Pennsylvania Historical Timeline, 1497-1787

This following article is by my friend Bill Dollarhide, taken from his book Pennsylvania Censuses & Substitute Name Lists, 1680-2015.

Prologue: Pennsylvania’s history begins with William Penn’s plan to gather Friends into a place free of the political turmoil of England. Understanding the history of an area helps us understand the movements of our ancestors.

1497. Giovanni Caboto, an Italian sponsored by English King Henry VII, explored the Atlantic coast of North America. He claimed the area for the English King, who changed his name to John Cabot in honor of the event.

1524. Giovanni da Verrazano explored the Middle Atlantic region. An Italian hired  by  the  King of France,  he  sailed  past the present New Jersey coast, entered New York bay and reached the Hudson River, then headed north towards present Maine.

1606. Two joint stock companies were founded, both with royal charters issued by King James I for the purpose of establishing colonies in North America. The Virginia Company of London was given a land grant between Latitude 34° (Cape Fear) and Latitude 41° (Long Island Sound). The Virginia Company of Plymouth was founded with a similar charter, between Latitude 38° (Potomac River) and Latitude 45o (St. John River).

1607. May. Led by John Smith  and his cousin, Bartholomew Gosnold, the London Company established the first permanent English settlement in North  America  –  the  Jamestown Colony.

1609. Delaware. Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, discovered Delaware Bay and River. A year later, Captain Samuel Argall, an English sea captain, named the bay and river after Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, governor of Virginia.

1638. Delaware. Dutchman Peter Minuet led a group of Swedes to the Delaware and established Fort Christiana (now Wilmington), the first permanent settlement on the Delaware and the founding of the New Sweden Colony.

1651. Delaware. Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch governor of New Netherland, built Fort Casimir (now New Castle) just a few miles south of Fort Christina on the Delaware, but the Swedes were not pleased with the Dutch intrusion.

1654. Delaware. The Swedes captured Fort Casimir and renamed it Fort Trinity. A year later the Dutch defeated the Swedes, ending the New Sweden colony, and Delaware became part of New Netherland. But, several Swedish communities continued.

1664. New York and New Jersey. The Dutch colony of New Netherland became controlled by the English after Gov. Peter Stuyvesant surrendered to the British following a naval blockade. The English also took control of New Jersey from the Dutch.

1664.  New York. King Charles II granted to his brother, James, the Duke of York, the following:  “…main land between the two rivers there, called or known by the several names of Conecticut or Hudsons river… and all the lands from the west side of Connecticut, to the east side of Delaware Bay.” The area was named New York for the first time.

1664.  Delaware. Sir Robert Carr drove the Dutch off the Delaware and claimed the land for James, Duke of York. Delaware then became an English colony.

1665-1674. New Jersey. In 1665, James, Duke of York, granted to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkley of Stratton, a part of the New York colony between the Hudson River and the Delaware River. In 1674, Berkley sold his share to the Quakers. Carteret’s original portion was then named East New Jersey, and the Quaker’s portion was named West New Jersey.

1674. The Treaty of Westminster ended hostilities between the English and Dutch and officially returned all Dutch colonies in America to the English. This ended the official Dutch presence in North America – but many of the Dutch settlements continued under English rule, particularly along the Hudson River of New York, and East Jersey.

1676. West New Jersey. Still in England, William Penn was heavily involved in the transportation of Quakers to the West Jersey Colony. He was a trustee in the colony’s establishment, and was responsible for drawing up the first set of laws. They would become the basis for the Great Experiment he envisioned for Pennsylvania a few years later.

1681. Pennsylvania. Charles II granted to William Penn a land charter to repay a debt owed to William’s father, Admiral William Penn. This was the largest English land grant to an individual, and William Penn became the sole owner and proprietor, with allegiance to England. Penn’s charter specified that the colony was bounded on the “…South by a Circle drawn at twelve miles distance from New Castle … unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of Northern Latitude…” Later surveys revealed that the town of New Castle in fact lay several miles south of the 40th Parallel. Maryland’s 1632 charter had specified that their northern boundary was the 40th parallel, and after Penn’s grant in 1681,  a 25-mile strip of land from the Delaware River to the Appalachian Mountains was claimed by both colonies. Neither Pennsylvania nor Maryland had settlements in the cross-claimed area until many years later, and the boundary remained in dispute for nearly 80 years.

1682. Delaware. The area of present Delaware was transferred from the Duke of York, proprietor of New York to William Penn, proprietor of Pennsylvania. The area became known as the “Lower Counties on the Delaware.”

1702. New Jersey. East and West Jersey were combined into one colony again. The two Proprietors appointed a governor for the Province of New Jersey, but with continued land sales by both East New Jersey and West New Jersey. Thereafter, the two land offices remained intact under the administration of Land Commissions, for the purpose of selling land to individuals. Both commissions still exist today.

1707. During the reign of Queen Anne, the United Kingdom of Great Britain was established after the Union with Scotland Act passed the English Parliament in 1706; and the Union with England Act passed the Parliament of Scotland in 1707. The English colonies were now British colonies.

1730-1732. Cresap’s War. In the royal grants of both colonies, the 40th Parallel was mentioned as the northern boundary of 1632 Maryland and the southern boundary of 1681 Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvania’s grant language incorrectly placed the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay as the assumed position of the 40th Parallel, which was actually 25 miles further north. Maryland maintained its claim  to the 40th Parallel, even though their claim would have put the city of  Philadelphia in Maryland, not Pennsylvania. As early as 1718, shiploads of transplanted Ulster Scots / Scots-Irish, arrived in Philadelphia, and almost immediately headed into the Pennsylvania wilderness. They were joined by  Palatine Germans (Pennsylvania Dutch),  who  were  the first to settle in  the  Lancaster area. By 1725, both groups reached the Susquehanna River, which became a barrier to further western settlement. In that year, the Maryland colony issued a land grant to Thomas Johnson, who operated a ferry at Peach Bottom. In 1730, Wight’s Ferry and a land office was established by the Pennsylvania colony to facilitate settlement across the river. When the colony of Maryland heard of Wight’s Ferry, Lord Baltimore authorized Thomas Cresap of Maryland to open a ferry and land office at Blue Rock.  Fights broke out between workers of the competing ferries. The battles of the “war” were mostly in court, and in 1732, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, signed a provisional agreement with William Penn’s sons, which drew a compromise line between the Pennsylvania claim and the original Maryland claim. He later reneged, saying the document he signed was not correct. The Maryland and Pennsylvania settlers continued to battle each other over jurisdiction  in  the areas of present Harford Co MD and York Co PA. The compromise line was not finally agreed to until 1760,  when King George III ordered Lord Baltimore (the 6th)   to  formally  accept  the  1732  agreement  of  his father.   The  line was not surveyed and marked on the ground until 1764.

1755. Braddock’s Road. During the French and Indian War, a wagon road was constructed to advance British military forces against the French. Based on a 1753 trail blazed by 21-year old Major George Washington of the Virginia Militia, a road was ordered by British General Edward Braddock. The road was constructed in 1755, from a point on the Potomac River near Georgetown, Maryland, to  Fort Cumberland, then into Pennsylvania, and on to Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburgh. This was the first wagon road to cross the Appalachian Mountains.  After the war, the roadway was mostly abandoned, but after the formation of the United States, it became known as the Cumberland Road, and was part of the primary route for migrations between Baltimore and the Ohio River where the first public land sales took place. The route today is the same as US Hwy 40 / I-70.

1758. Gen. John Forbes, the new British  commander, built Forbes’ Road through Pennsylvania, took possession of Ft. Duquesne, and renamed it Ft. Pitt, as the British forced the French out of the western wilderness. Forbes Road was very close to the line of I-76 (Pennsylvania Turnpike) and U.S. Hwy 30 into Pittsburgh.

1763. The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War (in Europe and Canada: the Seven Years War). France ceded virtually all of its North American claims to Spain (west of the Mississippi) and to Britain (east of the Mississippi). Soon after, King George III declared the “Proclamation Line of 1763,” as a way of rewarding the Indians who had helped Britain against the French. The  proclamation  established an Indian Reserve that stretched from the Appalachian Mountain Range  to  the Mississippi River.

1764. Pennsylvania and Maryland. After years of arguments between the Penn Family and the Calvert Family, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary, which became known as the “Mason-Dixon Line.” The line was the same as the compromise agreement made between the Penns and Calverts in 1760. It became the unofficial dividing line between the northern  and southern British colonies, later states.  Along the length of the Mason-Dixon Line, stone monuments were erected every five miles, each with the engraved coat of arms of the Penn Family on the PA side of the stone, the arms of the Calvert family on the MD side.

1768. Treaty of Stanwix. On the above map, Cession No. 1 (green area) has a history dating back to the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. In that treaty between the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs and the Six Nations (Iroquois), a new “Line of Property” was drawn, separating British Territory from Indian Territory.  From Fort Stanwix (now Rome, NY) the division line ran to Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh), and then down the Ohio River to the Tennessee River. The part of the 1768 line in Pennsylvania is shown on the map as a heavy green line. In 1784, the United States government met with the Six Nations,  again at Fort Stanwix, and the first treaty between the U.S. and any Indians was concluded. Article 3 of the treaty defined the western boundary of the Six Nations, and  “that the Six Nations shall and do yield to the U. S., all claims to the country W. of said boundary.”   That treaty became Cession No.1. Map Source: Indian Land Cessions in the United States.

1775. Delaware. The three Lower Counties broke away from Pennsylvania. They declared their independence from Great Britain, adopted a constitution, and became the “Delaware State,” the first of all the colonies to call themselves a state.

1776-1783.  Revolutionary War. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war, and the United States of America was officially recognized as an independent nation by Britain, France, and Spain.

1779-1863. Septennial Censuses/Tax Lists were taken by the state of Pennsylvania every seven years, beginning with 1779 through 1863. The population counts from these statewide name lists were used to apportion the seats of the General Assembly. They are now more often called “tax lists’ because the names are for eligible taxpayers. Regardless of the semantics of “census” versus “tax list,” only a portion of the septennial name lists survive. Those that do exist were published as part of the Pennsylvania Archives series, and later as an online database.

1787.  Dec. 7. Delaware ratified the U.S. Constitution and became the 1st  state in the Union.

1787.  Dec. 12.  Pennsylvania was the 2nd state to ratify the Constitution and join the Union.

1787.  Dec. 12. New Jersey became the 3rd state to join the Union just a few hours after Pennsylvania.

1790. The above map shows in black, the 21 counties of Pennsylvania at the time of the 1790 Federal Census. The current 67 counties of Pennsylvania are shown in white. * Map Notes: Although the federal government sold the Erie Triangle to Pennsylvania by patent in 1792, Pennsylvania had purchased the land from Indians in 1789. The Triangle was added to Allegheny County in 1792. Map Source: Page 289, Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790-1920.

Further Reading:

Pennsylvania Censuses & Substitute Name Lists, 1680-2015 (Printed Book), Softbound, 83 pages, Item FR0285.

Pennsylvania Censuses & Substitute Name Lists, 1680-2015 (PDF eBook), 83 pages, Item FR0286.

Online Pennsylvania Censuses & Substitutes: A Genealogists’ Insta-Guide TM , Laminated, 3-hole punched, Item FR0355.

Online Pennsylvania Censuses & Substitutes: A Genealogists’ Insta-Guide TM (PDF version), Item FR0356.

 

 

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