On the Liberty Bell, it's spelled Pensylvania. Likewise on plenty of maps from the colonial days.
When did it become Pennsylvania (with three n's)?
Answer
While English spelling became more and more standardized after the printing press was introduced in 1475, it was not considered important until the 19th century. In the U.S., universal standardization was spurred by Noah Webster's ideologically motivated 1783 speller and 1828 dictionary, and by Horace Mann's efforts and the start of universal public schooling in various states from the 1830s onwards. The dictionaries did not include proper nouns, so names were among the last words to get standardized spellings, as any exasperated genealogist sifting through old passenger manifests and Census data knows.
Probably a dozen forms were in use in the late 1700s. Both Pensylvania and Pennsylvania appear on the original U.S. Constitution, notable as not only was the document composed in Pennsylvania, but the secretary, one Jacob Shallus, was a scribe for the Pennsylvania state legislature and presumably one who ought to know.
Multiple spellings frequently appear in the same document, sometimes just a few words apart:
… or no words apart:
Indeed, Seymour Stanton Block's 2004 biography of the commonwealth's most famous son, entitled Benjamin Franklin, Genius of Kites, Flights and Voting Rights, reports that as an anti-counterfeiting measure,
[Franklin] purposely spelled Pennsylvania a different way on each denomination bill: Pennsylvania, Pensylvania, Pennsilvania, and Pensilvania
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