Complete History Of The City Of Allegheny Pennsylvania

Author : Carl. Wilhelm
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781628450064
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (5 download)

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Download or read book The Complete History of the City of Allegheny in Pennsylvania written by Carl. Wilhelm and published by . This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Complete History of the City of Allegheny in Pennsylvania: 1740 to 1890 By Carl Wilhelm Preface I have not undertaken to write a critical history of the City of Allegheny. What I attempted to do was to write a historical narrative, believing that form best suited to the occasion. In fact, no other style of history could be made interesting in this case. Had I been writing the history of a city of national importance or great antiquity, the case would have been different. The events narrated in the following pages can only be of local interest, and if I have succeeded in making them interesting and in a measure instructive, my task has been accomplished. It may be objected that I have given too much space to tradition and personal adventure. To this I answer that Walter Scott's novels are a better history of Scotland than has ever been written of that country. While most of these characters are imaginary and the events made to suit his purpose, he draws a true picture of the people, customs and institutions of his country, a picture that impresses itself much more readily on the mind of the reader than pages of lifeless facts and figures. I mention this not because I wish to make any comparison between that great author's work and my own humble performance, hut simply to show that by coloring, that is by giving life and interest to minor events, history is made palatable to the general reader, without in the least detracting from its intrinsic value. The early history of Allegheny abounds in material from which a historical romance, say on the Cooper style, could be constructed, and I shall always regret that I wasted my opportunity. It was a real pity to be obliged to kill off such a hero as Andrew Long in the second chapter, when he might have been put through many more thrilling adventures and hair-breadth escapes, Finally to die of old age, bedded on the two or three hundred Iroquois scalps which he had taken to avenge the cruel death of his mother at the hand of the savages of that tribe. It would have been much more interesting had Mrs. Russel and her children been rescued at the last moment, instead of allowing them to be massacred by the Indians. The plaintive lowing of the cow, when that affectionate brute found it was left behind, alone in the wilderness, could have attracted a party of trappers, to appear upon the scene just in time to save Mrs. Russel and the little ones. In that case all the savages, with one exception, would have been made to bite the dust, and that one sent home without ears as a terrible warning to the rest of his tribe. Or Samuel Bendei and his two companions might have arrived twenty-four hours earlier at the deserted cabin, accompanied by a band of friendly... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.