The Penn Family  Manors  and their Relevancy  to our Pennsylvania  Forebears: An Overviewld,td
 
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Page Table of Contents: 
1. Penn Family Manors [A brief 
and general overview]
2. Relevant Penn Family Manors 
and Our Forebears Within Them
 

Manors Relevant
to Our Forebears and Research
With Dedicated Pages :

Manor of Springettsbury
[York, York Co] 
Manor of Maske
[York,now Adams Co] 
Digges Choice
[Hanover & Littlestown Pa, Maryland Grant] 

Relevant Links regarding Manors
within these Pages

James  LOGAN, our direct
William Logan , our direct
William Penn

 

  • William Penn & his family acquired 44 Manors aggregating  in total 421, 015 acres,  82 perches. Our directs   James  LOGAN and his son William Logan were both responsable for their formation, while other of our directs lived within them. 
    • The concept of manor grants was  resurrected by the English for William Penn  more than three centuries  after the last grant of a manor in England occured [during  the Reign of Edward III  which began in 1327].footnote 1 
  • The 1681 charter for Penna  eastablished the Penn family right to manors. 
    • The charter "gave Penn broad powers in selling or renting his lands. Those purchasing  land from him must have his approval of any method they themselves might use to sell the land to others.  Although Penn could create manors for individuals he liked (Section XIX), these 'lords of the manor' could not subdivide by creating smaller manors. Thus, the manorial system could not develop to break up Pennsylvania into small, hostile areas. "1 
  • The ongoing nature of the manors was related to the ongoing expansion of Pennsylvania and the desire for profit by the Penn proprietaries, but did not always keep pace with settlement of the frontier
    • As new lands were opened for settlement based on treaty with the Native Americans, the Penn family sometimes delayed in designating their apportioned manors within the newly assigned lands. Settlers in the affected territory sometimes predated the manors allocated by the Penn familyFootnote 3  and sometimes the treaties themselves [See Blunstone Licenses
  • All Manors were abolished by act of legislature  1776 but the effects lingered
    • compensation to the Penn Family was included in the 1776 acts of legislation. Footnote 2 Hostilities caused by the Manor system did occur and the lingering effects were seen until the early 19th century [apropros the Manor of Springettsbury  in now York co, and the Manor of Maske in then York, now Adams , Co and as evident in other areasfootnote 3C

 


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1] Penn Family Manors, A General Overview
2] Manors Relevant to Our Research within them Links to their history and our families
 

Penn Family Manors, A General Overview:

The first manors of Pennsylvania involved the southeastern area of Penna; As treaties with the native Americans were made opening new territories to warranty, the Penn family typically allocated for themselves generous Manors among the choicest of the lands now open for white pioneering.  The surveyor-general [this person being direct ancestor James Logan of the Howard Allied famlies] under the Penns surveyed to them forty-four manors in the eastern, western and other parts of a Pennsylvania, aggregating 421, 015 acres and 82 perches.  Research any county in Pennsylvania as they are first settled as frontier, then branched off from previous counties, and unfolded in history to us, and you will see mention of the original manors of the Penn family.

" In nearly every tract that Thomas and Richard Penn opened for sale, they reserved a parcel of ten acres for every 100,000 that they sold. Their purpose was to hold the acreage until the area's population increased, which would enable them to sell  portions of it for a higher price. In what became Adams County, they retained the 43,500-acre ' Manor of Mask.'  Although the state legislature passed the ' Divesting  Act'  in 1779 confiscating the proprietors' unsold lands, it permitted them to retain their  manors." From PHMC Doc Heritage, Wilt's Map Discussion

The History of Centre county Webpages reads "By limiting claims to 400 acres for any one person, the warrant process was intended to favor poor settlers. However, Penn and his descendants took prime   land as "Manors," consisting of 1/10th of any new land opened to warranting.Merchants, speculators, and military officers claimed multiple warrants under their own names and those of relatives and friends. Most settlers, predominantly Scotch-Irish and German, bought land already warranted or took out later,  "junior," warrants on tracts where they had squatted."
The manorial right,  particularly as the colony grew in size, often led to dischord, as the manors were frequently in wild frontier, not even yet surveyed, at the same time that the region was open for emmigration to the burgeoning population in the east anxious and in need to farm their own lands.

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On to 2.Penn Family Manors with links to  Our Forebears Within Them



 



 
 




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Penn Family Manors and Our Forebears Within Them
There are several Manors [or proprietary leases] that are relevant to our Pennsylvanian forebears, and all  three of them were involved in hostilities. Adding to the sense of chaos regarding their regions was the dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania regarding the Maryland/ Penna boundary finally summarized with the Mason Dixon Survey [1763 - 1767] . The manors involving our ancestors all involved Md and Penna and their contest to hold the land as their own.


For hard copy research regarding the Manors and their inhabitants see:
THE PENNSYLVANIA ARCHIVES . See THIRD SERIES = 30 volumes. Land, Military and Tax Records. General Index located inVolumes 27-30.Vol. I & 2: Land Grants 1681-1795 Vol. 4: Maps of proprietary manors (1683-1773). Contains relevant maps.

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Footnote One

The concept of a manor was not new to the Penn family; It had been resurrected by the English for William Penn many years after the last grant of a manor in England .
"...The charter granted in 1681 by Charles II to William Penn invested in the latter and his heirs the absolute ownership of all the land in Pennsylvania, with comparatively slight exceptions. From then until July 4, 1776, all titles to that land were derived either from Penn himself or some of his family. Though a manor had not been granted in English since the reign of Edward III, which began in 1327, the surveyor-general under the Penns surveyed to them forty-four manors in the eastern, western and other parts of a Pennsylvania, aggregating 421, 015 acres and 82 perches. ....By his charter, Penn and his heirs became the owners, subject to the  Indian titles, of all the land in Pennsylvania, except that in the possession of the Swedes, Dutch and English along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers."3
 

Footnote Two

Footnote Three


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Sources for this Page if not previously [in text] given:

1. (New Jersey) Extract from  The Indian Tribes of North America  by John R. Swanton.  Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 145ó1953. [726 pagesóSmithsonian Institution] (pp. 48-55). Presented in pages of the Northern Plains Archive Project web site.
2.  York County History Pages of York County Webpages.
3. Armstrong County Penn. Genealogy Project . Chapter 14 Manor Part 1 of the Manor Township pages. Sites: Source: Page(s) 310-345, History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania by Robert Walker Smith, Esq. Chicago: Waterman, Watkins & Co., 1883. Transcribed January 1999 by Donna Mohney for the Armstrong County Smith Project. Published 1998 by the Armstrong County Pennsylvania Genealogy Project. "
4. State Museum of Pennsylvania. Brief Summary of the 1681 Charter.


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