I. 438. Kirkbride, Thomas S-, II. 335. "Kirkbride's," II. 335. Kirkbridesburg. See Bridesburg. Kitchen's Coffee House, IL 5. Knights of Blended Rose, I. 274-6. Knights of Burning Mountain, I. 274-6. Know Nothings, IL 307, 310-11. Knox, Henry, I. 342, 368. Knyphausen, General, I. 265. Koch, Jacob Gerard, I. 438; II. 14. Kosciusko, Thaddeus, I. 370, 386. Kossuth, Louis, II, 261-2. INDEX 453 Kremer, George, II. 171. Krimmel, J. L., II. 116. Kuhn, Adam, I. 209, 259. Kuhn, Hartman, II. 29, 251. Kunzie, Mrs., I. 269. Labouchere, P. C, II. 17. Lacey, General, I. 213, 427-8. Ladies of Blended Rose, I. 274-6. Ladies of Burning Mountain, I. 274-6. "Lady's Friend," II. 199. Lafayette, G. W., I. 386; II. 124 ,127. Lafayette, Marquis de, joins Washington, I. 261; wounded, 263; taken to Bethlehem, 263; on ap pearance of army, 279; narrow escape of, 280; subscribes money, 292; befriends Carey, 327; at Olinutz, 386; his visit in 1824-5, II. 124-33; death of, 253. Lafayette Hotel, II. 249, 426, 427. Lailson's Circus, I. 392; II. 31. Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad, II. 384-5. Lallemand, Henry, II. 26, 162. Lamb, Lemuel, II. 122. Lamb Tavern, II. 98. "L' Ambuscade," I. 350, 352. Lancaster, road to, I. 148; fair at, 212; packhorses in, 213; size of, 229; Assembly in, 263, 381; II. 78. Lancaster County, Germans in, I. 124; Scotch Irish in, 128; organized, 148, 183; wagons of, 194; representation of in Assembly, 195, 247; voting places in, II. 71. Lancaster Road, traffic on, I. 229; flight of people out, 254; becomes a pike, 348, 401, 446; wagons on, 451. Lancaster Turnpike Co., II. 122, 133. Lancaster, Joseph, II. 65. Lancaster System, I. 426; II. 65-6; abolished, 221-2. Land Title Building, II. 427. Landreth, D., II. 221. Langhorne, Jeremiah, I. 123. "Lansdowne," I. 237, 384; II. 26, 54, 322. La Pierre House, II. 249-50, 426. Lardner, Lynford, I. 164, 237. "La Resolue," I. 295. La Roche, Rene, II. 107. Latrobe. B. H., I. 403-4, 406-7, 407-8, 408-9, 411, 444; II. 54, 114- "Laurel Hill," Rawle's, I. 236, 282, 298; II. 54, 323- Laurel Hill Cemetery, II. 54, 223-4. "Laurels, The," II. 54, 223. Laurens, Henry, I. 286. Lauzun, Due de, I. 294. Law Academy, origin of, II. 113. Law Library Co., I. 413; II. 113. Lawler, Matthew, I. 424; II. 1. Lawrance, J. V. O., II. no, 340. Lawrence, John, I. 186, 236. Lawrence, Thomas, first, I. 138, 139, 140, 178, 186. Lawrence, Thomas, second, I. 186. Lawson, Alexander, I. 415. Lawyers, education of early, I. 217; increased number of: 412. Lay, Benjamin, I. 120, 153, 233. Lazzarini, I. 410. Lea, Henry, C, II. 195, 409, 410, 418. Lea, Isaac. II. 193, 194, 195. Lea and Blanchard, II. 195-6, 324. Lead, scarcity of, I. 242. League Island, I. 312, II. 401. Leather trades, regulation of, I. 116. Lebanon Garden, I. 395; II. 37. Lee, Arthur, I. 302. Lee, Henry, I. 364, 380. Lee, Richard Henry, I. 250, 251, 337. Leech, Thomas, I. 178, 186. Leech Tobias, I. 50, Leech & Co., II. 154. Leeds, William R., II. 299, 392, 408. Legaux, viniculturist, I. 407. Lehigh River, Germans in valley of, I. 124; Scotch Irish on, 128; Franklin leads troops to, 199; canal opened on, II, 136-7; gravity road on, 142. Lehigh Coal Mine Company, II. 48. Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co., II. 49-50. Lehigh Valley Railroad, leased, II. 415. Lehman, Wm., II. 57, 68, 78, 121, 336. Leib, Michael, I. 413, 416, 417; II. 1, 9- Leidy, Joseph, II. 340. Leiper, Thomas, I. 438, 441; II. 5, 9. I25, 142. Leland, C. G., II. 198, 200, 203, 204, 222, 240, 293, 3r4, 326, 327-8, 390-1. Lemon Hill, I. 236; II. 54, 322. Leni Lenape, Indians, I. 22-3, 195. L Enfant, Major, I. 298, 339, 408. Leopard," II. 1. Leslie, C. R., II. 30, 116. Leslie, Eliza, II. 194, 209. Lestapis, II. 17. Le Sueur, C. A., II. 25, 107, 121. Letitia House, I. 31, 45^ 47. "Letters of a Farmer," Dickinson's, I. 220-1. Levis, Hosea, J., II. 179. Levy, Moses, I. 412, 433, 454; II. ,,9. Levy, Nathan, I. 199. Levy, Samson, I. 198-9, 412. Lewis, Edwin M., II. 364, 414. Lewis, Elijah, II. 342. Lewis, Ellis, II. 329, 350, 369. Lewis, John F., II. 251. Lewis, Joseph J., II. 342. Lewis, Joseph S., I. 438; II. 116, 120, 121, 122, 125, 127. Lewis, Robert M., II. 136. Lewis, Wm., I. 412, 413; II. 54. in. Lewis, Wm. D., II. 325, 350, 364. Lexington, news of battle of, I. 239-40. "Liberator, The," II. 273, 275. Liberia, negroes sent to, II. 271. "Liberty Bell," I. 186, 251-2, 263; II. 210, 253, 404. Library Co., of Phila. See Philadelphia Library. Lieber, Francis, II. 233, 244. Lighting of streets, first steps toward, I. 185; num ber of lamps for, 230; watchmen for, 431; Henfrey's plans for, 440; gas for, II. 57-8; by watchmen, 80; by gas, 217-8; by electricity, 420. Lincoln, A., mentioned, II. 271, 328, 343, 347, 348, 349; in city, 350-1; calls for troops, 352; his secretary of the treasury, 355; relations with his cabinet, 360 ; declares slaves free, 367 ; re nominated, 371; reelected, 372; visits Sanitary Fair, 373; death of, 377; funeral of, 377. Lind, Jenny, II. 248, 330-2. Linn, J. B., I. 419. Lippard, George, I. 251; II. 210-n, 215. Lippincott, J. B., II. 325. 364. Lippincott, J. B. & Co., II. 325-6. Lippincott, Grambo & Co., II. 325-6. Liston, Robert, I. 341, 369, 373, 380. Littel, Eliakim, II. 26-7; II. 92. "Litters Living Age," II. 27. "Little Belt," II. 6. Little Tinicum Island, I. 312. Livingston, R. R., I. 251. Lloyd, David, I. 55, 81, 90-91, 100, 130. Lloyd, Thomas, arrival of, I. 38; left in charge by Penn, 44; proclaims James II. 47; leading man of province, 49-50; Penn writes to, 51; ap pointed commissioner, 52; Blackwell quarrels with, 52; Governor, 54; invited to assist Fletcher, 54; death of, 55; naturalizes Germans, 59; to draw up charter, 85; theology of, 87. Lockwood, E. Dunbar, II, 410, 418. Locomotives, II. 145, 151, 152-3, '59- Locusts, plague of, I, 72. "Log College," I. 155- . , Logan, Deborah, on treaty under the elm, I. 24, witnesses entrance of British, 264; sees wounded, 267; sees fires, 271; tells of evacuation, 281; II. 22. Logan, Dr. George, I. 301, 4M- Logan, Tames, arrives, I. 87; value of, 87-8; faith ful to Penn, 88; impeachment of, 100; visits England, 101 ; responsibilities of, 102; Palatines commended to, 107; alarmed by German immigra tion 107, 126; complains of Gookin, 108; ad vances money to city, 115; opposes paper money issues, 122, 123; Keith's attack on, 130; mayor, 118- marriage of, 160; in Stenton, 160; writings of, '160; assists Phila. Library, 176; Logaman Library, 176, 410; helps Godfrey, 177; founder of University, 178; Indians visit, 193. Logan, Wm., I. 236. Logan Square, I. 30; IL 77-8, 79, 220, 373- Loganian Library, I. 176, 410. Lombard Street, laid out, I. 166. Lombardy Garden, II. 37- Lcmbardv poplars in streets, II. 95- London Coffee House, I. 168, 2,9, 223, 225, 239, 246. London Society of Traders, 1. 41- Long, Stephen H, II. 151, Long Beach, II. 44- TT Long Branch, I. 384. 395; H- 6, 42-3. 229- 454 INDEX Longfellow, H. W., lines on Acadians, I. 198. Longstreth, J. Cooke, II. 345. Longwood Meeting, II. 269, 326. Lopers, propellers of, II. 237. Loring, Joshua, I. 280. Lotteries, countenanced, I. 133; used to raise money for war, 174; increased use of, 189-90; laws against, 190 ; for canals, 405 ; scandals con nected with, II. 45, 92-3. Louis XIV, I. 48. Louis XVI, infants named for, I. 285; Gerard presents letter of, 286; birthday of, 286; shouts for, 294; busts of, 307; medallion of, 351 ; asylum for, 355; beheaded, 361 ; portrait of, 362; receives Mrs. Bingham, 384. Louis Philippe, I. 385; II. 192. Louisburg, I. 173, 200. Louisiana, purchase of, I. 417. Low, pirate, I. 122. Lowell, J. R., II. 204, 206-7. Lower Counties. See Delaware. Lower Dublin township, IL 303. Lower Ferry, See Gray's Ferry. Lowther, George, I. 90. Loxley House, II. 272. Lucas, John, II. 229. Ludwick, Christopher, I. 425-6, 428 ; II. 122. Lum, Mary, I. 436. Lundy, Benjamin, II. 270-2, 273, 278. Lutherans, arrival of, I. 124; protest against theatres, 167; schools of, 425. Luzerne, M. de la, in Carpenter house, I. 236; arrives, 287 ; subscribes to army, 292 ; leads French society, 297 ; celebrates birth of dauphin, 298-9; home of, 298; notifies troops of peace, 306; escorts Washington, 306; attends theatre, 328. Lyell, Charles, II. 242, 293. Lyle, Peter, II. 391. Lyon, Matthew, I. 416. Lyon, Patrick, I. 377, 406; II. 82. MacAlester, Charles, I. 438. MacAlister, James, II. 426. McArthur, John, Jr., II. 249, 349, 422. McCall, Archibald. I. 236; II. 6, 17. McCall, Samuel, Jr., I. 175, 178. McCall, Peter, II. 253, 305, 339, 369. McCall, Richard, II. 11. McCalmont, James, I. 333. Macaulay, T. B., I. 18, 106. Maclay, Senator William, I. 337, 338-9, 348-9. McClellan, Dr. George, II. 68, 106, 121, 222, 336, 339- 1 McClellan, General George B., II. 363-4, 367, 371, 372, 391. McClellan, Dr. J. H. B., II. 363. McClellan, Dr. Samuel, II. 106. McClenachan, Blair, I. 288, 295, 435; II. 92. McClenachan, Rev. Wm., I. 188. McClure, Colonel A. K., IL 344, 348, 393, 402, 408, 417, 4i9, 427- "McClure's Times," II. 403. McCrea, James, II. 415. McCulloch, Hugh, II. 375, 376, 377, 383, 386. McHenry, Dr. James, I. 289, 373. McHenrys, ships of, II. 237. McKean, H, P., II. 250. McKean, Joseph B., I. 413, 433; II. 119. McKean, Thomas, arrives, I. 218; urges new consti tution, 249, 250; in Duche's house, 282; sentences Tories, 283; reviews French troops, 294; informed of surrender of Cornwallis, 296; in Congress, 238; fines libellers, 322, 323; reforms prison system, 322; in Federal procession, 335; relations with Cobbett, 374; governor, 374, 378, 416; traits of, 416-7; mentioned, 412; II. 9. McKim, J. M., II. 272, 275, 321. McKinley, President, II. 253. McLane, Allen, I. 269, 279, 280-81, 291; II. 125. McLane, Louis, II. 178. McLaughlin, Frank, II. 402. McLeod, A. A., II. 414-5- McMahon, Bernard, II. 108. McManes, James, II. 299, 392, 408, 409, 419. McMichael, Morton, II. 196, 200, 212-3, 215, 236, 254, 258, 262, 278, 286, 287, 307, 322, 324, 325, 350, 364, 391, 397, 402, 407. McMullen, Wm., IL 299, 389-90. Maclure, Wm., II. 69, 107, 121. Macpherson, Captain John, I. 236, 243, 314. Macpherson, Major John, I. 243. Macpherson, William, I. 243, 364, 373, 380, 386, 416; II. 1. Macpherson Blues, I. 243, 392. Macready, Wm. C, II. 29. Maddox, Joshua, I. 179. Madison, James, I. 327, 331; II. 8, 25. Magaw, Rev. Samuel, I. 380, 424, 425. Magdalen Asylum, II. 121. Maguire, N. H., II. 425. "Maine Law," II. 249, 310. Makin, Thomas, I. 57. Manatawny, I. 132, 148, 229, 254. Manayunk, Indian name of river, I. 13; origin of village of, II. 53; railroad to, 148; borough of, 302; street cars to, 319-20. Mann, Wm. B., II. 229, 299, 339, 344. Mansion House, Third Street, II. 5-6, 26, 89, 90, 91, 99, 130, 246-7. Mansion House, Market Street, II. 5, 151, 248. Mantua, II. 60, 302. Manual Training Schools, II. 425. Manufactures, regulation of, I. 116-7; England's ef fort to throttle, 214-5; colonists encourage their, 239; protected in Pa., 318-9; what they were in 1825, II. 170. Manufacturers and Mechanics' Bank, II. 176. Marie Antoinette, I. 298, 361, 362, 418. Mario, G., II. 332. Market Street, laid out as High Street, I. 30; markets in, 73; first use of name, 184; name legally changed, II. 309; street cars on, 319-20. Market Street Bridge built, I. 405-6, 446; II. 227, 228, 397. Markets, in High Street, I. 73-4; hire of stalls in, 1 02 ; new houses for, 103-4 ; extension of, 115; Black describes, 183-4; Fisher describes, 184; new stalls in, 1 84 ; in South Second Street, 1 84 ; en largement of, 228; appearance of, 398-9; in Second Street, 432-3; II. 95; extended to Eighth Street, 73-4; cleanliness of, 74-5; prices in, 75-6; in Northern Liberties. 76; in Southwark, 76; in Spring Garden, 76-7; effort to rid streets of, 219-20. Markham, Wm., Governor, I. 20; receives Penn, 21; returns to London, 40; governor of "lower coun ties," 54; assists Fletcher, 54; governor again, 55; receives Swedish ministers, 68 ; Penn visits, 77 ; military spirit, 79; with pirates, 81; owns slaves, 93- "Markham's Frame," I. 55, 83. Markoe, Abram, I. 240, 241, 326. Marr, Lawrence, I. 300. Marryat, Captain, II. 241, 245. Marshall, Charles, II. 68, 121. Marshall, Christopher, I. 244, 270, 281, 291. Marshall, John, goes to France, I. 370; on death of Washington, 379-80; decision in Olmsted case, II. 4; his Life of Washington, 105; death of, 253; monument to, 254. Marshall House, II. 248. Martin, David, I. 179. Martineau. Harriet, II. 156-7, 166, 169, 203, 245. "Martyr Book," I. 160. Mary, Queen, I. 48, 90. Mason, David H., II. 1 52. Mason, Richard, I. 406. Masons, Tories in lodge room of, I. 258, 259; in Washington's funeral procession, 380; hall of burned, IL 551 new hall of, 58; dancing assembly in hall of, 99; gas used in hall of, 217; new halls of, 334; Broad St. temple of, 399. Massey, Charles, Jr., I. 438, Masters, Thomas, I. 86, 105, 134. Masters, William, I. 178, 235. "Masters House," I. 235, 270, 284, 340, 370, 381, Matlock, Timothy, I. 245, 248, 286. Matthews, Charles, II. 29. May poles, I. 164, 168. Mayor's office, created, I. 85-6; early occupants of, 104-5, r38-9; those who decline it fined, 139, 184; occupants of continued, 226-7; reconstituted, 343, later occupants of, 424; II. 177, 305, 310-11; po sition of changed by Bullitt Bill, 418; list of occu pants of, since the foundation of the city, 432-4. Meade, General, II. 322, 369-70, 378, 379. Mease, Dr. James, I. 357, 414; II. 58-9, 66, 107, 109, 209, 221. Mechanics' Bank, II. 21, 122, 361. Medicine, primitive state of, I. 142-3, 180, 207-8; edu cation to practice, 207-9; new practitioners of, 413-4; progress in. slow, II. 109, 175. Meigs, Charles D., II. 107, 174, 176. INDEX 455 Meigs, Dr. John F., II. 364. Melish, John, I. 446, 449; II. 61. Memorial Hall, II. 403, 406, 424. Menageries, visiting, II. 40. Mennonites, I. 37, 59, 64, 107, 124. Mercantile Library, II. _ 67, 121, 220, 399. Mercer, General, reburial of, II. 223. Merchants' Coffee House, II. 5, 14, 218. Merchants' Exchange, II. 169-70, 219, 232, 334, 399. Merchant's Hotel, Sanderson's, II. 255. Mercury treatment for yellow fever, I. 357. "Mercury," see "American Weekly Mercury." Meredith, Hugh, I. 157, 158, 176. Meredith, Wm., I. 413, 419, 433; II. 24, 112, 119, 120, 121, 122. Meredith, Wm. M-, II. 112, 226, 236, 324, 338-9, 365. 393- Merion, I. 33, 36, 63. Merrick, S. V., II. 69, 121, 218, 227, 307, 324, 365, 372. Merry, Mrs., see Mrs. Warren. Meschianza, I. 273-7, 283, 285. Messchert, H., II. 251. Methodists, I. 188, 189; II. 118. Mexico, war with, II. 258-9. Mey, C. J., I. 10. Michaux, Andre, II. 107. Michaux, F. A., I. 382, 448; II. 25, 107. Michel, M., balloonist, II. 38. Mickveh. Israel, I. 198-9. Middle Ferry, I. 72, 114, 261, 405-6. Mifflin, Samuel F., II. 123. Mifflin, Thomas, I. 226, 233, 236, 290, 293, 301, 320, 330, 343, 350, 352, 358, 360, 364, 365, 370, 373, 395; II- 54, 97- Mifflin, Warner, I. 233. Miles, Samuel, I. 295, 335, 356. Milestown, II. 60. Miley, Jacob, I. 333. "Mill Grove," Audubon's place, IT. 108. Miller, E. Spencer, II. 339, 364. Mills, Robert, II. 117. Milnor. James, II. 2. Mineral Springs, II. 40-41, 64. Mingoes, I. 22. Mint, see United States mint. Minuet, Peter, I. 12-13. "Mirror of Taste," II. 30, 34. Mischianza see Meschianza. Missouri Ouestion, II. 23, 269. Mitchell, Dr. John, K., II. 24, 106, 120, 176, 200, 208. 339, 392. Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, I. 245, 358; II- 208. Mittelberger, I. 125. Moffat, David, I. 438; II. 7- Molly Maguires, II. 414. Molony, James, II. 251. Mompesson, Roger, I. 101, 118. Monmouth, Duke of, I. 48. Monmouth, N. J., battle at, I. 282. Montesquieu, I. 332. "Montesquieu," Girard's boat, II. 7. Montgomery County formed, I. 311. "Montpelier," II. 54. Montresor, Captain John, I. 275. Moody & Sankey, II. 396. Moody, Tames, I. 300. Moore, Bloomfield H., II. 372. Moore, Charles, I. 209. Moore, Henry D., II. 310, 311. Moore, John, I. 55, 8i, 205. Moore, Samuel Preston, I. 181. Moore, Thomas, I. 419-20. Moore, Wm., of "Moore Hall," I. 177, I9S, 205, 275-6. "Moore Hall," I. 177. 205. Moorhead, Wm. G., II. 154-5, 356, 386, 387- Moran, James, II. 238-9. . Moravians, arrival of, I. 155; missionaries, 202-4; nurse Lafayette, 263. More, Nicholas, I. 33, So, 52- Moreau, General, I. 447; H- '7, 25. Moreland, I. 33, 62; II. 301, 302. Morey, Samuel, II. 141. Morgan, Evan, I. 180. Morgan, John. I. 205, 207, 208-9, 237. Morrell, D. J., II. 394, 407- Morrey, H., I. 58, 85, 86, 134. , Morris, Anthony, first, I. 69, 70, 86, 104, 115, 123, 134- . T Morris, Anthony, second, I. 139- Morris, Cadwalader, I. 295. Morris, Casper W., II. 48. Morris, George P., II. 208. Morris Gourerneur, I. 192, 310, 315, 330, 332, 333; Morris, Lewis, I. 192. Morris, Richard, I. 70. Morris, Robert, statesman, taken up by Charles Will ing, I. 186; visits Hughes, 216; presides at din ner, 240; opposes constitution of Pa., 250; op poses Declaration, 252-3; in charge in Phila., 254; in Fort Wilson, 290; British try to reach, 277; Brown goes to, 277-8; at Manheim, 278; addresses French. 280; sound ideas of, 288; his relations with Holker, 288; flour comes to, 288; mob at tacks, 288-9; Superintendent of Finance, 292-3; in assembly, 293; sustains Washington, 293-4; dines French officers, 294; asks states for money, 295; brings French specie from Boston, 295; es tablishes bank, 295; appeals to Quakers, 301; abused in papers, 301; escorts Washington, 306; refuses specific supplies, 308; labors with states, 309; retires, 309; notes of, 309; goes into hiding, 310; sends ship to China, 315; trustee of col lege, 320; defends bank. 321; trustee of Episcopal Academy, 326; federalist, 330, 333; delegate in Federal Convention, 339 ; Washington in home of, 331-2; senator, 337; federalism of, 338; bargain for capital, 339; gives up house to Washington, 339-40; his awe of Washington, 341; president of canal companies, 347; opposes French follies, 352; his Asylum company, 355; Washington dines with, 373; downfall and imprisonment of, 379; good taste in home of, 384; takes stock in theatre, 390; servants of, 398; ice house of, 399; his financial difficulties, 401; befriends Pine, 414; shipowner, 435; how he differed from Girard, II. 161. Morris, Mrs. Robert, I. 179; collects money, 292; escorts Mrs. Washington, 306; social leader, 383; Washington at home of, 331-2; meets Mrs. Wash ington, 338; welcomes Lafayette, II. 125; Lafay ette calls on, 129; at Lafayette ball, 131. Morris, Robert, poet, II. 200, 208, 213, 215, 236, 262. Morris, Robert Hunter, governor, I. 192; military plans of, 193; unpopularity of, 195; retires, 200. Morris, Samuel C, I. 290. Morris City, II. 60. "Morris's Folly," II. 339, 377, 408. 429- Morris's Hill, II. 52. Morris House, in Germantown. I. 357. Morrisville, near Fairmount, II. 13 5- Morton, James, I. 241. Morton, John. I. 253. Morton, Dr. S. G., II. 107. Morton. Robert, I. 267. Moss, Tohn, I. 435, 438; II- 251. Mott, Tames, II. 272, 27s, 279, 346. Mott, Lucretia. II. 272, 275, 277, 278, 279, 346. "Mount Airy," I. 162, 236. "Mount Peace," II. 54- "Mount Pleasant," I. 236, 284, 300; II. 54, 323. "Mount Prospect," II. 54- Mount Regale Fishing Co., I. 169. "Mount Sidney, II. 54- „ 0 , , „„„ Moyamensing, I. 62, 423, H- 7L 72, 289, 295-6, 302. Moyamensing Bank, I. _ 176, 337- Moyamensing Prison, II. 167. Mud Island, I. 242, 312. Mulberry street, see Arch street. Muhlenberg, F. A., I. 156, 250, 334- Muhlenberg, G. H. E., I. I5&. . , Muhlenberg, Rev. Henry M., arrives L 156, de scribes Paxton Boys, 203; refugees come to 254, 263; his complaint of prices, 257; hears .firing at battle of Brandywine, 262 ; sees Washington s troops, 264; sufferings of, 265, 269; sees fires, 27° describes dress of Continental soldiers, 279- Muhlenberg, Peter. I. 156, 335. Murat, Prince, II. 26. Murdoch, James E.. II. 184, 328. Murphy, John K.. II. 290, 311. Murray, C. A., II. 99, 145-6, 157, 241-2, 243. Muscovy Company, I. to Musf/.Trst^eSsV. I ^5. lack of in city, 388; M^cal'Fun^loliet1;- f med. II too; hall of too; president of, 122; lectures in hall of 221 nail ot too small, 330; Jenny Lind in hall of, 331. Naglee, John, II. 9. 303- Nancrede. Dr. Joseph G., II. 107. Nanny Goat Market riots, H 284, 285, 280. Napoleon, I. 370, 379! "• *7, 23, 25-6. 456 INDEX National Banking system, II. 382-4. "National Gazette," II. 23-4, 105, 213. National Hall, II. 346, 350. National Theatre, II. 189-90, 193, 298, 331. Native American Riots, II. 283-8. Naval Asylum, II. 1 69. Navy Yard in Southwark, I. 432; Lafayette visits the, II. 130; street cars to, 321; removed to League Island, 401. Naylor, Captain Charles, II. 259, 287, 288. Neagle, John, II. 116. Neal, Alice, II. 200, 210. Neal, Joseph C, II. 200, 204, 209, 215, 343. Neall, Daniel, IL 275, 276. "Neck," origin of name, I. 161. Negroes, barbarous laws affecting, I. 93-4, 120-21; Keimer offers to teach, 130; more equal treatment of, 304; churches of, II. 119; number of in city, 269; kidnapping of, 269-70; movement to colon ize, 270-2; riots of, 273-81; barred from street cars, 321. See also Slaves. Neilson, Robert, II. 251. Nesbit, J. M., I. 295. Neshaminy, I, 40, 63. "Neutral Huts," I. 197-8. Nevins, S., II. 148. New Amstel, see Fort Casimer. "New Building," I. 154, 178, 179-80. New Castle & Frenchtown Railroad, II. 150, 1*1, 159- New England Society, II. 122. New Harmony, II. 1 07. New Jersey, Duke of York acquires, I. 16; divided, 16; Quakers in, 19; secures islands in Delaware, 312; ratifies constitution, 334. "New Lights," I. 155. New Orleans, Jackson's victory at, II. 14; Girard's bequest to, 163, 164. New Netherland, I. 11, 16. New Sweden, I. 13-14. New Wales, Penn proposes to call Pa., I. 20. New Years Shooting, I. 167. New York, founding of, I. 9; captured by English, 16; road to, 72, 229; stages to, 158, 212, 311-2, 402-3; II. 64-5; steamboats quicken time to, 62-3, 106, 158; railroad trip to, 158-60, 230; growth of, 132-3; commercial advantages of, 225, 235-6, 346, 429. Newbold, L. H., II. 192-3. Newkirk, Matthew, II. 1 50, 322. "Newlanders," I. 125. Newlin, Nathaniel, I, 123. Newspapers, day of issue of, I. 158; change in char acter of, II. 103-4, io5-6; circulation of, 104; fur ther changes in, 215-6, 402. Nicetown, I. 60, 306, 320. Nicholas, Charles, II. 27. Nicholls, Anthony, I. 145. Nicholson, Tohn, II. 48. Nicklin, Philip, I. 438. Nicola, Lewis, I. 327. Nixon, Henry, II. 122. Nixon, John, I. 226, 252, 295, 335, 346. Noah, M. M., II. 34. Noailles, Viscount, I. 385. Nolte, Vincent, II. 17-18. Non-Importation Resolutions, I. 216-7. Norris, Charles, I. 180. Norris, Isaac, first, I. 70, 78, 105, 108, 115, 122, 138, 161. Norris, Isaac, second, I. 148-9, 160, 186, 193, 204, 218; II. 22. Norris, J. P., II. 121, 122, 170. Norris, Richard, IT. 151. Norris, William. II. 151. Norristown, beginnings of, I. 311; railroad to, 147. "North American," II. 211-13, 347, 402, 427, 428. North Pennsylvania Railroad, II. 228, 308, 318, 413. North Philadelphia Street car line, II. 320. North River, I. 10. Northampton county, I. 183, 191. 247. Northeast Square, see Franklin Square. Northern Dispensary, II. 120. Northern Liberties, creation of, I. 29-30, 62; in creasing population of, 312, 423, 424; divided into wards, II. 71, and into election districts, 72; markets in, 76, subscribes to Penna. R. R., 227; police in, 289; population and area, 300, 301; township of, 303, gas works of, 308; debt of, 308. Northern Liberties and Penn township railroad, IL 144. 150. Northern Pacific Railroad, Cooke finances, II. 384- 8. Northumberland county, I. 247, 248. Northwestern Railroad, II. 309. Nourse, Joseph, I. 400. Nuttall, Thomas, II. 107. Odd Fellows' Hall, II. 279. Oellers' Hotel, I. 326, 351, 396-7, 399. "Ogontz," II. 385, 388, 425. Ole Bull, II. 185. "Old Buttonwood Church," I. 69, 152; II. 118. "Old Ironsides," II. 152. "Old Lights," L 155, 189. "Old Pine Street Church," I. 189, 267. "Old Pretender," I. 52. Old Swedes' Church, see Swedes' Church. Oldmixon, Sir John and Mrs., I. 391; II. 2g. Oldschool, Oliver, see Joseph Dennie. Olmsted case, II. 3-4. Olympic Theatre, see Walnut Street Theatre. Omnibus, introduction of the, II. 218-9; replaced by street cars, 318. Onderdonk, Bishop, II. 256. "Onrust," I. 10. Orange Street Meeting, II. 268. Ord, George, II. 107, 121. Ord, John, II. 422. "Ormiston," II. 54, 323. Orphan Society, asylum of burned, II. 56; men tioned, 121, 130, 163. Oructer Amphibolis, I. 440. Osborne, Richard, II. 229. Osbourne, George, I. 302. Otis, Bass, I. 116. Oswald, Eleazer, I. 301, 327. Otto, Dr., John C, I. 107, 120, 176. Ouvriard, II. 17. Owen, Griffith, I. 87, 134. Oxenstiern, I. 12. Oxford Township, I. 33, 62, 63, 69; II. 301, 302. Packhorses, transportation by, I. 2i2r3. 229. Page, James, II. 11, 97, 258, 317, 346. Paine, Thomas, I. 248, 249, 288, 302, 320, 327, 353, 405- Painter, U. H., II. 358. Palatines, I. 107, 1 24-7. Palmer, Anthony, I. 162, 174, 175, 192. "Palmetto Flag," II. 352. Pancoast, Joseph, II. 339. Panic of 1837, II. 179-80, 185; of 1S57, 324; of 1873, 388-9. t „ Paoli, massacre at, I. 264. Paoli, Pasquale, I. 221. Paper, manufacture of, I. 58-9, 320. Paper money, first issues of, I. 122-4; raises prices, 131; increases trade, 132; new issues of, 146-7J mob demands more, 148; further efforts to ex pand, 192. Pappagoya, John, I. 14, 15. Parkinson's, II. 248. Parish, David, II. 17-8. Parrish, Dr. Joseph. IL 97, 107, 120, 176, 253, 339. Parsons, Wm., I. 176, 177. Passyunk, I. 15, 62, 68, 423; II. 71, 72, 300, 302. Pastorius, Francis Daniel, arrives, I. 33, 37: founds Germantown, 38-9; praises Penn, 44; _ talents of, 49; "Penna. Pilgrim," 62; heavy learning of, 87; death of, 134; protests against slavery, 233. Patterson, Joseph, II. 373, 383, 394, 407. Patterson, Robert, II. 92, 120, 121. Patterson, General Robert, II. 126, 131, 256, 262, 286, 287, 325, 349, 352, 353. 358. Patterson, R. M., II. 24, 100, 107, 119, 121, 258. Patterson, Samuel D., II. 196, 202-3. Patterson, William C, II. 227, 236, 307. Pattison, Robert E., II. 409, 418. Paulding, J. K., II. 27. Pavements, use of pebbles in, I. 11 1-2; extent of, 185; lottery for, 190; at end of 18th century, 383; in 1818, II. 79; material used for, 80; Mon tule describes. 96; kept clean, 243-4, new, 420. Paxson, Chief Justice, II. 415. Paxson, Timothy, I. 437; II. *, 164. Paxtang Church, I. 202, 311. "Paxton Boys," I. 202-4. Pea Patch,, II. 10. Peale, C. W., waits on Morris, I. 288; transparencies of, 288, 297, 298, 306-7; museum of, 392, 444; IL 38-9, 115; aids in forming academy of fine arts, I. 433; mentioned, II. 57, 97, 113. See also Peales' Museum. Peace Democrats, II. 369, 370-71. INDEX 457 "Peace Jubilee," II. 428. Peale, James, I. 392. Peale, Franklin, II. 56, 97, 152. Peale, Raphael, I. 392. Peale, Rembrandt, I. 392; II. 39. Peale, Titian, I. 392. Peale s Museum, I. 392, 444; II. 38-9, 115, 152, 191, 192-3, 217. Pearce, H. W., II. 378. Pearson, who named Chester, I. 21. "Peel Hall," II. 164. Peirce, Wm. S., II. 341, 342, 345. Pemberton, Israel, I. 161, 180, 259. Pemberton, James, I. 161, 259. Pemberton, John, I. 259. Pemberton, Phineas, I. 49-50, 87. Pendleton, George H., II. 369. Penington, Edward, I. 259, 296. Penington, Isaac, I. 176. Penn, Granville John, I. 25. Penn, Hannah, marries and comes to Pa., I. 77-8; tires of Pa., 82; returns to England, 83; adminis ters province, 108, m; hears Logan, 130; death of, 137- Penn, John, "the American," I. 78, 83, no, 137, 138, 173- Penn, John, son of Richard, I. 193, 204, 225, 237, 247, 260, 332. Penn, John, of "Solitude," son of Thomas, II. 54, , 117. Penn, Letitia, I. 31, 77, 83, 101, no. Penn, Margaret, I. no, 137. Penn, Richard, I. no, 137. Penn, Richard, son of Richard, I. 204, 236, 284, 340. Penn, Springett, I. 77. Penn, Thomas, I. no, 137, 138, 149, 162, 164, 196. Penn, Wm., acquires interest in New Jersey, I. 16; boyhood of, 17; arrested, 18; Duke of York in tercedes for, 19; acquires Pa., 19-20; plans Phila. and advertises for colonists, 20-21; first visit to province, 21-2; describes Indians, 23; his opinion of Dutch and Swedes, 25; acquires "Lower Coun ties," 25; names Phila., 31; his political scheme defective, 33; penalty for libelling, 35; Welsh origin of, 36; efforts to educate people, 43-4, 57; return to England, 44; at James' court, 46; finan cial difficulties of, 46-7; an English courtier, 48; urges colonists to peace, 51; appoints commis sioners, 52; appoints Blackwell, 53-4; his colony seized, 54; restored, 55; returns, 77-8; marries a second time, 77; pacific influence of, 81; wine mak ing, 81; showy life of, 82; returns to England, 83, 87; his political views, 85; his farewell, 88; appoints Evans, 89; Queen Anne friendly to, 90; endeavors to sell Pa., 90, 101 ; stricken, 101-2; com mends Palatines, 108; unbusinesslike methods, 109; dies, 109, no; heirs of, 195; his views on slavery, 302; statue of on City Hall, 422. Penn, Wm., Jr., I. 77, 89-90, no. Penn Charter School, I. 57, 178, 188, 326, 424, 432. Penn, District of, II. 289, 302. Penn Square, II. 79, 220, 395-6. See also Centre Square. Penn Township, I. 423, 424; II. 71, 300, 303. Pennsbury, I. 40-41, 49, 81-2, 101. Pennsylvania, granted to Penn, I. ig-20; form of government for, 33; to be a haven for the op pressed, 36; seized by crown, 54-5; new charter for, 83-4; unjust apportionment 194-5; reappor tionment, 247; constitution of 1776, 249-50, 253, 255; Penn's interest in purchased, 282; adopts constitution of United States, 331-4; builds man sion for President, 339; constitution of 1790, 343! capital of removed to Lancaster, 381; to Harris burg, II. 78; sells State House to city, 78; why called Keystone state, 128; appoints canal com missioners, 138; builds Columbia Railroad, 143.-6; sells state works, 227; votes against "Maine Law," 249; constitution of 1838, 255; Civil War loan of, 356-7; tariff corruption in, 389; consti tution of 1873, 393. "Pennsylvania," frigate, I. 200. "Pennsylvania," ship of the line, II. 235. Pennsylvania Abolition Society, I. 304; II. 122, 269. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, I. 433. 434; II. 114, 115-6, 130, 296, 336, 396, 398. Pennsylvania Avenue, II. 144. "Pennsylvania Chronicle," I. 220, 221. Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, II. 337- Pennsylvania Company for Insurances on Lives, II. 361, 426. "Pennsylvania Evening Post," I. 220, 267, 281. "Pennsylvania Freeman," II. 273, 276, 279. "Pennsylvania Gazette," I. 129, 157, 193, 214, 220, 263, 281; II. 104. Pennsylvania Germans, market people, I. 229-30; II- 75- Pennsylvania Hall, built, II. 276; burned, 277-9. "Pennsylvania Herald," I. 327. Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, II. 221, 399. Pennsylvania Hospital, organized, I. 180-81; lectures at, 209; Adams visits, 227; wounded in, 253, 267; extended, 410; obtains statue of Penn, II. 117; West's picture, 117; officers of, 119; Lafayette at, 130; money from Girard, 163; insane hospital, 335. Pennsylvania Infirmary for Diseases of Eye and Ear, II. 120. "Pennsylvania Inquirer," II. 213. Pennsylvania Institute for Blind, II. 166. Pennsylvania Institute for Deaf and Dumb, II. 120, 130, 163, 424- "Pennsylvania Journal," I. 159, 219, 263, 281; II. 104. "Pennsylvania Ledger," I. 220, 267, 281. Pennsylvania Legion, II. 358. "Pennsylvania Magazine," I. 327. Pennsylvania Medical College, II. 336-7. Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, II. 120, 403, 424. "Pennsylvania Packet," I. 220, 263, 281, 328, 409; II. 105, 211. Pennsylvania Railroad, incorporated, II. 143, 226; built, 227; depot of, 227, 228; subscriptions to stock of, 227, 308; Sunday trains on, 231; hur ries troops to Harrisburg, 370; oil traffic on, 381; Northern Pacific allied with, 386; improved ter minals, 396; presidents of, 415; Broad street station, 415; Atlantic City roads leased by, 415-6. Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures, I. 319, 335. "Pennsylvanian, The," II. 213, 215, 343- Pennypack, L 62. Pennypot House, I. 33, 41. 70. People's Passenger Railway Co:, II. 416. People's Traction Company, II. 416. Pepin and Breschard, circus of, IL. 312. Penrose Ferry Bridge, II. 221. Pepper family, seat of, II. 54- Pepper, George, II. 221, 224, 250. Pepper, Dr. Wm., II. 340, 407, 424, 426. Pepperell, General, I. J 73- Pepys, I. 18. Perot, Elliston, I. 433; H- 120, 122. Perot, T. Morris, II. 409. 4io- Perry, Wm., assassination of, II. 282. Perry, Commodore, victory of, II. 13-U; dinner to, 14. Persico, €-., II. 116. Persico, L., II. 117, '3i- "Pet Banks," II. 17,6, 179- „ Peters, Rev. Richard, I. 161, 164, 172, 178, 179. 180, 187, 188, 193, 3io, 326, 413. 4i9- Peters, Wm., I. 161. TT Peters, Judge Wm., I. 24, 210, 237, 373, IL 93. 111, 122, 123, 125, 127, 130. Peterson, C. J., II. 196, J 98, 200. Peterson, Henry, II. 196, '99- Peterson, R. E., II. 3*9- Peterson, T. B., II. 199- "Peterson's Magazine, II. T99- Petroleum, discovery of, II. 3»°- Pettit, Thomas M., II. 113. Petty's Island, I. 190, 312, 31 5- fhiIaaelpPhfrPennVedenscdbes0site of. and plans his "ereene country town," I. 20; naming of, 31; first carters tor, l3, .85-7; divided into ten „ rds, n6-7- lack of taxing power, 102; mayors 01 uc fore 'Revolution, 226-7; income of corporation of 228; wards of' rear/anged, 313; ™!\on*£?*i returns to 339; reincorporated, 343. capital re SrcS^^^^aS Sj SFlTTi; fe^e Ho^ff^rf ££ £ arid T2&. ^lonsoli^ SB &S,^;^t«on,o1 f "Philadelphia," frigate, I. 4"- 458 INDEX Philadelphia Academy, I. 424-5. Philadelphia Bank, formed, I. 444; mentioned, II. 16, 324, 361, 398. Philadelphia College of Dental Surgery, II. 337. Philadelphia College of Medicine, II. 336. Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, II. 68, 108, 121. Philadelphia Contributionship, I. 231; II. 122. Philadelphia County, formed, I. 33; loans to, 124; taxables in, 182; limited in area, 183; division of, 311; voting places in, II. 71; debt of at consoli dation, 308. "Philadelphia Demokrat," II. 402. Philadelphia Dental College, II. 338. Philadelphia Dispensary, II. 120. Philadelphia Gaslight Co., II. 58. Philadelphia Hose Company, I. 431. "Philadelphia Inquirer," II. 24, 211, 213, 358, 402, 428. Philadelphia Institute for Deaf and Dumb, II. 120. Philadelphia Library, organized, I. 176; in Carpen ters' Hall, 238; site for building for, 313; secures Christ Church medallion, 362; building of in Fifth Street, 409- 1 o ; accepts Loganian Library, 410; officers of in 1825, II. 121 ; Penn Square site, 396; new buildings for, 399, 401; accepts Ridg- way Library, 400-1; sells Fifth street building, 423. Philadelphia Medical Society, I. 414. Philadelphia Museum, II. 190-92. "Philadelphia Record," II. 402, 428. Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, II. 70, 338, 426. Philadelphia Society for the Establishment and Sup port of Charity Schools, I. 425; IL 122. Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, I. 325; II. 122, 167. Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, II. 122. Philadelphia Traction Company, II. 416. Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, II. 143-6, 153, 153-5, 155-6, 224, 225, 226, 227. Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, II. 148-9, 225, 228, 413, 414-5, 416. Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad, II. 149, 225. Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad, II. 146-7, 152, 224-5. Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, II. 150, 224, 225, 227, 355, 415- Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, II. 413- Phile, Philip, I. 371 Phillips, H. M., II. 322, 339, 396. "Phoenix," first steamboat, II. 63. Phrenology, II. 109-10. Physicians, early, I. 142-3; education of, 207-8. Physick, Dr. P. S., I. 413; II. 12, 54, 106, 119, 251, 253- Pickering, Timothy, I. 373, 418 ; II. 3. Pietists, I. 37, 61. Pike, Thomas, Tory, I. 259. Pillory, I. 74, 104, 115, 118, 148, 150. Pinckney, C. C, I. 300, 331, 370. Pinckney, Charles, I. 3*31. Pine Street Meeting, see Hill meeting. Pine, Robert Edge, I. 389, 414, 434. Pirates, I. 80, 122. Pitney, Dr. Jonathan, II. 229. Pitt, I. 219. Pittsburg, cost of freight to, I. 213; beginnings of, 311; pike to proposed, 446; growth of, 449; stages to, II. 65 ; Conestogas to, 84 ; canal to finished, 138-9 ; railroad to proposed, 142 ; trip to over canals, 155-8; riots in, 408. "Plain Truth," I. 174. "Plantation," I. 161; II. 164. "Plume of Feathers," tavern, I. 106. Plumsted, Clement, I. 138, 139, 149. Plumsted, William, I. 166, 178, 186. Plymouth, I. 33, 50. Poe, E. A., I. 197, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205-6, 207-8, 214. "Point Breeze," in the Neck, I. 438; II. 308. "Point Breeze," Joseph Bonaparte's home, II. 26. Police, under superintendent, II. 289; under mar shal, 289 ; uni forms for, 290-91, 314; reorganized, 3 1 1-6. See also Watch. Polk, President, II. 256. Pollock, Governor, I. 329. "Polly," tea ship, I. 222, 223-4. Pony Express, II. 214. Pool Street, see Walnut Street. Pool's Circus, I. 391. Poor Richard's Almanac, I. 157. Poor, Quaker almshouse, I. 104; marking clothes to identify, 119; first public almshouse, 141; sec ond public almshouse called the Bettering House, 227; Bettering House abandoned and Blockley established, II. 168. See also Bettering House, Blockley Almshouse and Potters' Field. Porcupine, Peter, see Wm. Cobbett. "Porcupine's Gazette," I. 374-5- "Port Folio," I. 418-21; II. 23. Portage Railroad in the Alleghenies, II. 153-4* *55> 156. Porter, Captain David, II. 7, 224. Porter, Governor, II. 287, 288. Portugal, Jewish exiles from, I. 198. Postal Service, beginnings of, I. 40, 75-6, 99; de velopment of, 158; to Pittsburg and other places, 311; improvement of, 402, 451-2; further improve ments, II. 232-4; removal of post office, 334; street cars in, 321; first post office building, 398; new Ninth Street building, 423. Potter, Bishop, II. 321, 338, 399. Potter's Field, in Washington Square, I. 96, 183, 255, 270; on Lombard Street, II. 78. Potts, Dr. Jonathan, I. 290. Powder, house to hold, I. 113; scarcity of, 242 ; manufacture of, 320. Powel, Eliza, II. 116. Powel, John Hare, II. 11, 251, 254. Powel, Samuel, I. 204, 225, 226, 235, 297, 343; II. 54- Powell, W. B., II. 422. "Powelton," I. 226; II. 54, 228, 254. Poulson, C. A., II. 100. Poulson, Zachariah, I. 328, 354, 409; II. 105, 121, 21 1. Power, Tyrone, II. 29, 36, 61, 74-5, 99, 149, 158, 241, 244, 246, 247, 316. Pownall. Governor Thomas, I. 182. Pratt, Henry, I. 437; II. 45, 121, 250, 322. Pratt, Matthew, II. 114. Pratt and Kugler, II. 57. Presbyterians, first churches of, I. 69; first pres byteries, 128; church in High Street, 152; protest against theatres, 167, 329, 391; strength of in province, 182; divisions in, 188-89; Quaker dislike of, 204; new buildings for, II. 118. "President," frigate, II. 6. "President's March," I. 371. "Press," founded, II. 345; mentioned, 390, 40a, 403, 428. Preston, Dr. Jonas, II. 107, 335. Preston, Samuel, I. 105. Preston, Senator Wm. C, II. 254. Preston Retreat, II. 335. Price, Eli K., IL 224, 303, 304, 322, 339, 346. Prices, regulation of, by law, I. 117; during Revo lution, 256-8, 269, 287-8, 291-2; during War of 1812, II. 20. Priest, Wm., I. 390. Priestley, Joseph, arrives, I. 379; mentioned, 417. Prince Eugene Tavern, I. 106. "Prince of Parthia," first American play, I. 206. Prince of Wales in city, II. 349- Princeton College, I. 221, ,310. Printz, John, Swedish Governor, I. 13, 14. ^ Prisons, Quakers improve the, I. 34 ; first j ail in Market Street, 74, 104, 105; sold and torn down, 115; new Market Street jail, 115; bad construe* tion and bad administration of, 151; vile condi tion of, 228; Walnut Street jail built, 228; so ciety to relieve prisoners, 246-7; Market Street, jail sold, 314; reform of system in, 322-5; society to reform, 325; further improve ments in system, II. 58; erection of Eastern Pen itentiary, 166-7; Arch Street jail, 167; hangings abolished, 238-9. See also Arch Street Prison, Walnut Street Prison, Eastern Penitentiary, and Moyamensing Prison. Progressive Friends, II. 269. Prohibition law submitted to people, II. 249, 310, 422. Protection for industry, I. 318-9; II. 324-5, 389. Proud, Robert, I. 283, 326, 421. Provident Society, I. 122. Province Island, I. 375. "Prune Street," debtors' apartments in Walnut Street jail, I. 228, 379- Prune Street Theatre, II. 37. "Public Buildings," work on begun, II. 395-6; completed, 422-3. "Public Ledger," II. 211, 213-4, 215, 216, 278, 346, 402, 427. INDEX 459 "Public Record." II. 402. Public School System, established, I. 428; II. 65-6, 221-2; development of 425. Puleston, J. H., II. 386. Pumps, I. 112, 186, 230, 406-7. Punning, I. 413; II. 93-4- Purdon, John, Jr., II. 113. Purvis, Robert, II. 272, 275, 346. Pusey, Caleb, I. 87. Putnam, Israel, I. 254, 271. Quakers, come to New Jersey, I. 16; Fox founds sect, 17; persecutions of in England, 18; Penn's services to, 19; their attitude toward Indians, 23; liberal rule of, 34; in Germantown, 39; released from English prisons, 47; quarrels with in Pa., 51; opposed to war, 52-3; Keith's schism, 57; re fusal to endorse Pastorius anti-slavery petition, 61; meetings of, 63; moral rigors of, 64-6; favor severe punishments, 74; disturbed by mil itary demands, 79; not abolitionists, 93-4, 120; almshouse of, 104; their theologians, 105; re fuse to swear, 108; province comes out from influence of, 133; pull up grave stones, 133; dress of, 133-4; influence of in Assembly, 148; distressed by conduct in taverns, 150; cranks in meetings of, 152; oppose theatres, 167; again oppose war, 170, 173; as pamphleteers, 174; proportionate strength of, 182; increase in num ber of, 187-8; oppose lotteries, 190; in Assembly, 193, 194, 195-6; arm against Paxton Boys, 203; controversialists, 214; awakening to evils of slavery, 233 ; difficult position of, during Revo- lution, 244; fighting members form a new so ciety, 244; remain in city, 2=54; persecutions of by Whigs, 258-61; disaffection of in Chester County, 264; again under review, 283; mob threatens yearly meeting, 289 ; fresh attacks on, 296, 299; Morris appeals to, 301; anti-slavery views, 302; again oppose theatres, 329, 390-91; social traits of, 388-9; schools of, 428; new meetings of, II. 119; strong abolition sentiment among, 264; Hicks divides, 265-66, 268, 275; dress of, 267-8; active on Underground Rail road, 273; insane asylum of, 335; as abolition ists, 341. "Quaker City, The." II. 210. Quarantine, first arrangements for, I. 78-9; health officer appointed. 115; pest house on Province Island, 144; yellow fever in spite of, 355; new arrangements for, 375, 428. Quarry, Robert, I. 79-80, 80-1, 83, 90, 106. Queen's Rangers, I. 269. Quesnay, Alexander, I. 328. "Quids," I. 417. Race Street, laid out, I. 30; named, II. 309. Race Street Meeting. II. 267. Radnor, Welsh at, I. 36; Quaker meeting at, 63; Episcopal church at, 152. Rafinesque, II. 108. Raguet, Condy, II. 9, 113. Raikes, Robert, I. 425. Railroads, experimental, I. 441; building of, II. 141-50; locomotives on, 151-3; cars on 153-5. 159-60; discomforts of travel on, 159-60; new lines of. 224-30; fares on. 230; trains on. 230-1; steel rails on, 381; speculation in, 382, 384-8. Railroad Riots, II. 408. Ralph. James, I. 135. Ralston, Robert, I. 438; II- 121. 122, 131, i7», 251, 269. Randall, Josiah, II. 254, 258, 303. 304, 346. Randall. S. T., II. 299. "Randolph House." I. 236, 282. Randolph, Edmund, I. 331, 342, 358. Randolph, Tarob, TI. 107. Randolph, John, II. 253. Randolph, Peyton. I. 238. Rawle, Anna, I. 292, 296, 383. Rawle, Francis, first, I. 49-50. Rawle, Francis, second. I. 49-S0. 123. Rawle, Francis, third, I. 236, 282. Rawle, Wm., first, I. 203, 236, 373. 413. 433! II. 54. 67, in, 119. 121, 122, 123, 224. Rawle, Wm., second, II. 11, 67, 1". 303, 33». 339- Rawle, Wm. Henry, II. 321, 339, 364- Read, Charles, I. 86, 123, 138, 160. Read, Deborah see Deborah Franklin. Read, George, I. 331- Read, Commodore George C, II. 262, 329- Read, John, II. 112, 121, 122. Read, John Meredith, II. 112, 286, 303, 338, 342, 364- Read, T. B., II. 93, 198, 200, 326, 328. Reading, laid out, I. 183, plans for canal to, 190-91; Tories at, 260; pike to, 401. Reading Terminal, II. 414-5. Real Estate Trust Building, II. 427. Recorder, office of, I. 85-6, 102, 184. Red Bank Island, I. 242, 267, 312. Red Star Line, II. 382. Redemptioners, I. 107, 124-7. Redheffer, frauds of, II. 70. Redjacket, I. 365. Redman, John, I. 181, 208. Reed, Henry, II. 326. Reed, Joseph, I. 218, 226, 253, 277, 286, 290, 293, 301, 340; II. 54. Reed, Wm. B., II. 326, 329, 339, 344. Reedy Island, II. 441. Reeside, "Admiral," II. 177-8, 238. Rees's Encyclopedia, I. 422. Refreshment Saloons, II. 353, 378. Reid, Mayne, II. 206. Reinagle, A., I. 371, 390. Reinagle, Hugh, II. 116. Relf, Samuel, II. 105. Religious papers, II. 119. Renshaw, Wm., II. 5, 6, 43. Revere, Paul, I. 224. 225. Reyburn, John E., II. 419. Reynell, John, I. 180. Rhees, B. Rush, II. 121. Rhoads, Samuel, I. 177, 180, 226, 238, 241. Rice, Tohn, II. 396. Rice, Thomas D., II. 184. Richardet, Samuel, I. 361, 369. Richards, B. W., II. 177. 223, 258, 392. Richmond, in Phila., coal wharves at, II. 149; po lice in. 289; incorporation of, 302; debt of 308. Richmond, Va., trip to, I. 403; theatre fire in, II. 30; news of fall of, 374. Ridge Road, I. 71, 229, 445- Ridge Turnpike Co., II. 123. Ridgway, Jacob, I. 438; II. 123. 250, 399"40i. Ridgway, John J., II. 250. Ridgway Library. II. 399"40i. Ripka, Joseph. II. 251. Rising Sun Tavern, I. 272; II. 60, village, 306, 320. Risingh, J. C, I. 14, '5- Rittenhouse, David, I. 58, 234, 249, 288, 334, 347, 350, 4H; II- 3-4- Rittenhouse, Wm., I. 58- Rittenhouse Square, I. 30; II- 77-8, 220. Ritner, Toseph, I. 173, 278, 283. Roach, Isaac, II. 258. Robbins, John, Jr., II. 331. 372. Roberdeau, Daniel, I. 240. Roberts, Edward, I. 139- Roberts, George, I. 204, 225. Roberts, George B., II. 415- Roberts, Hugh, I. 180, 259. Roberts, John, I. 283. Roberts, Joseph, I. 164. Roberts. W. Milnor, II. 385- Roberts' Mill, I. 59- Tr Robin Hood Tavern, II. 54- Robinson, Patrick. I. 50-51- Robson, Stuart, II. 333- Rochambeau, Count de, I. 293-4. 200. Roche, George. T. 105. . Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, I. 311. 364, 3S2, 3»5. 386, 388; II. 75- "Rockland," II. 54, 323- Rogers, Evans. II. 250. Rogers, Captain Moses, II. 63. Rogers, Major Robert, I 227. Roman Catholics, see Catholics. Ronaldson, James, II. 69, 121. Rose, Aquila, I. 114, T3S- Ross, Betsy, I. 245. 262 Ross, George, I. 218, 238, 252. Ross, James, I. 374. 378, 416. Ross, John, I. 218. Ross, General Robert, II. n, 12. Roth, Philip, I. 371- , . Pa T ,,0 ,02] Rousseau, J. J., influence of in Pa., 1. 250, 302, Rowbotham, H. H, II. 184, 187. Rowson. Mrs Susanna, I. 39 1- Roxborough, I. 61, 71; II. 301, 302. "Royal Charlotte," I. 216, 219. 460 INDEX "Royal Pennsylvania Gazette," I. 268, 281. Royall, Anne, II. 61, 62, 74-5, 93, 95, 168. Rudman, Andrew, I. 67. Ruggles, S. G., II. 311, 350. Rumsey, James, I. 316. Rush, Benj amin, in University, I. 209 ; home of, 242 ; surgeon of fleet, 242 ; opposes constitution of Pa., 286 ; in Fort Wilson, 290 ; condemns paper money, 289; describes dauphin celebration, 298-9 ; treatment of yellow fever, 357 ; sues Cobbett, 374-5; his work on insanity, 413; death of, II. 106. Rush, James, II. 222, 250, 399-401. Rush, Madame, II. 250, 400. Rush, Richard, I. 340, 413 ; IL 1 12, 133, 338. Rush, Wm., I. 391, 411, 415, 433, 434; II. 33, 52, 114, 125, 129, 131. Rush's Lancers, II. 358, 360. Rutledge, John, I. 300, 331. Rutter, George, II. 114. Rutter, Thomas, furnaces of, I. 132; II. 48. Sabbath keeping. See Sunday laws. Sailer, Joseph, II. 216. St. Andrew's Church, II. 118. St. Andrew's Society, II. 122. St. Augustine, I. 9. St. Augustine's Church, II. 286-7. St. Bartholomew's Fairs, I. 211. St. Domingo, insurrection in, I. 355, 436. St. George's Methodist Church, I. 189. St. George's Society, II. 122. St. James* Church, II. 117. St. Joseph's Church, I. 196. St. Joseph's Hospital, I. 336. St. Mary's Church, I. 196. St. Michael's Lutheran Church, I. 1 56, 189. St. Michael's Catholic Church, Kensington, II. 286, 318. St. Paul's Church, I. 188, 190. St. Peter's Church, I. 188, 190. St. Philip de Neri Church, II. 287-8. St. Stephen's Church, II. 117-8. Salt, scarcity of, I. 257-8, 288. Saltonstall, Dudley, I. 243. Sandel, Rev. Andreas, I. 72. Sandif ord, Ralph, I. 1 20, 233. Sanitary Commission, formed, II. 372; fair of, 373- Sansom, Wm., I. 358, 426, 429, 430. Sansom Street Hall, II. 221, 307. Saratoga, battle of, I. 271, 280. Saratoga Springs, II. 41. "Sardine" arrives with stamp paper, I. 216, 219. Sartain, John, II. 193, 201, 203-4. "Sartain's Magazine," IL 203-4, 327. "Saturday Evening Post," II. 104, 196-7, 199, 212. Savage, Edward, I. 414. Saxe-Weimar, Duke of, II. 25. Say, Benjamin, I. 414; II. 69. Say, Thomas, II. 107, 119, 121. Scattergood, Thomas, I. 426. Schetky, George, II. roo. Schlatter, Michael, I. 156. Schools, founded by Penn, I. 43-4, 57; condition of after Revolution, 326; corporal punishment in, 427 ; private teachers, 424-5 ; Lancaster system in, 426; Sunday, 425; charity, 425; inferiority of, 427-8; public system established, 428; II. 65-6; system changed and developed, 221-22; High School started, 222; growth of influence of, 425. School of Design for Women, II. 336, 424-5. School of Industrial Art, II. 424. Schronk, Godfrey, II. 47. Schute, Sven, I. 14. Schuylkill Arsenal, I. 432;, II. 169, 353. Schuylkill Bank, II. 21, 112, 122, 337. Schuylkill Canal, building of, II. 47-8; coal trade on, 137; enlargement of, 138; few boats on, 413. Schuylkill Navigation Co. chartered, II. 47-8; en gages Cooley, 48; offers power for sale, 53; lease of property of, 413. Schuylkill River, Dutch name the, I. 13; ferries over, 40, 1 14 ; fishermen of, 147 ; plans to nav igate, 190, 310, 346; bridge over at Middle Ferry, 405; water from, 407-8, 431; II. 52-3; removal of obstructions in, 46; shad in, 46-7; canal built, 47-8 ; second bridge over, 50-51 ; "harnessed" at Fairmount, 52-3; country seats beside, 54-5; bathing in and skating on, 97; packets and steamers on, 134-5; railroad beside, 149; water of filtered, 420-1; bridges over, 429; commerce on, 429. Schuylkill and Susquehanna Canal, company formed, I. 347; excavations on, 405; merged, II. 45; work on finished, 134-5; trade over, 138; long route over, 142. Schwenkf elders, I. 124. Scotch-Irish, immigrants, I. 127-8; move into west, 147; strength of in colony, 182; belligerent char acter of, 194-5; attack Indians, 202;' rangers, 168. Scott, John M., II. 113, 125, 258, 260, 286, 303, 305. Scott, Thomas A., II. 386, 4*5- Scott, Sir Walter, II. 28. Scott, Winfield, II. 7, 12, 260, 353, 357. Scott Legion, II. 260, 351, 359. Scottish Societies, I. 168. Scull, Nicholas, I. 106. Second City Troop, I. 364, 380; II. 11, 124, 127. Second Presbyterian Church, I. 178, 179,. 187, 189, 190, 267; II. 118. Second Street, business centre in, I. 429; II. 89, 95- Sedan chair, I. 344. "Sedgeley," II. 54, 322. Seixas, David G., II. 120. Sellers, William, II. 322, 364, 394, 410. Semaphore Telegraph, I. 441. Sergeant, J. D., I. 350, 358, 413, 415. Sergeant, John, I. 413; II. 9, 24, 112-3, 1^9, 121, 132, 138, 252, 255, 338. Sergeant, Thomas, II. 113. Servants, indented^ I. 42; arrival from Germany, 107, 124-7; certificates for, 127; price of, 131; rewards for capture of, 131-2; tax on, 141; drink distributed to, 150; assembling of idle, 163; ef forts to enlist, 170; owners compensated for, 171; employed as teachers, 178; whipped, 186; in nineteenth century, II. 100-2. Seven-thirties, first, II. 361; second, 375-6, 377-8. Seybert, Adam, II. 107. Seybert, Henry, II. 404. Seward, W. H., II. 347- Shackamaxon, I. 24, 31, 62, 162. Shad, I. 28, 191; II. 46. Shakespeare Building, II. 6. 130, 297. Shakespeare Hotel, II. 6. Sharpless, James, I. 414. Sharswood, George, II. 339. Shaw, Joshua, I. 116. Shee, John, I. 335; IL 1. Sheppard, Furman, II. 339. Sheridan, Abraham, II. 51. Sherman, Roger, I. 251, 331. Shewell family, I. 246, 257. Shiffler, George, II. 285. Ship building, growth of, I. 133, 410-11, 442; IL 64, 140, 381. Shippen, Edward, first, I. 55, 70, 77, 86, 87, 89, 97, 104, 134, 160. Shippen, Edward, second, mayor, I. 139, 174, 184. Shippen, Edward, chief justice, I. 217, 236, 260, 276, 284, 326, 412. Shippen, Peggy, I. 276, 284, 300. Shippen, Dr. Wm., first, I. 178. Shippen, Dr. Wm., second, I. 181, 209. Shoemaker, Benjamin, I. 139, 186. Shoemaker, Samuel. I, 226, 237, 259, 282, 296. Shoemakertown, II. 60. Short Beach, II. 44. Shot towers, I. 442. Shulze, Governor, II. 45, 126, 127, 132, 138, 171. Shute, Attwood, I. 186. Sibbald, Charles F., II. 250. Sibbald, John, I. 172. Siemens-Martin process, II. 38 1 . Silk, attempt to raise, I. 132, 146* 410; II. 46. Simcoe, J. G., I. 269. Simcoe's Rangers, I. 269, 270. Simmons, A. H., II. 213-4, 4°*- Simpson, Bishop Matthew, II. 338, 373, 404. Sims, Joseph, I. 438; II. 54, 223. Singer, Captain Abraham, I. 364. Singerly, Wm. M., II. 428. Six Nations, I. 193. Slate Roof House, I. 70, 78; II. 399. Slavery, introduced into Pa., I. 27; increase in, 42; movement to abolish, 61; Quaker attitude to ward, 93; barbarities of, 93-94, 401; dress of si aves, 119; importations restricted, 1 20 ; price INDEX 461 of slaves, 131; idle slaves, 163; runaways, 232; duty on, 232-3; abolition, 253, 302-31, 423; II. 100, 264; underground railroad, 273. Sleighing, Quaker objections to, I. 389; reduces au diences at theatres, II. 31; a general pastime, 98. Slemmer, Lieutenant, II. 355. Smallpox, on "Welcome," I. 21; epidemic of, 99; frequency of, 142; inoculation for, 207; among soldiers, 255; vaccination for, II, 109. Smallpox Hospital, see City Hospital. Smilie, John, I. 333, 334. Smith, Armstrong, I. 1 13. Smith, Charles Emory, II. 428. Smith, Daniel B., II. 67, 68. 121. Smith, James, I. 252. Smith, John Jay, II. 223. Smith, General P. S., II. 258. Smith, Richard Penn, II. 105, 187, 200. Smith, Russell, II. 116. Smith, Samuel F., II. 251. Smith, Sydney, II. 357. Smith, William, arrives, I. 179; elected provost, 180; reports on England, 182; opens St. Peter's Church, 188; publishes pamphlet, 195; first man in province, 204; arrested and imprisoned, 205; edits magazine, 205; patron of young men, 205-6; on town committee, 226; Tory views of, 259; goes to Norristown, 260; daughter in Meschianza, 276; protests, 320; preaches on Franklin, 345. Smith, Wm. B., II. 417, 419. Smith, Wm. Drewitt. I. 259. Smith's Island, see Windmill Island. Smuggling, during Revolution, I. 221-3, 239. Smyth, A. H., II. 205, 207. Snyder, Simon, I. 417; II. 4, 8, 9, 21. Society of the Cincinnati, I. 380; II. 131, 252. Society of Friends. See Quakers. Society Hill, I. 41, 133, 136, 154, 15s, 167, 187, 265. Soissonois Regiment, I. 294. "Solitude," II. 54. 323. Sommerhausen, I. 59. Sormtag, W. L., I. 438. Sons of Liberty, I. 219. Sotcher, John, I. 81. "Soulsellers," I. 125. "South of Market Street," II. 245-6, 412. South River, I. 10. See also Delaware. South Street, laid out, 30; named, II. 309. South Street Bridge, II. 397. South Street Theatre, I. 167, 206, 267, 273, 328-9, 389, 390; II. 33, 34, 55- Southeast Square, see Washington Square. Southern Dispensary, II- 120. Southwark, district created, I. 182; growth of, 423, 424; shipbuilding in, II. 64; voting places in, 71-2; market in, 76; railroad in, 150, 151; police in 289; population and area of, 300-1; wards of, 302; commissioners of, 302; debt of, 308; street car line, 319. Southwark Bank, II. 176. Southwark Theatre. See South Street Theatre. Southwest Square. See Rittenhouse Square. Sower, Christopher, I. 159, 160. Sower, Christopher, Jr., I. 160, 209, 326. Spain, war of with England, I. 102, 169-70; pri vateers of, 171; Jewish exiles from. 198, new war with, 201. Sparks, Thomas, I. 442. Specific supplies for army, I. 292, 294-5. "Spirit of the Times," II. 215. Spottswood, Alexander, I. 158. . . , Spring Garden, origin of name, I. 312; district of formed, 71; market in, 77; subscribes to rail road stock, 227; police in, 289; area of, 301; wards of, 302; water works of, 307; gas works of, 308; debt of, 308. Spring Garden Institute, II. 336. "Spring Brook," II. 188. Spring Mill, I. 407. Springett, Gulielma, I. 19, 77- "Springettsbury," I. 40, 161-2, 236. Stage lines, first in Germantown, I. 115; to Mew York, 158, 212; to the South, 212; coaches on, 403; increased fares on, 446; to and from New York, 446-7; II. 64-5; to Pittsburg, I. 448-50; discomforts of travel on, II. 160-61. Stamp Act, I. 215-6, 218, 219. Stamper, John, I. 186. Stanbury, Nathan, I. 86, 105. Stansbury, Joseph. I. 258, 283. State Fencibles, II. 11, 132, 220. 232; delegates dine in, 218 •' con- £1 V° f0rm sfate =°ns«tution meets in 249; independence proclaimed at, 251-2; wounded in 267;. condition of after evacuation, ™* ve)„°.rSi;'d,"gS ereCted' 3>3-4; Federal con! vention meets in, 330; new state constitution adopted m, 343; architecture of, 408; Peale's Museum in 444; II. jg; damaged by fire, S 5! fire bells at, 56-7, 292-3; gas plant at, 57; elec tions in, 71, 302; scenes around, 72-3; sold to city, 78; desecration of, 126; Lafayette arch at, 129; excitement around, 173-4; new bells for, 404. State House yard, telescope in, I. 234; laid out in walks, 382-3, 429; menagerie in, 392; plan to cut it up into lots, 444; name changed, II. 79. State Island, I. 375, 428. State in Schuylkill, I. 169; II. 91. Steam engines, Colles builds, I. 234; Oliver Evans builds, 440. Steamboats, Fitch's, I. 316-7; Fulton's, 317; Evans' experiments with, 440; "Phoenix" arrives, 441; improved service by, 447; quicker time on, II. 61-3; explosions on, 64, 317. Steamships, first, II. 235-6; first American line of, 382. Stedman, E. C, II. 347, 358. Steele, General John, II. 9, 125," 132. Steinmetz, Jacob, II. 251. "Stenton," I. 160, 161, 193, 236, 266, 270, 301. Stepping mill in Almshouse, II. 168. Steuben, Baron, I. 279, 300, 412. Stevens, John, I. 441; II. 142-3, 149. Stevens, Thaddeus, II. 342. Stevens, Bishop Wm. Bacon, II. 321, 338, 405. Stevenson, R. L., I. 18-9. Stewart, Commodore Charles, II. 256. Stewart, R. R., II. 274. Stiegel, Baron. I. 278. Stille, C. J., II. 398, 407. Stock Exchange', II. 423. See also Merchants' Ex change. Stocks, built, I. 74, 104, 115; offenses punished in, 92, 122; burned, 150. Stockton, Robert F., II. 251. Stockton, Samuel, I. 335. Stokley, Wm. S., II. 322, 391-3, 394, 403, 408, 411, 419. Stone, J. A., II. 186. Story, Thomas, I. 77, 78, 86, 87, 105, 108, 160. "Strawberry Hill," II. 54. Strawberry Mansion^ II. 54, 323. Strickland, Wm., II. 22, 24, 33, 55, 69, too, 117, 118, 119, 121, 128, 129, 131, 133, 140, 143, 150, 168, 169, 170. Street car lines built, II. 318-22; fares on, 401; colors of, 401; consolidation of, 416-17. Street cries, I. 95; H- 84-8. Street names changed, II. 309. Strettell, Robert. I. 178, 186. Stuart, Edwin S., II. 419- Stuart, George H, II. 321, 373. Stuart, Gilbert, II. 414. Sturdivant, John, II. 181, 247, 248. Stuyvesant, Peter, I. 14, 15. Sugar maple, discovery of, I. 71. Sully, Lawrence. I. 414; IL "S- Sully, Thomas, I. 414; II. 115-6, 117, 129, 203. "Summerville," II. 54- Sun Tavern, II. 40. Sunbury & Erie Railroad, II. 308. "Sunday Despatch," II. 216, 345, 4°3- "Sunday Mercury," II. 403- "Sunday Republic," II. 403- , . Sunday Laws, early regulations, I. 35, 92-3; Friends favor, 66, 163; on railroads, II. 231; Mayor Conrad enforces, 310, 312; as applied to street cars, 321. ....¦.,.¦ t ,,f- Sunday Schools, society for instituting, I. 425. growth of, II. 119. '22. . . . Superstition, prevalence of, I. 65-6; in medicine, 142, 207. Supreme Executive Council, I. 250, 255. 302. Survilliers, Count. See Joseph Bonaparte Susquehanna River, canal to advocated, I. 229, plan to improve. 310. See also Schuylkill and Susquehanna Canal. Swaannendael, I. 11, 29. 462 INDEX Swaim, Wm, II. 96, 97, 251, 297. Swain, Won. J., II. 402. Swain, Wm, M., II. 213-4, 330, 401. Swaine, Captain Charles, I. 210. Swann's Circus, II. 31. Swaawick, John, I. 390. Swajt^matfr College, II. 425- Swedenborgian Church, II. 69, 119. Swedes, colony on the Delaware, I. 12, 13; drive out iWc-h, 14;- tfeensselyes driven out, 14-1 5 ; where settled when Peim- came, 25; life among the, 27; iromlaer of in 168^5, 43J Pastorius on the, 44; disappearance of language of, II. 118. Swedes' Church at Wicaco, erection of, I. 67-68; mentioned, 151; II. 1 18, 131. Swedish West India Company, I. 12. "Sweetbrier," II. 54, 323. Swift, John, first, I. 164, 222. Swift, John, second, II. 32, 113, 127, 176, 17?, 257, 258, 261, 270, 277-8, 279, 303, 305, 3J5- Swift, Joseph, I. 164, 326. Switzerland, immigration from, I. 107, 125. Sydney. Algernon, I. 33. Symcock, J., I. 51, 52, 53- Syng, Philip, Jr., 176, 178. Tacoma, II. 387. Tacony, I. 62. Tagert, Joseph, II. 122. "Taggart's Times," II. 403- Talleyrand-Perigord, I. 385. Talmage, T. Dewitt, II. 321, 338. Taney, R. B., IL 178. Taverns, merriment at, I. 106; tippling in, 150; soldiers quartered on, 1 70 ; comfort at, 396 ; names of 397; tax on licenses, II. 89; signs of, 89-90, 114-5; sports at, 91. Taxation without Representation, I. 216. Taylor, Abram, I. 164, 175, 178. Taylor, Bayard, II. 198, 200, 268, 326-7, 405. Taylor, Franklin, II. 425- Taylor, George, I. 252. Taylor, Jacob, I. 128. Taylor, General Zachary, II. 259, 260, 261. Tea, price of, 132; use of, 168; British^ tax on, 220, 221, 222; amount used in America, 222; "Polly" brings, 223-5; drinking of, 387. Teach, Edward, I. 80. Tees and Van Hook, shipbuilders, II. 64. Telegraph, first, I. 441; fire alarm, II. 313; es tablishment of lines, 237-8; to San Francisco, 381-2. Temperance movement, progress of, II. 249, 421. Temple, Americans study law in the, I. 217. Tender laws, I. 256, 293. Tennent, Gilbert, I. 153, *74> 178-9- „ Tennent, Wm., I. 155. Ternant, M. de., I. 350. Tertium Quids. See Quids. Test laws, repeal of, I. 320. Textile manufacturing, I. 410, 441, 443; II. 170. 283. Thackeray, W. M., II. 221, 249, 250, 326. Theatres, early opposition to, I. 34, 190; the first, 133, 166-7; laws against, repealed, 329, 389; unregulated condition of, II. 34-6. See also Chestnut Street Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, etc. Third Presbyterian Church, I. 189. Thomas, Abel C, II. 186, 330. Thomas, Gabriel, I. 70, 71, 74. Thomas, George, governor, I. 138, 16S, 170, 172, 173, 192. Thomas, George C, II. 386. Thomas, Moses, II. 27, 194, 331. Thomas, Wm. B., II. 310. Thompson, Charlotte, II. 333. Thompson, Robert Ellis, II. 425. Thomson, Charles, teacher, I. 1 79 ; visits Hughes, 216; recommends economy, 217; Franklin to, 220; faints, 225; sketch of, 225; secretary of con ference, 226; secretary of Congress. 238; wife of, 292; notifies Washington, 333; death of, II. 125; reburial of, 223. Thomson, Frank, II. 415. Thomson, John, I. 405, 441; II. 227. Thomson, J. Edgar, I. 405, 441; II. 227, 386, 415. Thomsonian doctors, II. 1 09. Third Street, the city's Wall street, II. 423. Third Street Hall, II. 144, 149, 225. Thirty Years War, I. 37. Thornton, Edward, I. 341, 362. Thurnstein, Lewis von. See Zinzendorf. Ticknor, George, II. 17-8. Tilghman, Edward, I. 390, 413; II. 111. Tilghman, James, I. 216, 218, 247, 260. Tilghman, Colonel Tench, I. 2g6. Tilghman, Chief Justice William, I. 413, 433; II. 13, 22, 24, 66, in, 119, 121, 133, 167, 191. Till, Wm., I. 139. Tilly, Count de, I. 385, 388-9. Timothee, Louis, I. 157, 176. Tinicum Island, I. 13, 15, 25, 27, 428. Tivoli Garden, II. 37. Tobacco, smoking of forbidden, I, 73, 112. Todd, Thomas, I. 121. Toll bridge, first, I. 116. Towers, John, II. 53. Tories, party in Revolution, I. 244; from other Colonies, 246, 259; strength of increased, 253; bazd lot of 256; singing in inns, 258; persecu tions of, 258-61; welcome British, 264; during winter 365; his treaty with Eng- dres; of ;,^u.T-as,at.ta?st°,n' 37°; farewdl a°" ?£*\ a 1 3 8; • 1S last blrthV Willing, Richard, I. 336; IL 258. Willing, Thomas, I. 186, 196, 226, 235-6, 241, 250, 252-3, 278, 295, 320, 326, 332, 346, 373, 383. Willing, Morris & Co., I. 232. Willow Grove, village, I. 230 ; pleasure park at, IL 417. Willow Street, railroad on, II. 144. Wills, James, II. 118, 166. Wilstach, Mrs. Anna H., II. 424. Wiltbank, J., II. 404. "Wilton," I. 161. Wilson, Alexander, I. 379, 419, 422; II. 26, 32, 116. Wilson, James, arrives, I. 218; in Congress, 241; opposes Constitution of Pa., 250; votes for Declara tion of Independence, 252-3; attack on house of, 290; wife collects money, 292; visits R. Morris, 310; trustee of college, 320; counsel of Bank of North America, 320; delegate in Federal Con vention, 330; Federalist, 330; in Federal proces sion, 335; oration by, 336; in Pa. convention, 343; guardian of poor, 358; financial troubles of, 379- Wilson, Major John, II. 143, 149. Windmill Island, I. 200-1, 312; II. 97, 98. Wine making, I. 59-60, 81-2, 132, 410. Wines, Enoch C, II. 222. Wingohocking, I. 62. Winter Tivoli Theatre, II. 37. "Wire Bridge," at Fairmount, II. 220, 397. Wise, Captain, I. 219. Wissahickon, Pastorius on, I. 38 ; Hermits beside, 64; mills of, 230; source of water supply for city, 346, 407; size of, II. 46; catfish in, 47; included in park, 323. Wistar family, I. 161. Wistar, Dr. Caspar, I. 413; II. 24, 106, 107. Wistar, Dr. Caspar, Jr., II. 67, 120. Wistar, Richard, II. 251. Wistar Parties, I. 24-5. Wister family, I. 161. Witchcraft, cases of, I. 34, 36, 65-6. Witt, Dr. Christopher, I. 62. Wolcott, Oliver, I. 373, 399. Wolf, Governor, II. 145. Wolfe, General, I. 201. Woman's Medical College, II. 337. Wood, George B., II. 68, 106, 121, 339. Wood, Wm. B., I. 419; II. 28-33, 35-6, in, i3*» 182-3, 184, 185, 247, 332. Wood's confectionery shop, II. 248. Woodhouse, Dr. James, I. 414. "Woodford," II. 54, 323. "Woodlands," I. 161-2, 199, 237, 393-4; II. 54, 224, Woodlands cemetery, II. 224. Woodside, John A., II. 114. Woodward, George W., II. 349, 369. 371. Woolman. John, I. 120, 233. Wright, Fanny, II. 93, 96. Wylie, Rev. Samuel B., II. 118. Wynne Street. See Chestnut Street. Wythe, George, I. 331. "Yankee Doodle," origin of, I. 371. Yardley, William, I. 51. Yellow fever, causes Quakers to change time of meeting, I. 63; first scourges of, 78, 144, 208; saves city from mobs, 355; in 1793, 355-60; later visitations of the, 375-8; Quaker view of causes of, 390; real causes of, 406-7; providential re movals by, 415; in the rgth century, 428. Yellow Springs, I. 207, 263, 395; II. 40-41, 135. Yohe's Hotel, I. 145, 248. York, Duke of, I. 16, 19, 26. York Buildings, II. 17. York county, I. 183, 195, 247. York Road, trafneon, I. 230; piking of, 445. Yorktown, expedition against, I. 293-4; capture of announced, 296-7. Young, John Russell, II. 364, 385. Young, Dr. Thomas, I. 249. Young Men's Christian Association, II. 373. Yrujo, Marquis de, I. 374. Zachary, Lloyd, I. 178, 180, 181, 208. Zinzendorf, Count, I. 155-6. Zion Lutheran Church, I. 189, 345. Zoological Society, chartered, II. 323-4; gardens open, 397. Zouaves, Ellsworth's. II. 355; Philadelphia regiments of, 358-9. 3 9002 fo