So I wrote about this yesterday, right? I didn’t originate the news about the National Park Service and William Penn in his Philadelphia pocket park at 2nd and Walnut off of Samson Walk. It was international news after a few hours yesterday which made me notice. William Penn being discussed by British newspapers will do that.

total b.s. leave william penn alone.

Well about half an hour ago I noticed an update on the NBC10 app and apparently the hair brained stupid idea, plan, or proposal is now revoked and of course the I-95 Superman known as Governor Josh Shapiro is taking credit for swooping in to save the day?

Groan….politics….

IMHO the people did this with instant public outrage, not the Governor who is using this as political capital to feather his own political nest. I mean Governor you are everywhere these days so what is it you are interested in? A US Senate Seat? A Presidential bid? Sorry not sorry something has to be cooking, right? So while he’s at it, how about those pipeline issues, Governor darling?

Anyway, here’s what NBC10 is saying:

NBC10 Philadelphia: NPS withdrawals plan to remove statue of William Penn from site of his Philadelphia home

Published January 8, 2024 • Updated 12 mins ago

The National Park Service (NPS) has withdrawn the review of a renovation plan that included the removal of the statue of William Penn from the site of his former Philadelphia home. 

The NPS asked for input on the future for the park, located near the intersection of 2nd and Walnut Streets off Sansom Walk in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood, and they certainly received it — at least online.

The online site where the public was supposed to provide comment on the Welcome Park proposal on Monday—the first day of a 14-day period where the NPS were going to receive public input on the plan.

By 6:30 p.m. Monday night, the NPS said the public comment period was closed.

“The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted. No changes to the William Penn statue are planned,” the NPS said in a statement.

…In a statement on the plan, the NPS said the goal of the proposed renovations were intended to create “a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors.”

After the proposal was withdrawn the NPS said:

“The National Park Service (NPS) remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park as the nation prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Upon completion of all the necessary internal reviews, the park looks forward to engaging in a robust public process to consider options for refurbishing the park in the coming years.”

The park is located on the site of Penn’s former home, it is also named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia. 

The design and construction of Welcome Park was funded by the Independence Historical Trust and was completed in 1982, notes the NPS in the statement….The withdrawn proposal called for the William Penn statue and Slate Roof house model at the park to be removed and not reinstalled.

Yeah, Super Josh did all of this, right? Public outrage at the National Park Service’s latest bit of stupidity and political pandering and a complete disregard of the actual history of William Penn had nothing to do with it? The fact that it is a Presidential election year has nothing to do with it either ? (Somewhere Dana Carvey is reviving Church Lady and isn’t that special.)

Park withdraws review of Welcome Park rehabilitation proposal

Date: January 8, 2024
Contact:Andrew McDougall, 215-435-4372

PHILADELPHIA — Independence National Historical Park has withdrawn the review of a draft proposal to rehabilitate Welcome Park and closed the public comment period. The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted.  No changes to the William Penn statue are planned.  

The National Park Service (NPS) remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park as the nation prepares to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Upon completion of all the necessary internal reviews, the park looks forward to engaging in a robust public process to consider options for refurbishing the park in the coming years.  

The park is located on the site of William Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia. The design and construction of Welcome Park was funded by the Independence Historical Trust and was completed in 1982.   

Updates on the project may be found on the park’s website at www.nps.gov/INDE.

Now let’s do remember that this park is barely a park and more of a rather dated 1980s concrete jungle masquerading as a park and has been since it was created . So making it more of a green space and honoring nature which is so part of Native American culture and history is not a bad plan, but William Penn and his slate house replica and his legacy should remain on the site that was his home in Philadelphia.

Also and once again people are in an uproar over William Penn because he owned slaves. At Pennsbury Manor. Quaker Charles Thomson, the most famous inhabitant of historic Harriton House in Bryn Mawr , Irish-born patriot leader in Philadelphia during the American Revolution and the secretary of the Continental Congress throughout its existence owned slaves before he freed them. Thomson prepared the Journals of the Continental Congress, and his and John Hancock’s names were the only two to appear on the first printing of the United States Declaration of Independence. He designed the Great Seal of the US too. So should he be removed from history too?

My point is some Philadelphia Quakers did own slaves and some known as “fighting Quakers” also fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and even WWI and WWII. Those are historical facts.

William Penn kept enslaved people. These are some of their names.

Slavery is wrong in today’s world, it wasn’t wrong quite yet in that world many centuries ago. It is an inconvenient truth yet part of the history that made this country. You can’t cancel all of our founding fathers and US history, nor should you. It was a different time. People and culture was different. Society was different. I say that as someone who has the genealogy of discriminated against people in my DNA. And there are plenty of people also descended from indentured servants as well as slaves.

Again, our history is our history. Covering it up and/or removing it means we could be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Being open to all segments of history gives us the opportunity to learn so yes that should include Native American and history of other indigenous peoples (like the Inuit tribes) and slavery and black history along with everything else. They are all pieces of the crazy quilt of American history.

We can’t pretend bad things didn’t happen and we shouldn’t. But history doesn’t exist for the convenient bits, it exists for ALL of it, including William Penn.

Face it before there was George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams or Paul Revere or Betsy Ross or Prince Hall or Louis Glapion or George Middleton or Absalom Jones or Richard Allen, there was William Penn.

History has a place in our lives. We live in Pennsylvania. We fight to see pieces of land that were William Penn land grants saved, we need to save him too. There would be no Pennsylvania without William Penn.

Have a good night and keep an eye on this story.