Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

In 1632 a small contingent of Swedes and Finns came to the land where the Schuylkill River meets the Delaware and founded New Sweden. In 1655 Peter Stuyvesant seized New Sweden for the Dutch, inciting conflict with the British until the Dutch relinquished their rights to the territory in 1673. Nine years later William Penn established a town between the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers, naming it Philadelphia, the "city of brotherly love", and in two years it evolved into an active settlement of about 2,500 people, most of them Quakers.