I agree with limiting the age range, and the change in name to "Penn Fleet Passengers" is certainly more clearly targeted. I guess my only question with the latter is whether the intent is really to restrict the project strictly to those who arrived on Penn's fleet or whether it is more focused on the earliest arrivals and founders of Pennsylvania? Or is the main focus on people who somehow had a connection with Penn?
My understanding is that the ships list for Penn's Fleet by-and-large did not survive and have been secondarily constructed. My research has turned up some ancestors who were original grantees but apparently did not make the transit with Penn in 1681-82, whereas others are suspected but not proven to have traveled with Penn. For example, I have just been cleaning up the profiles of John Michener (Michener-4) and Sarah Moore (Moore-320), who were married in Penn's home in Sussex in 1686. Moore is reported to have been either a ward or a servant-girl in the Penn household whereas Michener, who was a few years older than his wife, is plausibly reported in some accounts to have been Penn's manservant, and I have seen reports that claim that he traveled with Penn to the New World and back again, but have not found any primary documentation to confirm that. In any case, he emigrated permanently to Pennsylvania with his new wife shortly after their marriage in 1686. Is that an example of someone you would want included in the project, or not? Or what about someone like William Clayton, whom the Quakers sent over in 1677 BEFORE the fleet in order to negotiate land purchases from the native Americans, and who presided over Markham's Council in 1682 and subsequently was left as acting governor by Penn in 1684? Or what about the Quakers who immigrated not from the Old World but from Long Island or New England? I have no axe to grind here -- a project focused strictly on the passengers on Penn's fleet is a very appropriate and easily understood focus area. I merely intend to point out that the arrivals on Penn's Fleet are not fully representative of the original pioneers to Pennsylvania. Perhaps another way to define the group would be to set an arrival date before a certain time-certain -- for example, it would seem to me that one reasonable way to identify the earliest Pioneers might be those who arrived before the adoption of the 2nd Frame of Government (October 1701) -- the so-called "Charter of Privileges" that was celebrated by the casting 50 years later of the Liberty Bell. In this fashion, the "Pennsylvania Pioneers" might be identified in a manner somewhat analogous to the identification of the "Ancient Planters" of Virginia. Or another possibility might be to restrict it to those who arrived prior to the approval of the first frame in 1686.
