From the Executive Director

Posted by on Nov 19, 2019 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director With the arrival of fall, you can find festivals everywhere in Pennsylvania. Celebrations of harvest range from the National Apple Harvest Festival in Arendtsville, Adams County, and the Mushroom Festival in Kennett Square, Chester County, to old-country inspired Oktoberfests from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Many are established traditions with local origins — Stahlstown in Westmoreland County...
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American Helicopter Museum & Education Center: Commemorating the Delaware Valley’s Contributions to Vertical Flight

Posted by on Oct 29, 2019 in | Comments Off on American Helicopter Museum & Education Center: Commemorating the Delaware Valley’s Contributions to Vertical Flight Nestled in a large but unassuming building at the Brandywine Airport, just northeast of  West Chester, Chester County, is a museum that may seem out of place in Pennsylvania: the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center. After all, Russian émigré Igor Sikorsky (1889–1972) flew the first successful helicopter in the United States at Stratford, Connecticut, on September 14, 1939, many...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments “Persons and places conceive each other.” While preparing this edition of Pennsylvania Heritage, I was reminded of this quote from the preface of an American studies textbook I read as a graduate student, American Ground: Vistas, Visions and Revisions, edited by Robert H. Fossum and John K. Roth. It continues: “No people would have become American without a place of their own. Nor would any...
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“Remember Paoli!”

Posted by on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments Two centuries ago, in September 1817, local War of 1812 veterans gathered in a Chester County field with Revolutionary War veterans and citizens to place a marble monument on the grave of soldiers killed in the Battle of Paoli, or “Paoli Massacre,” four decades earlier. Today, it remains the second oldest Revolutionary War monument in the nation, and the campaign to “Remember Paoli!” continues...
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Herb Pennock, Baseball Hall of Famer and World War I Vet

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Herb Pennock, Baseball Hall of Famer and World War I Vet Herbert Jefferis “Herb” Pennock (1894-1948) was born and raised in Kennett Square, Chester County. He was reared in the Religious Society of Friends, or Quaker, faith. He was the son of Mary L. (Sharp) and Theodore Pennock, a well-to-do businessman whose lineage in Pennsylvania stretched back to 1685, when Christopher Pennock immigrated to Philadelphia from Ireland. Nicknamed the...
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Coatesville Veterans Hospital

Posted by on Dec 13, 2016 in | Comments Off on Coatesville Veterans Hospital More than 4.5 million men and women served in the various branches of the United States military during World War I. It was the first fully mechanized war, with soldiers exposed to mustard gas and other chemicals. The large number of veterans and the hazards of service resulted in a need for the U.S. government to provide specialized medical care on a scale not seen since the Civil War. Within...
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Baking Pennsylvania Dutch Style

Posted by on Sep 9, 2016 in | Comments Off on Baking Pennsylvania Dutch Style Regional American cuisine is fast becoming the hottest trend on the food scene today, and while we still hear a great deal about Cajun or the Southwest, one of the richest areas for culinary diversity is Pennsylvania. The Keystone Center for the Study of Regional Foods and Food Tourism, a nonprofit that has taken the lead in exploring the foods of our state, has identified five distinct culinary...
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The Parker Sisters by Lucy Maddox

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on The Parker Sisters by Lucy Maddox The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping by Lucy Maddox Temple University Press, 256 pp., cloth $28.50 The border where Chester County, Pennsylvania, adjoined Cecil County, Maryland, was contested territory in the conflict between “free” and “slave” states in the decades before the Civil War. Lucy Maddox provides a thoroughly researched account of one notable incident in this history, the...
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Historic Districts in Pennsylvania: An Evolving Sense of Place

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Historic Districts in Pennsylvania: An Evolving Sense of Place Jim Thorpe, originally named Mauch Chunk, is a small and picturesque borough of well-preserved 19th-century buildings perched on the side of a mountain along the Lehigh River in Carbon County. It once served as an important railroad and coal shipping center. As these industries waned in the 20th century, the town sought new economic purpose by marketing its scenic appeal as the “Switzerland of...
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Humphry Marshall, Father of American Dendrology

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Humphry Marshall, Father of American Dendrology Humphry Marshall (1722-1801) has been called the Father of American Dendrology, the study of wooded plants. In 1785 he authored Arbustum Americanum, a catalog of American trees and shrubs following the Linnaean system of plant classification, the first publication of its kind. A stonemason by trade, Marshall took an early interest in botany. His cousin John Bartram (1699-1777), who had created a...
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