William Penn - First Visit to America - PLAQUE
Amity Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
William Penn, on his first visit to America 1682-1684, came farthest north on Schuylkill River fifty miles up from the falls of Schuylkill to or near the mouth of Monocacy Creek three fourths of a mile south-west of this marker.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, made his first visit to his new proprietary colony between 1682 and 1684, the formative years when Philadelphia was laid out and the colony's character set. This marker records how far north he ventured up the Schuylkill River, reaching near the mouth of Monocacy Creek. It is a small window onto how a proprietor learned the shape and reach of the land he governed.
Why it matters
Penn's colony was founded as a haven of religious tolerance and fair dealing, and its early exploration helped set the pattern for orderly settlement of the mid-Atlantic.
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Related people
- · William Penn
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Anthony Sadowski
Amity Township, PA · est. 1966
Anthony Sadowski, a Polish pioneer, settled along the Schuylkill River in this region in 1712, making his living as a trader among the Native peoples of the area. His command of frontier diplomacy led the Provincial Government to employ him as a messenger and interpreter during negotiations with Indian tribes in 1728, and he was buried here in 1736 in the graveyard of St. Gabriel's Church.
Swedish Pioneers
Union Township, PA · est. 1949
In the first years of the 1700s, Swedish settlers took up land granted by William Penn and became the first Europeans to live in what is now Berks County. The stone home of Mounce and Ingeborg Jones, raised in 1716, still stands by the river bridge as the oldest house in the county. These pioneers were heirs to the earlier colony of New Sweden, carrying its people and building traditions up the Schuylkill into fresh country.
Fisher House
Oley Township, PA · est. 1948
Henry Fisher raised this home in 1801, when the young republic was still borrowing its architectural vocabulary from across the Atlantic. Its late Georgian lines — symmetry, restraint, and fine proportion — echoed the fashionable styles of the British Isles as adapted by the prosperous farmers and craftsmen of eastern and southern Pennsylvania. Houses like this one gave the settled countryside of Berks County its distinctive and enduring character.
De Benneville House
Oley Township, PA · est. 1948
In 1745 Dr. George de Benneville built his house in the Oley Valley, a fertile pocket of Berks County settled by German-speaking immigrants. A physician and itinerant preacher, de Benneville carried to America a radical theology of universal salvation, and from this rural corner he became the founder of Universalism in the colonies before his death in Philadelphia in 1793. His ministry took root among the diverse religious communities of colonial Pennsylvania, long a haven for dissenting faiths.