Archive Record
Metadata
Collection |
Mouns Jones |
Archive Number |
MJHTXT11 |
Title |
"Plantations" in Early Pennsylvania |
Description |
Plantations in Early Pennsylvania Within five years after settling on the banks of the Schuylkill River on their tracts north of the Manatawny Creek, Mouns Jones and his neighbors petitioned the Royal Governor in 1709 for a road for the convenient passage to and from their "plantations", describing both their individually surveyed and "patented" farmlands and the agrarian settlement community they had "planted" there. The term was used in both senses in various contexts in early documents. In his 1681 "Account of the Province Of Pennsylvania In America", William Penn explicitly and repeatedly used "plantations" [the "seeds of nations"] as a synonym for "Colonies" [e.g., the "Greeks planted many parts of Asia…" according to Penn]. Regarding his vast wooded Province, Penn was unequivocally describing the settled and occupied areas of the colony to which the First Purchasers had "transplanted" themselves, their families, and their cultural traditions. Penn’s First Purchasers were figuratively "taking root" in the lands and emerging communities they occupied. According to the journals of Evans, Bartram, and Weiser describing their 1743 journey from Bartram’s homestead SW of Philadelphia [formerly the site of Mouns Jones’ first "plantation"] through Tulpehocken to Onondaga, NY, the three journalists perceived a lack of development of "arts and sciences" by Natives in America before its "plantation by the whites...", an unequivocal reference to the settlement and development of Penn’s expansive "Sylvania" by European immigrants. However, in the same set of narratives, Lewis Evans used "plantation" to designate agricultural land holdings, observing that "Tulpohoocking [sic] is settled by High Dutchers, who have fine plantations, raise great quantities of wheat", milled to "very fine flour, which they bring in the spring and fall seventy or eighty miles to Philadelphia." The 18th century wagon road from Tulpehocken to Philadelphia traversed north-central Berks County, joined the "Oaley" road near the Boone family’s land holdings and mill, passed the Black Horse and White Horse Taverns in Morlatton, then turned to the southeast through Perkiomen and Germantown to the bustling market hub of Philadelphia. The British noblemen appointed to supervise trade between England and the colonies, unofficially known as the "Lords of Trade", were officially designated the "Committee of Trades and Plantations." Although semantically ambiguous, the Lords’ jurisdiction related to commerce with all communities in Penn’s colony, not merely to the farmers living on and working their cleared and "planted" fields. The term "plantation" soon expressed a related but different meaning: a tract of land with a significant portion of its acreage seasonally "planted" with subsistence produce, barter goods, and cash crops. Amos Long has observed that "Large farmsteads were frequently referred to as a plantation on early legal descriptions and deeds." The Annals of Swedes on the Delaware described the "manner in which a colony from Sweden was first planted here…", a clear use of the term as denoting a communal immigrant settlement. The use of "Plantation" persisted in the riverside settlement, described as "Manatawny" in early documents, later becaming known as "Molatton", then "Morlatton", through the middle of the 18th century. A 1751 advertisement for the sale of the White Horse Tavern, then located in the riverfront house formerly occupied by Marcus Huling a short distance down-river from Mouns Jones house, included the Tavern-owner’s entire "plantation, which lies on the road by the Swedes". It is apparent from contemporary sources that "plantation" conveyed two distinct meanings during the first century of settlement in Pennsylvania. Penn wrote that the first "planters" in these parts were the Dutch and soon after the Swedes and Finns", both skilled and productive in "husbandry." The term concurrently designated both the populated communities developing within Penn’s Province and the substantial family farmsteads spreading across the cleared tillable ranges of Penn’s vast rolling piedmont. L. Ward, 9/19/15 |
Object Name |
Records |
Catalog Number |
1000.01.122 |
Search Terms |
Plantations in Pennsylvania Plantations Colony Settlement Farmstead MJHTXT MJHTXT11 |