The city is attractively situated in the historic Wyoming Valley. The principal public buildings include the county court-house, the post office, the city hall, the county gaol and the 9th Regiment Armory. Among the city parks are Hollenback (102 acres) and Riverside (19 acres) parks, the River Common (35 acres) and the Frances Slocum Playground. In the city are the Harry Hillman Academy (non-sectarian), a secondary school for boys; the Malinckrodt Convent, the Wilkes-Barré Institute (Presbyterian), a school for girls; St Mary’s Academy (Roman Catholic), for girls; the Osterhout Free Library (44,000 vols.), the Library of the Law and Library Association (10,000 vols.) and that of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society (18,000 vols.), which was founded in 1858. Wilkes-Barré is situated in the centre of the richest anthracite coal region in the United States, Luzerne county ranking first in 1908 in the production of anthracite in Pennsylvania; and the value of the factory products increased from $8,616,765 in 1900 to $11,240,893 in 1905, or 30·5%. Among important manufactures are foundry and machine-shop products, valued at $1,273,491 in 1905; silk and silk goods ($1,054,863); lace curtains, cotton goods, wirework, &c. The city is governed by a mayor elected for three years, and by a legislative body composed of a select council (one member from each of the 16 wards elected for four years) and of a common council (one member from each ward, elected for two years).
The township of Wilkes-Barré was one of five townships the free grant of which, in December 1768, by the Susquehanna Land Company of Connecticut was intended to encourage settlement and make good the company’s claim to the Wyoming Valley (q.v.). In May 1769 more than 100 settlers from New England, in command of Major John Durkee (1728–1782), arrived at this place. With others who came a few days later they erected the necessary log cabins on the river bank, near the present Ross Street, and in June began to enclose these within a stockade, known as Fort Durkee. During the same summer Major Durkee gave the town its present name in honour of John Wilkes (1727–1797) and Colonel Isaac Barré (1726–1802), both stout defenders in parliament of the American colonists’ cause before and during the War of Independence, and in the following year the town plat was made. In September 1769 the “First Pennamite-Yankee War,” as the conflict between Connecticut and Pennsylvania for the possession of the valley is called, broke out. The Yankees lost Fort Durkee in November, but recovered it in the following February. The Pennamites erected Fort Wyoming on the river bank near the present Northampton Street in January 1771, but the Yankees took it from them in the following August. In the War of Independence, immediately after the battle of Wyoming (July 3, 1778), Wilkes-Barré was burned by the Indians and British Rangers; and again in July 1784, during the “Second Pennamite-Yankee War,” twenty-three of the twenty-six buildings were burned. In 1786 the Pennsylvania legislature sent here Colonel Timothy Pickering (q.v.) to organize Luzerne county, and to effect a reconciliation between the Connecticut settlers and the government of Pennsylvania. Colonel John Franklin (1749–1831) led a counter movement, and was imprisoned on a charge of treason in October 1787, but Franklin’s followers retaliated by kidnapping Pickering in June 1788, and kept him in the woods for nearly three weeks in a vain effort to make him promise to intercede for Franklin’s pardon. Wilkes-Barré was gradually rebuilt after its destruction in 1784, and in 1806 the borough was erected, though it was not separated politically from the township until 1818 (or 1819). A new charter was granted to the borough in 1855, and Wilkes-Barré was chartered as a city in 1871.
See O. J. Harvey, A History of Wilkes-Barré (3 vols., Wilkes-Barré, 1909–1910).
WILKIE, SIR DAVID (1785–1841), Scottish painter, was born on the 18th of November 1785, the son of the parish minister of Cults in Fifeshire. He very early developed an extraordinary love for art. In 1799, after he had attended school at Pitlessie, Kettle and Cupar, his father reluctantly yielded to his desire to become a painter; and through the influence of the earl of Leven Wilkie was admitted to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, and began the study of art under John Graham, the teacher of the school. From William Allan (afterwards Sir William Allan and president of the Royal Scottish Academy) and John Burnet, the engraver of Wilkie’s works, we have an interesting account of his early studies, of his indomitable perseverance and power of close application, of his habit of haunting fairs and market-places, and transferring to his sketchbook all that struck him as characteristic and telling in figure or incident, and of his admiration for the works of Carse and David Allan, two Scottish painters of scenes from humble life. Among his pictures of this period are mentioned a subject from Macbeth, “Ceres in Search of Proserpine,” and “Diana and Calisto,” which in 1803 gained a premium of ten guineas at the Trustees' Academy, while his pencil portraits of himself and his mother, dated that year, and now in the possession of the duke of Buccleuch, prove that he had already attained considerable certainty of touch and power of rendering character. A scene from Allan Ramsay, and a sketch from Macneill’s ballad of Scotland’s Skaith, afterwards developed into the well-known “Village Politicians,” were the first subjects in which his true artistic individuality began to assert itself.
In 1804 Wilkie returned to Cults, established himself in the manse, and began his first important subject-picture, “Pitlessie Fair,” which includes about 140 figures, and in which he introduced portraits of his neighbours and of several members of his family circle. In addition to this elaborate figure-piece, Wilkie was much employed at the time upon portraits, both at home and in Kinghorn, St Andrews and Aberdeen. In the spring of 1805 he left Scotland for London, carrying with him his “Bounty-Money, or the Village Recruit,” which he soon disposed of for £6, and began to study in the schools of the Royal Academy. One of his first patrons in London was Stodart, a pianoforte maker, a distant connexion of the Wilkie family, who commissioned his portrait and other works and introduced the young artist to the dowager-countess of Mansfield. This lady’s son was the purchaser of the “Village Politicians,” which attracted great attention when it was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1806, where it was followed in the succeeding year by the “Blind Fiddler,” a commission from the painter’s lifelong friend Sir George Beaumont. Wilkie now turned aside into the paths of historical art, and painted his “Alfred in the Neatherd’s Cottage,” for the gallery illustrative of English history which was being formed by Alexander Davison. After its completion he returned to genre-painting, producing the “Card-Players” and the admirable picture of the “Rent Day,” which was composed during recovery from a fever contracted in 1807 while on a visit to his native village. His next great work was the “Ale-House Door,” afterwards entitled the “Village Festival” (now in the National Gallery), which was purchased by J. J. Angerstein for 800 guineas. It was followed in 1813 by the well-known “Blind Man’s Buff,” a commission from the prince regent, to which a companion picture, the “Penny Wedding,” was added in 1818.
Meanwhile Wilkie’s eminent success in art had been rewarded by professional honours. In November 1809 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, when he had hardly attained the age prescribed by its laws, and in February 1811 he became a full academician. In 1812 he opened an exhibition of his collected works in Pall Mall, but the experiment was unsuccessful, entailing pecuniary loss upon the artist. In 1814 he executed the “Letter of Introduction,” one of the most delicately finished and perfect of his cabinet pictures. In the same year he made his first visit to the continent, and at Paris entered upon a profitable and delighted study of the works of art collected in the Louvre. Interesting particulars of the time are preserved in his own matter-of-fact diary, and in the more sprightly and flowing pages of the journal of Haydon, his fellow-traveller. On his return he began “Distraining for Rent,” one of the most popular and dramatic of his works. In 1816 he made a tour through Holland and Belgium in company with Raimbach, the engraver of many of his paintings. The “Sir
