58 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
Upon his return to London in 1683, Penn used
the Philadelphia map to advertise the colony in a
pamphlet that was published in English, German,
Dutch, and French. This signaled the ethnic tolerance
that had already begun to shape the settlement, in
sharp contrast to the relative homogeneity of the
early New England towns. The following year, Penn
asked Holme to create a map of the entire colony so
that potential buyers—and Penn himself—could see
the location of available lands.
This was easier said than done, for the pace of
land grants created a welter of conflicting claims
and surveys. Holme spent years sorting through
these accounts. By the fall of 1686 Penn had grown
impatient, writing from London with exasperation:
“we want a map to the degree that I am ashamed
here; ... all cry out, where is your map, what, no map
of your Settlements.” The surveyor responded with
equal frustration, explaining that he could hardly
make a map when his deputies produced such
inaccurate property surveys, if they gave him
surveys at all.
Holme probably finished the map in early 1687,
and he gave the copy reproduced at right to Penn
himself; at the time it was the most detailed map of
any of the American colonies. Yet the map brought
Holme even more headaches, for landholders
immediately began to squabble about boundary
claims and insufficient land grants. No doubt the
surveyor was at the end of his rope, having been
forced to produce a map with insufficient information,
which only compounded property disputes in a region
that had been settled so rapidly.
The map itself also captures the character of the
new colony. Holme provided little topographic detail,
focusing instead on the property divisions of human
settlement. This included some 670 settlers with
individual land grants that ranged from 125 to 5,000
acres. Where Penn had envisioned an orderly set of
communities organized around central villages, with-
in five years an avalanche of grants had overwhelmed
his plan. Towns grew ad hoc, emerging out of local
needs rather than following Penn’s master plan. Yet
the overall pattern—one that rejects the European
tradition of agricultural villages and the power of
central churches—also reflected Penn’s ideals of
tolerance, diversity, and the entrepreneurial spirit.
The “Welch Tract,” “Dutch Township,” and “German
Township” indicate the ethnic diversity that would
characterize Pennsylvania. In different ways, the
Pennsylvania map and the Philadelphia grid capture
the sense of potential that made Penn such a success-
ful father of the colony that bears his name.