"Gruenwald's book will make the same contribution to historical                  knowledge of the Ohio Valley as Lewis Atherton's Frontier Merchant did for our                  understanding of the mercantile Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century.... a finely                  crafted narrative that lets the reader understand that the Ohio River always served                  more as an artery, that is, a river of commerce, than a dividing line or                  boundary." -- R. Douglas Hurt, author of The Ohio                  FrontierRiver of Enterprise explores the role the Ohio played in                  the lives of three generations of settlers from the river's headwaters at                  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the falls at Louisville, Kentucky. Part One examines                  the strategies of colonists who coveted lands "Across the Mountains" as                  space to be conquered. Part Two traces the emergence of a new region in a valley                  transformed by commerce as the Ohio River became the artery of movement in "the                  Western Country." Part Three reveals how relations between neighbors across the                  river cooled as residents of "the Buckeye State" came to regard the river                  as the boundary between North and South. From 1790 to 1830, the Ohio River nurtured                  a regional identity as Americans strove to create an empire based on the ties of                  commerce in frontier Ohio and Kentucky, and the backcountry of Pennsylvania and                  Virginia. The book studies the local, regional, and national                  connections created by merchants by tracing the business world of the Woodbridge                  family of Marietta, Ohio. Only as regional commercial concerns gave way to statewide                  industrial concerns, and as artificial transportation networks such as canals and                  railroads supplanted the river, did those living to the north define the Ohio as a                  boundary.

River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790-1850 PDF

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