earliest days of the city by one of its greatest improvers, Samuel Carpenter, and it was fitted up for Penn's occupancy on the occasion of his second coming to America. Penn brought with him his family and household gods, expecting to make his home permanently in Pennsylvania; but within two years after taking possession of this mansion, owing to the distaste of his wife for colonial life, and owing to the fact that his enemies in London were dangerously threatening his powers and rights in America, he was forced to return to England. It was thought his absence would be temporary, but his affairs becoming more and more involved, he fretted away year after year in a vain endeavor to return, until he finally died, in 1718, without again visiting his colonial possessions. In 1704 Samuel Carpenter sold this house to William Trent for eight hundred and fifty pounds. This was the same Trent, who, in 1719, established mills on the Delaware, thus founding Trent-town-now Trenton. He died there, in 1724, as Chief Justice of New Jersey. Penn's mansion ultimately became, and continued to be until many years after the Revolution, 'a fashionable boarding-house. From there was carried, in 1782, the body of the eccentric General Charles Lee, which was interred in Christ Churchyard.

Our German friends, while wandering around the town visiting its many points of interest, probably found their way to another spot associated with the founder of the colony-the Blue Anchor Tavern, on the corner of Second and Dock streets, it being the first house he entered on reaching the city. Penn arrived at Newcastle by the ship "Welcome," in October, 1683. After spending a little time there, and at Chester, he proceeded to Philadelphia, landing at a low sandy beach fronting this tavern, at the mouth of Dock Creek, which, at that time, had grassy banks and rural surroundings. Tradition designates this inn, then just completing, as being the first substantial house erected in the city. For many years it was the point at which landings were made from small vessels trafficking with New Jersey and New England. It was also used as a ferry-house by persons crossing to Society Hill, to the New Jersey shore, and to Windmill Island, where a Dutch-looking structure ground the grain of the early settlers.

Meanwhile, the day is wearing on, and the Moelichs have

PHILADELPHIA EQUIPAGE IN 1735.

61

still a journey before them, for it is not to be supposed that newly arrived Germans will remain in Philadelphia when but a few miles beyond is a thriving settlement, composed entirely of their own countrymen. The good Pastorius, the faithful pastor, magistrate, teacher, patriarch, and friend of Teuton folk, had died fifteen years before, but he left behind him, at Germantown, seven miles away as the road then ran, a sturdy German community, and a firmly established Lutheran church. It was the pole toward which the needles of all Rhenish emigrants turned, and we must conceive of some means of transporting Johannes and his party to that prosperous place. The human imagination is quite capable of bridging centuries and of creating situations, so there is no reason why we should not be equal to this task, especially as we feel confident of the assistance of Thomas Skelton, who advertises in the "Gazette" that he has "a fourwheeled chaise, in Chestnut street, to be hired." This was the only public conveyance in the city. It was twenty-five years later before Jacob Coleman began running the first stage— "with an awning "-from Philadelphia to the King of Prussia Inn, at Germantown.

In 1735 the city boasted of but eight four-wheeled coaches, one of which belonged to Deputy-Governor Gordon. The streets were singularly clear of vehicles of every description. There were but six four-wheeled, one-seated chaises, drawn by two horses, besides the one that Shelton had to hire. The few carriages, if they could be so called, to be seen were twowheeled, one-horse chairs, a cheap sort of a gig with a plain painted body, ornamented with brass rings and buckles, resting on leathern bands, for springs. The general means of conveyance, both for goods and people, was by horses; farmers' wives came to town on pillions, behind their husbands, and stout market-women rode in from Germantown, panniers, filled with produce, flanking their horses' sides. Much of the freighting of the province was done by pack-horses, and it was a common sight to see a long line of them entering Philadelphia, laden with all manner of merchandise-some so enveloped in fodder as to leave exposed only their noses and hoofs, others bearing heavy casks suspended on either side, whilst still others staggered along beneath the weight of bars of iron, bent so to hang as to escape

the bordering trees of the contracted trails and roadways. There were but few carts; the man who brought the silver sand to the different doors each morning owned one; and we have seen to what base purpose another has been put by the town constable. That peculiar Pennsylvania institution, the big blue-bodied wagon, had not yet made its appearance, though it was not many years before the prosperity of the province was such as to result in every farmer having his wagon. Their first introduction caused great indignation among the owners of pack-horses, who feared that their business would be ruined. In 1755, when Postmaster-General Franklin found Braddock fretting and fuming at Frederick, in Maryland, because his contractors had failed to provide means of transportation, he at once agreed to furnish one hundred and fifty wagons, with four-horse teams, from Pennsylvania, and have them at Will's Creek within ten days. Franklin fulfilled his agreement, and thus was Braddock's army enabled to move on to its disastrous overthrow.

We will impress one of the carts into the service of aiding Thomas Skelton in moving our party. Johannes must return on some other day for his heavy luggage and furniture, as the "Mercury" will hardly as yet have commenced discharging from her hold. The Germantown road left town at the upper end of Front street, and, after following the river for a short distance, wound in a northwesterly direction, and plunged into a dense forest, the haunt then, as it had been for centuries, of bears, wolves, deer and wild turkeys. The wolves seemed to have proved the most annoying to citizens, as we find bounties for their extirpation offered for many years after. The highway was not much more than a trail, the branches of the giant trees, that. stood in solid phalanxes close to the wheel tracks, forming over the travellers' heads a roof of impenetrable foliage. Occasionally the shade was broken by the sunshine of a clearing, in the centre of which stood a log house, having a long sloping roof of thatch-the harbinger of the future greatness of suburban Philadelphia. Some of the clearings were already green meadows, in which no sign of trees appeared; others were studded by stumps showing the recent marks of the pioneer's axe. On nearing Germantown the road traversed a swamp, the wheels of the cart and chaise jolting over the rough logs of the corduroy road-bed that made the bog passable.

JOHANNES REACHES GERMANTOWN.

63

Our friends, listening to the tales of their guides, as they moved slowly through the woods, must have been filled with the most agreeable anticipations, on approaching the end of their journey. They found Germantown to be as thoroughly German, in language and in the appearance of the people, as any of the villages they had left, perched on the picturesque banks of the river of the Schoppen in the mother country. With its one long street bordered by straggling houses, it still presented much of the aspect of a frontier settlement. Many of the dwellings were the primitive structures of the early comers. They were built of logs, the interstices filled in with river-rushes and clay, and covered with a thin coat of plaster; their gables confronted the street, and a man of ordinary size could easily touch the eaves of their double-hipped roofs. The more modern houses were of dark glimmer-stone, with little windows set deep in the thick walls, and with huge chimneys rising at the corners. These low substantial buildings, with their steep roofs and protecting eaves, were planted well back from the highway, and surrounded by fruit-trees. The comfortably-rotund matrons of these dwellings, who looked out at the new arrivals from the open upper half of their Dutch doors, were all busily knitting, for these Germantown housewives had already acquired an inter-colonial reputation as the manufacturers of superior stockings.

The first German newspaper in Pennsylvania, and the first in America printed in a foreign language, was issued in Germantown the year of Johannes' arrival. This place retained all its German characteristics down to the year 1793. Until that date all the public preaching was in German; it was the language of business and society, and even that of the boys playing in the streets. The outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia, in the year '93, caused the offices of the general and state governments, and of the city banks, to remove to this suburban town. This introduced an English speaking element, and a population, which proved to be, in part, permanent. Germantown thus becoming favorably known to Philadelphians, rapidly increased the number of its English speaking people.

And now we must bid Johannes a many years' farewell-here he and his family fade for a time from our sight and knowledge. By the aid of a lively fancy, we have been able, for one day, to

clothe him with all the attributes of existence and experiences, but to continue that for a decade would be to tax the powers of your scribe beyond his capabilities. Family tradition asserts that he remained in the vicinity of Philadelphia for ten years. We will leave him there to acquire the language, educate his children, rub off his foreign characteristics, and gradually to assimilate himself and his family with the manners and customs of the people of the new country of his adoption. Our next knowledge of his life is from the pages of a letter he received from Bendorf in the year 1745. That interesting communication will be presented in the coming chapter.