Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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Frontmatter: PMHB July2012
No full textTable of Contents, Book Review List, Editorial Advsory Board, Cover Illustration Credits, Contributors, Contact and Submission Informatio
The Ambitions of William Henry
Get PDFHISTORIANS HAVE TRAPPED William Henry of Lancaster (1729–86) in the identity of gunsmith. Though meant as a com-pliment—most accounts portray Henry as the most important gunsmith in the "rifle-making hub of colonial America," Lancaster County—this confinement is ironic, since Henry escaped this occupation as soon as he was able. The term gunsmith, then as now, could describe men who repaired guns, who produced specialized gun parts (such as bar-rels or locks), who created an entire gun from scratch (lock, stock, and barrel), or who ran a factory that employed other men. Henry seems not to have engaged in any of these activities after 1760. By the last decade of his life, Henry had achieved a level of financial security (and apparently embodied the virtuous independence thought to derive from it) that led his peers to entrust him with positions of responsibility and that left Henry free to accept them. He served first in local and state governments and was later appointed an administrator and financier for the Continental army and elected twice to the Continental Congress. We have failed to register the shape of his career, the magnitude of his trans-formation; instead, historians have imagined that during all these varied activities, Henry continued to work as a gunsmith. Indeed, the belief that Henry "was engaged in the manufacture of firearms for over thirty years," that he produced the rifles or muskets carried by soldiers from the French and Indian War through the Revolution, has been central to stories about him
Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America. By WENDY BELLION
Get PDFColonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania. By BEVERLY C. TOMEK
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"Fair Play Has Entirely Ceased, and Law Has Taken Its Place": The Rise and Fall of the Squatter Republic in the West Branch Valley of the Susquehanna River, 1768–1800
Get PDFDURING THE 1770S, hundreds of predominantly Scots-Irish settlers trespassed onto Indian territory north of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. There they formed a squatter republic, annually electing a tribunal of "Fair Play Men" who distributed land to newcomers and kept order under a set of rules sometimes referred to as the Fair Play code. During the American Revolution, the squatters sided with the patriots, and Pennsylvania\u27s republican government assumed control of the region. After the Revolution, the legislature granted the squatters the right to purchase the tracts they had occupied by filing pre-emption applications, which, if successful, would prevent the general public from buying the plots in question. An applicant could then request a warrant for the purchased land, pay for a survey, and receive a patent after the surveyor returned his records to the land office. Most of the squatters could not afford to buy their own lots and chose instead to sell their rights to the improvements they had made to the land. Those who sold tended to move away. Other squatters had the means to stay in the region after the Revolution, and several of them became leading members of their community
Letter to Farmers in Pennsylvania: John Dickinson Writes to the Paxton Boys
Get PDFOne of "Pennsylvania Farmer" John Dickinson\u27s earliest public documents, recently processed by the John Dickinson Writings Project, is titled "Letter to the Inhabitants of the Frontiers on their intended Expedition ag[ains]t the Indians under the Protection of the Gov[ernmen]t." Dickinson wrote this seventeen-page draft to convince the Paxton Boys, who had recently slaughtered a group of peaceful Conestoga Indians, not to do the same to the Moravian Indians in protective custody in Philadelphia. Although "hidden" in plain view in the Delaware Public Archives, this document has not surfaced in past attempts to publish Dickinson\u27s writings, nor is it included in John R. Dunbar\u27s The Paxton Papers (1957). Though undated, the content of the missive indicates that it was written no earlier than January 6, 1764, and that it may have been a response to the Paxtonians\u27 Declaration and Remonstrance, read in assembly on February 17. The letter does not appear to have been published
PMHB Book Reviews 136(1)
No full textAll book reviews in the Pennsylvania Magazine of HIstory and Biography, volume 136, number 1, January 201