Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections Associations between butterflies and buttons, Conestoga wagons and cannon, sculpture and arrowheads, or fossils and founder William Penn’s original Charter may seem tenuous, even obscure and, perhaps, nonsensical. But a relationship does exist: they are among the one and a half million objects and thirty thousand cubic feet of manuscripts, records, maps and photographs in the custody and...
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The Boals of Boalsburg: Two Hundred Years of a Pennsylvania Heritage

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Boals of Boalsburg: Two Hundred Years of a Pennsylvania Heritage What is the story of America? The question stirs the imagina­tion, conjuring romantic im­ages of stalwart pioneers stalking the vast wilderness, of hardworking farming families toiling from sunrise long past sunset, and of village mer­chants eking out meager livelihoods in America’s heartland. Much of the story is devoted to the fledging hamlets and em­bryonic communities and their...
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Eyedazzlers: The Two-Century Romance of Navajo Weavers and Germantown Yarn

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Eyedazzlers: The Two-Century Romance of Navajo Weavers and Germantown Yarn The cavernous nineteenth-­century factory buildings of Philadelphia’s John Wilde & Brother, the oldest independent rug yarn mill in the United States, seem out of place against the trendy restaurants and galleries of Manayunk, a showplace of modern urban renewal in the city’s greater Germantown neighborhood. A mural on the wall of the smallest mill building depicts images...
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George W. G. Ferris (1859-1896)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on George W. G. Ferris (1859-1896) Around the world, Ferris wheels often symbolize the carefree days of summer. Yet, the engineer who “re-invented the wheel” is less remembered. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on February 14, 1859, one of ten children of George W. G. and Martha Edgerton (Hyde) Ferris. In 1864, the senior Ferris sold the family’s 1,200-acre dairy farm for the...
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Making Heritage Chocolate at the Historic Crossing

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Making Heritage Chocolate at the Historic Crossing On Saturday, June 16, 2012, Washington Crossing Historic Park (WCHP) in Bucks County, administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), partnered with the American Heritage Chocolate division of Mars Inc. to present a program entitled “Taste a Revolution in Chocolate.” The chocolate-making demonstration and lecture on the history of chocolate was attended by...
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