DOCSLIB.ORG

Morris-Shinn-Maier Collection HC.Coll.1191

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Morris-Shinn-Maier Collection HC.Coll.1191 Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 Finding aid prepared by Janela Harris and Jon Sweitzer-Lamme Other authors include: Daniel Lenahan, Kate Janoski, Jonathan Berke, Henry Wiencek and John Powers This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit September 28, 2012 Describing Archives: A Content Standard Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections July 18, 2011 370 Lancaster Ave Haverford, PA, 19041 610-896-1161 [email protected] Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 Table of Contents Summary Information ................................................................................................................................. 3 Biographical/Historical note.......................................................................................................................... 7 Biographical/Historical note.......................................................................................................................... 8 Scope and Contents note............................................................................................................................. 15 Administrative Information .......................................................................................................................16 Controlled Access Headings........................................................................................................................16 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 18 Historical Papers.................................................................................................................................... 18 Individuals..............................................................................................................................................24 Photographs..........................................................................................................................................343 - Page 2 - Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 Summary Information Repository Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections Creator Cadbury, Lydia C. Shinn , 1828-1904 Creator Cadbury, Richard, 1825-1897 Creator Cadorus, Page Creator Collins, Julia Cope , 1866-1958 Creator Cope, E. D. (Edward Drinker) , 1840-1897 Creator Grimké, Angelina Emily, 1805-1879 Creator Grimké, Sarah Moore, 1792-1873 Creator Haines, Elizabeth Shinn, 1823-1883 Creator Haines, Henry, 1819-1905 Creator Harrison, Hannah, fl. 1769 Creator Jones, Owen, 1819-1878 Creator Leeds, Morris Evans, 1869-1952 Creator Maier, Anna Morris Shinn , 1874-1941 Creator Maier, James Shinn, 1907-1999 Creator Maier, Paul David Irwin, 1874-1936 - Page 3 - Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 Creator Maier, William Morris, 1909-1982 Creator Morris, Caspar, 1805-1884 Creator Morris, Catharine Wistar, 1772-1859 Creator Morris, Catharine Wistar, 1840-1922 Creator Morris, Henry, 1802-1881 Creator Morris, Israel Wistar, 1807-1868 Creator Morris, Israel, 1811-1905 Creator Morris, Levi, 1807-1868 Creator Morris, Naomi McClenachan, 1811-1893 Creator Morris, Stephen Paschall, 1800-1865 Creator Morris, Wistar, 1815-1891 Creator Rees, Thomas, fl. 1754 Creator Shinn, Earl Jr., 1738-1886 Creator Shinn, Earl, 1796-1865 Creator Shinn, Ellen Morris, 1832-1977 Creator Shinn, Emma Morris, 1849-1912 Creator Shinn, James Thornton, 1834-1907 Creator Shinn, Rebecca, 1836-1882 - Page 4 - Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 Creator Shinn, Sarah Comfort, 1801-1865 Creator Shipley, Anna Shinn, 1826-1888 Creator Thomson, Charles, 1729-1924 Creator Vaux, George, IX, 1863-1927 Creator Vaux, Sarah H. Morris, 1838-1880 Creator Vaux, William Sansom, 1872-1908 Creator Walcott, Mary Vaux, 1860-1940 Creator Wood, Emily Hollingsworth Morr, 1842-1916 Title Morris-Shinn-Maier collection Date [inclusive] 1720-1975 Extent 78.0 Linear feet General Physical Quantity of papers as described in each instance is estimated. Description note Language English Abstract This collection spans approximately 200 years, from the late 1700s to the late 1900s, and five generations of the Morris-Shinn-Maier family, which are traced through matrilineal and patrilineal lines. They were prominent Quaker businessmen and lawyers in the Philadelphia area, and a large portion of the collection is dedicated to their legal and business material, as well as a great deal of very detailed financial material. There is also a quantity of personal material, namely diaries and correspondence, and material from philanthropic work done by later generations. Principal - Page 5 - Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 individuals include Paul David Irwin Maier, William Morris Maier, Anna Shinn Maier, Levi Morris and Naomi McClenachan Morris. Preferred Citation note Haverford College Library, Haverford, PA, Special Collections, Quaker Collection, Morri-sShinn-Maier collection, Coll. No. 1191 - Page 6 - Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 Biographical/Historical note History of the Harriton Estate: Rowland Ellis (1650-1731) was born in Dolgellu, Wales. He visited Pennsylvania in 1686, and moved there in 1696. He settled on about 698 acres in a region designated by William Penn for Welsh Quakers. Ellis named his property "Bryn Mawr," after his estate in Wales (which passed to his daughter Ann). Ellis is said to have built the mansion house, which still exists as a museum, in 1704. Richard Harrison (?-174?) was a Maryland tobacco farmer, slave owner and Quaker. He married Hannah Norris in 1717, and bought "Bryn Mawr" estate from Rowland Ellis in 1719. Harrison moved his family there from Herring Creek, Maryland. He renamed the estate "Harriton," following the example of his father-in-law Isaac Norris, who named his New Jersey estate "Norriton." Richard Harrison kept slaves at Harriton, which became one of the largest northern slave plantations of its time, but he was at one point chastised by his meeting for keeping too many slaves. Harrison built a meetinghouse (which was razed in the 1820s) and a family burial ground on Harriton grounds. Hannah Harrison Thomson (1728-1807) was the daughter of Richard Harrison and Hannah Norris Harrison, a Quaker minister whose parents had been a prominent colonial official, and the daughter of a prominent colonial official. Hannah Harrison married the Secretary of the Continental Congresses, Charles Thomson in 1774, and inherited the Harriton estate from her father after his death. Hannah Harrison Thomson lived with her husband at Fourth and Spruce during his political career. After his retirement in 1789, Hannah Harrison Thomson and Charles Thomson returned to her childhood home. Charles Thomson was an abolitionist, and presumably it was he who ended the practice of keeping slaves at Harriton. The Thomsons had no children, and after helping to raise her great-nephew Charles McClenachan, the eldest surviving child of his generation, they selected Charles to inherit the Harriton estate after their deaths. However, Hannah Harrison Thomson died in 1807, and Charles McClenachan in 1811 (during the lifetime of Charles Thomson). Charles McClenachan then left his inheritance to a six-week old daughter Naomi McClenachan, but under the terms of a life estate, Charles Thomson remained in the old Harriton mansion until his death in 1824. Page Cadorus (1774-1840) was a former servant or slave, of black or mixed-race. He was a favorite of Charles Thomson, and was probably raised in the Thomson household. During his lifetime, Charles Thomson gave Cadorus a life-estate on another part of the Harriton property. The land was known as Cadorus (or Codorus) Farm, and was legally owned by Page Cadorus, but he never resided there; instead, he leased it to tenant farmers. After Cadorus died in 1840, his life estate reverted back to the ownership of Naomi McClenachan Morris, who had inherited the entire property from her father. She moved there with her husband, Levi Morris. Levi handled the management of the estate until his death in 1868, and under his guidance, the Harriton property was leased to a number of tenant farmers. Levi also organized the building and leasing of a mill. He sold plots of land for their timber, and then resold the land as a farm (called Woodleave Farm). There - Page 7 - Morris-Shinn-Maier collection HC.Coll.1191 were a number of different farms on the Harriton property, all of which generated money for the Morris family. It is unclear what buildings existed on this part of the property. A building called Lane’s End, which still stands, may have housed Cadorus’ tenant farmer as well as a springhouse. The building as it stands now, however, was probably significantly altered (if not entirely re-built) by Levi Morris during the nineteenth century. The same goes for the mansion house in which the Morris family lived. There was probably a building on the same spot before the Morris’s moved to the property after Cadorus’ death in 1840, but it is unknown exactly what type of building. The current mansion may have been built on top of the former building, or expanded from it. The old Harriton mansion built by Rowland Ellis and lived in by Richard Harrison and family was the home of tenant farmers throughout the nineteenth century, but the Morris family never lived in it. In the late nineteenth century, Naomi McClenachan Morris decided that it was improper for a Quaker lady to live in a house named after a slave—although Page Cadorus was not necessarily one—and she decided to rename
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Pennsylvania Assembly's Conflict with the Penns, 1754-1768
    Liberty University “The Jaws of Proprietary Slavery”: The Pennsylvania Assembly’s Conflict With the Penns, 1754-1768 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the History Department in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in History by Steven Deyerle Lynchburg, Virginia March, 2013 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Liberty or Security: Outbreak of Conflict Between the Assembly and Proprietors ......9 Chapter 2: Bribes, Repeals, and Riots: Steps Toward a Petition for Royal Government ..............33 Chapter 3: Securing Privilege: The Debates and Election of 1764 ...............................................63 Chapter 4: The Greater Threat: Proprietors or Parliament? ...........................................................90 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................113 1 Introduction In late 1755, the vituperative Reverend William Smith reported to his proprietor Thomas Penn that there was “a most wicked Scheme on Foot to run things into Destruction and involve you in the ruins.” 1 The culprits were the members of the colony’s unicameral legislative body, the Pennsylvania Assembly (also called the House of Representatives). The representatives held a different opinion of the conflict, believing that the proprietors were the ones scheming, in order to “erect their desired Superstructure of despotic Power, and reduce to
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Bryn Mawr, 1683-1900
    Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College Publications, Special Books, pamphlets, catalogues, and scrapbooks Collections, Digitized Books 1962 The History of Bryn Mawr, 1683-1900 Barbara Alyce Farrow Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_books Part of the Liberal Studies Commons, and the Women's History Commons No evidence was found that the copyright was renewed in the 28th year from the date of publication, as required for books published between 1923 and 1963 (see Library of Congress Copyright Office, How To Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work [Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 2004]). The book is therefore believed to be in the public domain. Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Custom Citation Farrow, Barbara Alyce. The History of Bryn Mawr, 1683-1900. Bryn Mawr, PA: Committee of Residents and Bryn Mawr Civic Association, 1962. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_books/14 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The HISTORY OF BRYN MAWR 1683-1900 Barbara Alyce Farrow THE HISTORY OF BRYN MAWR 1683 - 1900 Barbara Alyce Farrow Foreword by Catherine Drinker Bowen Pub lished by A Committee of Residents and The Bryn Mawr Civic Association Bryn M.:lw r, Pe nn sylvania 1962 This work is based on a thesis submitted in 1957 to Westminster College New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. Copyright © Barbara Alyce Farrow 1962 library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-13436 II To my grandmother, Mrs.
    [Show full text]
  • PEAES Guide: the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
    PEAES Guide: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania http://www.librarycompany.org/Economics/PEAESguide/hsp.htm Keyword Search Entire Guide View Resources by Institution Search Guide Institutions Surveyed - Select One The Historical Society of Pennsylvania 1300 Locust Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 215-732-6200 http://www.hsp.org Overview: The entries in this survey highlight some of the most important collections, as well as some of the smaller gems, that researchers will find valuable in their work on the early American economy. Together, they are a representative sampling of the range of manuscript collections at HSP, but scholars are urged to pursue fruitful lines of inquiry to locate and use the scores of additional materials in each area that is surveyed here. There are numerous helpful unprinted guides at HSP that index or describe large collections. Some of these are listed below, especially when they point in numerous directions for research. In addition, the HSP has a printed Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP: Philadelphia, 1991), which includes an index of proper names; it is not especially helpful for searching specific topics, item names, of subject areas. In addition, entries in the Guide are frequently too brief to explain the richness of many collections. Finally, although the on-line guide to the manuscript collections is generally a reproduction of the Guide, it is at present being updated, corrected, and expanded. This survey does not contain a separate section on land acquisition, surveying, usage, conveyance, or disputes, but there is much information about these subjects in the individual collections reviewed below.
    [Show full text]
  • Historic-District-Satterlee-Heights.Pdf
    NOMINATION OF HISTORIC DISTRICT PHILADELPHIA REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES PHILADELPHIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION SUBMIT ALL ATTACHED MATERIALS ON PAPER AND IN ELECTRONIC FORM ON CD (MS WORD FORMAT) 1. NAME OF HISTORIC DISTRICT The Satterlee Heights Historic District 2. LOCATION Please attach a map of Philadelphia locating the historic district. Councilmanic District(s): 3 3. BOUNDARY DESCRIPTION Please attach a map of the district and a written description of the boundary. 4. DESCRIPTION Please attach a description of built and natural environments in the district. 5. INVENTORY Please attach an inventory of the district with an entry for every property. All street addresses must coincide with official Office of Property Assessment addresses. Total number of properties in district: 8 Count buildings with multiple units as one. Number of properties already on Register/percentage of total: 2/25% Number of significant properties/percentage of total: 8/100% Number of contributing properties/percentage of total: 0/8 Number of non-contributing properties/percentage of total: NA 6. SIGNIFICANCE Please attach the Statement of Significance. Period of Significance (from year to year): from 1871 to 1897. CRITERIA FOR DESIGNATION: The historic district satisfies the following criteria for designation (check all that apply): (a) Has significant character, interest or value as part of the development, heritage or cultural characteristics of the City, Commonwealth or Nation or is associated with the life of a person significant in the past; or, (b) Is associated
    [Show full text]
  • Read Book the Founding Fathers
    THE FOUNDING FATHERS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Lecturer R B Bernstein,Professor of Chemistry Richard B Bernstein | 184 pages | 14 Dec 2015 | Oxford University Press | 9780190273514 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom The Founding Fathers PDF Book Today, there are only strategically challenged political tacticians running the affairs of state. All the Founding Fathers, including the first four U. But the financial sector favored only those people who were able to get into the market early, and those who were already financially sound enough to invest. Hamilton play Alexander Hamilton film Liberty! Additionally, Madison's plantation wasn't financially successful, which contributed to his declining fortune. For this federal holiday, Business Insider decided to examine how some of the Founding Fathers, including some who signed the Declaration of Independence, made their wealth. Few people ever met the exacting standards of this persnickety revolutionary. He was part of the Second Continental Congress and as such helped provide legislative leadership to back up George Washington in his fight against the British. Retrieved April 14, He was then chosen to lead the Continental Army. They feared the fate of the republic was still at risk, until it was solidified. Although orthodox Christians participated at every stage of the new republic, Deism influenced a majority of the Founders. He was chosen to help negotiate the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the American Revolution. John Jay , a Founding Father of the United States who served the new nation in both law and diplomacy. And those issues were never resolved: Even Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, thought that a peaceful and stable biracial society was impossible.
    [Show full text]
  • Quaker ^Hcerchants And'theslave Trade in Colonial Pennsylvania
    Quaker ^hCerchants and'theSlave Trade in Colonial Pennsylvania JL MERICAN NEGRO slavery has been the object of frequent exam- /\ ination by scholars. Its growth and development, beginning X A^ with the introduction of the first Negroes into English North America and culminating in its abolition during the Civil War, have been traced in much detail. To be sure, scholars do not always agree in their descriptions and conclusions, but certainly the broad out- lines of Negro slavery as it existed in North America are well known.1 Slavery in colonial Pennsylvania has also had its investigators. These researchers have tended to place a great deal of emphasis upon Quaker influence in the Pennsylvania antislavery movement. Friends in general and Pennsylvania Quakers in particular are credited, and it would seem rightly so, with leading the eighteenth- century antislavery crusade. It was in the Quaker colony that the first abolition society in America was founded; the roll call of im- portant colonial abolitionist pamphleteers is studded with the names of Pennsylvania Friends—William Southeby, Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, and Anthony Benezet among them.2 The rudimentary state of our knowledge of the colonial slave trade, as distinct from the institution of slavery, becomes apparent when one examines the role of the Philadelphia Quaker merchants in the Pennsylvania Negro trade. Little recognition has been accorded the fact that some Quaker merchants did participate in the Negro traffic, even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. Nor has 1 A recent study of slavery in America, which reviews the work that has been done on the problem and also introduces some valuable new insights, is Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 111., 1959).
    [Show full text]
  • The 'Philadelphia Election ^Iot 0/1742*
    The 'Philadelphia Election ^iot 0/1742* "^W "^T "TEE ARE thoroughly sensible of the Great Disadvantage \ /\/ Sir William Keith's management has been to our • • Interest/1 the Pennsylvania Proprietors wrote to James Logan, "but we hope now he is in England the People will Coole in their Zeal to his Party, so that we may get a good Assembly Chose."1 Their hope was already a reality. Keithian politics no longer had any significance; the old coalition which had gathered around the fiery and independent Governor ceased to exist almost with his departure for England in 1728. Only five of his supporters were returned to the legislature in 1729, and by the following year but three remained.2 The issues which created the controversies during the 1720's were already passe. The old leadership either died off, or gave up its positions of power, and in turn was supplanted during the next decade by a group of talented and younger men—Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Norris II, Israel Pemberton, Jr., William Allen, and James Hamilton.3 While party organization may have been more advanced in Penn- sylvania than in any other colony, it still depended upon personal relationships with control in the hands of a few wealthy families. The * This article, in somewhat different form, was read at a session devoted to early Pennsyl- vania history during the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association at Stanford University on Aug. 29, 1967. !The Proprietors to James Logan, Nov. 11, 1728, Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, VII, 111-112.
    [Show full text]
  • Morris-Shinn-Maier Collection
    Morris-Shinn-Maier collection MC.1191 Janela Harris and Jon Sweitzer-Lamme Other authors include: Daniel Lenahan, Kate Janoski, Jonathan Berke, Henry Wiencek and John Powers. Last updated on May 14, 2021. Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections Morris-Shinn-Maier collection Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................3 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................6 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................7 Scope and Contents..................................................................................................................................... 14 Administrative Information......................................................................................................................... 15 Controlled Access Headings........................................................................................................................16 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 18 Historical Papers.................................................................................................................................... 18 Individuals..............................................................................................................................................23
    [Show full text]
  • DUN DALE (Morris Estate) (Patterson Hall) Dundale Lane, .1 Mile West Of
    DUN DALE HABS No. PA-6012 (Morris Estate) (Patterson Hall) Dundale Lane, .1 mile west of County Line Road Villanova Delaware County Pennsylvania PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY National Park Service Northeast Region Philadelphia Support Office U.S. Custom House 200 Chestnut Street Philadilphia, P.A. 19106 HABS PA HISTORJC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY ..Zs-VILA I - ;# DUNDALE (Morris Estate) (Patterson Hall) HABS No. PA-6012 ' Dundale Lane, .1 miles west of County Line Road Location: Villanova Deleware County Pennsylvania USGS Norristown P.I., 7.5 Minute Quadrangle Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinates 17.470580.4932440 Present Owner: Villanova University, Villanova, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Present Occupant: Unoccupied and scheduled for restoration and renovation in 1994. Significance: DUNDALE is significant for several reasons: Built in 1890 in a late Victorian eclectic style, it is one of the few remaining large country houses (including a barn and other out buildings) from that era in Villanova--or anywhere among Philadelphia's famous "Main Line" suburbs, of which Villanova forms a part. Both the house and its original occupants, the Theodore Morris family, illustrate the lives of socially prominent Philadelphians who used great wealth, derived mainly from local industries, to create country estates between the end of the American Civil War and the Great Depression of the 1930s. DUNDALE is also significant because its designer. Addison Hutton, was among Philadelphia's most accomplished nineteenth-century architects and probably the last of its great building -- designers who had no formal schooling in the -- profession of architecture. The Quaker faith of both the architect, Hutton, and the Morris family add yet another significant dimension in that their Quaker culture influenced DUNDALE's design, as well as the tenor of life in this spacious country house.
    [Show full text]
  • To Center City: the Evolution of the Neighborhood of the Historicalsociety of Pennsylvania
    From "Frontier"to Center City: The Evolution of the Neighborhood of the HistoricalSociety of Pennsylvania THE HISToRICAL SOcIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA found its permanent home at 13th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia nearly 120 years ago. Prior to that time it had found temporary asylum in neighborhoods to the east, most in close proximity to the homes of its members, near landmarks such as the Old State House, and often within the bosom of such venerable organizations as the American Philosophical Society and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. As its collections grew, however, HSP sought ever larger quarters and, inevitably, moved westward.' Its last temporary home was the so-called Picture House on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Hospital in the 800 block of Spruce Street. Constructed in 1816-17 to exhibit Benjamin West's large painting, Christ Healing the Sick, the building was leased to the Society for ten years. The Society needed not only to renovate the building for its own purposes but was required by a city ordinance to modify the existing structure to permit the widening of the street. Research by Jeffrey A. Cohen concludes that the Picture House's Gothic facade was the work of Philadelphia carpenter Samuel Webb. Its pointed windows and crenellations might have seemed appropriate to the Gothic darkness of the West painting, but West himself characterized the building as a "misapplication of Gothic Architecture to a Place where the Refinement of Science is to be inculcated, and which, in my humble opinion ought to have been founded on those dear and self-evident Principles adopted by the Greeks." Though West went so far as to make plans for 'The early history of the Historical Soiety of Pennsylvania is summarized in J.Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, Hisiory ofPhiladelphia; 1609-1884 (2vols., Philadelphia, 1884), 2:1219-22.
    [Show full text]
  • University Micrcxilms International 300 N
    INFORMATION TO USERS This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this document, the quality of the reproduction is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help clarify markings or notations which may appear on this reproduction. 1.The sign or “target” for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is “ Missing Page(s)” . If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting through an image and duplicating adjacent pages to assure complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a round black mark, it is an indication of either blurred copy because of movement during exposure, duplicate copy, or copyrighted materials that should not have been filmed. For blurred pages, a good image o f the page can be found in the adjacent frame. If copyrighted materials were deleted, a target note will appear listing the pages in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., is part of the material being photographed, a definite method of “sectioning” the material has been followed. It is customary to begin filming at the upper left hand comer o f a large sheet and to continue from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. If necessary, sectioning is continued again-beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete.
    [Show full text]
  • Absconding Servants, Anxious Germans, and Angry Sailors
    ABSCONDING SERVANTS, ANXIOUS GERMANS, AND ANGRY SAILORS: WORKING PEOPLE AND THE MAKING OF THE PHILADELPHIA ELECTION RIOT OF 1742 Michael Bradley McCoy University ofPittsburgh fortnight before the Philadelphia Election of 1742, a weathered seaman named John Spence advised Quaker merchant Thomas Lloyd that a mob of sailors could help the Quakers defeat their political adversaries, the Proprietary Party. "In a jocular Manner," Spence told Lloyd "that if the Quakers would give him fifteen hundred acres of land, they should have the Election." After three years of bitter intra-elite division sparked by theWar forJenkins' Ear, Lloyd probably entertained the offer.Repulsed, however, by the mariner's audacity, Lloyd quickly retorted, "It was not to or nor was in.. .Spence's power help hinder" any party, it his place. Indeed, while laborers like Spence represented a growing segment of the urban population, inadequate taxable wealth meant most could not participate directly within the polity. Likely, maritime laborers represented from ten to and as much as twenty or twenty-five percent of the population, making them the single largest group of wage laborers.1 Given their mobility, wage fluctuations, and the inconsistency of employment, they PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY: A JOURNALOF MID-ATLANTIC STUDIES, VOL. 74, NO. 4, 2OO7 Copyright ? 2007 The Pennsylvania Historical Association This content downloaded from 128.118.152.206 on Mon, 2 Feb 2015 11:45:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY tax were underrepresented on the city's rolls. Because of their economic situation, "very few" mariners were "worth [the] Fifty Pounds" required for participation in Pennsylvania politics.2 Yet this year sailors would participate, and, wryly, Spence told Lloyd: "If clubs would not do.
    [Show full text]