The Surveyor and the Silversmith: Land Speculation on the Frontier of Western Pennsylvania

Neither the Leni Lenape nor the Iroquois called the 

land their own; for thousands of years, it had been 

inhabited by a mysterious people for whom they 

had no name. And, yet, white men like Daniel Leet, 

William Crawford and George Washington surveyed 

dense forests with measuring chains, tomahawks 

at the ready, to claim hundreds of thousands of acres 

simply because they could, because it was all God's 

bounty, because, like silver or gold, it would provide 

wealth far greater than any civilization had known 

before. It was an ideal few would realize. But then, 

one day, two families laid roots in the wilds of 

western Pennsylvania...