Note 167 — Chapter XVIII
Reading edition
It is not easy to follow Fox's scanty itinerary. There are two Tinicum islands in the Delaware (it is called "Dinidock" in the first edition of the Journal). The crossing was probably made at the upper island, which is just in front of what is now the city of Burlington, though this would be hardly ninety miles from Middletown Harbour, as he estimates. He then travels down across the very country which Friends afterwards settled under the leadership of William Penn. There is evidence to show that the idea of forming in America a colony of Friends originated with George Fox. We learn from a letter of Josiah Coale, a Friend who had travelled extensively among the Indians, that George Fox had commissioned him to treat with the Susquehanna Indians for the purchase of a strip of territory. Fox's letter is not preserved, but Josiah Coale's answer is among the Swarthmore MSS., and is as follows: "Dear George,—As concerning Friends buying a piece of land of the Susquehanna Indians, I have spoken of it to them and told them what thou said concerning it, but their answer was that there is no land that is habitable or fit for situation beyond Baltimore's liberty [i. e., beyond the domain of Lord Baltimore,] till they come to or near the Susquehanna fort, and besides William Fuller, who was the chief man amongst Friends with the Indians ... is withdrawn at present, ... so that without him little can be done at present with the Indians; and besides, these Indians are at war with another nation of Indians, who are very numerous, and it is doubted by some that in a little space they will be so destroyed that they will not be a people. Thine in the truth,
Josiah Coale."
This letter was written in 1660, twelve years before this American visit. About the same time William Penn's thoughts were turning in the same direction. Writing about Pennsylvania in 1681, he says: "This I can say, that I had an opening of joy as to these parts in the year 1661, at Oxford twenty years since." By a purchase made through John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge, Friends obtained possession of a great section of New Jersey in 1674, the year after George Fox arrived in England. There can be no doubt that his thoughts were on future settlements here as he travelled through what is now Pennsylvania and New Jersey.