Before the Dutch colony of New Netherland was conquered by the English, in 1664, it was given by Charles II to his brother, the Duke of York, who afterward became King of England as James II. James kept that portion of it that is now called New York to himself. What we call New Jersey he gave to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, who, after a few years, sold their interest to others. The colony already contained several settlements of Dutch and Swedes. In 1674 New Jersey was divided into East Jersey and West Jersey.

It was a time of religious persecution. Many people emigrated to the colonies in order to get a chance to be religious in their own way, and the proprietors of the New Jersey colonies promised to all who came liberty to worship in their own way. The people of Scotland, who were Presbyterians, suffered horribly from persecutions after the restoration of Charles II, and East Jersey received many Scotch emigrants, driven out of their own country by the cruelty of the government. Some people from New England also moved into East Jersey.

The religious sect most severely persecuted in England after the restoration of the king was the Society of Friends, whose members are sometimes called Quakers. Some of these came to East Jersey. West Jersey was bought by certain leading Friends, and a great many members of that society flocked to this province, where they established a popular form of government.

Just across the Delaware River from West Jersey was a territory not then occupied except by a few Swedes, who had come over long before to the old colony of New Sweden. Among those who had to do with the management of the West Jersey colony was a famous Quaker minister named William Penn. His father had been a great sea-commander, and William Penn had a claim against the King of England for a considerable sum of money due to his father. The king was in debt, and found it hard to pay what he owed. William Penn therefore persuaded Charles II to settle the debt by granting him a territory on the west side of the river Delaware. This the king called Pennsylvania, which means something like Penn's Forest. The name was given in honor of Penn's father, the admiral.

What is now the State of Delaware was also put under Penn's government by the Duke of York. Everything was done with ceremony in those days. When Penn got to Newcastle, in Delaware, its government was transferred to him in the following way: The key to the fort at Newcastle was delivered to him. With this he locked himself into the fort and then let himself out in sign that the government was his. To show that the land with the trees on it belonged to him, a piece of sod with a twig in it was given to him. Then a porringer filled with water from the river was given to him, that he might be lord of the rivers as well as of the land.

Penn sent his first emigrants to Pennsylvania in 1681. Philadelphia, where they landed, was yet a woods, and the people had to dig holes in the river-banks to live in through the winter. Nearly thirty vessels came to the new colony during the first year.

Although Pennsylvania was the last colony settled except Georgia, it soon became one of the most populous and one of the richest. Before the Revolution, Philadelphia had become the largest town in the thirteen colonies. This was chiefly owing to the very free government that William Penn founded in his colony. Not only English, but Welsh and Irish people, and many thousands of industrious Germans, came to Pennsylvania. People were also attracted by the care that Penn took to maintain friendly relations with the American Indians, and to satisfy them for their lands. Another thing which drew people both to Pennsylvania and New Jersey was the fact that the land was not taken up in large bodies, as it was in New York and Virginia, for instance. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the poor man could get a farm of his own.

By the sale and division of shares, the proprietaries of both East and West Jersey became too numerous to manage their governments well, and at length disorders arose which they were not able to suppress. In 1702 the government of both provinces was transferred to Queen Anne, and East and West Jersey were again united into the one province of New Jersey. But even to this day, in common speech, one sometimes hears the State of New Jersey spoken of as "The Jerseys" by people who do not know that two hundred years ago there were two colonies of that name. Pennsylvania remained in the hands of the Penn family, who appointed its governors till the American Revolution.



WILLIAM PENN

William Penn was born in London in 1644, so that he was thirty-seven years old when Pennsylvania was settled. He was the son of Admiral William Penn, who was celebrated for the part he took in the wars between the English and Dutch. Penn first came under the influence of the Friends or Quakers while he was a student at Oxford, and he was expelled from the university, with others, for the resistance they made to certain religious ceremonies introduced at that time. His father sent him to Paris, and he became an accomplished man of the world. He afterward became a Friend, which so mortified his father that the admiral turned him out of his house, but later he became reconciled to him. Penn was repeatedly imprisoned, and he boldly asserted in the English courts the great principle of religious liberty. He traveled into Wales, Ireland, Holland, and Germany, in his preaching journeys, and many of his acquaintances in those countries afterward came to Pennsylvania. Though Penn would never take off his hat in the presence of the king, he had considerable influence at court, which he used to lessen the sufferings of the Quakers and others. Penn died in 1718.