[Transportation]: [Livezey, Thomas]:

$1,750 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[SMALL COLLECTION OF MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENTS CONNECTED TO THE LAYING OF ROADS IN GERMANTOWN AND ROXBURY, PENNSYLVANIA BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION]. A small group of manuscript documents related to the laying of roads on and around Philadelphia merchant, politician, and Loyalist Thomas Livezey's property in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Livezey was a prominent businessman in colonial and Revolutionary Pennsylvania, and operated what was said to be the largest mill in the colonies. Involved in politics and friendly with Benjamin Franklin, he was a Loyalist during the Revolution. These documents illustrate the importance of roads in carrying out commerce in the colonial and early National periods, and the conflicts that would erupt when landowners felt that the course of roads disadvantaged them by passing through their land, or when businessmen felt the roads were too far away from the source of their production. The earliest document in the group is a signed and sealed quarter session court order dated June 7, 1763, describing a potential road from "Thomas Livesley's Mill." Six men are appointed to "view and if they see occasion lay out the said Road and make report of their doings to next Court and whether it be for publick or private use." The following document is from September of the same year and presents the report of that group, signed by the men named in the order. The route is described in precise detail, "Beginning at Thomas Lovisly's Mill road on the line dividing the

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