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. MEAGHER, THOMAS FRANCIS (1823-1867), Irish nationalist and American soldier, was born in Waterford, Ireland, on the 3rd of August 1823. He graduated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, in 1843, and in 1844 began the study of law at Dublin. He became a member of the Young Ireland Party in 1845, and in 1847 was one of the founders of the Irish Confederation. In March 1848 he made a speech before the Confederation which led to his arrest for sedition, but at his trial the jury failed to agree and he was discharged. In the following July the Confederation created a "war directory" of five, of which Meagher was a member, and he and William Smith O'Brien travelled through Ireland for the purpose of starting a revolution. The attempt proved abortive; Meagher was arrested in August, and in October was tried for high treason before a special commission at Clonmel. He was found guilty and was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Van Diemen's Land, whither he was transported in the summer of 1849. Early in 1852 he escaped, and in May reached New York City. He made a tour of the cities of the United States as a popular lecturer, and then studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1855. He made two unsuccessful ventures in journalism, and in 1857 went to Central America, where he acquired material for another series of lectures. In 1861 he was captain of a company (which he had raised) in the 69th regiment of New York volunteers and fought at the first battle of Bull Run; he then organized an Irish brigade, of whose first regiment he was colonel until the 3rd of February 1862, when he was appointed to the command of this organization with the rank of brigadier-general. He took part in the