Monument Man: Chester County’s John Gheen Taylor and His Memorials

In Pennsylvania’s Chester County there is an old burial ground called Birmingham Lafayette Cemetery. While it may seem quiet outside the cemetery’s gates, behind them is a collection of monuments that speak loudly, telling a story that once captured the attention of the nation. Between 1893 and 1913, a determined West Chester local named John Gheen Taylor made it his mission to erect certain...
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Chester County Welcomes Thee

The history of Chester County constitutes a significant part of the history of Pennsylvania, both province and commonwealth, and of the history of the United States of America. At the beginning of our nation’s Bicentennial and on the threshold of our state’s and our county’s tricentennial celebrations, Chester County looks proudly upon its past accomplishments and with...
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Pippin

Artistic reputations are – much like the stock market – hard to assess, and harder yet to predict. Such is the case with the career of Horace Pippin (1888-1946), a self-taught African American painter who lived in West Chester in southeastern Pennsylvania. An artist of national standing by the early 1940s, Pippin had made a meteoric rise from the local renown of his Chester County...
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