The Life Story of

Hannah Callowhill
Penn
BY: JESSICA TINGLEY

(Birth: February 11, 1671 – Death: December 20, 1726)

 Agenda
• HCP’s Childhood
• Her Courtship & Marriage
• Life as a Wife
• Their Journey to America
• Life as a Widow
• Her Lasting Legacy
Hannah’s Childhood
• Hannah was the sixth child born and the only one who lived to grow up.
• By age 14, she was an only child.
• Named after an older sister who died, and her mother.
• Education:
• commercial practices
• sources of materials
• markets
• accounting
• the mysteries of foreign trading
• 3rd Generation
• householdQuaker
management
• Old •maid?
the treatment of servants
– she wasn’t married until she was 25
• how to market efficiently
Hannah’s Courtship to William
• Met while he was on a religious visit to fellow Quakers in her city

• Courtship through letters

• Not equal because he wrote more than 2x as many letters as she did.

• He wrote to her for almost a year.

• She was not the striking beauty that Guli, Penn’s 1st wife, had been at that age, but was clever,
attractive, and possessed of the marked serenity that Quakers so highly praised.

• He forwarded:
• inscribed copies of his books
• told her of his troubles
• of Springett, his son’s illness,

• he always confessed his love, saying things like: “I love, honor and embrace thee and am,
without reserve,
• of his entirely thine as thou wouldst have me.”
sleeplessness
• of his occasional nose bleeds
 “My best love embraces thee, wch Springs from that
fountaine of Love & life, which Time, Distance nor
Disapointmts can ever ware out, nor the flood of many &
great Waters ever Quench. Here it is – dearest H – that I
behold, love, and value thee, and desire, above all other
Considerations, to be Known, received & esteemed by thee.
And Lett me Say, that the loveliness that the tendring &
blessed Truth hath beutified thee with, hath made thee
amiable in my eye, above many, & for that it is my heart,
from the very first, has cleaved to thee.”
- Wm Penn, September 1695
The Wedding
• It only took 2 months after his first declaration for the engagement
• William asked Hannah to marry him through a letter, but she did not answer the
question back this way.
• In November of 1695, she said yes!
• As was customary of the Quaker religion, the couple “went before the Quaker meeting
to say that they planned to marry, in order to get approval.
• For the longest time, she herself had planned on not marrying at all and she told him
when they first met that she “had resolved instead to dedicate herself to Quaker work.”
• As an appropriate response, “he reassured her that she could serve the Lord by
marrying him: "since thou wert for liveing to the Lord, as thy Husband, thou thus
marryest him in me."
• They were officially married in the Friends Meeting House in Bristol on March 5, 1696,
and he was almost double her age.
Life as a Wife
• Marriage assigned new privileges, advantages, and obligations to her.
• She became a step-mom to 3 teenaged children, before having 8 more children of
her own.
• 1st job was to care for his son, but he was too sick to recover and 1 month later, in
April, he died.
• The couple settled at Penn’s house in Worminghurst, in the quiet country, away
from her family.
• everything in the home reminded her and her husband of Gulielma & he would
often tell her how deeply he and Guli had loved each other, what a perfect wife she
had been, how she had ‘so heroically and so willingly sacrificed herself to his
religious and public life.
• Hannah would sometimes cry because for 12 full years after the marriage, Penn
continued to wear about his neck, day and night, the Spanish gold piece with its
memories of Guli.
 Journey to America
• 2 years later, the family set out to move to America, in order to better govern the colony.
• It took 3 months to travel, and Hannah was nearing the end of her pregnancy with their first child.
• Weather = bad + Food = salty + Not enough water to drink + LICE + Pregnancy made her seasick and
uncomfortable. Luckily, “Philadelphia was much more developed than it had been in Guli’s time, and
adequate medical care would be available.”
• They lived with friends temporarily, until their Steward had everything ready in June at their new home,
Pennsbury Manor, a country estate situated on the Delaware river twenty-four miles above Philadelphia.
• Hannah took responsibility for management of the manor's household activities, including the baking,
brewing, cooking, drying, pickling, preserving and spinning. As mistress of the manor, she was in charge
of the cellar, dairy, herb garden, larder, kitchen garden, and smokehouse and managed the domestic
workforce, which included at least three African-American slaves.
• They grew food in the garden, spun yarn, and wove cloth. Meals were planned using recipes she had
brought with her. She made medicines from the herbs in the garden. She brewed beer and ale. She
made marigold wine, and a drink called mead. She watched over the servants. She made sure that they
had good manners.
• Hannah and her servants had to make whatever they needed, or ask for it to be sent to them, because
the manor was outside of town.
 Doug Miller on HP's Marriage to Penn
Things didn’t turn out the way they thought…
•The Quaker attitude towards authority made them an almost impossible
people to govern. There was a greater disrespect for law and order in
Pennsylvania than might have been expected from a Quaker colony dedicated
to a ‘holy experiment.”
•It had only been 1 year in America, but economic and political necessity
forced the family to return to England in 1701.
•Since Hannah was city born and bred, she had only brief experience with
rural life, and was not enamored of it. Since she was trained by her father in
business matters, she was unhappy at being little more than a hostess at
Pennsbury, to visitors who unexpectedly stopped while traveling between
Philadelphia and New York.
•On November 2, 1701, the family left Pennsylvania, never to return again.
• When they got home, William Penn landed in prison for failure to pay his debts to the heirs of his
former steward, to whom he had mortgaged Pennsylvania.
• This meant that Hannah needed to step up and take care of the family during his absence.
• 3 years later -- William suffered a series of strokes and was incapacitated from 1712 until his death in 1718
(6 years).
• During this time, Hannah had to manage the family affairs, including the Pennsylvania proprietorship,
which she continued to do so after his death, as executrix of his will and guardian of their children, all
minors.
• As anyone would in this situation, she initially expressed reservations in her own ability; she hesitated to
act "for fear of mismanagement," as she said, because she was "but a woman.“ However, she successfully

- presided over 2 changes of deputy governors

- handled negotiations over the longstanding Pennsylvania-Maryland border dispute
- battled in the courts with her stepson, William Penn, Jr., over the terms of William, Sr.'s will
- battled the Crown, which wanted to take control of the colony
- battled her other stepsons, who tried to displace her
- & resolved conflicts with the English Government over laws passed in Pennsylvania
Life as a Widow
• Over time, his financial condition [had] worsened and there was not much money to give his
family.
• Since she was raised to believe that men and women were created equal, Hannah successfully
“governed the Pennsylvania colony for 6 years after her husband was incapacitated by a stroke in
1712... and for another 8 years in her own name” after his death.
• “At that time, no other woman in Britain, aside from Queen Mary II and Queen Anne held direct
political power of this kind. Although Hannah managed Pennsylvania with the help of her
[friends], she had the final word on all decision. Because it was usually impossible for a woman to
hold such a power, Hannah’s story puts her in a unique, comparable position.
• 4 years after William’s death, Hannah had an attack of paralysis, from which she partially
recovered, and lived till the year 1726, 8 years longer than William.
• Her remains were laid in the same grave with those of her husband as per her wishes.

Doug Miller on Hannah Callowhill Penn

Her Lasting Legacy
•Up until her own death in 1726, Hannah Penn remained involved in all affairs.
•Although there was no executor for Hannah’s will, the court did honor William’s
-- Springett claimed Pennsbury manor and the land around it.
-- The rest remained with Hannah’s children.
The family managed to hold Pennsylvania until the Revolutionary War. At that time Pennsylvania
became a state of the new United States, and no longer had ties to any 1 owner.
More Recently:
•on November 28, 1984 President Ronald Reagan made both William and
Hannah Penn honorary citizens of the United States.
•When congress did this, Hannah Penn became cited as "the first woman
Governor in North America.”
•For a while, her portrait even hung “among the portraits of Pennsylvania’s
founders and former governors,” thanks to work by First Lady Susan Corbett.
•Today, while venturing out around Pennsylvania, especially Philadelphia, it is
easy to see the influence and legacy that she left. There are several streets, schools,
health centers, and more are named after her and/or her husband.
•And of course, the infamous Pennsbury Manor was rebuilt as a tourist
attraction/museum for visitations.