High on a Mountain: Pennsylvania’s Legacy of Country Music

In 1607 Great Britain commenced the establishment of two colonial plantations. One of these was Jamestown in Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America. The other was much closer to home. The Ulster plantation was formed in the nine northern counties of Ireland. The goal of the colony was, in part, to extend British and Anglican hegemony over the Catholic and...
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Northampton County: From Frontier Farms to Urban Industries – and Beyond

Sweeping across southcentral Pennsyl­vania lies the Great Valley and nestled in its northeastern corner is mod­ern Northampton County. Bordered on the east by the Delaware River, on the south by South Mountain and the piedmont, and on the west by the valley of the Lehigh River, the three hundred and seventy-two square mile re­gion is one of gently rolling hills and wooded valleys, with...
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Carbon County: Stone Coal in the Switzerland of America

Carbon, the primary component of an­thracite coal, is also a county in eastern Pennsylvania – for the same reason. The value of anthracite to the burgeoning industrial revolution of the mid­-nineteenth century created in 1843 a new county from the northern fringes of the once­-immense Northampton County. Beginning in the nine­teenth century, an entire county of coal was carved and moved to...
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Lehigh County: The Land and Its People

Lehigh County encompasses the western half of the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. Bounded on the east by the Lehigh River, the main geographical feature of the larger valley, and on the north by the Blue Mountain range, the land is a mosaic of lime­stone plain, sinks and rolling hills. While the southern region of the county lies astride the so-called South Moun­tain and the hills of the...
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Shorts

The seventeenth annual Conference on Black History will be conducted by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission on Friday and Saturday, May 13-14, 1994, in Erie. The theme of this year’s event is “African Americans at Work in Pennsyl­vania.” For additional information, write: 1994 Conference on Black History, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, P. O. Box...
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Shorts

On Saturday, May 14, 1994, guides at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site will demonstrate traditional sheep­-shearing methods with both period and modern hand-held tools. They will also discuss the importance of farms and farming practices to an 1830s industrial community. To obtain additional details, write: Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, 2 Mark Bird Ln., Elverson, PA 19520; or...
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Shorts

“Women of Flowers: Victorian Women Botanical Illustrators” will be on exhibit, at Longwood Gardens from Saturday, Janu­ary 23 [1999], to Tuesday, February 23 [1999]. This spe­cial exhibit showcases works by artists fea­tured in garden writer Jack Kramer’s book of the same title. For more information, write: Longwood Gardens, P.O. Box 501, Kennett Square, PA 19348-0501;...
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It’s a Family Affair – Six Generations of Martin Guitars

For legions of guitar players and admirers of finely crafted musical instruments, the small town of Nazareth in eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley resembles its biblical namesake. It is the holiest ground, a Mecca, the wellhead of guitar dreams, aspirations and, yes, even obsessions. Nazareth is the home of C.F. Martin & Co., considered the world’s premier maker of steel-string...
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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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Bookshelf

Carnegie By Peter Krass John Wiley and Company, Inc., 2002 (612 pages, cloth $35.00) The name Carnegie, like several others of its day – Westing­house, Morgan, Ford, Rockefeller, Winchester, Chrysler, Du Pont, Edison, Hershey – stands apart, apparently requiring lit­tle, if any, introduction. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) stands next to J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller as one of the...
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