Quakers declined to use most of the names of the month in the Gregorian calendar because of their pagan origins; rather than January, February, for example, they said First Month, Second Month. (The months September through December, which were named after Latin numbers, were okay.) The same was true of the days of the week; Sunday School, for example, was “First Day School.” In this fashion, Penn prescribed numbers as names for streets running north–south—Second Street, Third Street, Fourth Street—matching the rational, straight lines of the grid. AN EARLY MAP OF PHILADELPHIA And so, William
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