. Historic Shrines of America The Letitia Penn House, Philadelphia

John T. Faris

Historic Shrines of America


Section 4

Rambles About the City of Brotherly Love


Chapter 31


The Letitia Penn House, Philadelphia

William Penn's First American Home



When William Penn, English Quaker, met Guli Springett, he fell in love with her at once. In 1672 they were married.

Ten years later when, as Proprietor of Pennsylvania, Penn was about to sail in the Welcome for America, he wrote a letter of which the following is a portion:

“My dear wife and children, my love, which neither sea, nor land, nor death itself, can extinguish or lessen toward you, most tenderly visits you with eternal embraces and will abide with you for ever. … My dear wife, remember thou wast the love of my youth and the joy of my life, the most beloved as well as the most worthy of all my earthly comfort, and the reason of that love were more thy inward than thy outward excellencies, which were yet many. God knows, and thou knowest it, that it was a match of Providence’s making, and God’s image in us both was the first thing and the most amiable and engaging ornament in our eyes. Now I am to leave thee, and that without knowing whether I shall ever see thee more in this world.”

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