Preparing Teachers for Homestead Parochial School, 1888-1921

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Preparing Teachers for Homestead Parochial School, 1888-1921 Teacher education was not a carefully systematized and regularized process in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centur­ies. Before the mandate for college de­grees, teacher examinations and certifi­cation, teachers in American classrooms would generally teach as they had been taught. This was particularly true in Ro­man Catholic parochial schools before diocesan administration of the...
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Life in an Industrial Boom Town: Monessen, 1898-1923

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Life in an Industrial Boom Town: Monessen, 1898-1923 In reading about our nation’s past, we often forget how different life was for our ancestors. We read about historical figures and movements, but rarely – except in excellent historical novels – do we gain a glimpse into the living environment. We also tend to for­get that there are many past environ­ments, each producing its own style and pace of living. During the late...
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Bitumen: All Gone with the Wind

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bitumen: All Gone with the Wind Maps of Pennsylvania­ – and Clinton County, for that matter – no longer carry the name of Bitumen. In fact, Bitumen has not appeared on maps for the last half-century. It’s not because the village is insignificant or unimportant. Simply put, the village is no longer there. With the excep­tion of a small wooden church and cemetery, Bitumen has disappeared. The history of Bitumen...
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Cambria County: Coming Full Circle

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Cambria County: Coming Full Circle Located in the highlands of west­-central Pennsylvania and amidst forbidding mountains – the Allegheny escarpment and the Laurel Ridge standing sentinel on its eastern and western borders­ – the territory that would become Cambria County was not easily accessible to early Pennsylvanians. Migrants bound westward during the second half of the eighteenth century avoided its...
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Northampton County: From Frontier Farms to Urban Industries – and Beyond

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on 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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The Sacred and the Secular: Immigrant Values in Pennsylvania History

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Sacred and the Secular: Immigrant Values in Pennsylvania History Since its founding, the history of Pennsylvania has sprung from the successive waves of immigrants who have settled within its boundaries. Colonial Pennsylvania was peopled by English, Scotch-Irish, German, Swe­dish, and Welsh arrivals. Germans continued to come after 1800 but were joined by thousands from Ireland and Wales. With industrial expansion after 1870, Hungarians, Lithu­anians, Poles...
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History is Alive and Well in Beaver County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on History is Alive and Well in Beaver County On June 6, 1824, the steamboat Ploughboy with the first contingent of Harmony Society members came around the bend in the river at Legionville; the skipper gave a cannon salute. After dropping anchor, the passengers disembarked and made camp. The following day, Father Rapp, leader of the Harmonists, wrote to the remaining members at New Harmony: “I consider this place the most healthful in...
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Massacre at Lattimer, An American Rite of Passage: An Interview with Michael Novak

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Massacre at Lattimer, An American Rite of Passage: An Interview with Michael Novak Why do so many kids from Pennsylvania make great quarterbacks?” Michael Novak, writer, teacher, theologian, and social philosopher leaned forward as he posed the question and then offered an answer. “Because they’re hard realists. You’re down by fourteen points with seven minutes to play. So, what’s new? That’s the way life has always been in this part of the...
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Life After the Mines Closed

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Life After the Mines Closed Pennsylvania’s hard coal region, stretching northeast from Tower City, in western Schuylkill County, to Carbondale, in the upper reaches of Lackawanna County, covers five hundred square miles. The region depended almost entirely on the mining of anthracite for a century and a half, beginning with the development of commercial mining operations in the 1820s. Ninety-five percent of the...
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Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray On Sunday, May 20, 1945, thirty-six thousand spectators packed Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, for a doubleheader that pitted the New York Yankees against the defending American league champions, the St. Louis Browns. The Yankees, who had finished in third place in the previous season, six games behind the Browns, had something to prove that afternoon. Even though the World War II had stripped...
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