A History of the University of Pennsylvania from Its Foundation to A. D. 1770/Chapter 19
Death entered early among the Trustees, for James Logan and Thomas Hopkinson died within a few days of each other, the one on 31 October and the other on 5 November, 1751, and in less than six weeks the Rector was numbered with them. Both were a loss to their associates, and to Franklin especially the death of Hopkinson must have left a vacancy in his own circle of friends difficult of replacement, for they had been associated together in matters of science and of beneficence. The Trustees met on 12 December, 1751, and proceeded to fill the vacancies without any note or comment, no encomium or eulogy expressed the sense of their loss. "Two of the Trustees, to wit, James Logan, Esqr and Thomas Hopkinson being deceased, Isaac Norris, Esq and Thomas Cadwalader were chosen in their Room, by a Majority of Votes." The influence wielded by Logan on behalf of the Academy could well be carried on by his son-in-law, Isaac Norris, the foremost Friend of his day; and Hopkinson's tastes for science would find just representation in Cadwalader who a few years later could exert his influence toward the development of the Medical Department of the College and Academy. Some notice of these two prominent worthies must be given here, before we look further into the work of the growing institution in whose direction they were now to participate.
Isaac Norris, son of Isaac Norris, the Councillor, was born in Philadelphia, 3 October, 1701. His father brought him up to a mercantile life, after fitting him by a trained education to take his proper place among his fellows He was endowed with good natural abilities, had received an excellent education, and might indeed be called learned; for, in addition to a knowledge of Hebrew, he wrote in Latin and French with ease, and his reading was extensive. He possessed a fine library containing many of the best editions of the classics, and was a liberal patron of literature.[1]
He had twice visited Europe for travel, and in 1743 he retired from mercantile life, and as he expressed it "lived downright in the country way." But before this his talents and aptitude for public affairs, call them politics if you will, brought him before his fellow townsmen prominently, and he had been sent to the Assembly in 1734. He here encountered as a staunch Friend the demands of the provincial government for money to arm the colony against the foreign enemy, and resisted and successfully opposed the requisition. He became the leader of the Quaker party. The Proprietaries now were Churchmen and personally had lost the respect of their great ancestor's co-religionists. The Friends had in 1710 granted a sum to Queen Anne for the reduction of Canada, but it was accompanied by an explanation that their principles forbad war, but commanded them to pay tribute and yield obedience to the power God had set over them in all things so far as their religious persuasions would permit. But now, they were not willing to place funds for such purpose in the hands and power of the Governor and his friends. But finally in 1739, the Assembly yielded to the importunities for money, and voted £3000, to Isaac Norris, his brother in law Thomas Griffitts, Thomas Leech, John Stamper and Edward Bradley, "for the use of King George II." There were now beginning the dissensions arising out of the claims of the Proprietaries that all their lands should be exempt from provincial taxation, which grew into a grave occasion of opposition to their government in time, and the tie of religion being sundered, this opposition to the Proprietaries on account of their exceeding selfishness eventually placed Pennsylvania in the front of the contests of the Revolution. Norris was a member also of the Assemblies of 1740 and 1741, and in 1742, in the latter year occurring the riotous scene at the election, due it was said to the machinations of the Governor, in which however Norris was returned to the Assembly. In 1745 he was with Kinsey and Lawrence appointed by the Governor a commissioner to represent Pennsylvania at the conference with the Indians at Albany. And in 1755 he was again sent to Albany as a like commissioner to treat with the Indians.
Continuing a member of the Assembly, he succeeded John Kinsey as Speaker in September 1751, and in that year he directed the legend for the new State House Bell which became so prophetic, though perhaps at the time he would have shrunk from the application made of it in 1776. He continued Speaker of the House fifteen years. The contest between the people and the Proprietaries grew during this period, and Norris at the head of the Quakers was firmly opposed to their privileges as they claimed them. In 1757, the Assembly resolved to send him and Franklin to England to solicit the removal of grievances arising out of the Proprietary instructions to their Governors, such as forbidding them to sanction any bill for the revenue which did not exempt their property from taxation and the like; but on account of ill health he declined the appointment, so that Franklin undertook it alone. His opposition to their encroachments, however, did not lead him to desire the exchange of a Royal Government for a Proprietary, and when in 1764 a petition to this effect passed the Assembly, he resigned the Speakership, rather than as Speaker sign the petition to the Crown for the change and Franklin was chosen Speaker in his place and signed the petition. Franklin could see no remedy for the trouble but in the substitution of a Royal Government in the place of one by a privileged Family; but not many years elapsed before he himself acknowledged that there was as little dependence to be placed upon the so called paternal government of a King. It was in this contest that we find Franklin's mind developing those great principles which he eventually had to apply to our national affairs and which became in the logic of events the unanswerable argument for our Independence, while such men as Norris and his son-in-law John Dickinson, alike pure and patriotic as was Franklin, stopped short of the realisation of those principles of true Government which all of English blood are expected to uphold. By the strange contrarieties of popular suffrage, Franklin was not returned to the next assembly, only however by a minority of twenty-five in a vote of nearly four thousand, while Norris, who contrary to his wishes had been placed on the County Ticket was again chosen to the Assembly, and again became the Speaker, while Franklin, the majority in the Assembly remaining unbroken, was chosen Colonial Agent and carried abroad the petition for redress against the claims of the Proprietaries. Isaac Norris shortly again resigned the Speakership on 24 October 1764; and on 13 July, 1776, he died at his seat, Fair Hill. It was justly said of him by a cotemporary, "That in all his long public career he never asked a vote to get into the House, or solicited any member for posts of advantage or employment."
His public duties forbad him, in the want of robust health, from attending with any diligence to the duties of his Trusteeship of the College and Academy, and his service therein continued less than four years. At the meeting of the Trustees of 11 February, 1755, this minute appears:
As Isaac Norris, Esqr had never met the Trustees but once since his being chosen, and, it was said, had intimated he could not conveniently attend at their Meetings, Mr. Peters was desired to write to him, and acquaint him that the Trustees were endeavoring to obtain a new Charter confirming the former with some Additions, and were desirous to know whether it would be agreeable to him that his Name should be inserted therein.
Mr. Peters produced his reply at the next meeting, which was as follows; and which was
order'd to be enter'd on the Minutes.
Respected Friend, Richard Peters
I can have no Objection to the Qualification to the Govmt as we take it every year before we are instituted to our Seats in the Assembly, neither have I any objection to any other Part of the Academical Institution, but heartily wish you success in it My Distance from Town, and the Ails I have, make it very inconvenient to me to attend the Duty of a Trustee, and therefore I request the Gent'n will be pleased to accept my Resignation of that Trust.
I return them my Thanks for the Favours they have already shewn me by inserting my Name in their former Charter, and am Their and
Yr Assd Fr'd
Feby 25 1755Isaac Norris.
On a previous page was narrated his connection with the Friends Publick School, and the cause of their desire for his resignation from the Board of Overseers. Strong Friend as he always was, he was unwilling to confine his influence in the favor of a public education to the seemingly narrow limits his Society had marked out for the instruction of their Youth.
His two sons died in infancy. His daughter Mary became the wife of John Dickinson, the famous author of A Farmer's Letters, and whose Mother was sister of Dr. Thomas Cadwalader. It was while Dickinson was President of Pennsylvania, that he "presented Dickinson College, Carlisle, with the principal part of the library of the late Isaac Norris, Esq., consisting of about 1500 volumes upon the most important subjects."[2]
Dr. Thomas Cadwalader was born in Philadelphia in 1707 the son of John Cadwalader, who came to Pennsylvania from Pembrokeshire and married in 1699 the daughter of Dr Edward Jones of Lower Merion, then in Philadelphia County, one of the earliest practitioners of medicine in the Province. Young Cadwalader received his early education at the Friends Publick School then under the charge of Thomas Makin. Later, his father sent him to England to pursue his studies as a physician, spending a year in the study of anatomy under Chesselden and returning home about 1731. He at once took an active part in practical movements, and as he was about the age of Franklin, perhaps the youngest of the coterie which gathered around him, he was drawn into the same line of activities, and at once threw his interests with those who were then forming the new Library company, in which he was a Director many years. Watson[3] names him as one of the physicians inoculating for the small pox in the Winter of 1736–7, others being Doctors Zachary, Shippen, and Bond, afterwards his fellow Trustees in the Academy and College.
Marrying in 1738 a daughter of John Lambert of New Jersey, he appears to have taken up his residence in that province about that time, and when in 1746 Governor Belcher granted a Borough charter to Trenton, he was chosen the first Burgess. When four years later the citizens surrendered this charter, Dr Cadwalader shortly thereafter returned to Philadelphia and upon the death of Thomas Hopkinson he was chosen 12 November, 1751, upon Franklin's nomination, a Trustee of the Academy to succeed him; and in the same year he was elected a member of the Common Council of Philadelphia and there served until 1774. In 1755 he was called to the Provincial Council at the same time as were John Mifflin and Benjamin Chew who a few years later became his fellow Trustees. He was a member of the Philosophical Society for many years, and in 1765 became a member of the Provincial Council; and during the Revolution became a Medical Director in the Army. As one of the physicians to the new Hospital, he gave there a course of medical lectures.[4] He was a signer of the Non-Importation Article in 1765, but his age precluded him from an active participation in the affairs of the Revolution. In July, 1776, he was appointed by the Committee of Safety with Drs. Bond, Shippen, jr, and Rush a committee for the examination of all the candidates who applied to be surgeons in the Navy; and he was also appointed a Medical Director of the Army Hospitals, and in 1778 succeeded the elder Dr. Shippen as Surgeon of the Pennsylvania Hospital.
Though a resident of Philadelphia the greater portion of his life, Dr Cadwalader retained his farm near Trenton, called Greenwood, to which he frequently resorted, and here he died 14 November, 1779, but two months after the abrogation of the charter of the Academy and College of which he had been a diligent and faithful Trustee for nearly twenty eight years. Though he and his wife, who survived him seven years, remained Friends all their lives, their only sons John and Lambert both distinguished themselves in the military service of the Revolution. The elder, Gen. John Cadwalader, was elected a Trustee on his father's death. Both these sons were "entered" by him in the Academy and College in 1751 at its opening.