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...
read more

The Search for Jacob Shallus

Long before the bicentennial of the United States Constitution rendered them ubiquitous, the pen strokes We the People probably formed the most famous and sacred piece of handwriting in the Western world. The original lettering, seen by swarms of visitors to the document’s repository in the nation’s capital, is the very script of the Constitution signed by members of the...
read more

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...
read more