From the Executive Director

For a long time, the Smithsonian Institution has called itself “The Nation’s Attic.” The name conjures up its role as America’s memory. Storerooms hold bits and pieces of the lives of Americans, famous and less celebrated. That metaphor also works for us here at PHMC. We consider ourselves to be like a Pennsylvania version of the Smithsonian museums, capturing the broad history of the...
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From the Executive Director

People often think of history as events in the distant past, so it’s perhaps natural that visitors to our PHMC sites look for objects from Pennsylvania’s earliest historic periods. Our collections do not disappoint. If you wander through The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, you’ll find fluted projectile points from the Shoop archaeological site in Dauphin County that date to the last...
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Mystery of the Monongahela Culture: Archaeology at Foley Farm

In 1939, anthropologist Mary Butler identified and formally named the Monongahela Woodland Culture, a prehistoric Indian way of life centered in the Monongahela Valley of south­western Pennsylvania, west­ern Maryland and parts of northern West Virginia. Dr. Butler’s reasons for naming this prehistoric Indian culture were, in part, based on ar­chaeological investigations sponsored by the...
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1928 Pennant at Conrad Weiser Homestead

During an age of uncertainty, marked by tenuous alliances and shifting allegiances, Conrad Weiser (1696-1760) emerged to become many things to many people: frontiersman, interpreter, treaty-maker, negotiator, Indian agent, and justice. During the French and Indian War, he played a pivotal role as a provincial officer and diplomat. Nearly two hundred years after his death, the Conrad Weiser...
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2010 PHMC Photography Contest

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) is hosting a great way to showcase your photography of historic sites along the Trails of History. Contest Rules: The contest runs from July 1, 2010, through January 1, 2011. Photographs must have been taken by the person entering the contest within the last three years (since June 30, 2007) at any PHMC Trails of History historic site....
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