When we were all seated around the table, my mother said, in a voice of simmering excitement, “This letter came today, from Pennsylvania; from our friends, Daniel and Judith Kite. Your father and I have both read it.” She offered the letter to him. “Wilt thou read it aloud, husband?”
But my father said, “No, no! It’s thy letter. Judith wrote to thee. Thou should read it.”
I saw that she was pleased at this. She said, “It was sent nearly three months ago. They are all in good health, and have a plot of land, and – well, Judith says, ‘Forgive me, Susanna, for not writing earlier. We arrived, as planned, before winter set in and have been hard at work ever since, clearing the ground for planting, building a house, buying animals (we have a fine horse now, and chickens, and a pig), and setting up the forge. All is new and promising here and exactly as described by the Proprietor in his writings. The necessities of life are to hand, prices are cheap, Daniel has plenty of customers, and I shall be kept busy growing food and caring for the animals. The young ones help us, and are well. Now in this winter season, we have great quantities of snow, and the rivers are locked in ice. We look forward to spring. Are your plans made? I long to see thee again, dear Su, and thee too, Will, after so many long years…’” Here my mother’s voice wobbled.
“When did thou know Judith, Mam?” asked Betty. And Sarah, wriggling on her seat as she always does when interested, exclaimed, “They have animals? Will we have some?”
“We may have chickens, Sarah,” my mother said. “We know Judith and Dan from our Shropshire days, twenty years ago. Judith had her first child there – Benjamin; he’ll be about eighteen now. They emigrated to Boston before Jos was born, to take the Truth to the New World. Dan is an outspoken Friend, a preacher – a troublemaker, the authorities would say – and Boston was a challenge for him, since Friends have never been welcome there. He and Judith have suffered years of persecution.”
“Like us?” said Sarah.
“Worse than us,” said Betty, who read the books and pamphlets in our shop.
My mother agreed. “Often worse than us.”
She read on: “‘This new colony of Pennsylvania will be a haven for many people. There were Dutch here already; and Swedes who have long been settled – we see their log cabins all around. English, Welsh, Germans and French come now, all fleeing persecution for their faith. There is constant activity, new houses finished every day, new streets, new settlers arriving, fair prices for plots of land, and fair rents, and plenty of work to be found. We have great hopes for this venture, dear friends. It is truly a holy experiment, as William Penn has called it. Without a militia, without arms, with freedom of religion, and seeking fellowship with all people, we shall be living the gospel every day. We have come seeking Eden, and believe we will find it here.’”
She laid the letter down, and we all fell silent for a few moments. I listened to the crackle of the fire and lost myself in imagining that far-off land where Eden could be found.
When the silence ended, my mother said, “This strengthens my belief that we have made the right choice.” And then she got up and said, “Now let’s eat.”
The girls immediately broke into chatter. Betty helped my mother bring the food to the table and Sarah set out the cutlery. All three females were unusually talkative – but this was no ordinary day. After supper we all went down to the bookshop and my father brought out the pamphlet written by the Proprietor, William Penn, to encourage settlers to come to Pennsylvania. He found a map, and spread it out on the counter so that we could see where the new city of Philadelphia was being built: sixty miles up the Delaware River, near its convergence with the Schuylkill, so that the city stood on a promontory between the two rivers.
“We will land here,” he said, pointing, “on the Delaware side, though there is no wharf yet, and we must be brought off the ship in small boats. The voyage will take two months at least.”
My mother put a fist to her mouth and shook her head. I knew this sea crossing was the part she dreaded, especially for Sarah, who was often ill.
“Many others have made this voyage and survived,” my father said gently.
“I know, husband. I know. And if Judith has endured it, so shall I. And put my trust in God.”
“Life will be hard at first,” he said. “The Proprietor says here, ‘They must be willing to be two or three years without some of the conveniences they enjoy at home.’ But, ‘There is better accommodation, and English provisions are to be had at easier rates…’ And see here” – he took up a second pamphlet, The Present State of the Colony of West-Jersey – “this is another settlement on the Delaware, more old-established than Pennsylvania, where many are Friends. They say, ‘The air is temperate and healthy, winter not so long as it is in England’ – so it will be better for Sarah – ‘few natives in the country; but those that are, are very peaceable, useful, and serviceable to the English inhabitants…’”
I read on, to myself, and found descriptions of the many creeks and bays, and navigable rivers; of the woodland bought from the natives, full of familiar trees like oak, cedar, chestnut, walnut and mulberry, and others that were new to the English.
“What will our house be like?” Betty asked.
“We’ll have no house at first,” my father said. “We’ll have to build one.”
Betty gave him a sceptical look. None of us could imagine our father building a house, and he knew it.
He smiled. “We will employ builders,” he said.
“Will there be a school? A meeting house? Shops?” The girls were full of questions.
“There will certainly be a place to meet,” said my mother, “probably in someone’s house.”
And my father added, “We will be free to worship without fear of persecution. And in a few years we’ll have a better life, a new country…”
I looked at the map, and saw how the land granted to William Penn stretched far, far to the north and west of Philadelphia, with almost nothing marked but rivers and a skein of mountains running north to south.
I ran my hand across it. “What is here?”
“Wilderness,” my father said. “Forests, rivers, wild animals. ‘A red man’s wilderness’, George Fox called it.”
And William Penn was the owner of this vast tract of land, having dreamed for years of setting up such a colony. He was given this territory, the size of southern England, by Charles Stuart, the king, in settlement of a debt the king had owed his father, Admiral Penn; and now he would use it for his holy experiment, and we would be part of that great cause.
My father turned to me. “Well, Jos? How dost thou feel about all this?”
I shrugged. Enthralled as I was by the maps and pictures and by William Penn’s vision, I was unwilling to admit any of this to my father. “I’ll come,” I said.
My mother spoke sharply: “Of course thou’ll come! I won’t go without thee!”
“Judith says there is plenty of work there,” my father said. “We must find thee something to thy liking.”
I looked at my hands, at the bruised knuckles, the broken nails, the blood of the shambles still in the creases of my skin. “I suppose they’ll have butchers there,” I said, “and butchers’ll need swabbers and sweepers.”
“Thou’rt determined to provoke me, Josiah. Thou could do better than sweeping; thou know it. Thou should endeavour to learn a trade.”
“I’ll get work there,” I said, “but I’ll find my own master.”
I imagined an explorer, or a trading voyage up one of those great rivers that flowed out from the wilderness; saw myself as ship’s boy.
“Good.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “But think about thy natural talents. Thou can cast accounts, and read well, and write a fair hand.”
“A clerk!” I said, and sighed.
“Why art thou so hurtful to Dad?” Betty said later. She had joined me, uninvited, on the bed in my attic room.
This room was one I had chosen for myself years ago, and kept – against all common sense, since these days I could stand upright only in the very centre. But I liked the feeling it gave me of being apart from the rest of the family. I had a few books there – Friends’ writings, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and also books with maps and drawings. My own drawings – for I loved to draw – were tucked away in a folder, not displayed. Friends do not approve of drawing and painting unless for some useful purpose, such as a herbal or a map. My parents knew of my interest, for I used scrap paper from the shop; they tolerated it, but my mother urged restraint: “Thou must not make likenesses of people, Jos, or any other work that leads to vanity.” I did not make portraits, but I drew the view from my attic window, the rooftops and spires, the gulls that perched on the windowsill and glanced about with fierce eyes, their feathers lifting in the breeze. From that window I had a glimpse of the docks, the network of masts and spars, a sense of ships coming and going, all the life of the great river.
And up here I was away from my father’s eye.
“He bullies me,” I said in response to Betty.
“He tries to help! And he’s right: thou should be a clerk – keep tallies and ledgers—”
“Huh! Like I did for Thomas Green? He didn’t think much of my skills.”
“Thou didn’t try.”
“I didn’t like him.”
But it was true I’d been unwilling – lazy, even. And Thomas Green’s business was up north, in a dull part of London, far from the docks and the vigour of the City. I hadn’t wanted to stay. I’d been on a month’s trial, and had failed. I was glad to come home, but it had angered my father, who had put effort into arranging the bond.
Betty said, “I shall work with Dad in the print shop when we go to America. He says I can. I’ll be fourteen by the time we sail – no need for any more schooling.”
I looked at her in surprise. I’d thought of her as a child, but it was true, she’d be old enough to work.
She was clever, my eldest sister, and eager to learn. She and Sarah went to Hester Lawrence’s school for the daughters of Friends, at Mile End. There they learned to read, write and cast accounts; also to sew, and darn hosiery, and knit, and launder and prepare herbal remedies – all those womanly tasks that I was spared. And of course they were guided gently but firmly towards the light. Silence and Bible-reading took up much of their day at school, as it had at mine. Betty was proficient in everything. Sarah, who had always been a frail child, was often ill and absent from school; she was slower to learn; and our mother, who feared for her, kept her close at home. She was Mam’s baby, the youngest since Henry had died.
So there we were: the protected Sarah; Betty, who spent all her spare time in the print shop or among the books – Betty, who was our father’s pride, his “clever girl”; and me, his only surviving son, and a disappointment to him.
“I’ll miss my friends at school,” said Betty. “Ruth, and Damaris. And I’ll miss Tabby.” She gave me a teasing look. “Thou will, too. Thou’rt blushing, Jos!”
“Tab’s spoken for,” I growled. “Anyway, she’s too old for me.”
“Too old! Thou make her sound ancient!”
I changed the subject. “Dost thou think Mam wants to go? I know what she said, but…”
I knew Mam had been less certain than our father, who was such an admirer of William Penn, and had been inspired by his writings from the start. My mother thought more of those people we would leave behind and probably never see again: her Shropshire family – our grandmother Elizabeth Thorn, for whom Betty was named, Uncle Isaac and Aunt Deb – and the Lacons, our neighbours and work partners for so many years. For months my parents had sought spiritual guidance and waited on the inward light. Some Friends regarded emigration as a moral failure, a reluctance to stand up and face persecution. I knew my parents had wrestled with this.
“I think Dad is more certain,” said Betty. “But when thou think how we have suffered, all of us – Dad has never really recovered from that time in New Prison, has he? – surely she must want to go?”
“Dost thou want to?”
Usually Betty likes to appear detached and worldly-wise. But not now. “Oh, yes!” Her eyes shone. “And thee?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
The adventure drew me, and the vision of a society based on the gospel. But there was another reason: in Philadelphia the majority of people would be Friends. We would not be living constantly among people who despised or mocked us; I would not need to pretend indifference to Friends’ ideals, as I did when out with my butcher companions. Above all, we would not suffer for our faith. We need not fear arrest, imprisonment or fines.
I shall change when I am there, I thought. I’ll show my father what I can do, and he’ll be proud of me.
A new world, a new beginning. How could I not want to go?