Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Contents » Capital of the United States

Abolitionism

Few regions in the United States can claim an abolitionist heritage as rich as Philadelphia. By the time Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) launched The Liberator in 1831, the Philadelphia area’s confrontation with human bondage was nearly 150 years old. Still, Philadelphia abolitionism is often treated as a distant cousin of the epic nineteenth-century ⇒ Read More

Alien and Sedition Acts

A culmination of political battles between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists while Philadelphia served as capital of the United States, the federal Alien and Sedition Acts imposed stringent new rules governing political speech and writings, immigration rights, and non-naturalized immigrants. They also had an immediate impact on the political life of Philadelphia as they inflamed passions in ⇒ Read More

Almshouses (Poorhouses)

From the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, almshouses offered food, shelter, clothing, and medical care to the poorest and most vulnerable, often in exchange for hard labor and forfeiture of freedom. Those who entered the Philadelphia region’s almshouses, willingly or unwillingly, rarely accepted this exchange and often protested their treatment or blatantly ⇒ Read More

American Philosophical Society

Well before the Declaration of Independence, in 1743 Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) and his friend the Quaker botanist John Bartram (1699-1777) established the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia as a declaration of scientific independence from Great Britain’s scientific domination. The APS developed from a group of local intellectuals keen on expanding human knowledge to serve informally ⇒ Read More

Anatomy and Anatomy Education

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dissection and study of human corpses became the primary method for medical students to gain intimate visual and tactile knowledge of the body and prepare to perform surgery on the living. As the chief medical city in the United States during this period, Philadelphia also became the leading center ⇒ Read More

Arsenals

For much of the nation’s history Philadelphia held a preeminent position as the provider of logistical support to the U.S. Army, and federal arsenals played a considerable role in the economic life of the city. The Schuylkill Arsenal and Frankford Arsenal were, respectively, the largest manufacturers of uniforms and small-arms ammunition in the country, often ⇒ Read More

Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793

Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, published in 1799 by Philadelphia native Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), became one of the most influential works of American and Philadelphia Gothic literature. The novel recalls the yellow fever epidemic (August–October 1793), which transformed Philadelphia into a place of chaos. Such late-summer epidemics were common across North ⇒ Read More

Artisans

As skilled laborers who hand-crafted their goods on a per-customer basis, artisans played a central role in the formation of Philadelphia’s prerevolutionary economy: producing essential goods and services and providing social stability within households composed not just of immediate family but also of journeymen and apprentices. American independence brought artisans new economic opportunities as the ⇒ Read More

Athens of America

In the decades after American independence, the atmosphere of liberty in Philadelphia spawned an artistic spirit that earned this city its reputation as the Athens of America.  Here, enthusiasm for the arts grew with the same fervor and in the same houses, streets, and shops where the seeds of political freedom had been sown and ⇒ Read More

Ballet

Philadelphia has a rich ballet history that spans centuries. Although initially not hospitable to dance, the city developed into an attractive destination for international ballet dancers and teachers and eventually produced the first genuine ballerinas born in the United States, the first thoroughly American ballet troupe, and one of the most prominent of the regional ⇒ Read More

Bank of North America

Chartered May 26, 1781, by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation, this enterprise was the first national and truly commercial bank in the United States. Officially titled The President, Directors, and Company of the Bank of North America (BNA) until 1825, the bank was the first created by the national government to do ⇒ Read More

Bank of the United States (First)

Chartered in 1791 as part of the financial and economic reform plans of Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), the first secretary of the Treasury, the first Bank of the United States played an instrumental role in establishing the nation’s credit. Based in Philadelphia, then the national capital, the bank drew many principal investors from the region and ⇒ Read More

Banking

Greater Philadelphia’s banking roots go deeper than those of any region in the country. Philadelphia was the home of the first commercial bank (1782), the first national bank (1791), the first savings bank (1816), and the first savings and loan association (1831). Until the mid-1980s, celebrated local institutions such as First Pennsylvania, Girard, and Provident ⇒ Read More

Barbershops and Barbers

Throughout much of its modern American history, barbering has been derided as “servile” work, unfit for native-born, white citizens. As such, the profession has been dominated by marginalized groups. In the Philadelphia region, African Americans owned and operated the majority of barber shops during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since then, waves of immigrant ⇒ Read More

Bartram’s Garden

Located on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, Bartram’s Garden, considered the oldest surviving botanic garden in North America, has served as a monument to the storied history of Philadelphia’s botanical endeavors and to the genius of John Bartram (1699–1777) and his descendants. Established as a family farm and garden by John Bartram in ⇒ Read More

Birch’s Views of Philadelphia

The City of Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania North America; as it appeared in the Year 1800 is a masterpiece of American copperplate engraving and the first book of views to be entirely produced and published in the United States. Comprising twenty-seven scenes or “views” of Philadelphia’s buildings and streetscapes, the book aimed to ⇒ Read More

Board of Health (Philadelphia)

Philadelphia suffered numerous outbreaks of epidemic disease throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it was not until 1794, in the wake of the disastrous 1793 yellow fever outbreak, that a group of concerned citizens founded the Board of Health, independent of the city’s control. In the nineteenth century, the city supported the board with ⇒ Read More

Boarding and Lodging Houses

Distinguished by its ubiquitous row houses and high rates of home ownership, Philadelphia has been long been known as a “city of homes.” But for much of its history, it also has been a city of boardinghouses. “Boarding” and “lodging” houses did not enter the local lexicon until the late eighteenth century, but the practice ⇒ Read More

Book Publishing and Publishers

Between 1750 and 1800, Philadelphia became the center for book printing and publishing in the United States, surpassing New York and Boston. Although Philadelphia lost that primacy in the nineteenth century, firms specializing in medical and religious publishing continued to do well. By the mid to late twentieth century, however, as the publishing industry consolidated, ⇒ Read More

Botany

Beginning in the eighteenth century with the botanical enthusiasts who explored the world around them as part of a larger interest in natural history, botany became an integral part of the Philadelphia region’s national and international reputation. It brought scholars and enthusiasts from across the globe to study and explore Philadelphia’s collections and gardens, influenced ⇒ Read More

Brickmaking and Brickmakers

The city of Philadelphia was built with bricks, giving it an appearance many neighborhoods retained into the twenty-first century. An abundance of local clay allowed brickmaking to flourish and bricks to become the one of the most important building materials in the region. Because it could be accomplished with just a few rudimentary tools, brickmaking ⇒ Read More

Capital of the United States (Selection of Philadelphia)

As the national capital from 1790 to 1800, Philadelphia was the seat of the federal government for a short but crucial time in the new nation’s history. How and why Congress selected Philadelphia as the temporary Unites States capital reflects the essential debates of the era, particularly the balance of power between North and South. ⇒ Read More

Cartoons and Cartoonists

American cartooning began in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), who introduced cartoons to North America, used images to galvanize viewers to action on the issues of their day. As the political, economic, and cultural capital of the early United States, Philadelphia became a center for producing political cartoons and humorous caricatures. Although New York eventually supplanted ⇒ Read More

Cemeteries

Cemeteries have been integral features of the Philadelphia-area landscape since the earliest European settlements of the mid-1600s. Over the centuries, and in tandem with developments such as epidemics, immigration, industrialization, war, and suburbanization, the region’s cemeteries matured from small, private grave sites, potter’s fields, and church burial yards to rural cemeteries, national cemeteries, and memorial ⇒ Read More

Center City

Forming a core of civic, commercial, and residential life since Philadelphia’s seventeenth-century founding, Center City has been a continually evolving experiment in urban living and management. The roughly rectangular area of about 2.3 square miles between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, from Vine Street to South Street, occupies the territory of the original 1682 city ⇒ Read More

China Trade

First pursued by the city’s merchants after the American Revolution, the China trade linked Philadelphians to the rest of the world through commerce. Alongside merchants in New York, Boston, and Salem, Philadelphians were pioneers in the trade, risking their ships and capital in new long-distance sailing routes that crisscrossed the globe to generate the silver ⇒ Read More

Civil Defense

Because of Greater Philadelphia’s position as a political, cultural, and economic hub, the region’s residents have often found their daily lives deeply affected by times of national crisis. Civil defense, generally defined as local voluntary programs designed to protect civilian life and property during times of conflict, has taken many forms: militia, home defense, civilian defense, ⇒ Read More

Classical Music

Classical music stands apart from vernacular (or “folk” music) and from “popular” music (in the form of simplified commercial entertainment) in its complexity of structure and high level of performance requirements. Philadelphia established a major position in American classical composition and performance in the early nineteenth century, and maintained that position through its premier professional ⇒ Read More

Coffeehouses

Philadelphia’s first coffeehouse opened in 1703, and by mid-century half a dozen operated within the city limits. Their purpose, however, changed in important ways as the eighteenth century progressed. Early coffeehouses primarily served the needs of traders and mariners, acting as crucial centers of commerce. In the decades following the American Revolution, however, some coffeehouse ⇒ Read More

College of Physicians of Philadelphia

One of the oldest professional medical societies in the United States, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia was founded in 1787 “to advance the science of medicine and to thereby lessen human misery.” At the time, Philadelphia, home to the first general hospital and medical college, was the center of American medicine. The College of ⇒ Read More

Cordwainers Trial of 1806

Shoemaking, one of the most lucrative trades in Philadelphia during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, also proved to be one of the most contentious. Dissension within the trade worsened in the last decade of the eighteenth century and climaxed with the Philadelphia Cordwainers (shoemakers) Trial of 1806. This trial proved to be not only ⇒ Read More

Crime

Crime is inextricably linked to Philadelphia’s shifting economic fortunes. Its history reflects the region’s status as a port and point of entry for goods, immigrants, and migrants, where concentrations of both wealth and poverty developed in a center of American commerce and industry.  As a type of economic activity, forms of crime changed dramatically as ⇒ Read More

Dancing Assembly

Established in the winter of 1748-49, the Dancing Assembly of Philadelphia— also known as “The Assembly” or “The Assemblies”— originated as an occasion for elite men and women to gather for social dancing in carefully matched pairs. Modeled after the English “assembly,” a type of formal social gathering most famously held in Bath and London, ⇒ Read More

Delaware County, Pennsylvania

Carved out of Chester County in 1789 (with the remainder of that county lying to its southwest), Delaware County long served as a distinct but close neighbor to the City of Philadelphia. Linked to the Philadelphia port from the eighteenth century onward, the eastern part of the county, including Chester and its neighboring municipalities along ⇒ Read More

Democratic-Republican Societies

In the 1790s the Democratic-Republican Societies emerged and helped to establish the precedent in the United States for political organization and government opposition at the local and regional level. In April 1793 in Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States, Peter Muhlenberg  (1746-1807) and Michael Leib (1760-1822) founded the first of these societies, the ⇒ Read More

Dentistry and Dentists

As dentistry slowly emerged as a profession in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, innovative dentists in Philadelphia helped to shape dental care, procedures, and tools. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, dental colleges, journals, and societies contributed to the expansion of dental training and practice, which gradually but increasingly became accessible to women and people of ⇒ Read More

Dispensaries

Free clinics known as dispensaries served the “working poor” of European, British, and American cities from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Paid or volunteer physicians saw patients on site or at their homes in the dispensary’s district, caring for both minor ailments and more serious diseases. The Philadelphia Dispensary for the Medical Relief ⇒ Read More

Dogs

For as long as people have inhabited Philadelphia and the surrounding area, dogs probably have been present, too. As the first domesticated animal, dogs possess a long, complicated past with humans, likely dating back between fifteen thousand and thirty thousand years. Domesticated canids accompanied human migrants to the Americas around 10,000 to 12,000 BCE. Over ⇒ Read More

Doylestown, Pennsylvania

Located a mile north of the Routes 611-202 convergence, thirty-five miles north of Center City Philadelphia, Doylestown has served as the government center of Bucks County for over two centuries. Once a small village surrounded by farms, Doylestown developed into a bustling borough with a thriving downtown, a university, two museums, and commuter rail that ⇒ Read More

Dutch (The) and The Netherlands

From seventeenth-century Dutch settlements in the Delaware Valley to twenty-first century business connections, the greater Philadelphia area has had longstanding and meaningful ties with the Netherlands. Not to be confused with the more numerous Pennsylvania Dutch—who are in fact German, or Deutsch, speakers—Nederlanders helped shape Philadelphia through migration and cultural, social, and economic exchange. The ⇒ Read More

Educational Reform

Since the early nineteenth century, several reform efforts have aimed to improve Philadelphia-area public schools. While the historical context and the individual actors changed over time, a firm belief that basic education for all could foster social equality animated reform in every era. Of course, race- and class-based inequality did not disappear, but educational reform ⇒ Read More

Entomology (Study of Insects)

Philadelphia and its nearby vicinities became important sites for entomological study by the nineteenth century due to the presence of the Academy of Natural Sciences (established in 1812) and the American Entomological Society (1859). Entomological writing and illustration also flourished in this center for book production. Over time, entomologists’ interest in insects shifted from the ⇒ Read More

Fairmount Park Houses

From the mid-eighteenth century, prominent Philadelphians looking for a rural, healthy, scenic environment built small mansions, or villas, along the Schuylkill River, one of two major waterways that define Philadelphia’s geography. In the early nineteenth century, the city began to acquire properties along the Schuylkill, including these villa houses. These purchases culminated in the 1855 ⇒ Read More

Fashion

Fashion played an important role in Philadelphia’s development as a center for retail and manufacturing. Philadelphians imported and promoted the latest European styles while producing garments and accessories of comparable style and quality. Area retailers played a pivotal part in fostering consumer culture in the nineteenth century and set industry standards for the nation. Despite ⇒ Read More

Fever 1793 (Novel)

Published in 2000, Fever 1793 is a young adult novel that tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named Mattie Cook, who fights to survive the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia. The historical novel by Laurie Halse Anderson (b. 1961) depicts 1793 America through the eyes of Mattie, who, when the fever hits ⇒ Read More

Forts and Fortifications

Constructed from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century, defensive fortifications along the lower Delaware River and bay guarded the region during times of international and sectional upheaval. As important structures with such long histories, forts help to explain the political, economic, and social history of the Greater Philadelphia region. The earliest fortifications in the lower ⇒ Read More

Free Black Communities

In the nineteenth century, Philadelphia and the region surrounding it came to contain free black communities that by most measures were the most vibrant, dynamic, and influential in the United States. Free African Americans relied on each other to confront the persistent power of slavery and white supremacy in Philadelphia and the region. At the ⇒ Read More

Freemasonry

Freemasonry, one of the oldest fraternal societies in the world, arrived in America with migrants from England to Philadelphia, Boston, and other places in the British colonies. The fraternity in the Philadelphia area became one of the strongest of all American grand lodges and created one of the finest examples of Masonic architecture in the ⇒ Read More

French Revolution

The French Revolution of 1789 created political, social, and financial instability throughout Europe, prompting many terrified French aristocrats, businessmen, and intellectuals to flee to the United States. Philadelphia, with its cosmopolitan atmosphere, accessible port, and thriving commerce, attracted many of the French émigrés. Most settled along the Delaware River in the Mulberry district of Philadelphia ⇒ Read More

Fries Rebellion

In 1798, while Philadelphia served as capital of the United States, a new federal tax and the Alien and Sedition Acts sparked resistance in rural Bucks, Montgomery, and Northampton Counties of Pennsylvania. The reputed ringleader John Fries (1750-1818) was twice convicted of treason but received a presidential pardon. Beyond local disruption, the rebellion played a ⇒ Read More

Fugitives From Slavery

Immediately after passing the nation’s first gradual abolition law in 1780, Pennsylvania became a haven for fugitive slaves from neighboring states, putting the state at odds with slaveholders throughout the South and causing tension with Maryland in particular. Though New Jersey also attracted escaping slaves, and whites in both states had mixed reactions to the ⇒ Read More

Furnituremaking

From the founding of Philadelphia in 1682 until the late 1800s, a vibrant community of cabinetmakers plied their skills alongside specialists in carving, chair making, and turning. Others who worked with wood included carpenters, coopers, shipwrights, and wheelwrights. These tradesmen were as diverse as the city itself, and their complex webs of language, ethnicity, religious ⇒ Read More

Grand Federal Procession

Three hours long and a mile-and-a-half in length, the Grand Federal Procession was an ambitious act of political street theater, scripted by federalist supporters of the newly ratified U.S. Constitution and performed in the streets of Philadelphia on the Fourth of July 1788. From its commencement at Third and South Streets to its conclusion on ⇒ Read More

Grand Juries

The grand jury, enshrined in common law and inscribed in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has represented a force for citizen participation in the judicial process as well as for government power. The grand jury has the power to indict in felony cases and the broad right to investigate crimes. Although Delaware, Pennsylvania, ⇒ Read More

Hail, Columbia

“Hail, Columbia,” written in Philadelphia in the closing years of the eighteenth century, became a popular patriotic song in early America and served for many years as the unofficial national anthem. Bands began to play it in honor of the vice president of the United States in the 1830s, and later it became the official ⇒ Read More

Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave revolt in the history of the modern world, caused large numbers of both blacks and whites to flee the Caribbean, with many relocating to the United States. In 1793 Philadelphia received hundreds of these refugees, including white slaveholders and their black slaves. Foreign policy decisions also were made ⇒ Read More

Herpetology (Study of Amphibians and Reptiles)

Over the course of three hundred years, urbanization and habitat loss in the Philadelphia region threatened amphibians and reptiles that once fostered rich scientific discussions. Nevertheless, pioneering herpetologists influenced medical, paleontological, and ecological studies of these creatures in North America. Beginning in the eighteenth century, naturalists on both sides of the Atlantic became entranced with ⇒ Read More

Hinterlands

Since its founding, Philadelphia has acted as a commercial hub for the surrounding region, its hinterlands. Although New Jersey and Delaware had European settlers before Philadelphia’s establishment in 1682, Pennsylvania and its founding city quickly became the focus of economic activity in the region extending both east and west of the Delaware River. With an advantageous ⇒ Read More

Historic Preservation

Through more than three centuries of building and rebuilding settlements, towns, and cities, the region centered on Philadelphia and spanning southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and northern Delaware became a living museum of American architectural history. The fate of structures ranging from log cabins and colonial mansions to courthouses, warehouses, and the famed Independence Hall often ⇒ Read More

Historical Societies

Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Americans started establishing historical societies to collect and preserve historical materials. In 1815, Philadelphia became the fourth U.S. city to host a historical society, the American Philosophical Society’s Historical and Literary Committee. The city’s religious tolerance and central location made it a natural location for religious and ethnic societies. ⇒ Read More

Home Remedies

Although Philadelphia has been a premier city for medical innovation since the mid-eighteenth century, the diverse peoples of the region also have used home remedies to heal themselves. Home remedies preserve traditional domestic healthcare practices, and they have persisted into the twenty-first century as part of alternative medicine and mainstream scientific therapies. Medical recipes often ⇒ Read More

Immigration (1790-1860)

The revival of immigration to Philadelphia and its surrounding region in the early nineteenth century provided one of the most powerful elements in reshaping the city’s society. After a decline in immigration during the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, the growing industrialization of the Philadelphia region began to attract streams of ⇒ Read More

Infectious Diseases and Epidemics

Despite Philadelphia’s prominence, throughout its history, as a center for medical education and care, the region has experienced numerous epidemics of infectious disease. British America’s largest city in the eighteenth century, Philadelphia suffered dreadful outbreaks of smallpox and yellow fever, while the nineteenth century brought an exotic new disease—cholera—that killed hundreds. By the early twentieth ⇒ Read More

Insurance

Insurance is sometimes called an “invisible” element of commerce, but in Philadelphia, it has never been far from view. From the eighteenth century through the twenty-first, Philadelphia’s leadership in the field of insurance has enhanced the city’s preeminence in many types of commercial and communal endeavor. Insurance in Philadelphia, over the years, has meant everything ⇒ Read More

Irish (The) and Ireland

Contacts between the Philadelphia region and Ireland began in the late seventeenth century, shortly after the creation of Penn’s colony. Long a part of the urban fabric of Philadelphia, Irish Catholics endured nativist assaults of the Bible Riots of 1844 and did not see one of their own become mayor until James H. J. Tate, ⇒ Read More

Iron Production

Long before western Pennsylvania dominated the American iron and steel industries, southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey became the epicenter of colonial iron production. In a little over forty years beginning in 1716, Pennsylvania ironmasters erected nearly fifty furnaces and forges for producing iron stock and goods, and by 1840 the region’s national preeminence had ⇒ Read More

Law and Lawyers

From its earliest days as an English colony, Pennsylvania needed lawyers to run the government, settle disputes, and keep the peace. As Philadelphia became a large city and important commercial, insurance, banking, and shipping center on the eve of the American Revolution, its lawyers were crucial to every civic endeavor, including the making of a ⇒ Read More

Lazaretto

Situated roughly ten miles south of Philadelphia, in Essington, on the west bank of the Delaware River, the Lazaretto is considered to be the oldest and last surviving quarantine station in the United States. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the Lazaretto was the first stop for immigrants and merchants on incoming ships whose passengers ⇒ Read More

Library Company of Philadelphia

With a handful of like-minded associates, the twenty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) formed a self-improvement club in 1727. By reading, conversing, and improving their minds, members of the Junto believed they would also improve their circumstances, their social position, and their community. Four years later, much the same group institutionalized edification and self-improvement by establishing the ⇒ Read More

Literary Societies

Philadelphia’s literary societies typically have combined the social with the intellectual and artistic, with ongoing shifts in the balance between the two. As descendants succeeded the founding members, they prized the relationships and traditions handed down over generations, perhaps more than the original literary pretext of the organization. Philadelphia has often been described as a ⇒ Read More

Lotteries

Lotteries have a long and controversial history in the Philadelphia region. Since the early eighteenth century, random drawings of numbers have funded charities and clubs, paid for roads and schools, settled estates, distributed land, and promoted various private and state-run initiatives. Lotteries have drawn multitudes of customers seeking cash and other prizes, but over three ⇒ Read More

Mansions

Since the earliest European settlement in the seventeenth century, but especially from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, large houses constructed by elites in the Philadelphia region provided agreeable places to live that demonstrated social status. As architectural fashion and geographic distribution changed, mansions served as conspicuous symbols for elite Philadelphians and were a salient ⇒ Read More

Maps and Mapmaking

As the country’s largest city, and for a time capital of the new nation, Philadelphia was well situated to chart the young republic’s changing geography. Using its capacity to attract all the manufacturing elements necessary for successful publishing—printers binders, colorists, engravers and others—Philadelphia became the home of the nation’s first full-time geographical publisher and soon ⇒ Read More

Market Street

Market Street, one of Philadelphia’s primary east-west thoroughfares, originated in the 1682 city plan devised by William Penn (1644-1718) and Thomas Holme (1624-95) as High Street, one hundred feet wide and located at the longitudinal center of the city. Penn’s knowledge of plague and a devastating conflagration in 1660s London prompted the width of the ⇒ Read More

Militia

As the social and political center of colonial Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and the surrounding region served as a microcosm for the complex and often convoluted history of the colonial and early national militia. The role of Philadelphia militia also illustrates the nature of militia units during the American Revolutionary War. The first militia in the region ⇒ Read More

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

The early Europeans who settled in what would become Montgomery County in the eighteenth century tended prosperous farms, forges, and mills. They depended on the Philadelphia market to sell their products and on its port to connect them to the wider colonial world. Subsequent generations built a dense transportation network that linked county laborers, suppliers, ⇒ Read More

Mother Bethel AME Church:
Congregation and Community

Established in the crucible of the American revolutionary era, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is recognized as the genesis of black religious organizing spirit. The church is mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, formed in 1816. Located at Sixth and Lombard Streets in Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood, the church sits on the ⇒ Read More

Mount Holly Township, New Jersey

Mount Holly, New Jersey, established by Quakers in 1677 and known variously in its early history as Northampton and Bridgetown, became the county seat for Burlington County through an act of legislation in 1793. Three years later the Burlington County Court House, similar in style to Philadelphia’s Congress Hall, opened to serve as the official ⇒ Read More

Mummies

Philadelphia’s fascination with Egyptian mummies began modestly, but by the end of the nineteenth century the city held some of the largest collections of mummies in the United States. Although some mummies had only a transient stay in Philadelphia or were lost to the ravages of time, many remained in museums to teach later generations ⇒ Read More

Nativism

While Philadelphia has not been alone in experiencing sharp undercurrents of nativism, virulent rhetoric and periodic waves of violence aimed at the foreign-born have often wracked the city. Clashes between nativists and immigrants between the 1720s and the 1920s helped to set the boundaries of the city as well as define the limits of American ⇒ Read More

New Year’s Traditions

New Year’s celebrations in the Philadelphia region have often included parties, formal wear, fireworks, and parades as part of a two-day, secular celebration from December 31 to January 1. The changing of a calendar year from one to the next has long been cause for commemoration and reflection, and the city’s diverse communities have shaped ⇒ Read More

Norristown, Pennsylvania

Founded in 1784 as the county seat of Montgomery County, Norristown sits on three hills that slope down to the Schuylkill River fifteen miles northwest of Center City Philadelphia. Its riverfront location and abundant waterpower helped the town prosper throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth. In the second half of the twentieth ⇒ Read More

Nursing

The history of nursing in the Philadelphia area is one of long and storied traditions. Men and women have often nursed their sick families and friends at home, which for millennia represented the best, safest, and most comforting site for treatment and care. Bringing a stranger into that home to provide nursing care was a ⇒ Read More

Opera and Opera Houses

Opera has played an important role in Philadelphia arts and entertainment since the mid-eighteenth century. The city has long been a key center for opera and holds several important distinctions in opera history, including being the site of the first serious opera performances in America, birthplace of the first major American opera composer, and home ⇒ Read More

Pacific World (Connections and Impact)

Historians have often situated Philadelphia in three geographic contexts: on the western edge of the “Atlantic World” during the colonial era, as an eastern metropole for hinterlands and the receding frontier to the west, and in the mid-Atlantic region between the North and South of the United States. These geographic frames all make sense, given ⇒ Read More

Painters and Painting

Philadelphia has a long, distinguished history as a center of American painting. In addition to the work of individuals and artistic family dynasties, the history of Philadelphia painters is linked with the city’s art schools, particularly the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), founded in 1805. Working locally and abroad, Philadelphia painters have connected ⇒ Read More

Paper and Papermaking

Home to the first paper mill in the British American colonies, Philadelphia was the nation’s primary papermaking center through the early nineteenth century. The region lost its national preeminence in papermaking in the late nineteenth century, but it continued to host important makers of paper and paper products. Skilled papermakers, including William Rittenhouse (1644–1708), a ⇒ Read More

Peale Family of Painters

For over 125 years, the family headed by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) documented Philadelphia’s leading citizens and created paintings to decorate their homes. The Peales’ involvement in the arts enriched the cultural landscape of Philadelphia, and their work as naturalists and museum entrepreneurs advanced the causes of art, science, and science education in the United ⇒ Read More

Peale’s Philadelphia Museum

Inspired by eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideals celebrating humankind’s capacity to learn and use new information, the artist Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) conceived his Philadelphia Museum. In it, Peale intended the works of man and nature to coexist for the edification of all. The Philadelphia Museum, Peale said, served “to instruct the mind and sow the seeds ⇒ Read More

Pennsylvania Prison Society

Founded in 1787 as the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, the Pennsylvania Prison Society quickly became a leading advocate for the humane and salutary treatment of the incarcerated. From the restructuring of the Walnut Street Jail in the eighteenth century, to the construction and oversight of the Eastern State Penitentiary in ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia (Warship)

Inspired by patriotic fervor during the Quasi-War with France, the people of Philadelphia raised money in one week during June 1798 to build the USS Philadelphia to help increase American naval power to protect commerce. Completed in 1799, the Philadelphia served in both the West Indies and the Mediterranean Sea, where it was captured in ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia and Its People in Maps:
The 1790s

Philadelphia was the premier urban city in North America during the Early National era, a city so admired that people nicknamed it the “Athens of America.” Between 1790 and 1800, it was the official political capital of the United States.  It served as a major commercial hub of the nascent nation and became its financial ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Contributionship

As North America’s longest continuously operating fire insurance company, The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire (The Contributionship) affected the physical and economic development of Philadelphia and the region while simultaneously establishing modern insurance underwriting standards. Through its insurance operations, The Contributionship promoted fire safety, lent money for home mortgages, ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Lawyer

The term Philadelphia lawyer originated in the eighteenth century as a description of members of the Philadelphia bar, then widely considered the best trained in the American colonies and exceptionally skilled in the law and rhetoric. By the twentieth century the term had taken on a less flattering secondary meaning, to denote a clever attorney ⇒ Read More

Pirates

Philadelphia, like many cities throughout the Atlantic world, encountered a new threat in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries from pirates who raided the numerous merchant vessels in the region. Several historians have labeled this era as the golden age of piracy. Pirates also remained active after 1730, using the city as a staging ⇒ Read More

Plays of Susanna Rowson

In the three years in the 1790s that Susanna Rowson (1762-1824) was a presence on the Philadelphia stage as a writer and performer, her tireless promotion of the theater helped establish its centrality to the city’s arts community. Rowson came to prominence as a writer for Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, published in 1791 ⇒ Read More

Poetry and Poets

Philadelphia boasts a rich history of poetry—poetry that describes intimate life experiences as well as an evolving history of immigration and colonization, urban growth and decline. Indeed, from the colonial era to the twenty-first century, poetry often stood at the center of civic life, fully engaged with the public sphere. The poetry of Philadelphia, reflecting ⇒ Read More

Police Department (Philadelphia)

Created by state law in 1854 to maintain public order, prevent riots, and apprehend criminals, the Philadelphia Police Department operated for its first hundred years under direct control of politicians and served the reigning party’s interests by collecting graft as well as apprehending vagrants and solving crimes. During the twentieth century, especially in the latter ⇒ Read More

Political Parties (Origins, 1790s)

Philadelphia, long considered the “cradle of liberty” in America, was also the “cradle of political parties” that emerged in American politics during the 1790s, when the city was also the fledgling nation’s capital. A decade that began with the unanimously-chosen George Washington (1732-99) as the first President of the United States ended with partisan rancor, ⇒ Read More

Poverty

Urban areas in the United States have always attracted destitute persons, including immigrants and internal migrants fleeing even worse poverty and harsher conditions elsewhere. Philadelphia and its environs were no exception, having had a reputation as “the best poor man’s country” reaching as far back as the city’s founding in 1682. Despite the area’s vibrant ⇒ Read More

Presidents of the United States (Presence in Region)

Presidents of the United States, seeing Philadelphia as the city most connected to American independence, often have turned to the city and region to campaign, advance their agendas, and commemorate the past. In the city where the nation’s first two presidents established the executive branch of government, presidential legacies have spurred commemoration as well as ⇒ Read More

Printing and Publishing

From the late seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century, Philadelphia’s printing and publishing industry was a central component of the city’s evolution from “Green Country Town” to “Cradle of Liberty” to “Workshop of the World.” Growing their operations from small do-it-all shops into large fully mechanized publishing houses, Philadelphia’s printers and publishers capitalized on the ⇒ Read More

Prisons and Jails

In the late 1700s, on the heels of the American Revolution, Philadelphia emerged as a national and international leader in prison reform and the transformation of criminal justice practices. More than any other community in early America, Philadelphia invested heavily in the intellectual and physical reconstruction of penal philosophies, and the region’s jails and prisons ⇒ Read More

Private (Independent) Schools

The private or independent schools in the Greater Philadelphia area came about mainly to satisfy a need felt by wealthy, white families to educate their children in a cultural and intellectual environment that would prepare them for the responsibilities befitting their gender, race, and class status. Most have existed for at least a century. Although ⇒ Read More

Privateering

As one of the largest British ports in North America, during the eighteenth century Philadelphia held a prominent place in privateering, the practice of privately financed warships attacking enemy shipping during wartime. These vessels, either converted merchant vessels or purpose-built commerce raiders, were often investments of wealthy or enterprising merchants. In order to operate legally, ⇒ Read More

Public Health

From the moment Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans came together in the Delaware Valley, they confronted a host of health threats. Philadelphia’s earliest public health efforts reflected the lack of scientific understanding of infectious diseases, and usually began only after an outbreak commenced. After the terrible 1793 yellow fever epidemic, Philadelphia’s leaders founded a permanent ⇒ Read More

Public Parks (Philadelphia)

Philadelphia boasts the oldest and one of the largest urban park systems in the United States, comprising more than one hundred parks encompassing some ten thousand acres. With origins in William Penn’s innovative city plan, Philadelphia’s public green spaces range in size and type from small neighborhood squares to extensive watershed and estuary parks along ⇒ Read More

Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans

The centuries-long relationship between the Philadelphia region and Puerto Rico unfolded in four interrelated areas: economic links, political channels, personal networks, and cultural exchange. Several dynamics shaped those connections over time. Colonialism, first under Spain and later the United States, set the broad context for trade relations and government policies. Individual reactions to those policies ⇒ Read More

Quasi-War

Philadelphia, as capital of the United States during the 1790s, played a central role in the conflict called the Quasi-War, an undeclared war, between the United States and France during the years 1798 to 1800. Philadelphia became a hotbed of public displays for and against the Federalists’ response to this conflict and served as a ⇒ Read More

Red City (The)

Written by Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) and published in 1908, The Red City: A Historical Novel of the Second Administration of President Washington is a historical romance, a genre whose plot typically consists of a quest, followed by trials, and ending in marriage. Mitchell presents a view of Philadelphia in the 1790s as politically divided ⇒ Read More

Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Much as New England was shaped by its Puritan heritage, the history of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley intertwined heavily with the Religious Society of Friends. Philadelphia gained one of its nicknames, “The Quaker City,” from its founding and settlement by the Friends, colloquially known as Quakers, a historically Christian religious sect that emerged during ⇒ Read More

Restaurants

From colonial-era taverns to the celebrity chef establishments of the early twenty-first century, Greater Philadelphia’s restaurants illuminated the region’s socioeconomic, cultural, and culinary trends while also providing sustenance for millions, employing thousands, and in some cases emerging as historic and nostalgic treasures. Taverns and public houses (“pubs”) represented the area’s earliest food-serving establishments; many operated ⇒ Read More

Roman Catholic Parishes

Parishes stand at the center of Roman Catholic religious life. Since the arrival of Catholicism in the Philadelphia region in the early eighteenth century, parishes have shaped Catholics’ sense of communal identity by functioning as both the administrative unit of a diocese and the primary site of Catholic worship. Developing into expansive complexes that often ⇒ Read More

Saint Patrick’s Day

In March, Philadelphians of many backgrounds join together to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, the city’s Irish citizens, and their heritage. Celebrated in Philadelphia since 1771, the holiday began as a Catholic holy day and evolved into a rambunctious affair marked throughout the region by parades, music, dancing, drinking, and wearing kelly-green clothing to symbolize the ⇒ Read More

Scientific Societies

Since the eighteenth century, Philadelphia-area scientific societies have promoted scholarship and innovation, increased access to scientific knowledge and played an important role in the professionalization of various disciplines. Longstanding institutions, including the American Philosophical Society (1743), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824), have garnered national and international accolades, while many ⇒ Read More

Shoemakers and Shoemaking

One of Philadelphia’s oldest occupations, shoemaking grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become one of the city’s leading industries. During that period shoemakers in Philadelphia also became some of the leading figures in the city’s, and the nation’s, burgeoning labor movement. The methods and institutions that these leaders used throughout the nineteenth century ⇒ Read More

Slavery and the Slave Trade

Slavery and the slave trade were central to the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Philadelphia as the region economically benefited from the institution and dealt with tensions created by slave trading, slave holding, and abolitionism. Early Philadelphia, an Atlantic trading hub, became both a focal point for the slave trade and a community of enslaved ⇒ Read More

Smith’s and Windmill Islands

Once a prominent feature of the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden, Smith’s and Windmill Islands were shifting signifiers of the recreational, commercial, and financial development of the region. Originally one island, then segmented by a canal in 1838, the islands attracted early but unsuccessful proposals for bridges between Camden and Philadelphia. Although they served ⇒ Read More

Smoking and Smoking Regulations

The origins of smoking tobacco in the Philadelphia region can be traced to the era before European colonization and evolved from pipes and cigars to the commercialization of cigarettes beginning in the late nineteenth century. Philadelphia-area farmers grew tobacco, local manufacturers produced cigars and cigarettes, and the N.W. Ayer advertising agency helped Camel cigarettes become ⇒ Read More

Social Dancing

Dancing has been popular in Philadelphia since the city was founded, in spite of religious opposition, especially from Quakers. Far from succumbing to religious criticism, social dancing gained in importance as a way for socially ambitious Philadelphians to demonstrate their gentility.  For most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, well-to-do families gathered for formal balls ⇒ Read More

Society Hill

Society Hill is one of Philadelphia’s oldest neighborhoods, with more buildings surviving from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than any other in the country. Usually defined by the boundaries of Walnut, Lombard, Front and Eighth Streets, this area south of Independence National Historic Park evolved over the centuries as a diverse, complex residential and commercial ⇒ Read More

Spanish-American Revolutions

As a port with longstanding commercial, cultural, and political connections with Spanish America, Philadelphia played a significant role in the era of Spanish-American revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The City of Brotherly Love welcomed individuals escaping Spanish domination and helped to support their ideas about liberty, equality and independence.   Philadelphia’s ⇒ Read More

Staircase Group (The)

After Charles Willson Peale’s The Staircase Group emerged from a private collection in the mid-twentieth century, the Philadelphia Museum of Art placed the compelling trompe l’oeil (deceive the eye) double portrait on display and it became widely reproduced in American popular and art historical literature. Its contemporary popularity echoed the popularity it enjoyed at Peale’s ⇒ Read More

Street Vendors

From the colonial period to the present, street vendors have been integral yet contentious features of Greater Philadelphia’s economic landscape. Providing massive numbers of customers with food, clothing, and other goods while allowing many working people an occupational foothold in the region, vending also sparked controversies regarding taxes, regulation, public health, and uses of space. ⇒ Read More

Tobacco

Growing, trading in, and manufacturing tobacco were important components of the economy and society of the Delaware Valley for centuries. Early residents raised tobacco for personal use and as a trade commodity, but in most of the region it fell out of favor by the late eighteenth century. The exception was Southeast Pennsylvania, where tobacco ⇒ Read More

Treaty Negotiations with Native Americans

From the arrival of Europeans in the seventeenth century through the era of the early republic, treaties were an important tool in diplomacy between native nations and colonial Pennsylvania and later the nascent federal government. Treaties followed indigenous modes of diplomacy, into which colonists introduced, and imposed, the signing of treaty documents. However, treaty councils ⇒ Read More

Trees

Trees have been culturally, environmentally, and symbolically significant to the Philadelphia region since the city’s founding. They were believed to improve public health, they beautified and refined city streets, parks, and other green spaces, and several were revered as living memorials to past historical events. Trees also faced their fair share of destruction during the ⇒ Read More

Turnpikes

From their earliest introduction in Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century to their modern incarnations as high-speed highways, turnpikes have expanded Philadelphia’s reach to points west and linked the region with other commercial centers and suburbs of the eastern seaboard. Beginning with the first turnpike in the United States, a sixty-two-mile paved toll road from ⇒ Read More

U.S. Congress (1790-1800)

During the 1790s, while Philadelphia served as the nation’s temporary capital, the U.S. Congress met problems and threats to the nation that tested the endurance of the Constitution and the republic it framed. Domestic issues of finance, taxation, sectionalism, Indian affairs, and slavery divided the delegates into bitter political camps, and international relations fomented disagreements ⇒ Read More

U.S. Presidency (1790-1800)

Although the federal government under the U.S. Constitution went into operation in New York City in April 1789, the capital moved to Philadelphia late in 1790 and remained until 1800. This decade encompassed formative years for the U.S. presidency, including nearly seven years of the administration of George Washington (1732-99) and more than three years ⇒ Read More

United States Mint (Philadelphia)

Coins have been minted in Philadelphia as long as the federal government has produced legal tender coins. First authorized by Congress in 1792, the U.S. Mint’s Philadelphia facility (commonly known as the Philadelphia mint) in the early twenty-first century remained the nation’s largest producer of coins. Its history has been intertwined with the complicated history ⇒ Read More

Vagrancy

Vagrancy, generally defined as the act of continuous geographical movement by the poor, often has been interpreted to signify idleness, unemployment, and homelessness. Since the colonial era, it has been a driving social concern in the Mid-Atlantic region, where urban centers, including Philadelphia, attracted poor migrants seeking new economic prospects. Laws created to aid them ⇒ Read More

Veterans and Veterans’ Organizations

Military veterans began organizing in the Philadelphia area during the waning days of the Revolutionary War. As the Continental Army disbanded, its veterans often met at City Tavern and the first general meeting of America’s first veterans’ organization, the General Society of the Cincinnati, occurred there on May 4, 1784. Just as regularly, however, veterans ⇒ Read More

West Chester, Pennsylvania

Boosted by its strategic location some twenty-five miles from Philadelphia, West Chester, Pennsylvania, grew and prospered for most of its history as the county seat of Chester County. Pressured by mid-twentieth-century suburbanization, the borough lost its commercial and residential dominance and even its role as county seat somewhat diminished as the growth of the surrounding ⇒ Read More

Whiskey Rebellion Trials

The first two convictions of Americans for federal treason in United States history occurred in Philadelphia in the aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising against the federal excise tax on whiskey that took place primarily in western Pennsylvania in 1791-94. Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital during this period and therefore was the city ⇒ Read More

Wieland; or, the Transformation: An American Tale

Wieland; or, the Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown is considered to be one of the first examples of a distinctly American Gothic novel, characterized by its use of sensational violence and intensity. Published in 1798, it was the first of four novels Brown wrote over a span of only eighteen months. Only ⇒ Read More

Wilmington, Delaware

Located thirty miles southwest of Philadelphia, Wilmington is Delaware’s largest city and the New Castle County seat. It originated as a colonial trading area and ferry crossing and later became one of the country’s most vital industrial and chemical-producing centers. With the decline of manufacturing near the close of the twentieth century, the city emerged ⇒ Read More

Yellow Fever

For more than a century beginning in the late seventeenth century, sudden outbreaks of yellow fever sowed death and panic throughout Philadelphia and its environs. With medical science seemingly powerless against it,  yellow fever was a terrifying and mysterious threat that rivaled any disease of the era in its capacity to take lives and disrupt ⇒ Read More

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