Corry State Fish Hatchery

Posted by on Feb 3, 2020 in | Comments Off on Corry State Fish Hatchery Constructed in 1876, the Corry State Fish Hatchery in Corry, Erie County, is the pioneer trout hatchery of the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission and one of the oldest in the nation. As the state’s prototype and its longest continually operating site, it represents the commonwealth’s earliest formal commitment to wildlife conservation and sport fishing. Hundreds of millions of fish raised...
read more

The World Petroleum Industry: It All Started in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The World Petroleum Industry: It All Started in Pennsylvania The modern petroleum industry is a vast and complex association of multinational corpora­tions, producing countries, consumers and other inter­acting elements. The petroleum milieu is often identified and equated with the largest oil companies, “the seven sis­ters”: Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, Gulf, British Petroleum, Mobil, Standard of California, and Texaco. As if to empha­size the...
read more

“The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened to Us Country People”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on “The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened to Us Country People” On a Halloween night early in the 1930s, a barn caught fire a few miles from Corry, Erie County. A passer by, Harry Burrows, hurriedly tied his horse and ran to help free the trapped animals. In the excitement no one noticed that the farm’s hired man was missing, but later they learned that his kerosene lantern was the cul­prit in starting the fire. “Some time, some way, he knocked...
read more

The Battles Bank: When Honesty Was Collateral and Chickens Paid the Interest

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Battles Bank: When Honesty Was Collateral and Chickens Paid the Interest On the day the pri­vately owned R. S. Battles Bank in Girard, Erie County, closed, it had been in operation for eighty-seven years. For nearly a century its owners had steadfastly offered services to their depositors despite panics, recessions, depressions, robberies, even a presidential proclamation. Oddly enough, the doors of the vine covered brick building were ultimately closed in 1946 by...
read more

Joshua M. Merrill

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Joshua M. Merrill Nearly a century and a half ago, on August 27, 1859, Edwin L. Drake struck oil near Titusville, Venango County, recognized as the world’s first commercially drilled oil well. Shortly afterwards, Joshua M. Merrill (1828–1904), a chemist in Corry, Erie County, made important discoveries in the refining of oil. Merrill pioneered the redistillation of oil, a process known as “cracking,” to produce...
read more

Hatching Room at the Pennsylvania State Fish Hatchery

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Hatching Room at the Pennsylvania State Fish Hatchery Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817–1894) of Bellefonte, Centre County, is remembered in history as Pennsylvania’s “War Governor” for his ardent and early support of President Lincoln and the Union during the American Civil War, but he also played a critical role in conservation in the mid-nineteenth century by naming James J. Worrall the Commonwealth’s first Commissioner of Fisheries in 1866....
read more