Philadelphia’s European History
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the viillage of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area.
Europeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey.
The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.
In 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch.
An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn’s charter for Pennsylvania.
In 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony.
Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city’s Fish town neighbourhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for ‘brotherly love’, derived from the Ancient Greek.There were a number of cities named Philadelphia in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods.
As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia’s rapid growth into America’s most important city.
Penn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.
The city’s inhabitants did not follow Penn’s plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots.Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.
As for the Lenape , following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.
In Philly , as it became known a number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city’s intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824).These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.
Destination: Mid Atlantic States
Watch: Historic Walks: 4th of July
