Historic towns of the middle states

"Historic towns of the middle states" by Lyman P. Powell is a historical collection written in the late 19th century. It gathers illustrated, essay-length portraits of notable towns in the Middle States—especially in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware—linking local scenes and architecture with colonial, revolutionary, and civic history as told by resident scholars and writers. The opening of the book sets its scope and method: a preface frames this as the second volume in a series, retaining the plan of commissioning native or long‑resident authors and acknowledging collaborators, followed by a contents list that maps a tour from Albany to Pittsburgh. Albert Shaw’s introduction argues that the Middle States, born of Dutch, Swedish, English Quaker, German, and Scotch‑Irish roots, served as a mediating, cosmopolitan bridge between New England and the South, with the Hudson–Mohawk corridors, immigration through New York, and cities like Albany, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh shaping national development. The first chapter on Albany traces its Dutch beginnings at Fort Orange and the Rensselaerswyck patroonship, the English takeover with enduring Dutch culture, pivotal alliances with the Six Nations, military bustle in the French wars, revolutionary fervor, and its later identity as the State capital with notable civic and ecclesiastical architecture capped by a monumental Capitol.

Historic towns of the middle states, from the public domain. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77274.