Pickering Mines Deed History

In 1681 William Penn granted his friend Charles Pickering 5,383 acres of land where Pickering thought he had found silver. Pickering died on a voyage back to England before 1700. He willed his land to sixteen friends, whose names are unknown, but some of them are probably in the 1715 tax return.

For unknown reasons there seemed to be problems splitting the tract into 16 pieces. This issue was resolved when Joshua Carpenter (half-brother to Samuel Carpenter, the deputy governor of Pennslyvania from 1694 to 1698) was given a patent that stretched from the Schuylkill to the Welsh line and overrode a substantial part of the Pickering patent. In response William Penn asked for a resurvey of the tract. This resulted in a resolution of the dispute where the additional land from the new Joshua Carpenter patent was assigned to 2 of the 16 tracts (these tracts were later known as the Moore Hall and Anderson Farm tracts). The original Pickering patent was split into 14 tracts, Joshua Carpenter received one of the tracts and Samuel Carpenter 3 of them.

It is not clear whether this manoevering was connected with the financial problems Samuel Carpenter faced in 1702.

Table 1 Charlestown - Pickering Mines & others

From	To	Date	Area	Cost	Reference
William Penn	Charles Pickering	10/23/1681	5,000a		Survey not found, index says D73-226 but this is incorrect.
Charles Pickering	16 friends	Between 1688 - 1700	5,000a		Died while returning to England. Partition resolved in Chester County Court of Common Pleas, 8/28/1705.
William Penn	Joshua Carpenter and Company	8/26/1701 (survey)	5358a?		Survey D77-421; see Joshua Carpenter and Company Patent. This patent overlapped substantially with the Pickering Mines tract.
There are 16 landholders in Charlestown in the 1715 tax return. The total acreage is 8,480 acres. This compares with a 12/28/1737-8 survey result of 12,950 acres and a quote (deed E-456) of 5,358 acres split among 16 friends which is stated as coming to 340 acres per person (actually 334 acres). The 5,000 acres will have been before the 6% road allowance which brings it to 5,300 acres. Note that Samuel Carpenter held 3 tracts out of the 16.
?	James Anderson	1713	340a		see Anderson Farm
John Moore		1715	340a		Tax return; see Moore Hall tract
Joseph Pidgeon		1715	340a		Tax return; see Joseph Pidgeon tract
Thomas Tress		1715	340a		Tax return; see Thomas Tress tract
Joshua Carpenter		1715	340a		Tax return; see Joshua Carpenter tract
Samuel Carpenter		1715	1620a		Tax return; see Samuel Carpenter North East and Samuel Carpenter South West
William Sanders		1715	340a		Tax return; see William Sanders tract
Joseph Richards		1715	340a		Tax return; see Joseph Richards tract
Griffith Pritchet		1715	340a		Tax return; see Griffith Pritchet tracxt
John Jones		1715	340a		Tax return; see John Jones tract
Henry Flowers		1715	340a		Tax return; see Henry Flowers tract
Samuel Richardson		1715	340a		Tax return; see Samuel Richardson tract
Edward Shippen		1715	340a		Tax return; see Edward Shippen tract
Francis Rawles		1715	340a		Tax return; see Francis Rawles tract
Non-Pickering Mines tracts
David Lloyd (Phoenixville area)		1715	1,600a		Tax return; see David Lloyd tracts
Samuel Buckley		1715	500a		Tax return; see Samuel Buckley tract