Pine Grove Furnace POW Interrogation Camp

Posted by on Oct 8, 2020 in | Comments Off on Pine Grove Furnace POW Interrogation Camp Located near Pine Grove Furnace within the state park of the same name in Cooke Township, Cumberland County, a 200-acre plot of land was the site of a unique sequence of historical events over the past 225 years. In the mid-18th century, iron ore was discovered along nearby Mountain Creek, which led to the development of Pine Grove Iron Works, a large-scale iron mining and pig iron production...
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William Curtis Truxal’s Footlocker

Posted by on Nov 12, 2019 in | Comments Off on William Curtis Truxal’s Footlocker William Curtis Truxal (1882–1960) was a 34-year-old attorney residing in Somerset when the Pennsylvania National Guard unit he commanded, Company C of the 10th Infantry Regiment, was mustered into federal service for World War I on July 15, 1917. A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, he had first enlisted in the guard as a private in February 1914, and by October of that...
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The Sacrifices of Company C: Somerset County’s Valiant Soldiers in the Great War

Posted by on Nov 11, 2019 in | Comments Off on The Sacrifices of Company C: Somerset County’s Valiant Soldiers in the Great War In spring 2004 a resident of Somerset in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, chanced upon an aged postcard that had fallen behind a dresser many years before. Dated November 7, 1918, the postcard had been sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland, and was addressed to “the Family of Herbert Foust,” a soldier of Company C, 110th Infantry Regiment, a Pennsylvania...
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Camp Elder Civil War Paroled POW Camp

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Camp Elder Civil War Paroled POW Camp Located in Westtown Township, Chester County, Camp Elder was a holding facility for the Union’s paroled Prisoners of War (POWs) from mid-July to August 1863. Because of logistical problems associated with holding enemy prisoners during the American Civil War both Union and Confederate armies issued hundreds of thousands of paroles to soldiers captured in battle. Terms of this practice were...
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No Summer Solstice: War Stories of the Home Front Survivors

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on No Summer Solstice: War Stories of the Home Front Survivors War stories. Before epic movies and documentaries changed its connotations, the phrase once implied a personal exchange, the kind that took place in barber shops, on porches, or in front of the court house on hot summer afternoons when the fish weren’t biting. They were the kind of stories that grew better in the telling, each time preserving another aspect, perhaps, of a day in a...
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