Part 3: Frontiers of Education
Colonial and imperial wars and conflicts, even those that seemed far away from Philadelphia, profoundly shaped the Academy, College, and Charitable Schools of Philadelphia. Although the school sat “in the Town” as Franklin had wished, beginning in the 1750s an accelerating series of crises in Pennsylvania shook the Philadelphia establishment.
Franklin, Rev. Richard Peters, and other Trustees became deeply enmeshed in negotiations between Native inhabitants and European settlers, as they attempted to manage a turbulent “frontier” of settlements to the north, south, and west of the city. The Seven Years’ War (1754–63) brought violence and disruption to Native peoples and white settlers across broad expanses of territory. Elites were often at odds with settlers: while William Smith and others advocated for increased evangelization of Native peoples, the Scots-Irish “Paxton Boys” massacre of Conestoga Indians in 1764 showed how racialized violence could divide the colony. Franklin, David Rittenhouse, and others encountered the Paxton rebels in Germantown and heard their grievances, persuading them to return west.[1]
One intriguing piece of evidence suggests the role the Academy could play in Pennsylvania-Native relations. In May, 1755, diplomat Conrad Weiser sent two sons of a Mohawk ally named Jonathan Gayienquitigoa to the Academy of Philadelphia. One son, Jonathan, died in Philadelphia in 1757; the fate of the other son, Philip, is unknown.
During the same years, tensions also increased between Pennsylvania’s English and German-speaking populations. Franklin, Smith, and other Anglophiles worried about the political affiliations and cultural habits of German and Swiss settlers, who were in fact a highly diverse group committed to maintaining the spirit of toleration that had attracted them to Pennsylvania. A controversial, failed project initiated by Smith and Franklin to establish “charity schools” in German-speaking communities to inculcate English language and Anglo values only deepened the social rifts.
“I desire you to listen to what we are going to say”
The Indian “treaties” or conference minutes printed by Franklin and Hall document multiday diplomatic meetings between Native and colonial officials in the mid-18th century. As alliances between Pennsylvanians and the Native communities to the west, north, and south became increasingly unstable, and white-Native encounters grew increasingly violent, leaders struggled to respond. Shown here are pages from the conference at Lancaster in May 1757, when representatives from the Haudenosaunee Five Nations, Senecas, Delawares, and Nanticokes attempted to repair relations with the British government, the Pennsylvania Proprietor, and the Pennsylvania Assembly, assisted by their experienced interpreter Conrad Weiser.[2] The conferences were punctuated by oratory with gifts of wampum belts and trade goods.[3]
A number of men present were Trustees of the Academy and College: Richard Peters, John Mifflin, Benjamin Chew, James Hamilton, and Isaac Norris. This set of treaties contains marginal notes in the hand of Benjamin Franklin; he may have taken them to England and presented them to Lord Shelburne.
A Scots-Irishman of humble background who became the secretary to the Continental Congress, Charles Thomson attended a Presbyterian school led by Rev. Francis Alison and later the Academy of Philadelphia. He taught in the Latin School for a brief time before moving to the Quaker Academy (now William Penn Charter School), where he was recruited by Quaker Israel Pemberton to attend diplomatic conferences as a secretary to Teedyuscung, the Delaware leader. Thomson’s Enquiry is an unusually acute study of Native-Pennsylvania relations, diplomacy, and conflict, and one that is critical of Pennsylvania’s land policies.[4]
“a liberal education is a means of spreading a thirst for heavenly wisdom”
Smith saw no contradiction between the success of his educational institution and of his ministry, and this pamphlet includes sermons given to the first College class (1757) and to Anglican clergy, in support of the Church of England’s missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. He looks forward to a time when the French enemies of England “shall be confined within their due bounds” and the English will have a “more natural and lasting dominion over the Heathen Natives.” The College will contribute to that “dominion”: education, “the Advancement of Useful Science,” would, Smith argues, bring about “the propagation of Christ’s Gospel” in the colonies.
William Smith, named only as “a Lover of his Country,” authored this highly partial account of the British response to Shawnee and Delaware uprisings in western Pennsylvania. What Smith labels their “sudden, treacherous, and unprovoked” attacks were one part of Pontiac’s Rebellion following the Seven Year’s War. The narrative recounts Colonel Henry Bouquet’s expedition to Fort Pitt, his victory at Bushy Run, and subsequent peace negotiations with Shawnees, Delawares, and Senecas.[5]
First printed in Philadelphia, the book was reprinted in London with artwork by Smith’s former student Benjamin West.[6] This image probably shows one of the Delaware leaders, Custaloga or Tamaqua (called The Beaver), delivering a speech to Bouquet and his men while holding a wampum belt. West’s image, surprisingly, dignifies the orator and is one of only a few European visual examples showing Native diplomatic practice.[7]
Franklin and Smith, who rarely agreed, found common ground in their worries over immigration to Pennsylvania and the “character” and political loyalties of the German-speaking populations. They and other Trustees, with support from England, promoted a scheme for educating “poor Germans” in the Pennsylvania countryside: building schoolhouses and recruiting schoolmasters, while imposing mandatory bilingual education with an Anglican emphasis. The two probably hoped that the project would weaken the political alliance between the Germans/Swiss and the Quaker party.[8] Smith also seems to have feared increasing Presbyterian influence among the Germans, led by the College of New Jersey.[9] Germantown printer Christopher Saur led opposition to this scheme in his newspaper, although it seems to have had only a limited impact.
When Christopher Saur, Sr., printed a complete German-language Bible in 1743, it was a remarkable achievement, the first European-language Bible printed in America.[10] His son Christopher Saur II printed a second edition in 1763, and then this third edition in the fateful year of 1776. His print shop was among the largest in the colonies, with four presses. He also cast his own type in Germantown, then an independent borough.[11]
Revolutionary legends of conflict surround this impressive publication. Were unbound sheets of this Bible destroyed by Continental soldiers during the Battle of Germantown? Or taken by the British occupiers and used for gun cartridge paper—giving this Bible its nickname, the “Gun-wad Bible”? What can be documented is that Saur’s refusal, as a Dunkard, to take the Oath of Allegiance to the new state of Pennsylvania led to the seizure and sale at auction of his establishment, including bales of unbound sheets of the Bible, by American authorities in 1778. Some of the sheets were sold to the Continental army, who may well have used them as cartridge paper. Other sheets were purchased by another Germantown printer who bound them up in the postwar years.[12]
Among many other works on the Paxton Boys, see Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost; Kenny, “Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Massacres,” and in general, Digital Paxton.↑
Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost, 92–93. On Weiser, Merrell, Into the American Woods. ↑
Merrell, Into the American Woods, on wampum, 187–193. ↑
Reese, The Struggle for North America↑
For overview and edition, see Martin West, ed., Bouquet's expedition against the Ohio Indians in 1764, 2017. On Pontiac’s Rebellion: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America: A History, 102ff; Taylor, American Revolutions, 58ff. ↑
Maps are present in the Bradford Philadelphia edition, but no engravings (Evans copy online). See West, Bouquet’s Expedition, 97, 105–109. ↑
On Custaloga: Merrell, Into the American Woods, 201-211; on Tamaqua: 204, 218, 246, 248. ↑
Gordon, 77–79; Weber, The Charity School Movement. ↑
Bell, “Franklin and the German Schools,” 383. ↑
Wolf, Germantown and the Germans, 111. ↑
Lehmann-Haupt, The Book in America, 19-20: Saur the younger had a “complete letter–founding establishment when hs goods were sequestrated by the Americans in the Revolution.” 1778. “perhaps the largest” print establishment in the colonies, with four presses. Saur’s Bible of 1743 is first American Bible in a European language, and the 1776 Bible may be the first book printed with type cast in America. ↑
Wolf, Germantown and the Germans, 112–113. Rumball-Petre, America’s First Bibles, 51–63. ↑