Features / history
Bristol’s historic links to Pennsylvania
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump visited Pennsylvania more than any other state during this US presidential election campaign.
But did you know that Pennsylvania has close links to Bristol?
The man who founded the state even has a statue of himself in Millennium Square.
That man is William Penn (1644-1718), a Quaker leader and advocate of religious freedom who oversaw the founding of Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities.
But Penn’s Bristol connections are looser than his father, Sir William Penn (1621-1670), a Royal Navy admiral who was born in St Thomas parish in Redcliffe and is buried at St Mary Redcliffe Church where his armour and pennants are also displayed.
Being unable to repay a large debt he owed Sir William Penn to his son William, King Charles II signed the Charter of Pennsylvania in 1681 with the king naming the new colony in honour of Sir William Penn, with Penn Jnr originally wanting to call the land Sylvania.
Jim McNeill, author of The Life & Family of William Penn published in 2011 by Bristol Radical History Group, says the Penn family helped shape the way we live and “their actions created social and class tensions that are still being played out today”.
“In fact, the Penn family, when it is referred to at all, is portrayed in Bristol as being either brave seafarers… or with kindly, if not saintly, reverence…
“What is never mentioned in public is the full story of the Penns, including that:
- “They had a long history, over 260 years, of being pro-Monarchy and anti-Republican.
- “William Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn, was both Cromwell’s Sea General as well as a financier of the Stuart Royal Family.
- “Admiral Penn was the Sea General who captured Jamaica from the Spanish, thus establishing that island as the centre of English slave trading and sugar production.
- “William Penn, a leading Quaker, was a slave owner who established his own slave plantation in Pennsylvania.
- “The Quaker sons of William Penn were responsible for defrauding Native Americans out of vast areas of land.”
A 37ft-high bronze statue of William Penn on top of Philadelphia’s City Hall is said to be the largest and heaviest bronze statue on top of any building in the world.
Designed by Scottish artist Alexander Milne Calder, the statue was placed on City Hall in 1894.
The smaller sculpture of William Penn on Millennium Square is by artist Lawrence Holofcener and is part of a trio commissioned for the opening of the square in 2000 which also includes Bible translator William Tyndale and poet Thomas Chatterton.
A statue of actor Cary Grant – who also left Bristol to make his fortune in the United States – by Graham Ibbesson was unveiled in 2001.
The Pennsylvania History blog calls the statue of Penn in Millennium Square “particularly awful”.
The blog says “it is yet another uncritical public portrayal of William Penn – no word here, in the old slaving port of Bristol, of Penn being a slave owner, nor is there any mention of the displacement of Native Americans or the despoilation of a wilderness”.
The William Penn statue in Millennium Square was commissioned when the square was constructed – photo: Martin Booth
Main photo: Martin Booth
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