PREFACE
Reading edition
The triad of volumes dealing with the older American Historic Towns along or near the eastern coast is now complete. The three volumes, like the chapters of which they are composed, have their inevitable limitations. While neither in historical value nor in literary quality has it proved practicable to secure a uniformity of standard, editor and contributors have done the best they could, and they now feel assured that the series has proved its right to exist. It is quickening interest in our historic towns, bringing to light important facts, picturing for the patriotic reader who may not be free to make personal visits the places he would visit if he could, and making clear to him many things he would not be likely to learn in the towns themselves, however long a stay he might be free to make.
Like the preceding issues, this volume has a patriotic and educational purpose, but it goes forth also on an irenic mission. The editor’s father, dead almost a quarter of a century, lived in a little border town where in war times love and hate alike were hot. An avowed and fearless Unionist, he was also a true and faithful pacificator. As Mr. Rule has said of Louisville, James B. R. Powell “occupied a position similar to that of Tennyson’s sweet little heroine, Annie, who, sitting between Enoch and Philip, with a hand of each in her own, would weep,
“‘And pray them not to quarrel for her sake.’”
In planning and in shaping this volume, the editor hopes that he is proving himself worthy of an honored father, whose name he would connect in this way with the work and with the series.
His special acknowledgments are due to his wife, Gertrude Wilson Powell, for discriminating and invaluable assistance at every stage, and to Professor W. P. Trent, who, in addition to the preparation of a comprehensive Introduction, has ever been ready with such counsel and suggestions as enhance in many ways the value of the volume.
Lyman P. Powell.
St. John’s Rectory, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. August 10, 1900.
