Genealogical and Personal History of the Allegheny Valley Pennsylvania
By John W. Jordan LLD
Foreword
The present work, "Genealogical and Personal History of the Allegheny Valley, Pennsylvania," presents in the aggregate an amount and variety of genealogical and personal information and portraiture unequalled by any kindred publication. No similar work concerning Allegheny valley Families has ever before been presented, and it contains a vast amount of ancestral history never before printed. The object, clearly defined and well digested, is threefold:
First. To present in concise form the history of the Allegheny Valley Families of the Colonial Days.
Second. To preserve a record of its prominent present-day people.
Third. To present through personal sketches the relation of its prominent families of all times of the growth, singular prosperity and wide-spread influence of the Allegheny Valley, Pennsylvania, and its tributary region.
There are numerous voluminous histories of the State, making it unnecessary in this work to even outline its annals. What has been published, however, relates principally to civic life. The amplification necessary to complete the picture, old and nowaday, is what is supplied by these Genealogical and Personal Memoirs. In other words, while others have written of "the times," the province of this work is to be a chronicle of the people who have made this magnificent region what it is.
Unique in conception and treatment, this work constitutes one of the most original and permanently valuable contributions ever made to the social history of an American community. In it are arrayed in a lucid and dignified manner all the important facts regarding the ancestry, personal careers and matrimonial alliances of those who, in each succeeding generation, have been accorded leading positions in social, professional and business life. It is not based upon, neither does it minster t, aristocratic prejudices and assumptions. On the contrary, its fundamental ideas are thoroughly American and democratic. The work everywhere conveys the lesson that distinction has been gained only by honorable public service, or by usefulness in private station, and that the development as prosperity of the region of which it treats have been dependent upon the character of its citizens, and in the stimulus which they have given to commerce, to industry, to the arts and sciences, to education and religion--to all that is comprised in the highest civilization of the present day--through a continual progressive development.
The inspiration underlying the present work is a fervent appreciation of the truth well expressed by Sir Walter Scott, that "there is no heroic poem in the world but...
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