Lot 38D email save

FAIRMAN, Thomas. Autograph petition signed by "Ffa

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[Philadelphia]: 15 March 1708/1709. 2 pp. folded sheet (310 x 194 mm). Written recto only of each sheet with versos blank, one docketed. The petitioner asks the deputy governor and council for redress against the actions of a local sheriff in the course of a dispute with John Morris over the sale of a "certaine parcell of land" which had been settled by arbitration after "very large" bonds had been posted. Delay in the arbitration proceedings and misplaced evidence evidently caused the grievance which the petitioner wishes satisfied. The petition was presented by Fairman to Gookin and the Provincial Council on 16th March, but the issues proved too complex to allow for an immediate decision: the minutes record that "as the affair appears perplex'd & this Council being no Court of Equity, He [Fairman] is referred over to the Law" (Minutes of the Provincial Council, II: p.434). At the first settlement of Pennsylvania, Fairman served as Thomas Holme's deputy surveyor and was among those who helped layout the city of Philadelphia. He is best remembered, however, for owning the property where William Penn was said to have negotiated with the Indians at Shackamaxon under a great elm tree that would become known as the Treaty Elm.

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