A Radical Shift: Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on A Radical Shift: Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776 “Our form of government still continues, but I think it cannot last long,” John Penn (1729–95) wrote to his family in England in October of 1775. The grandson of William Penn, John Penn was serving as governor of Pennsylvania. For some time, he had been observing changes in the attitudes of Pennsylvania residents regarding their relationship with the mother country. In June of 1774, he had...
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Susanna Wright: Poet and Polymath on the Susquehanna

Posted by on Apr 17, 2026 in | Comments Off on Susanna Wright: Poet and Polymath on the Susquehanna   No right has man his equal to control, Since, all agree, there is no sex in soul; Weak woman, thus in agreement grown strong, Shakes off the yoke her parents wore too long. Those lines of poetry, written in a rigidly paternalistic 18th-century America, establish Susanna Wright (1697–1784) as one of America’s early supporters of women’s equality. More subtly, the poem, entitled “To Eliza...
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Forgotten Founder: Thomas Paine and American Independence

Posted by on Apr 17, 2026 in | Comments Off on Forgotten Founder: Thomas Paine and American Independence Philadelphia was the largest, wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city in all the colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. As the major commercial hub for British North America, the city’s economy was based on trade and commerce and bolstered by shipbuilding, textiles and other industries. Philadelphia was also a hub for political activism, with town meetings and pamphlets disseminating...
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Revolutionary Things: Objects from the Collection

Posted by on Jan 14, 2026 in | Comments Off on Revolutionary Things: Objects from the Collection Massachusetts has the Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill and the Shot Heard Round the World; Virginia can lay claim to Mount Vernon, Monticello and Yorktown; and New Jersey and New York bore the brunt of the fighting in the conflict. But few if any of the original 13 colonies can compete with Pennsylvania in terms of the sheer concentration of people, places and things associated with the nation’s...
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Raising Philadelphia by Justin McHenry

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on Raising Philadelphia by Justin McHenry Raising Philadelphia The Making of America’s First Great City, 1750–1775 by Justin McHenry Brookline Books, 224 pages, hardcover $32.95 McHenry’s appetite for research and his passion for storytelling combine here to illuminate threads of history and biography into readable stories for a broad audience. Focusing on Philadelphia’s transformation into a cultural and political epicenter...
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“An Office I had some kind of Right to”: Benjamin Franklin and the Origins of the U.S. Postal Service

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on “An Office I had some kind of Right to”: Benjamin Franklin and the Origins of the U.S. Postal Service In 1788, near the end of his life, Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) summed up a lengthy and significant association with the postal system in America in a letter to his old friend Charles Thomson, then secretary of the Continental Congress. Franklin wrote, “On my Return from England the Congress bestow’d on me the Office of Postmaster General, for which I was very thankful. It was indeed an Office I...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Aug 25, 2025 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter One hundred years ago, Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum — now a site on PHMC’s Pennsylvania Trails of History — opened to the public. It was founded by two free-spirited brothers, Henry and George Landis, who essentially devoted their lives to building a massive collection of artifacts related to Pennsylvania German rural life and culture. Conestoga wagons, farm implements and machinery,...
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A Beacon of Liberty for the Enslaved: 250 Years of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society

Posted by on Jun 11, 2025 in | Comments Off on A Beacon of Liberty for the Enslaved: 250 Years of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society   By the early 1700s, French Protestants — largely Calvinists known as Huguenots — suffered in their country from severe religious persecution, among them a boy, Antoine Bénézet (1720–72), and his parents. When their property was seized unless they renounced their faith, they departed their country, making their way to London, where they joined a welcoming group that stood for tolerance,...
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Pennsylvania and the American Revolution: An Interview with Gordon S. Wood

Posted by on Jun 11, 2025 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania and the American Revolution: An Interview with Gordon S. Wood   The American Revolution was the most significant event in our country’s history. Independence from Great Britain not only resulted in the birth of a new nation but also one dedicated to a uniquely democratic form of government unknown to the world in the 18th century. It also forged a national identity, rooted in the principles of liberty, equality and republicanism, that has endured for...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 11, 2025 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter This edition of Pennsylvania Heritage brings us to the 250th anniversary of the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in the spring of 1775. Two of the features included here commemorate historic milestones in the pursuit of liberty and a third serves as an introduction to Pennsylvania’s involvement in the Revolution. Following the conflicts at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts,...
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