The Delectable Country

TitleThe Delectable Country
Year of Publication1939
Publication TypeNovel
Number of Pages or Episodes715 p.
LanguageEnglish
AuthorsBaldwin, Leland D. [Dewitt]
PublisherLee Furman, Inc.
CityNew York
Keywords"Pittsburgh Gazette"; Albert Gallatin (1761-1849); Conestoga wagons; Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816); immigrants; James O'Hara (1752-1819); John Neville (1731-1803); John Scull (1765-1828); keelboats; ministers; Modern Chivalry (1792); Monongahela rye; Native Americans; Pilgrim's Progress (1678); pioneers; Protestants; Scots-Irish Americans; Scottish Americans; soldiers; Tories; Whiskey Rebellion
Abstract

After a trip from New Orleans up the Mississippi and the Ohio, David Braddee, 19, pilots his foster father’s keelboat to a tough landing among the scattered cabins of Pittsburgh, where he stays and comes of age. “The ‘delectable country’ is a dual symbol—the goal of David's journeyings into the wilderness, and of his striving toward that ‘delectable country of the soul’ which Bunyan so happily christened,” says Western Pennsylvania Historical Review.

Notes

Settings are referred to by their historical names as follows: Mt. Washington is Coal Hill; Monongahela is Parkinson's Ferry; Ft. Lafayette is Ft. Fayette.

Author Biography

Leland D. Baldwin (1897-1981) was born the son of a Methodist minister in Fairchance, Fayette County. In 1932, he earned his PhD in history at the University of Michigan and was hired as the librarian of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society. In 1936, when the University of Pittsburgh Press was established, he became its first editor and assistant director of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Survey, the first 10 books published by the new university press. He served as University Librarian for the University of Pittsburgh from 1940 until his enlistment in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, after which he became professor of American history at Pitt. He died in Santa Barbara, California.

Time

1790s