Sydney Ware, Eastern State Penitentiary Artist

Posted by on Dec 17, 2019 in | Comments Off on Sydney Ware, Eastern State Penitentiary Artist Built in the 1820s as part of a new type of prison system, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was founded on the belief that prisoners could be rehabilitated during incarceration through separate confinement and industrious labor. During the penitentiary’s span of operation, 1829–1971, numerous records were compiled about the inmates and maintained at the prison, including statistics on...
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Doing Time in Dauphin County, 1842-1901

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Doing Time in Dauphin County, 1842-1901 They locked up Elias Nation on April 18, 1842, giving him official first place in Dauphin County’s new prison. (For the record, Jacob Stripe was registered nearly two weeks earlier, for assault and battery, but he was out before the prison’s grand opening.) Nation was twenty­-nine years old and looked “yellow,” wrote Keeper Wil­liam Watson; he underlined that fact in his...
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Black Harrisburg’s Resistance to Slavery

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Black Harrisburg’s Resistance to Slavery In April 18, 1825, a fugitive slave from Mary­land was found by his owner in Harrisburg and was imprisoned in the Dauphin County jail. A hearing on the matter was held in the courthouse that day, with Judge Bucher presiding. It took most of the day to con­vince the Judge that the slave should be returned to the custody of the slaveholder, during which time, according to the Pennsylvania...
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