From trail to railway through the Appalachians

From the time of the settlement of Massachusetts Boston has had a large share of the business of the country. Her natural advantages are great. On the one hand there is her harb...

If a stranger from a distant land should come to New York, he might take an elevated train at the Battery and ride to the upper end of Harlem. He would then have seen Manhattan...

About halfway between old Fort Schuyler, or Utica, and Fort Stanwix, which is now Rome, is the village of Oriskany. A mile or two west of this small town, in a field south of th...

If we think that the men of a hundred years ago were people with few wants, who were willing to let others do the trading and make the fortunes, we are quite in the wrong. They...

The Erie canal had not long been finished when a new way of carrying men and merchandise came into use in New York. In the next year after the great celebration the legislature...

The people of New York City like to say that Philadelphia is slow, and would almost make one think that all the men there wear Quaker hats and act like William Penn. The citizen...

A horse railroad had been built from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna river, and the big Conestoga wagons were running along the pike to Pittsburg; but this was not enough. New Y...

The sea reaches inland almost to the northeast corner of the state of Maryland. This long, wide arm of the ocean receives many rivers and is known as Chesapeake bay. Near its no...

Even after the Erie canal was built and long lines of boats were carrying the grain and other products of the West to New York, the men of Virginia and Maryland did not give up...

If we look at a map, we shall see that the Allegheny river flows southward from New York into western Pennsylvania. The Monongahela river, rising among the rough highlands of We...

Alexander Spotswood was a famous governor of the colony of Virginia. He was of Scottish parentage, but he was born in Morocco, where his father was a surgeon. The lad grew up to...

Dr. Thomas Walker was a man of Virginia. He had attended William and Mary College, and was well educated for his times. As the agent of a land company which had a grant of new l...

Not long before the Revolution began some treacherous whites in the western country had murdered the whole family of the friendly Indian chief, Logan. This aroused the tribes an...

In the old days it took the traveler weeks to go from Pennsylvania or the Potomac river to the valley of east Tennessee. He might camp in the woods, living on the few provisions...