Recorded Webinars

New Worlds: The Provincial Roots of the Seven Years War in Western Pennsylvania

Brady J. Crytzer

Brady J. Crytzer teaches history at Robert Morris University. He is the recipient of the Donald S. Kelly and Donna J. McKee Awards for outstanding scholarship in the discipline of history. A specialist in imperialism in North America, he is the author of a number of books, including War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756, Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, and Hessians: Rebels, Mercenaries, and the War for British North America. He is also the host of Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution. (sound begins at about 2 minutes)

The Venango Path - Then and Now

Dr. Charles Williams

The Venango Path was a Native American pathway that ran from the Forks of the Ohio (present-day Pitts-burgh) north to the village of Venango at the mouth of French Creek, and through the French Creek Valley to Presque Isle near Lake Erie. The Venango Path was an important north-south “landscape of movement” for Native Americans and Europeans alike, facilitating trade, migration and settlement, and military activities. During George Washington’s 1753 journey to oust the French from their forts in the French Creek Valley, the Venango Path provided access to the backcountry vital to his mission. This presentation will focus on the forgotten landscapes and historic environments traversed in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in the French Creek Valley, and how natural and human factors have changed these landscapes over time.

Mapping the Backcountry before the American Revolution

Dr. Jim Ambuske

Hear Dr. Jim Ambuske from the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mt. Vernon explore the history of the backcountry (present-day western Pennsylvania) before the War for Independence using maps from the Washington Library's Richard H. Brown Revolutionary War Map Collection. Explore western Pennsylvania's history and how imperial powers used maps to inscribe meaning on the American landscape.