Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost Harrisburg’s Senate Hotel, designed by architect Miller Isaac Kast in an elegant French Beaux Arts style, was opened by hotelier James Russ in 1906. In a successful nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, it was described as “the finest com­mercial … building in the City of Harrisburg.” Preservationists treasured its handsome facade for the...
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Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost Schuylkill County’s first official courthouse was erected in Orwigsburg in 1815, four years after the creation of the county. The building, enlarged in 1846, housed government offices until 1851, when the county seat was moved to Pottsville. Three years later, the Arcadian Institute occupied the building, but the academy failed. In 1873, a group of investors organized the Orwigsburg...
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Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost In 1845, less than five years after entering politics, William Bigler (1814-1880) built a handsome Italianate-style residence in Clearfield. Before settling in the Clearfield County seat, he apprenticed with his brother John at The Centre De­mocrat, published in Bellefonte, Centre County. In Clearfield, he amassed a fortune in the lumber business. He served in the state senate from 1841 to...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (297 pages, cloth, $30.00) In less than three-quarters of a century, the Connellsville coke industry, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, mushroomed from slight beginnings into a key supplier essential to the iron and steel industries. It then fell victim...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories, 1965–1973 by Sherry Buchanan published by the University of Chicago Press, 2007; 180 pages, cloth, $25.00 For generations of Americans, it was an icon with the decidedly distinctive click. Invented by George G. Blaisdell, the first Zippo® lighter was manufactured by the Zippo Manufacturing Company, Bradford, Bradford County, seventy-five...
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Dispatch from Governor Andrew Curtin

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Dispatch from Governor Andrew Curtin A dispatch issued on June 15, 1863, by Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817–1894) to various post offices in Pennsylvania alerted citizens to the imminent arrival of Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee in Pennsylvania. It was the first public notice of the South’s advance on the Keystone State which ultimately resulted in the horrific three-day Battle of Gettysburg waged July 1-3. “Lee...
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From the Editor

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on From the Editor It is with great excitement that the staff of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) prepares to launch the agency’s annual theme for 2010, “Black History in Pennsylvania: Communites in Common.” This theme enables PHMC to partner with local and regional organizations to rediscover – and, in many cases, uncover – Black history in communities...
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Pennsylvania’s War Governor

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s War Governor On September 14, 1862, Pennsylvania’s Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin invited the governors of the northern and border states to a meeting to be held at Altoona, Blair County, in ten days. The purpose of the meeting that became known as the Loyal War Governors’ Conference — or, simply, the Altoona Conference – was to “take measures for a more active support of the government’s prosecution of...
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Letters

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters Walked Away With My Prize I found the planters peanuts article [“Mr. Peanut’s Hometown: Wilkes-Barre and the Founding of Planters Peanuts” by William C. Kashatus] in the summer 2010 issue of the magazine quite fascinating. It exemplified the rags to riches story that America has spawned since its beginning. How a poor Italian immigrant with entrepreneurial skills managed, in a...
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This Is a Beautiful, Bountiful Earth: Joseph Trimble Rothrock and the Preservation of Penn’s Woods

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on This Is a Beautiful, Bountiful Earth: Joseph Trimble Rothrock and the Preservation of Penn’s Woods The lush, verdant woodlands characteristic of Pennsylvania’s landscape are almost entirely second-growth forests, in existence roughly for less than a century. Had it not been for the groundbreaking work of many conservationists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Keystone State’s present terrain would be dramatically different. One of the most important of those...
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