Person:Thomas Paschall (1)

Letter of Thomas Paschall

Letter of Thomas Paschall, 1683. Pp. 251-54.

The River is taken up all along by the Swedes, and Finns, and some Dutch, before the English came, near eight score miles, and the Englishmen some of them, buy their plantations, and get room by the great river side, and the rest get into Creeks, and small rivers that run into it, and some go into the woods seven or eight miles: Thomas Colborne (from Berkshire, England, settled on Chester Creek) is three miles in the woods, he is well to pass, and has about fourteen acres of corn now growing, and has gotten between 30 and 40 Li. by his trade, in this short time. I have hired a house for my family for the winter, and I have gotten a little house in my land for my servants; and have cleared land about six acress; and this I can say. I never wished myself at Bristol again since my departure…

…"Now I shall give you an impartial account of the country as I find it, as followed. When we came into Delaware bay we saw an infinite number of small fish in sholes, also large fish leaping in the water; the river is a brave pleasant river as can be desired, affording divers sorts of fish in great plenty, it is planted all along the shore, and in some creeks, especially in Pennsylvania side, by Swedes, Finns, and Dutch, and now at last, English throng in among them, and have filed all the rivers and creeks a great way in the woods, and have settled about 160 miles up the great river; some English that are above the falls, have sowed this year 30 or 40 bushels of wheat, and have great stocks of cattel; most of the Swedes and Finns are ingeneous People, they speak English, Swede, Finn, Dutch and the Indian; They plant but little Indian corn, nor tobacco; their women make most of the linnen cloth they wear, they spin and weave it and make fine linnen, and are many of them curious housewives; The people generally eat rye bread, being approved of best by them, not that here is not good wheat, for I have eaten as good bread and drank as good drink as ever I did in England, as also very good butter and cheese, as most in England. Here are three sorts of wheat, as winter, summer, and buck-wheat; the winter wheat they sow at the fall, the summer wheat in March, these two sorts are ripe in June; then having taken in this, they plow the same land, and sow buck wheat, which is ripe in September. I have not given above 2x6d per skipple (which is 3 English pecks) for the best wheat and that in goods which cost little more than half so much in England, here is very good rye at 2s per skipple, also barley of 2 sorts, as winter, and summer, at 4 Guilders per skipple; also oats, and 3 sorts of Indian corn, (two of which sorts they can malt and make good beer of as of barley), at four Guilders per skipple, a Guilder is four pence halfpenny. I have bought good beer, pork; and mutton at two pence per pound and some cheaper. …Here is a great store of pountry… I have bought good venison of the Indians very cheap, …I have bought four deer for two yards of trading cloth… We had bearsflesh this fall for little or nothing, it is good food, tasting much like beef… here is plenty of rum, sugar, ginger, and molasses. I was lately at Bridlington fair (marginal note in manuscript "New-Jersey"), where were a great resort of people, with cattle and all sorts of goods, sold at very reasonable rates.

…Here are gardens with all sorts of herbs, and some more than in England, also goose-berries and rosetrees, but what other flowers I know not yet. Here are peaches in abundance of three sorts I have seen rot on the ground, and the hogs eat them, they make good spirits from them, also from corn and cherries, and a sort of wild plums and grapes, and most people have stills of copper for that use… The woods are full of oaks, many very high, many of them about two foot through, and some bigger… A Swede will fell twelve of the bigger in one day.

…William Penn is settling people in towns. There are markets kept in two towns, viz. Philadelphia, being chiefest, Chester, formerly called Upland.

Signed, Thomas Paschall

About Thomas Paschall

The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, Volume XXIII, No. 2

William Penn's Twenty-three Ships, With Notes on Some of Their Passengers by Marion Balderston, Pages 27-67.

On page 43

The Society of Bristol [10]

Thomas Jordan, master, for Pennsylvania

12 [April] THOMAS PASCHALL: 3 cwt. nails; 4 cwt. wrought iron; ¾ cwt. lead; 2½ cwt. brass manufactured; 5 cwt. wrought pewter; ½ chalder grindle stones; 3 firkins butter; 3 yards paving stones value 3s.

THOMAS PASCHALL, pewterer, from Bristol and F.P. of 500 acres, with his wife Joanna and children Thomas, William and Mary, were presumably passengers on this ship. He obtained an order or warrant for the surveying of his land 18 7m (Sept.) 1682, a month after the vessel's arrival. See Howard Williams Lloyd, Lloyd Manuscripts (Lancaster, Pa., 1912), 229 232, and Pennsylvania Archives, 3rd Series, 11, 765. For a letter written by him in February, 1683, to his friend "J. J." of Chippenham in England, see PMHB, VI (1882), 323, or Myers, Narratives, 247.

On page 44

3 [May] THOMAS PASCHALL: 28 lbs. wrought pewter; 28 lbs. brass manufactured; 2 cwt. wrought iron; 1 firkin butter; 1½ bushels oatmeal; 1 small saddle; 3 parcels wares value £1 1s. 8d.

Philadelphia Business Directory, 1690 by Hannah Benner Roach, Pages 95-129, On page 117 "Two Pewterers"

1. THOMAS PASCHALL, pewterer, was Philadelphia's first such artisan, probably having arrived in August, 1682, from Bristol. A First Purchaser of 500 acres, his first settlement was "on the banks of the river Schuylkill;" when he sold his city lot in 1686 to Ann Lee, he was of Philadelphia County. By 1690, when he bought from Thomas Jenner a bank lot between Chestnut and High, he had moved to town, and was rated here on his Philadelphia estate assessed in 1693 at £150.

2 THOMAS LANGSHAW, pewterer, in 1689 leased on ground rent from Griffith Jones a lot 25 by 100 feet in depth on the west side of Front at the southernmost corner of Jones' whole lot north of High Street. He was not rated here in 1693, probably having already moved to Chester County where he died in 1696.

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, VI (1882), 325. Paschall's city lot, surveyed 19 2m 1683, was at the northeast corner of Mulberry and Third Street. See Deed Book E 1 5, 231: 4 3m 1686, Thomas Paschall to Ann Lee; ibid., E 2 5, 150: 10 Sm 1690, Thomas Jenner to Thomas Paschall. See PMHB, XXVII (1905)~ 216, for Paschall family records.

Lloyd Manuscripts, Press of The New Era Printing Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1912, by Lloyd, Howard William and Glenn, Thomas Allen Pages 229 - Thomas Paschall was an early purchaser of land in Pennsylvania. In Vol. i, p. 39, Pennsylvania Archives, there is an account of sales in England by William Penn of land in the new colony. Letters from Penn to Philip Ford under date of 22nd day of the 3rd month, 1682, and to Thomas Holme, Surveyor General of the Province, contains the list of purchasers and the authority to survey their land. Thomas Paschall's name is on list 15 for 500 acres. Thomas Paschall with his wife and family must have arrived in the Province, either about the time of Penn's first visit or just before, as a letter written by Thomas Paskel to J. J. Chippenham in England, dated February 10th, 1683, new style (Pennsylvania Magazine of Hist. and Biog., Vol. i, page 323, etc. ) would seem to indicate.

According to Holme's map of the Province of Pennsylvania (1681) which gives the names of the original purchasers from William Penn, and the locatio of their land, Thomas Paschall's plantation ws situate near to the site of the present Mount Moriah Cemetery, and extending north towards Angora station.

Thomas Paschall, like many of the other early settlers, was interested either directly or as attorney for others, in the purchase and sale of land.

He was also much interested in public affairs and held several offices. He was elected a member of the Assembly from Philadelphia County, 3rd month 11th, 1685, again on 3rd month 10th, 1689, and in 1717. (See Votes of the Assembly.) ...

In 1705 he acted as one of a committee to divide the city into wards. He was useful in public affairs, and during the latter part of his life lived in the city proper, near the corner of Second and Walnut Streets where he kept a pewterer's shop. Like his father, he was a manufacturer of, as well as a dealer in, pewter and brass plates and utensils.

1.   The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine
   Vol. 23, No. 2, 1963.

   William Penn's Twenty-three Ships, With Notes on Some of Their Passengers by Marion Balderston Pages 27-67 On page 43

2.   ROOTS-L.

   PASCHAL-PASCHALL genealogy - by Clarence McDaniel, Mar 2, 2013

3.   Patrick Hogue (Samples). The Samples / Semples Family.