After Suffrage: Pennsylvania’s Inaugural Class of Women Legislators

Posted by on Nov 25, 2020 in | Comments Off on After Suffrage: Pennsylvania’s Inaugural Class of Women Legislators “For one born and reared as this writer was in hidebound Pennsylvania, it is startling to find eight women in the Legislature of that State. Moreover, to learn from their men fellow-members of the natural way they take their place and do their work.” – Ida Tarbell, 1924 “I believe these eight women are going to make an impression. I believe they are going to ask themselves on...
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Crawford County: Welcoming the 21st Century

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Crawford County: Welcoming the 21st Century We passed over some good land since we eft Venango, and through several extensive and very rich meadows, one of which, I believe, was nearly four miles in length, and consid­erably wide in some places. Twenty-one year old George Washington, who would in time become a major landholder and land specula­tor, described Crawford County in 1753 as he carried a dispatch demanding the com­mander of the...
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Pennsylvania Woman as Journalist: The Ida Tarbell Nobody Knew

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Woman as Journalist: The Ida Tarbell Nobody Knew In the summer of 1905, as Ida M. Tarbell’s muckraking History of the Standard Oil Company had completed its long serial run in McClure’s Magazine and been published as a book, Miss Tarbell received an envelope addressed to: Miss Ida M. Tarbell Rockefeller Station Hades Inside was a caustic letter from a reader who was furious with her attack on Standard Oil, but since such...
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The Valley That Changed the World: Visiting the Drake Well Museum

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Valley That Changed the World: Visiting the Drake Well Museum “They’ve struck oil!” They were only three words, but they thundered triumphantly throughout the valley along northwestern Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek during the days following the long-anticipated breakthrough – one that would change the world forever – on an otherwise quiet Saturday in August 1859. To many it was a miracle, one on which great fortunes would be...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Beaux’s Art Pennsylvania native Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) was one of the most important and successful portrait painters of her time (see “Artistic Ambitions: Cecilia Beaux in Philadelphia” by Tara Leigh Tappert in the winter 1996 edition). Among the significant commissions she completed in the early twentieth century was a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt’s...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Guide to the State Historical Markers of Pennsylvania By George R. Beyer Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2000 (456 pages, paper, $15.95) It is generally well known that the Commonwealth’s state historical marker program is among the most popular public history initiatives ever mounted by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). The program, also one of the...
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The Lady and the Titan

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Lady and the Titan Before the creation of the Pulitzer Prize, long before Woodward and Bernstein, there was Pennsylvania’s own Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944). Best known as the muckraking journalist who single-handedly took on the mighty John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), she was among the most feared and admired women of her time. Writing during the Progressive Era, an age of hope and reform running roughly from...
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