The History of Pennsylvania in North America

An Introduction to This Volume and the Author Robert Proud, Pennsylvania's first historian, brought forth his two-volume "History of Pennsylvania" in 1797 and 1798, although the book had been completed in 1780. The two volumes of the HISTORY cover the period 1681 to 1742 with on additional chapter on the period 1760 to 1770. Proud had available to him historical resources which he chose to ignore and much of his work is marred by partisanship and bias. A pacifist of staunchly conservative outlook, he was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1728, came to Philadelphia in 1759, and died there in 1813. Living through two American wars and dying during a third, he remained throughout his long life a Tory of deepest hue. Never an egalitarian, ke was dismayed by the sweeping social and economic changes wrought by American independence and never reconciled himself to the objectives of the new republic. Although well-trained as a scholar, there is much truth to Proud's own assertion that his HISTORY was imperfect, deficient, and not what he had hoped for after some twenty years of gathering material and writing amidst gnawing privation as a schoolmaster. For us today the HISTORY is of interest as a keenly felt and prophetic warning of progressive decay in human affairs and the dangers of control by "forward, selfish and less qualified" men. At a time when exuberant chauvinism and bloated immodesties perfused the writings of the new republic's protagonists, Proud warned of demagoguery and the "boasting of mere theory and anticipation." Intransigent and opinionated, Proud exemplifies the dissenting comf mentator whose political criticisms and trenchant observations of the passing scene remain perennially interesting and valuable to the historian. Robert Bray Wingate Rare Books Librarian Pennsylvania State Library Harrisburg March 3, 1967.