Pennsylvania's 1681 Charter
Commemorating Pennsylvania’s history on Charter Day
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Scott LaMar
Pennsylvania's 1681 Charter
Airdate: March 10, 2023
Sunday is Charter Day in Pennsylvania – a day to commemorate Pennsylvania’s founding and to celebrate the 1681 charter that created Pennsylvania.
The Charter itself will be on display at the state museum in Harrisburg and number of state historic sites will be free to visit.
On The Spark Friday, Andrea Lowery, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, talked about why history is important,”I think it gives us context for today. I mean, you can’t understand where you are if you don’t know where you’ve been. We definitely see history as an opportunity to help people place themselves within Pennsylvania, within the the arc of the narrative and figure out where they want to go. And history is a tool to help them do that.”
State archivist David Carmichael called the Charter “Pennsylvania’s birth certificate.” He told a story of Pennsylvania’s founder William Penn,”In my opinion, because he was a Quaker, he practiced humility in a very conscious way, and he did not want the colony to be named for him. And he was afraid that people would think it had been named for him when it was called Pennsylvania, but it was actually named for his father, Admiral Sir William Penn. So it was named for William Penn, but not the William Penn we think about. He argued with with the king about this or the king’s counselors about this, that if you name it for my father, everybody will think it’s a name for me. And of course, he was right, because we all think it was named for him. But we actually have a draft of the charter in the state archives that was finished just a couple of days before the final version. And when it comes to the name of the colony, it was left blank because as late as that, they didn’t know what they were going to name it because they were still arguing over it. But the king insisted. And so in that draft, someone came back later in a separate hand, you can tell and wrote it shall be called Pennsylvania.”
Historic sites and museums where there free admission and activities Sunday:
- Brandywine Battlefield Park, Chadds Ford
- Bushy Run Battlefield, Jeannette
- Conrad Weiser Homestead, Womelsdorf
- Cornwall Iron Furnace, Cornwall
- Daniel Boone Homestead, Birdsboro
- Drake Well Museum, Titusville
- Eckley Miners’ Village, Weatherly
- Ephrata Cloister, Ephrata
- Fort Pitt Museum, Pittsburgh
- Graeme Park, Horsham
- Joseph Priestley House, Northumberland
- Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, Lancaster
- Pennsbury Manor, Morrisville
- Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum, Scranton
- Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, Ulysses
- Pennsylvania Military Museum, Boalsburg
- Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Strasburg
- Somerset Historical Center, Somerset
