From the Executive Director

Posted by on Feb 3, 2020 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director Spring is field trip season here at the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. Each year, we welcome approximately 90,000 schoolchildren to our museums and historic sites, with most of them visiting between March and June, when classroom schedules have a little more flexibility and teachers are anxious to help students burn off a little of their spring fever. Many of the students who...
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Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style

Posted by on Dec 2, 2013 in | Comments Off on Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1836–1903) was nothing if not determined. In 1872, as editor of The Index, the nation’s leading free-thought magazine, he began to muster the full force of his small army of subscribers against what was being called “the God-in-the-Constitution amendment.” A philosopher and theologian, he sought to reconstruct theology in accordance with scientific methodology. From the...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (297 pages, cloth, $30.00) In less than three-quarters of a century, the Connellsville coke industry, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, mushroomed from slight beginnings into a key supplier essential to the iron and steel industries. It then fell victim...
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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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A Century of Motorsports: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Century of Motorsports: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines! At the turn of the last century motorized vehicles began to displace horses as the primary means of transportation in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation. In the beginning automobiles and motorcycles were mechanically primitive and the roads made of dirt, which often turned to mud when it rained or snowed. But it was not long before utility turned to entertainment. As the automobile became...
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