a biography of the day--hannah callowhill penn (2d wife of PA founder william penn)
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Twenty-six years old when she arrived in Philadelphia, Hannah was twenty-four years younger than her famous husband. Penn's first wife, Gulielma Maria Springett, had died on February 24, 1694, leaving her husband to care for their two surviving children, Laetitia and William Penn, Jr. While her brother stayed in England, Laetitia came to the colony with her father and
stepmother. Born in Bristol, England, Hannah Callowhill was the only surviving daughter of a wealthy merchant. She first met Penn when he was on a religious visit to fellow Quakers in her city. After he left, they began a courtship through letters. The exchange of notes, however, was not equal, for her suitor wrote more than twice as many letters as Hannah did and in one missive gently chided her for not keeping up a more regular correspondence. Despite her apparent laxity in letter writing, Penn proposed and she accepted. The two were married in the Friends Meeting House in Bristol on March 5, 1696.
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The Penn family had only been in America about a year when economic and political necessity forced Penn to return to England in 1701. His money problems were twofold: Penn's representatives were having trouble collecting rents from tenants on his lands in Ireland, and his business agent in London, Philip Ford, claimed that Penn owed him ten thousand pounds sterling. Penn's most significant political problem stemmed from efforts by the royal government to take control of Pennsylvania. These were serious problems that required his direct personal attention.
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After Penn became ill in 1712 and suffered a series of debilitating strokes during the following year, she also had to take care of her ailing husband. When Penn became paralyzed by several strokes, Hannah ably handled all of the province's official business. She sent letters of advice and instruction to its governor Charles Gookin and to James Logan and she also handled her husband's other complicated financial and legal affairs.
After Penn's death, in July 1718, Hannah Penn had to grapple with a challenge to her husband's will. In an effort to cut Hannah and her children out of the inheritance, William Penn, Jr. mounted a legal effort to contest his father's will. Although he died before the case was settled, his son Springett attempted to have the court declare the will invalid, asserting that his grandfather was mentally incompetent when he wrote it. Hannah Penn prevailed, however, and saw to it that her children received the estate. When she died on December 20, 1726, the proprietorship of Pennsylvania passed to her three sons: John, Thomas, and Richard.
http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-20