Spring 2003 Symposium: Exploration, Nation, Empire
April 12, 2003
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
1300 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107

In observation of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition and in conjunction with HSP’s 2003 theme, “Pennsylvania and the Americas,” this symposium focuses on themes of exploration, travel, nature, and early nation building in the Commonwealth. In particular, papers explore how early Pennsylvanians understood and interacted with the environment and its native inhabitants, and how they traveled and rebuilt that environment to their own purposes.

10:00- 10:15 Welcome

10:15 - 11:45 Frontier Encounters

Christopher N. Fritsch, Oxford University
Civilization Comes to the Frontier: The Practice of English Common Law in Pennsylvania’s Back Country during the Eighteenth Century

David Preston, College of William and Mary
The Trojan Horse of Empire: Imperial Crisis in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1758-1774

Joseph Alessi, Saint Thomas Aquinas College
Logstown and the Building of Pittsburgh, 1748-1763

Discussant: Daniel Richter, University of Pennsylvania

11:45 - 1:00 Lunch Break

1:00 - 2:15 Mapping the New Nation: Science and Nature

Rob Cox, American Philosophical Society William Denton (1823-1883): Mental Geologist

Carrie Berkman, University of Delaware
Progress and Primitivism: The Ambivalence of an Antebellum Nation in Robert Montgomery Bird’s Watercolors

Discussant: TBA

2:30 - 4:00 Pennsylvanians on the Move

Robert Anderson, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
“Pleasanter than...expected:” The Transforming Experience of Travel on the Pennsylvania Overland Trail for Women

Louis Waddell, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
A Pennsylvania Farm Boy on the Western Mining Frontier: The Tragedy of Robert Woods Hoge, 1877-1889

Joseph Monzione, Independent Scholar
More than Just a Railroad: The Pennsylvania Railroad and the Building of Modern America

Discussant: Kathryn Wilson, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania