New York Times Archives - Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine

Pennsylvania Governors Residences Open to the Public

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Jul 17, 2015 in | Comments Off Pennypacker Mills Pennypacker Mills possesses a lengthy history dating to about 1720 when Hans Jost Hite built the fieldstone house and a gristmill near the Perkiomen Creek, Schwenksville, Montgomery County. Purchased in 1747 by Peter Pennypacker (1710-1770), the house was enlarged and a saw mill and a fulling mill were constructed. The property acquired its name for the three mills. Peter...
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Currents

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off Parrish Frederick Parrish (1870-1962) – who later adopted the family name Maxfield as a middle and then professional name – was born into Philadelphia’s Quaker community and reared in a culturally privileged environment. From his father Stephen, an acclaimed etcher and landscape painter, he inherited his talent for natural observation and an understanding of the business of...
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King Pearl L. Bergoff Invades McKees Rocks!

Posted by Robert Smith on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off On Monday, July 12, 1909, one of the bloodiest labor disputes of the early twentieth century broke out at the sprawling works of the Pressed Steel Car Company in McKees Rocks, Allegheny County. Located on the Ohio River several miles northwest of center-city Pittsburgh, the company employed hundreds of skilled workers, all of American-born descent, and thousands of unskilled first-and...
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Picture Window Paradise – Welcome to Levittown

Posted by Curtis Miner on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off “To the outsider, Levittown, Pennsylvania, seems like a vast mirage, a city of 4,000 spanking new ranch homes where a short year ago were acres of corn and wheat … ” Ladies Home Journal, March 1953 On Monday, June 23, 1952, John and Philomena Dougherty packed up their belongings, and with their two daughters in tow, drove from a government housing project in northeast...
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The Soulful and Sultry Miss Ethel Waters

Posted by Edward McCann on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off Much of Ethel Waters’ success as a popular twentieth-century entertainer has been credited to the rather simple fact she, in her own words, never forgot who she was and where she came from. She achieved renown as blues singer, theater and film actress, and best selling author. She also emerged as a role model, if not icon, for several decades of African American women. And she accomplished...
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A Centennial of Color for Crayola Crayons!

Posted by Elizabeth Hall on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off One day last winter, a crayon-hued, double-decker bus pulled into the heart of Dallas, Texas. For five days, crayon fans climbed on board to draw, color, and sample new products. The event kicked off the Crayola® ARTrageous Adventure tour, a traveling centennial party for the Crayola crayon, manufactured by Pennsylvania-based Binney & Smith, Inc. After a twenty-five-city cross-country trek,...
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Pennsylvania Copperheads: Traitors or Peacemakers?

Posted by Timothy Kehm on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off Panic swept through Philadelphia in 1860, gripping manufacturers and merchants in its throes as southern slave states threatened to leave the federal union. The South had grown into an enormous market for Philadelphia’s merchants, and the city’s textile manufacturers depended on Dixie to supply the cotton they needed. Fears of secession and resulting massive unemployment prompted Mayor Alexander...
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James A. Finnegan (1906-1958)

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off At the 1956 Democratic Convention in Chicago, former President Harry S. Truman greeted Philadelphian James A. Finnegan (1906–1958) and asked how he was. “Very good,” replied Finnegan. “I hope it isn’t too good!” Truman quipped. Truman had endorsed New York Governor William Averell Harriman for the Democratic nomination for president. Finnegan served as campaign manager for former Illinois...
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Mountain House, Cresson, Pa.

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off Leading a ‘Simple Life’ among the farmers,” wrote EBG on the reverse of a penny postcard depicting the Mountain House at Cresson, Cambria County, one hundred years ago, on August 10, 1908. The writer’s sentiments were obviously facetious — the Mountain House, built in 1880–1881, had been a grand hotel financed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) that drew scores of affluent guests to the...
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Making Peace on the Gettysburg Battlefield, Fifty Years Later

Posted by James Rada on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off For six frenetic days in 1913, from Sunday, June 29, through Saturday, July 4, two armies – fifty-four thousand strong combined – invaded Gettysburg for a second time. They fought the first time a half century earlier, July 1-3, 1863, and were looking forward, admittedly many anxiously, to facing each other again. It wasn’t a fight they anticipated at the second meeting,...
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