EARLY LETTER DATED 1702 SENT FROM PHILADELPHIA TO LONDON~ from Maurice Lisle to Margaret Lowther, sister of William Penn, founder Pennsylvania
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Description
[PENNSYLVANIA] LISLE, Maurice.
Sending respects from Pennsylvania, in an autograph letter, signed 10 April 1702,
from Philadelphia, to Margaret Lowther in London. 8vo. (1) Pp.
Addressed on verso of integral leaf. Very good. The fold marks are typical of letters of the early 18th-century before the use of envelopes. This letter crossed the Atlantic in the form of an oblong “packet” Bi-folium letters such as this were first creased twice horizontally, then folded twice vertically, before being sealed with wax (the wax seal nicely preserved).
A fine example of a private ship letter sent from Pennsylvania to England – conveyed by a Quacker ship captain across the Atlantic just 21 years after the founding of Pennsylvania
Correspondence of any kind sent from America to England seems to be very scarce.
The sender, Maurice Lisle, expresses his gratitude for various kindnesses. Lisle served as the Chief Clerk of the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly in Philadelphia from 1704 to 1722—so in 1702, he was on the cusp of stepping into that role. Beyond his clerical office, Lisle was a well-established figure in Philadelphia’s mercantile and Quaker community.
Maurice’s journals from 1715 provide detailed insights into daily colonial life—cargo, wharves, rent, conversations with ship captains – a key primary source for historians studying early 18th-century Philadelphia society and commerce. These journals are preserved in the Brown Family Papers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
The recipient of our letter “at her house in Red Lyon Square near Holburn, London” is Lisle’s “much honored friend” Margaret Lowther, the sister of Gov. William Penn. In the letter Lisle references the Right Hon ble Gov Penn (“to whom pay Gov my humble Respect”) who had departed from Pennsylvania never to return a year earlier in 1701.
The address panel is inscribed with the name Joshua Guy (the Quaker ship captain of the vessel which conveyed the packet across the Atlantic in 1702). Guy’s name is mentioned in the Papers of William Penn: 1701-1718 and in the account of “some sufferings for his Christian Testimony, by John Smith of Marlborough in Chester Country, Pennsylvania: “We got a passage to Philadelphia in a vessel commanded by one Joshua Guy “