MEADVILLE  , a

city and the county-seat of Crawford county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on French Creek, 36 m . S. of Erie . Pop . (1900), 10,291, of whom 912 were foreign-born and 173 were negroes; (1910 census) 12,780 . It is served by the Erie, and the Bessemer & Lake Erie railways . Meadville has three public parks, two general hospitals and a public library, and is the seat of the Pennsylvania College of Music, of a commercial college, of the Meadville Theological School (1844, Unitarian), and of Allegheny College (co-educational), which was opened in 1815, came under the general patronage of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1833, and in 1909 had 322 students (200 men and 122 women) . Meadville is the commercial centre of a good agricultural region, which also abounds in oil and natural gas . The Erie Railroad has extensive shops here, which in 1905 employed 46.7 % of the total number of wage-earners, and there are various manufactures . The factory product in 1905 was valued at $2,074,600, being 24.4 % more than that of 1900 . Meadville, the oldest settlement in N.W . Pennsylvania, was founded as a fortified post by David Mead in 1793, laid out as a town in 1795, incorporated as a borough in 1823 and chartered as a city in 1866 .