Lydia Wade, the First American Hostess of William Penn

LYDIA WADE63 LYDIA WADE, THE FIRST AMERICAN HOSTESS OF WILLIAM PENN By Lydia Sharpless Hawkins l As a young June bride, in the historic old City of London, Lydia Wade, the first American hostess of the Founder of Pennsylvania, makes her earliest appearance in history. This was in the year 1664. She was then living in the Parish of St. Botolph, just outside the city's enclosing wall,—with its sometime moat, the Houndsditch —and near to its eastern entrance, the Aldgate. Not far away was Petticoat Lane. Her maiden name was Lydia Evans. She was among the early converts to Quakerism and several times suffered persecution for her belief. In the spring and early summer of that year her nuptial intentions with another convert to the new sect, Robert Wade, a young carpenter of the same parish, having been brought before the Peel Monthly Meeting of Friends, approval was given and the marriage was solemnized, Fourth Month (June) 28, 1664, at the Peel Meeting , in St. Johns Street. This section of London, the present densely populated district of Clerkenwell, was without and to the northwest of the old walled city and at some distance from the abode of the bride and groom. Its vicinity is distinguished by many objects of historic interest, amongst others, the venerable gate of the monastery of the Monks of St. John of Jerusalem, the pleasant gardens of the Charter house, the ancient Norman Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, and the transformed, but forever martyr-hallowed Smithfield. The land where the marriage occurred once formed part of the possessions of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, having been received by them from the Crown at the dissolution of the monastery. The young couple had spent barely a month of wedded life, when their future guest,—whom they were not to know until later years—the gay, young cavalier, William Penn, then in the bloom of his 20th year, returned from France to his London home with the dress and graces of that land of his two-year sojourn. The 1 A paper read at Chester, Pennsylvania, 5 mo. 21, 1932, at the summer meeting of Friends' Historical Association in observance of the 250th anniversary of the first arrival of William Penn in America, 1682-1932. 64 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION horrors of the terrible Plague of 1665 must have been all about the Wades, but fortunately the Great Fire of 1666 did not reach them. Lydia Wade was active in the affairs of Friends' meetings both in England and Pennsylvania. In 1672, she was a signer of the epistle sent by London Friends to the women Friends in the Barbadoes . In 1674 and 1676, she contributed liberally to help poor women Friends, through the agency of the Women's Box Meeting of London. She was left behind when her husband removed to America in 1675. Under date of Second Month (April) 2, 1676 he wrote to her from Upland thus : " Dear and Loving Wife ... I hope thou wilt be well satisfied to come and live here. ... I do intend . . . after the Harvest is gotten in to come to England for thee, and I hope thou wilt be willing to come, seeing here are severall of thy Neighbours whom thou knowest well, as Richard Guy and his wife, and William Hancock and his Wife, and many others." Not long after this she came over to Upland and lived with her husband at Essex House. A good housewife, she dispensed a kindly hospitality to wayfarers of varying degree as they passed that way. In 1679, Jasper Danckaerts, a traveling Dutch Labadist, who had no love for Quakers, stayed with the Wades, and notes in his Journal that Robert " is the best Quaker we have yet seen and his wife, who is a good woman. . . . They have always treated us kindly." Among other notables entertained by Lydia Wade was William Penn's cousin, Captain William Markham, the Deputy Governor who came in 1681 ; and in 1682, no less a personage than Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, Proprietor of Maryland. We may well imagine, however, that Lydia's best efforts were put forth later that same year...