[39] Ibid., pp. 263-264.
[40] Ibid., p. 264.
[41] Ibid., p. 263.
[42] One student of the commerce of the Susquehanna Valley made sweeping generalizations about its significance which can hardly be substantiated. See Morris K. Turner, The Commercial Relations of the Susquehanna Valley During the Colonial Period (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1916). This dissertation, although claiming to deal with the Susquehanna Valley, never gets much beyond Harrisburg and seldom reaches as far north as Fort Augusta. Its accounts of roads, navigation improvements, and trade fail to reach the Fair Play settlers. This lends further support to their independent and self-sufficient existence. Turner's concluding paragraph is, however, a gem of economic determinism and bears repeating in full. Found on page 100, it reads as follows:
"If then, the commercial relations of the Susquehanna Valley were so far reaching affecting as they did in the pre-Revolutionary period the attitude of the people on all the questions, practically, of the day it is only fair to say that it was these relations which promoted the Revolution in the Province and drove the old government out of existence. The political issues were aided and abetted, yes, were created, were born from the womb of the neglected commercial relations of the Province and no other section at the time had such extensive relations as the Susquehanna Valley. No other conclusion can be reached after a serious study of the history of the period."
[43] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 150.