One of the Original Grants of Land in Pennsylvania and City of Philadelphia, Signed by William Penn

King Charles II owed William Penn £16,000, money which his late father Admiral Sir Penn had lent him. Seeking a haven in the New World for persecuted Friends, Penn asked the King to grant him land in the territory between Lord Baltimore’s province of Maryland and the Duke of York’s province of New York. With the Duke’s support, Penn’s petition was granted. The King signed the Charter of Pennsylvania on March 4, 1681, and it was officially proclaimed on April 2. Penn then set about finding people to help him populate these areas, and he did so by selling tracts of land. By July 1681, Penn announced his plan of land distribution, and his first land sale followed soon thereafter.

Nathaniel Paske was in the very first group to receive a grant of land by Penn, and his name is found on lists of the original proprietors of Pennsylvania. Paske arrived in the New World in 1682 and within a year was able to claim one of the first sections along the Schuylkill River, a primary avenue of then prominent maritime Philadelphia. He also owned a plot on what is now 4th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

Document signed, October 22 1681, a large format document, being one of the first grants Penn signed, granting Paske 250 acres in the New World. It recites the parties as “William Penn of Warminghurst in the County of Sussex, Esq.” and “Nathaniel Paske of the Parish of St. Olave’s Southwark in the County of Sussex”. It reads, in small part: “…. the said William Penn for and in consideration of the summe of five shillings of lawful money of England to him in hand paid by the same Nathaniel Paske, the receipt whereof he doth hereby acknowledge… hath bargained and sold and by these presents doth bargain and sell until the said Nathaniel Paske the full just proportion and quantity of two hundred and fifty acres of land…”

Land grants by Penn from this early period have become increasingly difficult to find.