Pittsburgh

Chapter 2: PREFACE

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

An account of a frontier settlement's growth from a scattered military post into an organized borough, tracing its social institutions, legal adjustments, and cultural maturation. It describes the effect of unsettled jurisdiction, conflicts and frontier insecurity on daily life; the slow emergence of schooling, newspapers, and municipal planning; patterns of land sales and incoming migration that created a diverse population; and the evolution of public and private affairs, including local controversies, duels, and civic leadership. Chapters move chronologically and thematically to show how crude pioneer habits gradually gave way to broader educational, cultural, and civic institutions.

PREFACE

The purpose of these pages is to describe the early social life of Pittsburgh. The civilization of Pittsburgh was crude and vigorous, withal prescient of future culture and refinement.

The place sprang into prominence after the conclusion of the French and Indian War, and upon the improvement of the military roads laid out over the Alleghany Mountains during that struggle. Pittsburgh was located on the main highway leading to the Mississippi Valley, and was the principal stopping place in the journey from the East to the Louisiana country. The story of its early social existence, interwoven as it is with contemporaneous national events, is of more than local interest.

C. W. D.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
November, 1915.