Meadville, Pennsylvania: A short history

Let me begin this book like Jack Webb began each episode of Dragnet. This is the city, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Home to about 14,000 citizens and growing smaller each year. Most of the people here are good folks, hard working, honest, but some try to make a living by ignoring the law and trying the patience of their good neighbors. That's where I come in, I carry a badge, or at least I used to carry a badge.
On the map, northwest Pa. seems as though it would be a modern, thriving center of transportation and industry, located roughly a hundred miles from Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Buffalo, but in the past 30 years progress has bypassed the city and sidestepped Crawford county. Meadville is known as the birthplace of the zipper thanks to Col. Lewis Walker the inventor of the hookless fastener and the Talon mfg plant which used to be the worlds #1 zipper maker. Meadville is also the home of Channellock tools, Dad's Dog Food, and Sharon Stone. Meadville is a nice friendly place to grow up and raise children, but when the children graduate from high school and college, they move away and seldom come back. Opportunities to be rich and successful do not abound here, just the opportunity to grow up innocent and naive.
In 1753, George Washington made his way through Meadville (not then in existence) on his way up French Creek to Fort LeBouf to tell the French to get out of the Penna. frontier, which was part of the disagreement which eventually escalated into the French and Indian war.
Meadville is on the southern boundary of the snow belt. In 1789 a sturdy pioneer named David Mead and some of his relatives came from Eastern Pa, settled on French Creek near the confluence of Cussewago creek and built a cabin or two, and started a settlement known as Cussewago, later to be re-named Meadville. It is my belief that the settlers of northwest Pa. came in late May or early June and thought "what a beautiful place to live." They put their crops in and built their cabins and then by the time January, February and March arrived they had too much invested to leave, they had already eaten their horses, and at any rate the lake effect snow was too deep to go anywhere. Indians of the six nation confederacy used this area of Pa as hunting grounds and they were more or less peaceful.  The only Indians living here when David Mead arrived was a displaced Mohawk named Stripe-Neck, and his family. The Meads and the Stripe-Necks lived together peacefully, but the real Indian trouble came when some of the western tribes from the Ohio-Michigan area moved in to cause trouble. (Ironically, even today trouble comes to Meadville in the form of gang members and drug dealers from Youngstown, Cleveland and Detroit.)
Meadville became the county seat of Crawford county.   Crawford county was named after Col. William Crawford, a famous Indian fighter who chased the trouble-making western Indians out of the area so German farmers could move in and start farming. Col. Crawford was eventually chased down himself and captured by the Delaware Indians near Sandusky, Ohio where he was severely tortured, skinned alive, and burned at the stake, the whole process taking about 3 days before he finally succumbed. Col Crawford really never lived in Crawford county, and he didn't die here either, and we in Crawford county are thankful for that. We can also thank Col. Crawford because he chased the Indians far enough away that today the nearest reservation Casino is about 70 miles from here.