Currents

Grand Manner Born in Nescopeck, Luzerne County, Peter Frederick Rothermel (1812-1895) was once one of the most celebrated his­tory painters in the United States (see “Painting for Peer, Patron, and the Public” by Kent Ahrens in the spring 1992 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage). Neglected for decades, he is at last being celebrated in a major exhibition, “Painting in the Grand...
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Shorts

“Working Under Wires,” examining the work – often unseen or unnoticed by the public – that ensured safe, reliable, and economical public transportation, will remain on exhibit at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington through December 1997. The exhibition focuses on the men and women employed by trolley companies as operators, mechanics, track crews, overhead wire and signal...
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“The Greatest Highway to the West”: Photographer William H. Rau Documents the Pennsylvania Railroad

It is perfectly safe in saying the amateur, and even the professional, will have much to learn from the results of this photo­graphic expedition, fitted out some months ago by the Pennsylvania Railroad with as much care and almost the expense of an Arctic one, and which is still in the field of exploration, daily sending in remarkable illustrations of choice picture finds and showing that which...
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Currents

Let’s Motor! Although Detroit has earned the title of “Motor City,” Pittsburgh was home to twenty automobile makers at the turn of the century, manufacturing such notable vehicles as the Penn 30 Touring Car, the Standard Model E Touring Car, the Keystone Six-Sixty, the Brush Model D Runabout, and the Artzberger Steam Surrey. Several of these automobiles attracted widespread...
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Currents

Doctor! Doctor! During the eighteenth century, and throughout much of the nineteenth cen­tury, most Americans attempted to heal themselves, as their ancestors had for centuries. Professional medical assis­tance was either too far away, too expensive, or both, and even affluent and urban families usually engaged in some sort of home health care before the doctor was summoned. Such care was...
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Calligraphy Version of Washington Irving’s Poem “The Wife”

Amy Matilda Cassey, the wife of affluent African American abolitionist, businessman, and community leader Joseph Cassey, was active in the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society, local black literary and debating societies, and reform movements of the day. Her greatest contribution, however, may be an album she compiled that spans nearly a quarter-century. From 1833 to 1856, Cassey filled her...
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Shorts

Continuing at the Library Company of Philadelphia through Thursday, November 25 [1999], is “Ardent Sprits: The Origins of the American Temperance Movement,” featuring books, prints, broadsides, sheet music, and manuscripts spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The American Temperance Movement called for moderation and even abstention in the use of alcohol. The longest and...
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Shorts

Opening Sunday, August 26, at Lan­caster’s Demuth Foundation is “Ben Solowey: The Modern Impulse, 1925- 1935,” which explores the Bucks County painter’s impact on the modern art movement (see “Ben Solowey: The Thing Speaks for Itself’ by Peter Frengel and David Leopold, Summer 1990). Internationally known artist Charles Demuth (1883-1935) was inspired by his...
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Shorts

The Internet Unplugged: The World-Wide Moravian Network, 1732-1858, an exhibit chronicling Moravian Church communi­cation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has been recently unveiled by the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth. The exhibit, which runs through Sunday, October 21 [2001], surveys the ways in which Moravians kept abreast of developments, as well as exchanged ideas and...
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Firm Foundations in Philadelphia: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Ties to Pennsylvania

For a century and a half, from 1807 until the early 1960s, the celebrated expedition undertaken by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) between 1803 and 1806 was generally perceived to be strictly a western United States phenomenon. Historians and educators who discussed it in their writings or in their teaching usually described the twenty-eight month ordeal as beginning...
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