Governor William Bigler Archives - Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine

The 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show: A Blue Ribbon State Fair

Posted by John Robinson on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off The Pennsylvania Farm Show is the largest indoor agricultural event in the United States. Each year hundreds of thousands of people flock to the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, to experience apples and alpacas, butter sculpture and blue-ribbon contests, milkshakes and mushrooms, square dancing and grape stomping, rodeos and tractor pulling, and...
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Clearfield County: Land of Natural Resources

Posted by George Scott on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off Clearfield County, believed named for the cleared fields found by early settlers in the area, belies its name; 83 percent of the county’s 1,143.5 square miles is still forested today. Its present timber, however, is second and third growth. Although its forest lands support some lumbering, the county’s economic life depends mostly upon coal and clay industries and the manufacture of...
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A Glimpse of Mercer County

Posted by Margaret Olson on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off Mercer County, situated on the western edge of the state about midway between Erie and Pittsburgh. takes its name from Hugh Mercer, who emigrated to Pennsylvania from Scotland. Mercer settled in Franklin County where he established a medical practice, but he achieved prominence as a military man fighting in the French and Indian War and serving with General Washington in the early campaigns...
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Perry County: A Sportsman’s Paradise

Posted by Duane Good on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off Despite its proximity to Pennsylvania’s bustling and heavily urbanized capital city, Perry County remains a sportsman’s placid paradise with its thickly forested mountains and lushly verdant valleys. Much like its neighboring counties – Franklin, Cumberland, Juniata and Dauphin – Perry County claims a topography that is neither unique nor unusual: its mountains give...
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Watts’ Folly

Posted by Jerry Clouse on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off When he is remembered at all, Frederick Watts is likely to be mentioned in connection with the McCormick Reaper, the Cumberland Valley Railroad, the establishment of the Pennsylvania State University or, more recently, the controversy over the demolition of his farmstead in Carlisle. It may seem an incongruous legacy but therein lies the charm and the extraordinary genius of this man from...
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Centre County

Posted by Vivian Hench on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off Centre County, as its name implies, geographically is Pennsylvania’s central county. The first known residents to inhabit its lands were the Munsee and Shawnee Indians from the Delaware River. Before 1725 these Indians began to move westward, first to the Susquehanna, later to the Ohio. The Iroquois, who claimed the Susquehanna country, assigned one of their chiefs – a man best known...
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Camptown

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off Stephen Collins Foster, son of German immigrants William Barclay and Eliza Tomlinson Foster, was born in Lawrenceville, near Pittsburgh, on July 4, 1826. As a child, he seemed to have more interest in music than in school. As a teen he was composing music, including “Oh! Susanna.” His first published song, “Open Thy Lattice Love,” was published in Philadelphia in 1844....
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Pennsylvania’s War Governor

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off On September 14, 1862, Pennsylvania’s Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin invited the governors of the northern and border states to a meeting to be held at Altoona, Blair County, in ten days. The purpose of the meeting that became known as the Loyal War Governors’ Conference — or, simply, the Altoona Conference – was to “take measures for a more active support of the government’s prosecution of...
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Desegregation of Pennsylvania Schools

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off Twenty-six years after Governor William Bigler (1814-1880) signed Pennsylvania’s common school law on May 8, 1854, creating “separate schools for the tuition of negro and mulatto children,” an African American in Meadville, Crawford County, challenged the legislation. In September 1880, Elias H. Allen unsuccessfully attempted to enroll his two children in the community’s...
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