Pennsylvania History (1642) from The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America's First Thirteen States (Amerisearch, Inc., 2009):
<A Swedish settlement in 1642, was the the first settlement in what was later to be Pennsylvania. In 1669, more Swedish settlers came up the Delaware River built Fort Wicaco, at a place later granted William Penn. Old Swedes' Church, "Gloria Dei," met in a blockhouse at Fort Wicaco in 1677, being served by German pastor Jacobus Fabritius and Swedish schoolmaster Jacob Jongh. Its new building, dedicated July 2, 1700, is the oldest Church in Pennsylvania. Charles II granted the land to William Penn as his personal estate, in repayment of a debt owed to his deceased father, Admiral William Penn. Admiral William Penn fought in the First and Second Anglo-Dutch Wars, 1652- 1654 and 1665-1667, and captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655. The son, William Penn, had been persecuted with imprisonment in the Tower for his conversion to the Society of Friends or Quakers. This influenced him to invite all the persecuted Christians of Europe to join his colony as a "Holy experiment."
In 1682, twenty-three ships arrived with Welsh Quaker settlers. This was the beginning a Quaker migration which lasted until 1696, overwhelming the Swedish and Finnish population. In 1693, letters were sent to Sweden's King Charles XI requesting Swedish Lutheran ministers, Bibles and Hymnals, which he sent in 1696, under the direction of Jesper Svedberg.
In 1706, Rev. Francis Makemie organized the first meeting of Presbyterian leaders in America in Philadelphia. By 1716 there were a total of four Presbyteries in America: Snow Hill; New Castle, Delaware; New York; and Philadelphia. In 1717 those four Presbyteries united to form a Synod-the Synod of Philadelphia.
A 1718 census listed white population at 40,000, of which half were Quakers. Between 1720 and 1729, German settlers known as New Baptists, or Dunkers, began arriving in Pennsylvania, as well as settlers of the older denominations of Swiss and German AnaBaptists or Mennonites and Amish.
They were followed by the Schwenkfelders, from the Rhine Valley, Alsatia, Suabia, Saxony, and the Palatinate. Members of the Lutheran Reformed Congregations came between 1730 and 1740. German Moravians, or Church of the Brethren, settled Bethlehem in 1739, having previously been in Georgia.
They worked particularly with the Native Americans.
British laws against dissenters drove 200,000 Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from Scotland and Northern Ireland between 1700 and 1750, most of whom came to Western Pennsylvania, settling in Lehigh, Bucks, and Lancaster Counties, and in the Cumberland Valley.
The first Jew in Pennsylvania was Indian trader Isaac Miranda, who settled near Lancaster in the early 1710's. In 1735, the first Jew to live in Philadelphia was merchant and shipper Nathan Levy, who purchased land for the first Jewish cemetery in Pennsylvania. During the revolutionary war the British continued the European custom of executing deserters at the gates of Jewish cemeteries and the gate of the Walnut Street cemetery still has the marks of British bullets.
Several Jewish families organized the first congregation, Mikveh Israel, in 1740, building the first Sephardic synagogue in 1782. The first Ashkenazic Synagogue, Rodeph Shalom, was built in 1795. In 1848, Isaac Leeser formed the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia and in 1856, banker Hyman Gratz joined him in establishing a trust for a teacher's college. Beginning in 1895, Gratz College is the first transdenominational Jewish college in the United States, and the oldest Hebrew college in the Western Hemisphere. In 2006, Philadelphia had a population of 285,000 Jews.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in Updegraph vs. Commonwealth, 1824, declared the law of 1700 still in force which imposed a penalty upon any who "willfully, premeditatedly and despitefully blaspheme, or speak lightly or profanely of Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or the Scriptures of Truth."> 1642PH001
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1642PH001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Pennsylvania History, beginning in 1642, from William J. Federer, The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America's First Thirteen States (St. Louis, MO: Amerisearch, Inc.).