History of Philadelphia

Located north of what will eventually become the Center City and on the east bank of the Schuylkill was a Lenape settlement named Coaquannock, meaning "grove of pines.

"[1] One of the largest Lenape settlements in the region, located in today's South Philadelphia near the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, was Passyunk, meaning "in the valley.

[citation needed] The first English settlement occurred about 1642, when 50 Puritan families from the New Haven Colony in Connecticut, led by George Lamberton, tried to establish a theocracy at the mouth of the Schuylkill River.

[11] The Dutch never recognized the legitimacy of the Swedish claim and, in the late summer of 1655, Director-General Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam mustered a military expedition to the Delaware Valley to subdue the rogue colony.

In 1669, one of the founders of the New Sweden, Sven Gunnarsson, moved into the region and settled at a place called Wicaco, a former native settlement located on today's Society Hill and Queens Village in present-day South Philadelphia, beginning with a log blockhouse.

[15] An orderly change of government ensued, as was normal in an age used to the privileges and prerogatives of aristocracy and which antedated nationalism: the colonists pledged allegiance to Penn as their new Proprietor.

[17] Penn later journeyed up the river and founded Philadelphia with a core group of accompanying Quakers and others seeking religious freedom on lands he purchased from the local chieftains of the Lenape or Delaware nation.

[19] Lord Baltimore and the Province of Maryland had circa 1652–53[19] finished waging a decade long declared war against the Susquehannocks and the Dutch,[19] who'd been trading them furs for tools and firearms for some time.

He named the city Philadelphia (philos, "love" or "friendship", and adelphos, "brother"); it was to have a commercial center for a market, state house, and other key buildings.

[26] The charter established Philadelphia as a city and gave the mayor, aldermen, and councilmen the authority to issue laws and ordinances and regulate markets and fairs.

The region was developed for agriculture and Philadelphia exported grains, lumber products and flax seeds to Europe and elsewhere in the American colonies; this pulled the city out of the depression.

During its brief period of ascendancy as an empire following the victory by Gustav the Great in the Battle of Breitenfeld Swedish settlers arrived in the area in the early 17th century to found a nearby colony, New Sweden in what is today southern New Jersey.

When Pontiac's Rebellion occurred in 1763, refugees again fled into the city, including a group of Lenape hiding from other Native Americans, angry at their pacifism, and white frontiersmen.

[40]After Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was seen as an inevitable British Army attack.

[42] After the Revolution's conclusion in 1783, Philadelphia was chosen to be the temporary capital of the United States from 1790 to 1800, and the city continued for some years to be the country's cultural and financial center.

Because of the violence accompanying the revolution on the island, Philadelphians, many of whom had southern ties, and residents of the Upper South worried that free people of color would encourage slave insurrections in the U.S.[50] Historian Gary B. Nash emphasizes the role of the working class, and their distrust of their betters, in northern ports.

Along with foreign immigration, domestic migration by African Americans from the South led to Philadelphia having the largest black population of a Northern U.S. city in this period.

[71] While immigrants moved into the city, Philadelphia's rich left for newer housing in the suburbs, with commuting made easy by newly constructed railroads.

Its major industries of the era included, but were in no means limited to, the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.

In nearby Wilmington, another large leather-producing city in the U.S., a report described a Morocco tannery in 1872:He saw “a bright room where half a dozen pretty sewing machine girls are stitching the wet, slimy skins into bags” while “strong muscular Negroes” fill the bags with sumac dust and water in “gloomy cellars” and upstairs “young Swedes and Irish boys dress the dry skins, a backbreaking operation, apparently,” commented the writer, “in the attitude of laundresses bent over an eternal washboard.

Manufacturing plants and the U.S. Navy Yard employed tens of thousands of industrial workers along the rivers, and the city was also a center of finance and publishing, with major universities.

"[86] Du Bois's study found, in addition to general mismanagement and neglect, severe racial disparities in employment, housing, health, education, and criminal justice.

Butler cracked down on bars and speakeasies and tried to stop corruption within the police force, but demand for liquor and political pressure made the job difficult, and he had little success.

Naval Yard at Hog Island, which constructed ships, trains, and other items needed in the war effort, helped attract blacks in the Great Migration.

Philadelphia began to modernize, steel and concrete skyscrapers were constructed, old buildings were wired for electricity, and the city's first commercial radio station was founded.

The fire marshal went to prison; and an official in the tax collection office, a water department employee, a plumbing inspector, and head of the police vice squad each committed suicide after criminal exposures.

Competition for housing, as African Americans (many had come to the city in the Great Migration from the South) and Puerto Ricans moved into new neighborhoods, resulted in racial tension.

In the post-World War II era of suburbanization and construction of area highways, many middle-class families met their demand for newer housing by leaving the city for the suburbs.

Deadly Mafia warfare plagued South Philadelphia, drug gangs and crack houses invaded the slums of the city, and the murder rate skyrocketed.

[123] In 2015, Pope Francis visited Philadelphia during his U.S. tour; he attended the 2015 World Meeting of Families and said mass to 1 million people on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.