Pennsylvania Colony
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50 free Pennsylvania Colony trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Pennsylvania colony began in 1681 as one man's gamble. William Penn, a Quaker who had been jailed for his beliefs, was handed a vast tract of American land and set out to prove that people of different faiths could live side by side. What he started grew into the busiest and most varied corner of British America. These fun facts about the Pennsylvania colony cover the whole story: how the province got its name and its odd yearly rent, Penn's dealings with the Lenape, the border quarrels with its neighbours, the settlers who poured in from across Europe, Benjamin Franklin's years in Philadelphia, and the frontier fighting that led toward 1776. The quiz suits students revising colonial America, teachers after a ready-made class round, and anyone curious about how a peaceful venture became the cradle of a new nation. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01William Penn's charter set the yearly rent for Pennsylvania at two of which items, delivered to Windsor Castle?
Beaver skins
Beaver skins were due at the castle every New Year's Day, along with a fifth of any gold or silver found, a token price for about 45,000 square miles.
Q 02Which English king granted William Penn the charter for Pennsylvania in 1681 to clear a debt owed to Penn's father?
Charles II
Charles II owed the late Admiral Penn £16,000 and settled the bill with American land instead of cash, making the son a vast landowner overnight.
Q 03William Penn named Pennsylvania's capital Philadelphia; what do the Greek roots of that name mean?
Brotherly love
Brotherly love joins the Greek philos, dear, and adelphos, brother, a fitting name for a town Penn planned as a refuge for the persecuted.
Q 04The 'sylvania' in the name Pennsylvania comes from a Latin word with which meaning?
Woods
Woods, or forests, is what the Latin means; Penn wanted plain Sylvania, but the king put Penn in front to honour the founder's admiral father.
Q 05Which Philadelphia icon, ordered from London by Pennsylvania's Assembly in the 1750s, cracked on its first test strike?
Liberty Bell
The Liberty Bell was recast twice by two local workmen, and it still spells the colony's name 'Pensylvania', an accepted spelling at the time.
Q 06A 1754 cartoon in the Pennsylvania Gazette urged the colonies to unite by drawing them as which animal cut in pieces?
A snake
A snake in eight pieces stood for the colonies, playing on a folk belief that a cut-up serpent would come back to life if rejoined before sunset.
Q 07Which toy did Benjamin Franklin reportedly fly in a 1752 Philadelphia storm to show that lightning is electricity?
A kite
A kite carried a pointed wire up toward the storm clouds and drew the charge down its wet string, with Franklin's son William helping.
Q 08Which young Virginia officer surrendered Fort Necessity, in western Pennsylvania, to the French in 1754?
George Washington
George Washington was getting his first taste of combat, and the defeat at the stockade he had built opened the French and Indian War.
Q 09The Pennsylvania State House, where the colony's assembly met in Philadelphia, is known today by which name?
Independence Hall
Independence Hall took its modern name from the 1776 vote to break with Britain, and the Constitution was signed in the same building in 1787.
Q 10Which branch of the US military traces its birth to recruiting at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia in November 1775?
The Marine Corps
The Marine Corps still toasts the colonial inn every 10 November, the day Congress ordered two battalions raised in the city.
Q 11Which famous boundary was surveyed in the 1760s to settle a land quarrel between the Penn and Calvert families?
Mason–Dixon line
The Mason–Dixon line took two English astronomers four years to run, and it later became shorthand for the border between North and South.
Q 12Which Pennsylvania city grew up on the site of Fort Duquesne, a French fort at the head of the Ohio River?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh got its name in 1758, when General John Forbes took the forks and named the spot for the British statesman William Pitt.
Q 13From which present-day country did most ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch emigrate in the 1700s?
Germany
Q 21Cresap's War of the 1730s was a violent border dispute between Pennsylvania and which neighbouring colony?
Maryland
Maryland read the charters as giving it everything up to the fortieth parallel, a line that runs north of Philadelphia itself.
Q 22Settlers from which New England colony fought the Pennamite–Yankee Wars over Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley?
Connecticut
Connecticut argued that its 1662 charter ran west all the way to the Pacific, which overlapped the land later granted to William Penn.
Q 23Which frontier vigilantes marched on Philadelphia in 1764 after killing unarmed Native villagers?
The Paxton Boys
Germany, above all the Palatinate region, sent most of them, with others from Switzerland and Alsace; their dialect is also known as Pennsylvania German.
Q 14Pennsylvania's 1776 constitution swapped the colonial title of province for which word, still its official style?
Commonwealth
Commonwealth is the word the constitution of September 1776 used when it swept away the Penn family's rule in favour of a single elected assembly.
Q 15Pennsylvania's central position among the original thirteen colonies inspired which enduring nickname?
The Keystone State
The Keystone State has been the nickname since 1802, borrowing the builder's word for the central stone that holds an arch together.
Q 16Which present-day state began as the three 'Lower Counties' of William Penn's Pennsylvania?
Delaware
Delaware won its own assembly in the early 1700s yet went on sharing a governor with its bigger neighbour until 1776.
Q 17Which 1776 pamphlet by Thomas Paine, urging a break with Britain, was first published in Philadelphia?
Common Sense
Common Sense, drafted under the working title Plain Truth, appeared anonymously that January and was read aloud in taverns and meeting places.
Q 18Which frontier dwelling reached the Pennsylvania region with settlers decades before William Penn arrived?
The log cabin
The log cabin became such an icon of the American frontier that it is commonly taken for a home-grown invention instead of a European import.
Q 19Which yearly booklet of weather forecasts and witty sayings did Benjamin Franklin launch in 1732?
Poor Richard's Almanack
Poor Richard's Almanack came out under the invented name Richard Saunders and sold as many as 10,000 copies a year.
Q 20Which 1737 deal let the Penns claim all the Lenape land that hired runners could cover in a day and a half?
Walking Purchase
The Walking Purchase promised the distance a man could go on foot, but the Penns cleared a straight path and hired the three fastest runners in the colony.
The Paxton Boys turned back a few miles short of the city after meeting a delegation led by Benjamin Franklin.
Q 24After William Penn's strokes in 1712, which relative took charge of running Pennsylvania until 1726?
His wife, Hannah
His wife, Hannah, managed the colony's affairs from England for fourteen years and saw off a lawsuit from Penn's eldest son, who wanted control.
Q 25In which famous prison was William Penn held in 1668 after publishing a tract attacking Church doctrine?
Tower of London
The Tower of London held him in an unheated cell, where he was handed paper to recant and wrote the defiant No Cross, No Crown instead.
Q 26Which university expelled the young William Penn in 1662 for his religious nonconformity?
Oxford
Oxford expelled him from Christ Church college after he rebelled against enforced worship, years before he formally joined the Quakers at 22.
Q 27What name did William Penn first propose for his American colony before the king settled on Pennsylvania?
New Wales
New Wales was Penn's first choice; he then tried plain Sylvania before the king added the family name in front.
Q 28What two-word name did William Penn give his plan to run Pennsylvania as a haven for fellow Quakers?
Holy Experiment
Holy Experiment was his phrase for a colony meant to set an example to the nations, though Penn also expected the venture to make him rich.
Q 29By tradition, William Penn made his peace treaty with the Lenape at Shackamaxon beneath which kind of tree?
An elm
An elm marked the spot until a storm blew it down in 1810, and the riverside site has been Penn Treaty Park since 1893.
Q 30Which Lenape chief, later nicknamed the Patron Saint of America, is said to have made peace with William Penn?
Tamanend
Tamanend became a folk hero in Philadelphia, and the Tammany societies, including New York's Tammany Hall, took their name from him.