From the very outset, Pennsylvania was the most polyglot and conglomerate of all the English colonies or provinces in America. West Jersey and Delaware, which latter State was originally a part of Pennsylvania and known as “the three lower counties on Delaware,” in some degree shared this miscellaneous character, and together the three formed a practically distinct unit in the Middle Colonies, peculiar in composition and without parallel elsewhere. The diversity in nationality and speech among the early settlers was directly reflected in architectural manifestations and the variant types were never wholly welded together into one distinct style and, even long after the advent and almost universal prevalence of the Georgian mode, they continued in use concurrently. Just as similar phenomena were to be detected in the several parts of New England, they displayed local peculiarities of artisanship attributable to the different traditions obtaining in the respective parts of the Old World from which the individual artisans had come. The two most noticeable features in the early population of Pennsylvania were the diversity of elements and the clannishness and consequent isolation of the people who composed the several distinct parts of the colony. These elements remained distinct from each other both from preference and interest, and natural conditions favoured this division. First of all in date of settlement on the shores of the Delaware were the Swedes, whose successful efforts at colonisation began in 1638. The Dutch, it is true, had previously made some slight attempts at settlement. In 1616, in pursuit of the exploration essayed but abandoned by Hudson in 1609, Captain Hendrickson, in the “Onrust” (“Restless”), had sailed up the Delaware to the mouth of the Schuylkill and, in 1623, under Captain Cornelius Mey, Fort Nassau was built at what is now Gloucester Point, nearly opposite Philadelphia. In the main, however, the Dutch preferred to stay down the bay and, in 1650, Fort Nassau was abandoned. They were traders rather than settlers, so far as their connexion with the Delaware was concerned, and the first real settlements, therefore, are to be credited to the Swedes who were home-loving, industrious farmers, proud of their homesteads and capable in the management of their dairies but possessed of little inclination towards commercial activity. The Swedish foundation was permanent and, though the Swedish population was eventually absorbed by the more numerous elements brought hither a few years later by Penn’s “holy experiment,” it left an indelible and significant mark upon the corporate composition of the colony and the traces of Swedish influence are still distinct and unmistakable, not only in much of the local architecture, in the names of places and persons, and in the strong strain of Swedish blood in many Pennsylvania families but in humbler and less obvious matters as well. As an instance of the latter may be