A Brief History of Politics in Crawford County

Crawford County has rarely stifled its opinions regarding national politics. The tone was set by residents in 1807 who burned an effigy of Federalist, Aaron Burr outside the courthouse. And this was hardly the county’s last political riot. While training to fight the British in 1812, the theft of an onion split local militiamen along party lines leading to a clash between Federalists troopers and their Democratic comrades who were hellbent on torching downtown Meadville.

Timothy Alden and the Founding of Allegheny College

Timothy Alden Jr., the founder of Allegheny College, was by all accounts a charismatic and motivated man who pursued opportunities to expand education throughout his life. He was descended from John Alden, who landed on Plymouth Rock on November 15, 1620. Like his father, Timothy Alden, he was a Harvard educated pastor and was ordained in 1799. He was the principal of three different academies in Portsmouth, Boston, and Newark, after which he moved to Meadville in 1815. “[Alden’s] goal was to serve God by serving Man, and to service his young county by strengthening its unity through inculcation of a community of ethics and morality through the education of ministers, teachers and others in the newly settled regions”.

Settler Disputes with Land Companies and the Burr Conspiracy

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton Duel

Crawford County does not have much of a history of domestic strife. The county was largely unsettled during the time of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 never touched the county, and political conflict never erupted into violence as Bleeding Kansas did. There is, however, one instance of a domestic dispute that divided the region for nearly thirty years toward the end of the 1800s.

Salt and Mud: Early Roads and the First Turnpike in Western Pennsylvania

A turnpike being raised

Today, a trip from Meadville to Pittsburgh takes about an hour and half. The worst travelers have to deal with today are the occasional storm, constant road repairs, and the terror of witnessing a driver attempting to merge while texting. Two-hundred years ago, the story was quite different. Obviously 79 did not exist, but neither did many other roads save for the one carved out of the woodlands by the French prior to their expulsion by the British or the many trails left by the native Americans. These same paths became the roads of the pioneers that would settle the area fifty years later until, due to pressure from trade, the first turnpike in Western Pennsylvania was built.