Erie County: Where Geography Has Shaped History

Erie County forms the northwest corner of the state, bounded by Lake Erie on the northwest, the states of Ohio and New York on the west and east respectively and parts of Warren and Crawford counties on the east and south. Historically the county was divided into two sections. The sou them region of 259 ,000 acres fell within the original land grant to William Penn. The northern portion of...
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Philadelphia, First

If it happened, it happened in Philadelphia,” so goes an old adage. And one not terribly far from the truth, either. Philadelphia has witnessed much of the history of the early United States. The sign­ing of the Declaration of Inde­pendence, probably the nation’s most hallowed docu­ment, drew the colonies’ lead­ing statesmen – including George Washington, Thomas...
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Preserving Philadelphia: A Conversation with Charles E. Peterson, F.A.I.A.

Those who know Philadelphia realize that it is an enormously important city with an illustrious, prestigious past. By many it is called the birthplace of a nation, by others the cra­dle of liberty. The United States was cre­ated in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Indepen­dence. The principles of the American Revolution were...
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Firm Foundations in Philadelphia: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Ties to Pennsylvania

For a century and a half, from 1807 until the early 1960s, the celebrated expedition undertaken by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) between 1803 and 1806 was generally perceived to be strictly a western United States phenomenon. Historians and educators who discussed it in their writings or in their teaching usually described the twenty-eight month ordeal as beginning...
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Bookshelf

The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 1: Journalist, 1706-1730 By J. A. Leo Lemay University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006 (549 pages, cloth, $39.95.) The first of seven volumes in honor of the three hundredth birthday of the famous founder,The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume I: Journals, 1706-1730, is a highly anticipated work by the dean of Franklin scholars that brings together the major...
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