The Storm Gathering

The Penn Family and the American Revolution

Lorett Treese

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 1992
• eBook ISBN: 9780271071770
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

Treese's book provides a popular history of Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary period from the vantage point of the heirs of William Penn.

Most Pennsylvanians are familiar with the story of William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania in 1681 as a haven for religious dissenters. But few may know what became of Penn's enterprise (the "proprietorship") in the years after his death in 1718. And fewer still may realize that Penn's descendants played an important, and increasingly unpopular, role in the coming of the American Revolution to Pennsylvania. The Storm Gathering, based on Penn family correspondence and other contemporary records, tells this fascinating story, focusing primarily on Thomas and John Penn, two of the last members of the Penn family to figure significantly in Pennsylvania's affairs before the colonies declared independence in 1776.

Lorett Treese begins her story with Thomas Penn, William Penn's son who eventually became chief proprietor. Thomas groomed his nephew John (sometimes called "indolent") to be governor of the colony. When John took up his duties in 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, the Penn proprietorship faced serious problems in managing Pennsylvania. The sheer size of the colony made it difficult for the Penns to collect their rents, and settlers moving westward clashed with Indians on the frontier, threatening the peaceful relationship that William Penn had established with native peoples. A stubborn legislature resisted Penn family control at nearly every turn, and Ben Franklin led an effort to thwart the Penns and make Pennsylvania a royal colony.

According to Treese, these domestic problems diverted the Penns' attention from the growing movement in America toward democracy and independence. But by 1768, after the British parliament had passed the Townshend Act taxing the American colonies, John Penn and his uncle Thomas began to realize the magnitude of their troubles, referring to the growing rift between America and Britain as "the Storm gathering."

Events began to overtake the Penns by 1775. In that year Thomas Penn died, and the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord brought war closer. In Pennsylvania, John Penn wrote that "The people here are forming themselves into companies & are daily exercising in order to be prepared for the worst." When the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia that summer, John knew that the end of Penn leadership was near. "Our form of government still continues," he wrote, "but I think it cannot last long . . . ." In 1776, as radical sentiment grew, the colonies declared independence from England, and Pennsylvania rewrote its constitution, divesting the Penn family of governing powers and making the colony a commonwealth. When war broke out, radical patriots forced John Penn into exile, and he eventually retired to his country home where he waited out the war.

Treese concludes this engaging story with the end of the Revolution and its aftermath. While Pennsylvanians began the difficult work of reconstructing their government, the Penns attempted to salvage their personal fortunes. Many former officers of the Penn establishment participated again in government, but Penn family members were pushed outside of American government.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. “Receive What Moneys Thou Canst Get In”: The Penn Proprietorship
• 2. “Proprietary Affairs Suffer Much”: The Penn Family in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
• 3. “To Kill Us All, and Burn the Town”: The Paxton Boys
• 4. “Contentions and Squabbling”: The Movement for Royal Government
• 5. “To Prevent a Stamp Duty Being Laid on America”: Pennsylvania and the Stamp Act
• 6. “Greatest Confusion”: The Personal Trials of John Penn
• 7. “Ungovernable Spirit of the Frontier”: The Incident at Middle Creek
• 8. “The Storm Gathering”: Pennsylvania and the Townshend Duties
• 9. “More Vexation and Uneasiness”: The Connecticut Yankees in Pennsylvania, 1763–1773
• 10. “A Fortune in the Clouds”: The Dispute After the Death of Richard Penn Sr.
• 11. “So Glorious an Exertion of Public Virtue and Spirit”: Opposing the Tea Act in Philadelphia
• 12. “Keeping Up the Flame”: The Penns and Politics from 1774 to Lexington
• 13. “Surrounded with Many Vexations”: The Penn Family and the Death of Thomas Penn
• 14. “A Difficult Card to Play”: The Penns, Independence, and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776
• 15. “Very Alarming to the Inhabitants of Those Parts”: Pennsylvania’s Border Problems from 1774 to 1776
• 16. “Calm Spectator of the Civil War”: Pennsylvania as a Commonwealth, John Penn as Private Citizen
• 17. “Unjustly Deprived of Their Property”: The Divestment Act of 1779
• 18. “Without Repining What Is Out of Our Power”: The Penns in the Wake of the American Revolution
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: Condensed Penn Family Tree and Interests in the Proprietorship
• Appendix B: Chronology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index