Coopers Ferry at Coopers Point

The long oared wherry carried people, horses, and carriages across the Delaware River. Early Quaker settlers took turns crossing the river on alternate months to attend the monthly meeting at William Cooper’s Pyne Poynt home and Thomas Fairman’s Shackamaxon house on the opposite shore of the Delaware River until Philadelphia’s meeting house was built. Fairman, husband of Petty’s Island owner Elizabeth Kinsey, senior Pennsylvania Quaker, and deputy surveyor for William Penn, allowed Penn to use his house the first year Penn stayed in his new colony. He also selected the site and negotiated the purchase of the Land on which Penn built Philadelphia.