“all Relations have much as they ware & give their Dear Love to Father & Mother…”

15-year old John, having just left the Penn household in Ruscombe, England, writes home. He mentions his mother’s cooking and the well-documented family love of chocolate. The recipient, John’s younger brother, Thomas Penn, who later owned ¾ of William Penn’s proprietary interest in Pennsylvania, practices signing his name on the address leaf. The “Black Cap” referred to in John’s postscript is a reference to the famous Quaker hat. Quakers, as a sign of their egalitarianism, refused to take their hat off for anyone, regardless of societal rank. “Addam” was William Penn’s nickname, a reference to the biblical first man.

“Upon reading this day at the Board the Humble petition of W^m. Penn Esq^r … Her Ma^ty. in Councill taking the same into her consideration is Graciously pleased, to ord^r accordingly, that the s^d petition of the Lord Baltimore, Be, and it is hereby Dismissed”

Document signed by Pennsylvania’s political leaders during a stormy period in the province’s history, which saw chronic tensions between Quakers and non-Quakers, between the “lower counties” of Delaware and the rest of the province, and between the proprietor (William Penn) and the Assembly. All the same, the separate signatures on two sheets of paper attests to the landmark commitment of Penn to religious tolerance.

Pennsylvania founder William Penn supported James II during the Glorious Revolution, James’s attempt to regain the English throne. When William and Mary ascended the throne, Penn was suspected of treason.

The “greatest of early American maps … a masterpiece” (Corcoran).

“This monumental work is without question the finest printed cartographic document relating to North America to be published to date.” (Burden). No other English American colony was mapped in the seventeenth century on such a large scale, and in such amazing detail.

“… there are ffour Comission^rs who by the order & command of y^e said Lord [Baltimore], have beene & are waiting … ever since y^e tenth day instant, for y^e Running y^e Division Lyne…”

Sandelands and Wade, two members of Pennsylvania’s first Provincial Council, alert Deputy Governor Markham of the arrival of Lord Baltimore’s commissioners to Augustine Hermann’s estate, near the disputed border between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Baltimore’s commissioners sought to locate the 40^th degree of latitude, the dividing line established by King Charles I’s original charter for Maryland. Markham did not come, choosing to wait for Penn’s arrival, most likely because he knew that an accurate measurement of the 40˚ line would deprive Pennsylvania of an outlet on the Chesapeake, and perhaps cause them to lose Philadelphia.

“As the loadstone attracts Iron, so ought acknowledgem^ts to pursue faviours … [I] dare not presume any further having soe lately recd soe great a marke of your bounty….”

Deputy Governor Anthony Brockholls of New York extends a cordial note to Governor William Penn in the midst of continuing deliberations between Penn and Lord Baltimore over the southern boundary of Pennsylvania and possession of Delaware.

This issue of The Pennsylvania Gazette, edited by Benjamin Franklin with his new partner David Hall, includes a brief story on a Jewish astronomer with a new method for determining longitude, a warning against confidence man Tom Bell, and a minor eruption of Mount Vesuvius.