Shikellamy Archives - Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine

Centre County

Posted by Vivian Hench on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off Centre County, as its name implies, geographically is Pennsylvania’s central county. The first known residents to inhabit its lands were the Munsee and Shawnee Indians from the Delaware River. Before 1725 these Indians began to move westward, first to the Susquehanna, later to the Ohio. The Iroquois, who claimed the Susquehanna country, assigned one of their chiefs – a man best known...
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Historical Sketch of Luzerne County

Posted by Ralph Hazeltine on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off The Proclamation Line of 1763 was a stopgap devised to give England a chance to gather her forces and to adopt a policy for further expansion of the American colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. The Treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1768 resulted in a pre-revolutionary division of Indian land to establish a boundary between the Indian hunting grounds and the white settlements. The treaty was the last...
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Northumberland County: The Mother County

Posted by Michael O'Malley on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off Although named for the most northern of England’s shires, Northumberland County has been often called by many the “Mother County.” Organized on March 21, 1772, as Pennsylvania’s tenth county, at one time it encompassed eighteen thousand square miles! The county once extended from the Lehigh to the Allegheny rivers, with the New York border as its northern boundary. Its...
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Finding a Light in the Forest: Conrad Weiser Homestead

Posted by Philip Pendleton on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off More than any other, Conrad Weiser (1696-1760) captured the imagination of the Pennsylvania German community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when its leaders asserted its right to be considered a major participant in the building of America. The veneration he was accorded led to the creation in 1923 of the historic park bearing his name and interpreting his...
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