Editing West Middlesex, Pennsylvania (section)

==History==
West Middlesex is one of the oldest localities in [[Mercer County, Pennsylvania|Mercer County]]. Samuel Byers, Andrew Wylie, William Bell, Richard Vanfleet and several others arrived in the vicinity in the late 18th century. In 1787, James Gibson received a plot of land west of the [[Shenango River]] for military services. Shortly thereafter, ownership of that land passed to Jacob Edeburn. In 1818, Jacob's son William Edeburn built a log grist mill on part of the land. It was purchased by James McConnell in 1821, who built a log house nearby.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=A Twentieth-Century History of Mercer County, Pennsylvania|last=White|first=J.G.|publisher=Lewis Publishing|year=1909|location=Chicago|pages=143–144}}</ref>

In 1830, Edeburn built a sawmill, and McConnell built a flour mill. James Gilkey, cultivator of the "Neshannock potatoes," surveyed the site and platted the town in 1836 on McConnell's land. A store and a tavern were opened about the time the town was platted, and in 1840 the post office was established, with Robert Young as the first postmaster.<ref name=":0" />

In 1864 West Middlesex was incorporated as a borough. The first [[Burgess (title)|burgess]] was D. Edeburn, and the first members of the council were C.W. Watson, Hiram Veach and G.R. Tuttle.<ref name=":0" />

West Middlesex was one of the first places in the Shenango Valley to become a center of the iron business. The old Middlesex furnace, erected in 1845, was a charcoal-burning plant.<ref name=":0" /> Additional coke and ore furnaces followed, including the Fannie (1873, remodeled in 1885) and the Ella (1882).<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WgLnAAAAMAAJ&q=west+middlesex+ella&pg=PA22|title=Directory of Iron and Steel Works of the United States and Canada|date=1888-01-01|publisher=American Iron and Steel Institute|language=en}}</ref>