Qualla: Westsylvania https://qualla.com/westsylvania en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Westsylvania https://qualla.com/westsylvania Westsylvania: Introduction https://qualla.com/westsylvania/ Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 2.5. In the summer of 1776, while Thomas Jefferson was drafting the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, settlers a few hundred miles west were drafting a different kind of declaration. They lived in the disputed country between Pennsylvania and Virginia, on the rivers around Pittsburgh and down the Ohio Valley. Neither colony was clearly their government. Both were trying to be. So the settlers proposed a third option: a new state, called Westsylvania, that would be the fourteenth member of the new American confederacy. They sent the petition to the Second Continental Congress. Congress ignored it. The state never happened. But the dream did not die quietly.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/dnye-westsylvania-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Westsylvania: The Border Nobody Knew https://qualla.com/westsylvania/ Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 2.5. The trouble started with the Mason-Dixon line. The famous survey, conducted between 1763 and 1767, settled the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland - but the surveyors were stopped by hostile Native American territory before they could extend the line all the way west. The li...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/dnye-westsylvania-the-border-nobody-knew.mp3 0:06 2 full Westsylvania: The Petition https://qualla.com/westsylvania/ Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 2.5. In 1776, weary of the chaos and inspired by the revolutionary moment, residents of the disputed region drafted what they called The Memorial of the Inhabitants of the Country, West of the Allegheny Mountains. The document is one of the more remarkable pieces of revolutionary Amer...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/dnye-westsylvania-the-petition.mp3 0:06 3 full Westsylvania: The Ghosts of Vandalia https://qualla.com/westsylvania/ Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 2.5. Westsylvania was not the first attempt to create a new colony in this country. Before the Revolution, the Ohio Company of Virginia and the Indiana Land Company - large speculator firms with vast paper claims along the Ohio - had combined as the Grand Ohio Company and lobbied the ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/dnye-westsylvania-the-ghosts-of-vandalia.mp3 0:06 4 full Westsylvania: The Treason Statute https://qualla.com/westsylvania/ Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 2.5. Pennsylvania and Virginia finally settled their boundary dispute in 1780, drawing what would eventually become the modern state line. The settlement left some Virginians waking up to discover they were now Pennsylvanians, which they did not enjoy. Westsylvania sentiment revived. ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/dnye-westsylvania-the-treason-statute.mp3 0:06 5 full Westsylvania: What Westsylvania Almost Was https://qualla.com/westsylvania/ Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 2.5. On the map, Westsylvania would have covered most of present-day West Virginia, all of southwestern Pennsylvania including Pittsburgh, slivers of Kentucky and Maryland, and a piece of the Virginia panhandle. Its capital would presumably have been Pittsburgh - the only town in the ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/e/westsylvania-wp/dnye-westsylvania-what-westsylvania-almost-was.mp3 0:06 6 full