Historic towns of the middle states

"Historic towns of the middle states" by Lyman P. Powell is a historical collection written in the late 19th century. It gathers illustrated, essay-length portraits of notable towns in the Middle States—especially in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware—linking local scenes and architecture with colonial, revolutionary, and civic history as told by resident scholars and writers.

The opening of the book sets its scope and method: a preface frames this as the second volume in a series, retaining the plan of commissioning native or long‑resident authors and acknowledging collaborators, followed by a contents list that maps a tour from Albany to Pittsburgh. Albert Shaw’s introduction argues that the Middle States, born of Dutch, Swedish, English Quaker, German, and Scotch‑Irish roots, served as a mediating, cosmopolitan bridge between New England and the South, with the Hudson–Mohawk corridors, immigration through New York, and cities like Albany, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh shaping national development. The first chapter on Albany traces its Dutch beginnings at Fort Orange and the Rensselaerswyck patroonship, the English takeover with enduring Dutch culture, pivotal alliances with the Six Nations, military bustle in the French wars, revolutionary fervor, and its later identity as the State capital with notable civic and ecclesiastical architecture capped by a monumental Capitol. The chapter on Saratoga places the famed springs within the great northern and western war‑paths, recounting raids and battles from the French and Indian era through Burgoyne’s failed campaign at Bemis Heights and the surrender at old Saratoga, then shifts to the postwar rise of the spa around High Rock and Congress Spring. The next chapter opens Schenectady’s story as a freer outpost led by Arendt Van Curler beyond patroon control, established on the Mohawk’s fertile plain at the key mountain pass that shaped its destiny.