Mountain Home maverick. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1906-1911, 1909-07-01

hall should have been made ready for the oc
cupany of the Provincial assembly and the gov
ernors council virtually at the exact time when
the colonies of Great Britain in America began
to feel their growing strength sufficiently to IN
duce them to insist more than ever before upon
the right to be specially mindful OF their own IN
terests. 1t only quarter OF a century AFTER
the "od Liberty Bell' cast by patriotic ar
tisans in this city that it used to gather the
people to hear the proclamation, by order OF the
continental congress, of the absolute political sep
aration of the 13 colonies from the mother coun-
try. The state house sheltered not only the
continental congress during many critical SEES
sions but also the supreme council of the feder-
alton of the United States the constitutional con-
venton of 1887, the supreme court of the United
States and the provincial and state legislature
of Pennsylvania in that long period OF the con-
ception, birth and infancy of the western repub-
lie Every man Of any distinction whatever in
that great epoch, from Andrew Hamilton and
Benjamin Franklin to Lafayette and Pulaski,
passed through its portals. 1t is the silent survv-
ing witness of a stupendous past, so stupendous
indeed that hardly anything is more wonderful
than the absolute simplicity of the austere stage
setting of those dramatic actions which indirectly
transformed the whole political world
William PENIS council of state first met in
George Guests unfinished house near the outh
of Dock creek, afterward called the Blue Anchor
tavern" Settlers at that time were living In
caves along the west bank of the Delaware riv
Swedes' church at Wicaco down the river. and
in William PENIS house in Laetitia court the
same which stands in Fairmount park, until
it removed to the new state house in 1747 The
Provincial assembly probably sat in the first
rough meeting house erected for the worship of
Friends shortly after PENIS arrival, and then in
the later on Front street known as the Bank
Meeting house. But it also sat elsewhere some
times in houses that erected for private use.
1t was in January, 1929, that the assembly,
awake finally to the need of a suitable provincial
capitol voted $4,000 (S10,000), toward its cost
| and appropriated the same out of issue of pa
| per money which 1t had just authorized William
/ Allen, who afterward one of Phihdelphia's
most famous mayors and became justice OF the
supreme court, acted as the agent of the province
in the purchase of the lots of ground on Chest
nut street, from Fifth to Sixth and extending
halfway back toward Walnut street, which
formed the chosen site. 1t not until 1863 that
! the remainder of the square acquired. DR..
Kearsley the architect Of Christ church. aspired
also to design the state house, and is said to have
been disgruntled because he was not permitted to
| do so Thomas Lawrence, Andrew Hamilton and
DR.. John Kearsey composed the building com
| mittee.
The main structure, minus the great tower.
which had not yet been built in a rough
| state when in September, 1886, William Allen
| the mayor. gave banquet and frolic In the Long
room in the second story, which was to be the
scene of so many later revelries and solemnities
well.
Public contractors were diatory in those days
| as in these, and 1t was not until 1745 that the
| room of the assembly in the state house was com
pleted. It is curious to note that it was heated
| at that time by means of two open stoves. al