Tag Archives ⇒ Update March

William Penn’s 12 slaves (a citation mystery)

March 17, 2021
· Martin Kelley

There has been renewed atten­tion in Quak­er cir­cles to William Pen­n’s slave­hold­ing in recent years. Late last year, the board that man­ages the William Penn House in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., decid­ed to embark on a renam­ing process because of the slav­ery, a deci­sion that has spawned a num­ber of seem­ing­ly end­less com­ment threads on Face­book, like this one. One thing that’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that many of the new advo­cates have set­tled on a spe­cif­ic num­ber of slaves. From Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion:

Despite his con­tri­bu­tion to U.S. his­to­ry and his inten­tions of found­ing a colony built on “broth­er­ly love,” William Penn owned 12 slaves in his estate, Pennsbury.

Twelve slaves. As part of my job is fact-checking, I like to double-check num­bers like that. Penns­bury Manor, the muse­um devot­ed to Pen­n’s life in his colony, just refers to a slave com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vides five names (Sam, Sue, Yaff, Jack, and Peter). So how has 12 become a cit­ed num­ber? Let’s go diving.

I don’t know FCN­L’s sources but a recent edi­to­r­i­al sub­mis­sion came to me in recent months cit­ing an August 2020 arti­cle by Michaela Win­berg in the online pub­li­ca­tion Bil­ly Penn, “William Penn kept enslaved peo­ple. These are some of their names”:

The records that exist aren’t total­ly clear, but it seems as if Penn enslaved rough­ly 12 peo­ple at his Penns­bury Manor estate, which was locat­ed in what is now the Philly sub­urbs. These peo­ple were pur­chased off the first slave ship known to have arrived in Philadel­phia, and were of African and Car­ribean [sic] descent.

I’m a fan of Bil­ly Penn but it’s not an aca­d­e­m­ic source. For­tu­nate­ly they gave a link to their asser­tion, a Sep­tem­ber 2012 arti­cle by Jack H. Schick in… oh dear, my own pub­li­ca­tion, Friends Jour­nal!In “Slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia” he wrote:

Quak­ers, though con­cerned and in the fore­front of efforts to end the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery, were not inno­cent. While liv­ing on his estate at Penns­bury Manor, before he returned to Eng­land for­ev­er in 1701, William Penn kept 12 slaves.

No cita­tion was giv­en but as Jack­’s edi­tor I can affirm he is fond of Wikipedia. I’m fair­ly con­fi­dent that he got his ref­er­ence from this entry, “His­to­ry of slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia”:

William Penn, the pro­pri­etor of the Province of Penn­syl­va­nia, held 12 slaves as work­ers on his estate, Penns­bury. They took part in con­struc­tion of the main house and out­build­ings. Penn left the colony in 1701, and nev­er returned.

If you ask Google “How many slaves did Penn have?” it gives you “12 slaves” as its instant answer and links to this Wikipedia page. Giv­en that the all-knowing search engine thinks this a vet­ted answer wor­thy of a 32-pixel head­line, how much can we trust it?

The imme­di­ate answer is: not much. Wikipedia has no cita­tion (as of this writ­ing; I should prob­a­bly go edit it myself). The trail would go cold there if not for the plat­for­m’s obses­sion with keep­ing its revi­sion his­to­ry. Through that one can find that the claim on Pen­n’s slaves dates to the Octo­ber 2007 cre­ation of the entry.

William Penn, the founder of the Penn­syl­va­nia colony, owned 12 slaves on his estate, Penns­bury; how­ev­er, he grad­u­al­ly became a sup­port­er of the abo­li­tion of the institution.

Thir­teen years of edits has reworked the sen­tence quite a bit but the 12 num­ber remains from the begin­ning and in that first Wikipedia draft there was a cita­tion to a USHis​to​ry​.org page. This is a still-extant web­site pro­duced by the Inde­pen­dence Hall Asso­ci­a­tion, a Penn­syl­va­nia non­prof­it found­ed in 1942. The process of link rot is at work, alas, and Wikipedi­a’s 2007 link gives a “page not found” today. Thank­ful­ly Archive​.org can take us back in the ear­ly aughts and let us read it in all of its early-oughts design glo­ry (it takes me back to see a back­ground image used to cre­ate a col­umn!). The USHis­to­ry post is just a cut-and-paste of a 2003 arti­cle in the Philadel­phia Inquir­er (again, acces­si­ble thanks to Archive​.org). Reporter Melis­sa Dribben’s lede goes right to the point:

William Penn owned at least 12 slaves. Dur­ing his life he grad­u­al­ly came around to advo­cat­ing abo­li­tion, but when he died in 1718, Penn­syl­va­nia was a long way from end­ing the practice.

Fur­ther down she men­tions Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soder­lund and their 1991 book, Free­dom by Degrees: Eman­ci­pa­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia and Its After­math. For the first time in this train of cita­tions we’ve actu­al­ly come to trained his­to­ri­ans! And I’d be hard pressed to think of any two aca­d­e­mics I would trust more to doc­u­ment this era of colo­nial Penn­syl­va­nia than Nash or Soder­lund. It’s long out of print but Google Book­s’s pre­view gives us the moth­er lode:

Quak­er pro­pri­etor and his asso­ciates made no effort to pro­hib­it black slav­ery in the City of Broth­er­ly Love and its envi­rons. Indeed, Penn owned at least twelve slaves him­self and stat­ed at one point that he pre­ferred them to white inden­tured ser­vants because slaves could be held for life. Though in one ear­ly will the pro­pri­etor pro­vid­ed for man­u­mis­sion, slaves worked on his Penns­bury estate in Bucks Coun­ty through­out his tenure. One of these slaves was Black Alice who died in 1802 at age 116. She recalled often light­ing the pro­pri­etor’s pipe.13

The para­graph has a cita­tion [see update, below] but the lim­it­ed Google Books pre­view does­n’t include the cita­tion index and used copies are a bit too pricey for me (by chance I am cur­rent­ly read­ing Nash’s very fas­ci­nat­ing Forg­ing Free­dom, which is avail­able as a used book for a much more rea­son­able price).

I do wish that this trail of cita­tions did­n’t end at a book that’s cel­e­brat­ing its thir­ty year anniver­sary. I’m sure we’ve had a num­ber of ambi­tious his­to­ri­ans dig­ging through base­ment archives since the ear­ly 90s. Sure­ly they’ve uncov­ered more evi­dence. (For exam­ple, Black Alice, a fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure, seems not to have been Pen­n’s slave at Penns­bury but instead was enslaved by fellow-Quaker Samuel Car­pen­ter, a friend of Penn, and own­er of an oys­ter house where Alice worked from age five.) But at least this one asser­tion — that Penn owned exact­ly or around or over twelve slaves — has a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic source at its root.

Update March 18, 2021:

I emailed Jean R. Soder­lund, who gave me the sources for that para­graph in Free­dom by Degrees!

The cita­tions in note 13 are: Dunn et al., eds, Papers of William Penn, 3:66 – 67; 4:113 – 14; Han­nah Penn to James Logan June 6, 1720, and Logan to Han­nah Penn, May 11, 1721, Penn Papers, Offi­cial Cor­re­spon­dence, 1:95, 97, HSP; Samuel P. Jan­ney, The Life of William Penn (reprint 1970), 421; Nash, Forg­ing Free­dom, 12.

She did quite a bit of work dig­ging through the records con­cern­ing Pennbury after pub­lish­ing the book and says “I don’t remem­ber being con­cerned about the ref­er­ence to ‘at least twelve’ in Free­dom by Degrees.”

I’ve also edit­ed Wikipedia. Thirteen-plus years after their stat showed up on the “His­to­ry of slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia” page, Nash and Soder­lund final­ly get the citation.

Digging into the first selfie, from Philly!

June 10, 2014
· Martin Kelley

tumblr_n6ze2y65fD1qz5mj0o1_1280

This guy in Streetview is stand­ing near the spot where the world’s first #self­ie por­trait was tak­en in 1839.

Robert Cor­nelius was one of the first peo­ple to try to repro­duce Louis Daguer­re’s pho­to­graph­ic tech­nique after news of the break­through reach Philadel­phia. A chemist work­ing at his fam­i­ly’s gas light­ing com­pa­ny, Cor­nelius start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal com­bi­na­tions until he found a way to reduce expo­sure times so that a per­son to sit still long enough for a por­trait. In Octo­ber 1839 he took a pic­ture him­self “in the yard back of his store and res­i­dence, (old) 176 Chest­nut Street, above Sev­enth (now num­ber 710), in Philadel­phia,” accord­ing to an oral his­to­ry pub­lished half a cen­tu­ry lat­er (PDF). Cor­nelius recounts:

It was our busi­ness to make a great vari­ety of arti­cles of plat­ed met­al. Very soon after­wards, I made in the fac­to­ry a tin box, and bought from McAl­lis­ter, 48 Chest­nut Street, a lens about two inch­es in diam­e­ter, such as was used for opera pur­pos­es. With these instru­ments I made the first like­ness of myself and anoth­er one of some of my chil­dren, in the open yard of my dwelling, sun­light bright upon us, and I am ful­ly of the impres­sion that I was the first to obtain a like­ness of the human face.

Remark­ably, in 2014, the Cor­nelius and Co. build­ing is still there on Chest­nut Street, though bare­ly rec­og­niz­able, with an extra floor on top and exten­sive facade changes. It’s a dis­count drug store. The back is the nar­row alley named Ion­ic Street, home to dump­sters and peo­ple want­i­ng to stay out of sight. The yard is to the right of these dump­sters. With #self­ie such a pop­u­lar hash­tag, Cor­nelius’s pic­ture has cir­cu­lat­ed on a lot of inter­net lists as the “world’s first self­ie.” But it’s his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance is far greater: it is the first pho­to­graph­ic por­trait of our species. I’m not typ­i­cal­ly one for hyper­bole, but we humans start­ed see­ing our­selves dif­fer­ent­ly after that portrait.

I orig­i­nal­ly assumed the build­ing on the right of the alley stood where the yard had been but a satel­lites turns up a sur­prise: the yard is still there! Look­ing at the 710 prop­er­ty from above, the build­ings fac­ing Chest­nut and Ion­ic are sep­a­rate – with a large open space in between! There are two sec­tions that look almost to be gar­den beds.

blank

Yo Philly, how has 710 Chest­nut Street not been snatched up and turned into a muse­um of pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry? The first floor could focus on nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Philadel­phia inno­va­tion, with the still-existent inner court­yard turned into a tourist des­ti­na­tion? It would be like cat­nip. What self-respecting mod­ern tourist would­n’t walk the few blocks from Inde­pen­dence Hall to take their pic­ture at the very site of the world’s first self­ie? I know Philly typ­i­cal­ly does­n’t respect any his­to­ry past 1776 but come on!

Update March 2021: Katie Park in the Inquir­er report­ing an all-too-predictable sto­ry: Philly L&I approves demo­li­tion of Chest­nut Street prop­er­ties that preser­va­tion­ists had tried to pro­tect. It’s not Cor­nelius’s house at 710 but it’s just a few doors down the block at 730 – 732. The arti­cle has some great info from Justin Brooks, a lawyer who’s been try­ing to orga­nize his­toric recog­ni­tion for the 600, 700, and 800 blocks of Chest­nut. One tid­bit: in 1891 Chest­nut Street was widened by the city, requir­ing “build­ing own­ers to tear down their own facades to move far­ther back.” (You could write a tome on Philly his­to­ry that’s been lost to road widen­ing projects but at least this was “just” the 700 block facades.)

Story: The teapot that survived

March 4, 2013
· Martin Kelley

“What do you think of this?” It was prob­a­bly the twen­ti­eth time my broth­er or I had asked this ques­tion in the last hour. Our moth­er had down­sized to a one-bedroom apart­ment in an Alzheimer’s unit just six days ear­li­er. Vis­it­ing her there she admit­ted she could­n’t even remem­ber her old apart­ment. We were clean­ing it out.

Almost forgotten history.
Almost for­got­ten his­to­ry. by martin_kelley, on Flickr

The object of the ques­tion this time was an antique teapot. White chi­na with a blue design. It was­n’t in great shape. The top was cracked and miss­ing that han­dle that lets you take the lid off with­out burn­ing your fin­gers. It had a folksy charm, but as a teapot it was nei­ther prac­ti­cal nor aston­ish­ing­ly attrac­tive, and nei­ther of us real­ly want­ed it. It was head­ed for the over­sized trash bin out­side her room.

I turned it over in my hands. There, on the bot­tom, was a strip of dried-out and cracked mask­ing tape. On it, bare­ly leg­i­ble and in the kind of cur­sive script that is no longer taught, were the words “Recov­ered from ruins of fire 6/29/23 at 7. 1067 Haz­ard Rd.”

We scratched our heads. We did­n’t know where Haz­ard Road might be (Google lat­er revealed it’s in the blink-and-you-miss-it rail­road stop of Haz­ard, Penn­syl­va­nia, a cross­roads only tech­ni­cal­ly with­in the bound­ary of our moth­er’s home town of Palmer­ton). The date would place the fire sev­en years before her birth.

We can only guess to fill in the details. A cat­a­stroph­ic fire must have tak­en out the fam­i­ly home. Imag­ine the grim solace of pulling out a fam­i­ly heir­loom. Per­haps some grand­par­ent had brought it care­ful­ly packed in a small suit­case on the jour­ney to Amer­i­ca. Or per­haps not. Per­haps it had no sen­ti­men­tal val­ue and it had land­ed with our moth­er because no one else cared. We’ll nev­er know. No amount of research could tell us more than that mask­ing tape. Our moth­er was­n’t the only one los­ing her mem­o­ry. We were too. We were los­ing the fam­i­ly mem­o­ry of a gen­er­a­tion that had lived, loved, and made it through a tragedy one mid-summer day.

I stood there and looked at the teapot once again. It had sur­vived a fire nine­ty years ago. I would give it a reprieve from our snap judge­ment and the dump. Stripped of all mean­ing save three inch­es of mask­ing tape, it now sits on a top shelf of my cup­board. It will rest there, gath­er­ing back the dust I just cleaned off, until some spring after­noon forty years from now, when one of my kids will turn to anoth­er. “What do you think of this?”

Update March 2017

blank
Prob­a­bly the old­est pic­ture of Liz I have, from 1931. Eliz­a­beth “Lizzie” “Gram­my” Williams Noll, Eliz­a­beth Klein­top, Puerette “Puri” “Pap­py” Noll. On porch of Colum­bia Ave. home, Palmerton.

Beyond all odds, there’s actu­al­ly more infor­ma­tion. Some­one has put up obit­u­ar­ies from the Morn­ing Call news­pa­per. It includes the May 1922 notice for Alvin H. Noll, my moth­er’s great grandfather.

Alvin H. Noll, a well known res­i­dent of Palmer­ton, died at his home, at that place, on Sun­day morn­ing, aged 66 years. He was a mem­ber of St. John’s church, Towa­mensing, and also a promi­nent mem­ber of Lodge, No. 440, I.O. of A., Bow­manstown. He is sur­vived by two daugh­ters, Mrs. Lewis Sauer­wine, Slat­ing­ton, and Mrs. Fred Par­ry, this city; three sons, Puri­et­ta Noll, Samuel Noll and Thomas Noll, Palmer­ton. Two sis­ters, Mrs. Mary Schultz, Lehigh­ton; Miss Aman­da Noll, Bow­manstown; two broth­ers, Aaron Noll, Bow­manstown, and William Noll, Lehigh­ton. Ten grand­chil­dren also sur­vive. Funer­al ser­vices will be held at the home of his son, Puri­et­ta (sic) Noll, 1067 Haz­ard Road, Palmer­ton, on Wednes­day at 1.30 p.m., day­light sav­ing time. Fur­ther ser­vices will be held in St. John’s church, Towa­mensing. Inter­ment will be made in Towa­mensing cemetery.

And there it is: 1067 Haz­ard Road, home of my moth­er’s grand­fa­ther Puri­ette Franklin Noll one year before the fire. So I’ll add a pic­ture of Puri­ette and his wife Eliz­a­beth with my Mom eighter years after the fire, at what the pho­to says is their Colum­bia Avenue home. Wow!