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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), New England. (search)
re fertile soil. They lay for a few days at Manhattan, when they were warned not to encroach upon New Netherland territory. The English, according to De Vries, claimed everything ; and these New-Englanders went on and had no trouble in finding Indians to sell them unoccupied lands. Indeed, the Indians were ready to sell the same lands to as many people as possible. At the middle of the summer they had planted corn and built trading-posts on Salem Creek, N. J., and near the mouth of the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania. Both settlements prospered, and the New Haven colony took them under their protection They came to grief in the spring of 1642 The intrusion of the New-Englanders was as distasteful to the Swedes on the Delaware as to the Dutch; and when the Dutch commissioner at Fort Nassau was instructed by Governor Kieft to expel them, the Swedes assisted the Dutch with energy. The New-Englanders yielded without resistance. They were carried prisoners to Manhattan, and thence sent ho
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Philadelphia, (search)
Philadelphia, Popularly known as the City of brotherly love ; founded by William Penn in 1682, between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. He bought the land of the Swedes; with the assistance of Thomas Holme, the surveyor of his colony, laid out the city at the close of 1682. He caused the boundaries of the streets to be marked on the trunks of chestnut, walnut, locust, spruce, pine, and other forest trees, and many of the streets still bear the names of those trees. The new city grew rapidly. Within a year after the surveyor had finished his work almost 100 houses were erected there, and Indians came almost daily with the spoils of the forest as gifts for Father Penn, as they delighted to call the founder. In March following (1683), the city was honored as the gatheringplace of the representatives of the people to consider a constitution of government which Penn had prepared. It constituted a representative republican government, with free religious toleration and justice
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Smith, Richard Penn 1799-1854 (search)
Smith, Richard Penn 1799-1854 Author; born in Philadelphia, Pa., March 13, 1799; was admitted to the bar in 1821; editor and owner of the Aurora in 1822-27; then resumed the practice of law and gave much time to literary work. He was the author of William Penn (a comedy); Life of David Crockctt; Life of Martin Van Buren, etc. He died in Falls of Schuylkill, Pa., Aug. 12, 1854.
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Steam navigation. (search)
propelled 8 miles an hour by the vapor. A stock company was formed at Philadelphia, and built a steam packetboat, which ran until the company failed in 1790. Fitch's efforts in steam navigation also failed. John C. Stevens, of Hoboken, N. J., constructed a steamboat on the waters of the Hudson that was driven by a Watt engine, moved by vapor from a tubular boiler of his own invention, and a screw propeller. The same year Oliver Evans put a steam dredgingmachine on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers propelled by a steam paddle-wheel moved by a high-pressure engine, the first of its kind ever used. Meanwhile Robert Fulton's Clermont on its trial-trip up the Hudson. Fulton, a professional painter, had conceived a plan for steamboat navigation while an inmate of Joel Barlow's residence in Paris. He met Chancellor Livingston in Paris, and interested that gentleman in his projects. He tried two experiments on the Seine in 1803. Fulton visited Scotland, where a steamboat was in
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Pennsylvania, (search)
and West Virginia bound it on the south, while West Virginia and Ohio are on the west. Area, 45,215 square miles, in sixty-seven counties. Population in 1890, 5,258,014; 1900, 6,302,115. Capital, Harrisburg. Henry Hudson enters Delaware Bay, examines its currents and soundings, but leaves without landing......August, 1609 Delaware Bay visited by Lord de la Warr......1610 Cornelius Hendricksen, in the interest of the Dutch, explores Delaware Bay and river as far as mouth of the Schuylkill......1616 Cornelius Mey ascends the Delaware River, and builds Fort Nassau, on the east side, nearly opposite the present Philadelphia......1623 [This first occupation by the Dutch is soon abandoned.] Swedish government sends out two vessels, the Key of Calmar and the Griffin, with a few Swedes; entering the Delaware, they erect a fort near the mouth of Christiana Creek, called Fort Christiana in honor of the then Queen of Sweden......1638 Swedish Governor Printz fixes his resi
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Valley Forge (search)
e numbered about 11,000 men, of whom not more than 7,000 were fit for field duty. Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge. The place was chosen because it was farther from the danger of sudden attacks from the foe, and where he might more easily afford protection for the Congress sitting at York. Blood-stains, made by the lacerated feet of his barefooted soldiers, marked the line of their march to Valley Forge. There, upon the slopes of a narrow valley on the borders of the winding Schuylkill, they were encamped, with no shelter but rude log huts which they built themselves. The winter that ensued was severe. The soldiers shivered with cold and starved with hunger, and there their genuine patriotism was fully tested. The British under Howe had full possession of Philadelphia and of the Delaware below, and Pennsylvania was divided among its people and in its legislature by political factions. General uneasiness prevailed; and when Washington sought refuge at Valley Forge,
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Washington, Martha 1732-1781 (search)
into the town. Fireworks were displayed in her honor, and a band of music serenaded her in the evening. When she approached Philadelphia she was met, 10 miles in the suburbs, by the governor of the State, the speaker of the Assembly, a troop of dragoons, and a large cavalcade of citizens. Some distance from the city she was welcomed by a brilliant company of women in carriages. She was escorted by these gentlemen and ladies to Gray's Ferry, on the One of Martha Washington's tea-cups. Schuylkill, where they all partook of a collation; and from that point to the city Mrs. Robert Morris occupied a seat by the side of Mrs. Washington. When the procession entered the city the wife of the President was greeted with a salute of thirteen guns. She journeyed on to New York. At Elizabethtown Point she was received by her husband, Robert Morris, and several distinguished gentlemen, in the splendid barge in which Washington had been conveyed from the same place to New York a month before.
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Wernwag, Lewis 1769-1843 (search)
Wernwag, Lewis 1769-1843 Civil engineer; born in Alteburg, Germany, Dec. 4, 1769; settled in Philadelphia in 1786. Not long afterwards he constructed a machine for manufacturing whetstones. He next became a builder of bridges and powermills. In 1809 he laid the keel of the first United States frigate built in the Philadelphia navy-yard; in 1812 he built a wooden bridge across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia, which became known as the Colossus of Fairmount and which was till that time the longest bridge ever constructed, having a single arch with a span of 340 feet. About 1813, when he settled in Phoenixville, Pa., he began experiments for the purpose of utilizing anthracite coal. For a time he found it most difficult to ignite it, but later, by closing the furnace doors and making a draft beneath the coal, he succeeded in producing combustion. Later he invented a stove in which he burned coal in his own home. He died in Harper's Ferry, Va., Aug. 12, 1843.
George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army (ed. George Gordon Meade), chapter 2 (search)
ve most uncomfortably. She is in a tent, living in the roughest manner, and has not even, I think, a female attendant. I have seen her once or twice. She appears contented and is, comparatively speaking, comfortably fixed; but she is entirely out of place. October 11, 1845. The mail will leave early to-morrow morning, by a steamer for New Orleans; so that in twelve days you will receive this. How much I wish I could accompany it. What joy to be once more at the northeast corner of Schuylkill Seventh and Spruce Streets; but, alas, it is useless to be speculating on impossibilities! Here I am, and here I must stay, and the best thing I can do is to be cheerful and contented. My health, thank God, is excellent, and as long as it so continues I shall be reconciled. I would have preferred going with Major Bache; but I should have been much more exposed, and my life in greater danger from disease than now; though the certainty of returning to you, and having an office in Philadel
Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865, Chapter 38: (search)
fire of the batteries for the repulse of any assaulting column that might attempt to enter the breach. The salient actually selected by the Federals proved to be that occupied by Elliott's brigade, with Pegram's battery; and the mine, commenced on the 25th of June, Colonel Pleasants's testimony, in Conduct of the War (1865), vol. i., p. 112. was ready to receive its charge on the 23d of July. The work was executed by the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers, 400 strong, mostly composed of Schuylkill coal-miners, and whose colonel, Pleasants, was himself an accomplished mining engineer. The mine, starting from the interior of Burnside's line of riflepits, immediately across Taylor's Creek, terminated beneath Elliott's salient, at a distance of one hundred and seventy yards, with lateral galleries beginning at that point, extending on the left thirty-seven feet, and on the right thirty-eight feet, and together forming the segment of a circle concave to the Confederate lines. In both
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