Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections
Written by Cathryn McElroy in the Features category and the Summer 1984 issue Topics in this article: A. Atwater Kent Jr., Academy of Natural Sciences, American Revolution, Americus Vespucius, Andrew Gregg Curtin, anthracite, archaeology, aviation, Baron von Steuben, Bethlehem Mines, Betsy Ross, bicycle, Boyd Rothrock, Brandywine Battlefield, Brig. Gen. Edward Hand, Bucks County Historical Society, Cambria Iron Works, cannon, Christopher Columbus, Civil War flags, clothing, Commodore Ellicott, Commonwealth collections, Conestoga Creek, Continental Army, Cornwall Iron Furnace, Count d'Estaing, Daniel Boone Homestead, David White, Declaration of Independence, Dr. Donald A. Cadzow, Eckley Miners' Village, Edward T. Stotesbury, Ephrata Cloister, Fort Pitt, Fort Pitt Museum, Frederick the Great, Gen. Joseph Warren, George D. Landis, George Lehman, George Washington, Graeme Park, Hall of Science Industry and Technology, Henry Chapman Mercer, Henry K. Deisher, Henry K. Landis, Hope Lodge, Horsham, Huntingdon County, Isaac James, J. A. Stober, J. E. Caldwell and Company, John Fritz, John Hancock, John Harris Jr., John Proctor Battalion, John S. Frankenfield, John W. Geary, John Witthoft, Leo Lesquereux, Marquis de Lafayette, Marshalls Creek, Matthew S. Quay, Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, museums, Native Americans, Old Economy Village, Pennsbury Manor, Pennsylvania Archaeological Survey, Pennsylvania Charter, Pennsylvania Collection of Fine Arts, Pennsylvania Farm Museum, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania Military Museum, Peter Frederick Rothermel, Philadelphia Committee of Safety, Phoenixville, Piper Cub (J-3), Pottsgrove Manor, R. and W. Wilson, Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, railroads, Raystown Dam, Safe Harbor, Safe Harbor Dam, Samuel Gordon, Sheep Rock Shelter, Shenks Ferry Indians, ships, silk, Simon Cameron, State Administration and Office Building, State Museum of Pennsylvania, Susquehanna River, Susquehannock and Shenks Ferry Indian villages, Susquehannock Indians, Thomas Graeme, Thomas Robinson, transportation, USS Pennsylvania, vehicles, W. Fred Kinsey III, Washington Crossing Historic Park, William Keith, William Reeder, William van StarkenborghAssociations between butterflies and buttons, Conestoga wagons and cannon, sculpture and arrowheads, or fossils and founder William Penn’s original Charter may seem tenuous, even obscure and, perhaps, nonsensical. But a relationship does exist: they are among the one and a half million objects and thirty thousand cubic feet of manuscripts, records, maps and photographs in the custody and care of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Whether two- or three-dimensional, they document Pennsylvania’s history, from rocks and minerals formed long before man walked on earth, to a mid-twentieth century four-door Packard sedan and souvenirs of the most recent political campaigns.
The rich array of the Commonwealth’s collections curated by the state’s official history agency is not limited to moveable objects and papers. Some of the collection is architectural, preserving historic sites from elegant eighteenth-century mansions such as Graeme Park, Pottsgrove Manor and Hope Lodge in Montgomery County to industrial structures and complexes, including Eckley Miners’ Village near Hazelton and Cornwall Iron Furnace in Lebanon County. Old Economy Village in Ambridge and Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County convey the tranquil feeling of communal societies established by religious groups in previous centuries. Military sites from Washington Crossing in Bucks County to Fort Pitt in Allegheny County echo with the triumphs and setbacks of those who fought to settle and build this country. In addition to these historic sites, regional museums, chronicling Pennsylvania’s military, industrial and agricultural progress, make up a statewide network of twenty-seven fascinating places for visitors to explore Pennsylvania’s heritage.
The greatest concentration of collections, however, is housed and exhibited in the William Penn Memorial Building, the official State Museum located in center-city Harrisburg, just north of the capitol building. The museum is the heart of the Commonwealth’s collections, where individual themes and specialized topics are skillfully interpreted in expertly mounted exhibitions depicting the full spectrum of the state’s natural, domestic, cultural and industrial history.
The background of the State Museum collections is similar to others maintained by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and to many throughout the country; it is, in itself, as rich in history and legend as it is long and complicated. Not only do the individual objects tell stories of their original craftsmen or owners, their purpose or relationship to historical events, but they often enter the collections intact with anecdotes which offer intriguing glimpses of eccentric and dedicated personalities, dizzying currents of patriotic fervor, and not infrequent quirks of fate or an occasional mystery.
Nineteenth century visitors to the burgeoning Dauphin County city frequently commented on the artifacts, documents and art embellishing the state capitol buildings. The Commonwealth’s first real effort to gather these objects into some relationship and give them perspective is marked in an eloquent description of the new State Administration and Office Building, south of the capitol, by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter in 1894:
“The museum and flag room is fifty feet square with a twenty-six foot ceiling and will be one of the most attractive points of interest at the Capitol. In this will be placed Rothermel’s famous painting of the Battle of Gettysburg, the portraits of the Governors of Pennsylvania, which have heretofore hung upon the walls of the reception room at the Executive Department, the war flags and relics which are now stored in the State arsenal, and the interesting collection of birds and animals which are part of Pennsylvania’s exhibit at the World’s Fair. It will also contain geological and mineralogical specimens and other objects of interest. The State has frequently had offers of interesting and curious relics which were refused because there was no place to store them, but hereafter, it is safe to say, such tenders will not be rejected.”
The building of collections, even entire institutions, was inspired by society’s fascination with relics and curiosities, many of which were associated with war. The background of the Commonwealth’s extensive military collections is generally the best documented because the arms and accoutrements were preserved as war trophies of particular actions, ardent affirmations of zealous patriotism, or as bounty seized for the honor of the Commonwealth. Consequently, cryptic mottos, shreds of silk and puzzling devices were worthy of veneration if they constituted one of the colors (flags) which survived battle service with Pennsylvania’s soldiers.
A faded green silk flag bearing the device of a hunter spearing a lion was flown at the siege of Boston in March 1776 by Gen. Edward Hand of Lancaster. Long cherished by the family of Lt. Col. Thomas Robinson, an officer of the First Continental Regiment which was led by Hand, the color was purchased by the state in 1879 through the good graces of a usually cynical politician, “Boss” Matthew Quay. The other important Revolutionary War color in the museum collections belonged to John Proctor’s Battalion and is the only surviving eighteenth century specimen emblazoned with the device of a coiled rattlesnake. Proctor’s was among the fifty-three “Associator” battalions raised in the spring of 1775 before the official militia was authorized by the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. Despite its rarity and outstanding historical significance, the color served yeoman duty as a table cover in the family of the battalion’s color bearer before presentation to the Commonwealth in 1914.
Nineteen fourteen was a landmark year in the creation of the Commonwealth’s color collection. The person who decided that the capitol’s magnificent rotunda would be enhanced by the addition of large cases displaying Civil War colors is unknown, but the project was vigorously pursued. Although many Civil War flags had been ceremoniously surrendered during a colorful Fourth of July pageant behind Independence Hall in 1866, efforts fifty years later to locate additional colors of Pennsylvania units met with such overwhelming success that several carried during the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War were also swept into the Adjutant General’s office.
The colors of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War are still exhibited in the rotunda and a major project for their restoration is now in progress. Earlier colors and other relics originally housed in the flag room-cum-museum were turned over to the State Museum in 1915 and the clerk charged with gathering the colors for transferral even donated his Civil War uniform, the collection’s first. The Adjutant General received the colors from the Commonwealth’s units of World War I; these were transferred to the museum in December 1946. The State Council of Defense, in World War II, designated the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission as the official agency to collect and preserve materials associated with Pennsylvania’s wartime activities.
Of course, colors are not the only pieces in the Commonwealth’s military collections; in fact, most people probably think first of weapons – guns, swords, shells, cannon – when they consider war. Enjoying the longest pedigree as war weaponry are four brass cannon brought to this country in the fleet of Count d’Estaing and presented to the Continental Army by the Marquis de Lafayette. Following the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, the cannon were conveyed to the Commonwealth and used by the Pennsylvania Militia. In 1824, they rendered salute to Lafayette when he visited Harrisburg during his much-heralded and triumphant return to America. These handsome examples of early French-American ties are currently exhibited at the Brandywine Battlefield, the Fort Pitt Museum, the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg and the William Penn Memorial Museum. The provenance of another cannon, surcharged ‘US’ to indicate American service during the Revolutionary War, is obscure. Originally made for Germany’s Frederick the Great in 1745, it somehow found its way into the State Arsenal and was among the historic weapons transferred to the State Museum. In 1982, this cannon was loaned for a General von Steuben exhibit hosted in Europe by the American and German governments.
Cannon of more recent vintage, but of no less importance, are four iron Griffins cast in 1861 in Phoenixville, a Montgomery County community better known for its popular majolica ware, a tin-glazed pottery. The cannon were purchased by the Philadelphia Committee of Safety for possible defense against Confederate forces following the Battle of Antietam.
Such dark moments were put behind at the close of the war when proud and buoyant Yankees chose to celebrate their successful campaigns. Governor John White Geary appointed a committee to properly commemorate the significance of the one great Civil War battle waged on Pennsylvania soil. In 1866 the committee commissioned a native Pennsylvanian, Peter Frederick Rothermel, to execute a series of five paintings depicting the three-day struggle at Gettysburg. The artist visited many of the veterans who had taken part in the epic battle, sketching portraits of the principal characters, and learning the landscape and positioning of the forces. When finally completed six years later, the size of Rothermel’s work surpassed the Commonwealth’s ability to house the main canvas; Pickett’s Charge measured sixteen by thirty-two feet! Not until 1894, twenty-two years after its completion, was the canvas placed in the building which later housed the original state museum. The painting was mounted in a specially created space when the William Penn Memorial Museum was completed in 1964 and the four supporting views are also part of the new Military History Gallery installation.
Although the flag room and museum enjoyed public acclaim at the dose of the nineteenth century, the development of the military collections for the most part pre-dated and was independent of the official State Museum. The General Assembly did not, until 1905, authorize the trustees of the State Library to “extend the scope of that institution, so as to include a museum for the preservation of objects illustrating the flora and fauna of the state, and its mineralogy, geology, archaeology, arts, and history.” By 1917, the library’s annual report was able to declare with pride: “It is doubtful whether there is a museum in the country outside of Washington which attracts more people than this one in Harrisburg.”
The appointment of taxidermist Boyd Rothrock as the museum’s first curator in 1907 resulted in a great emphasis on natural history in the early years of the institution. In that year alone, Rothrock collected 550 specimens of Pennsylvania’s mammals. One of the most expensive early museum purchases was that of the extinct passenger pigeon for one hundred dollars. Most exhibit specimens from those early years have disintegrated, but more than 45,000 items now comprise the natural science collections, from 1,170 seed pearls to a full-sized bison. But not all of the Commission’s animals are inanimate: live cows, guinea fowl, pigs, sheep, horses and peacocks roam the meadows and fields at Pennsbury Manor, Bucks County, the Daniel Boone Homestead near Reading and the Pennsylvania Farm Museum, Lancaster.
Although less lively, another animal in the collections is, perhaps, more captivating, not only for what it is but for how it came to the museum. While gifts and purchases continue to be major sources for artifacts, many have been yielded by field collecting and site excavations. In 1968, John Leap, a dragline peat miner near Marshalls Creek in the Poconos, pulled up what he believed to be a “stump,” but a curious co-worker discovered that the stump was, actually, bone. The find was relayed to the museum’s earth science curator, and resulted in the discovery of the eighteenth skeleton of a mastodon in Pennsylvania. The bones were under two feet of water and covered by five to six feet of sediment; nevertheless, ninety per cent of the huge animal’s skeleton was extracted. Only the tusks are missing, possibly due to the illness of the animal. Both the skeleton and a re-creation of what the towering nine-foot-high animal must have looked like are exhibited in the Hall of Geology.
The State Museum’s largest collection numerically was garnered primarily by excavation, and archaeological holdings are estimated at 850,000 pieces, though each pot sherd and bead has not been individually counted. Twenty-five hundred stone tools donated by J.A. Stober in 1906 auspiciously inaugurated the collection, and gifts and purchases continued as primary sources for archaeological acquisitions until 1916, at which time the museum began benefitting from field expeditions sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, forerunner of the present agency.
The Safe Harbor expedition, begun in 1930 under the direction of the first State Archaeologist, Donald A. Cadzow, brought the Commission’s archaeological field work national attention. The completion of the new Safe Harbor Dam, near the junction of the Conestoga Creek with the Susquehanna River, would submerge many important Indian sites. Work started by making plaster casts of the ancient Indian rock carvings, or petroglyphs, discovered on several islands in the river. Sixty-eight of the best petroglyphs were then cut from bedrock with a pneumatic drill. More than ten tons of rock were wrestled onto row boats for transport to the shore and later to the State Museum. Excavation of eight nearby Lancaster County archaeological sites yielded more than 25,000 artifacts, plus tens of thousands of glass trade beads from Susquehannock and Shenks Ferry Indian villages.
Good guesses are important in collecting. In 1957, an amateur archaeologist boating on the Susquehanna River speculated that a rock shelter favored by scouts, picnickers and sheep might also have been attractive to Indians. By digging a preliminary test hole, John Miller discovered the important dry deposits of the Huntingdon County Sheep Rock Shelter. Until 1959 Miller, with advice from State Anthropologist John Witthoft, excavated the 300-by 30-foot site himself, overcoming problems of locating the land’s owner and transportation difficulties of a site best reached by water. Partly due to fear of destructive pot hunters, Miller then turned the excavations over to the State Museum under the direction of Witthoft and State Archaeologist Fred Kinsey III. During the Commission’s excavations and later field work by the Pennsylvania State University, the dry deposits, unusual in the humid climate of Pennsylvania, relinquished many unique and well-preserved organic objects. The retrieved moccasin fragments, seeds, plant remains, bark basket and feathers convey an exceptionally graphic picture of the area’s natural resources and their use by man since before the sixteenth century; the site has been submerged since the completion of the Raystown Dam. However, the Pennsylvania Archaeological Survey, with information on more than 12,000 sites throughout the state, indicates bountiful grounds for further archaeological excavations.
Not only specimens, but people are part of the Commonwealth collections’ fascinating story. One of the most intriguing characters in the museum’s early history was collector and dealer Henry K. Deisher, who sold the museum many archaeological and historical objects. In 1917, the Deisher collection of Indian implements, described as “one of the most beautiful collections of such material as can be found in any museum,” was purchased with a special legislative appropriation of $4,000.
Fortunately, Deisher and a few others, including the Landis brothers (whose collection eventually spawned the Pennsylvania Farm Museum), recognized that objects relating to everyday life in Pennsylvania were important to the heritage of the state. Examples of Deisher’s first sales to the museum in 1909 are a rye-straw beehive for $6, a 1751 stoveplate for $25, a 1780 powder horn for $1 and a glazing grinder “with history” for $15. Ten years later Deisher observed that the type of artifacts he was collecting would soon not be available, and responded to the assertion that he had “an uncanny way of finding things,” by replying, “No, it is hard work.” Of his penchant for collecting, he said: “I have often decided not to buy another relic, but it seems inborn and inbred and it has been impossible to cast it off.”
Deisher declared it “no trouble to sell at better prices, but I am for the State Museum first and all the time.” By “1928, he calculated that he had supplied sixty-three percent of the State Museum collections. In that year he was hired as an assistant curator of archaeology and antiques at a salary of $2,040 a year. With WPA help, Deisher inaugurated the first formal catalog of antiquities in the museum’s collections. Although he concentrated on the history rather than on the description of the artifacts listed, numbers were written on the objects and keyed to a record system for the first time. It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of this catalog; without it many objects could not now be reconciled with existing records, and their histories irrevocably lost.
Deisher’s service to the State Museum was not without its trials. Henry Mercer, operator of the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown, had purchased objects from Deisher for his famed collection, now in the care of the Bucks County Historical Society. In 1929 Mercer counseled his old friend against activities which might be construed as private collecting or dealing while a public servant:
“As I make out you have mortgaged your own private salary for over two hundred dollars to get things which might escape into the museum. The State ought to pay for these things out of the museum funds, not you out of your private resources. The State will never thank you for this and might very easily under certain circumstances misunderstand it. What do politicians care? My advice is never, never, never to do it again.”
Evidently Deisher did not heed the advice. He blamed his dismissal in May 1936 on politics. He insisted that he had donated items valued at $700, plus personal time, car fares, stationery, postage, and reference books and magazines “because the state would not supply,” and rather bitterly wrote that to make ends meet he had “to patronize cheap restaurants.” Despite this accounting, he maintained he had “unconsciously built up the Museum, more as hobby than [for] profit.”
No collections records exist from May until Deisher was rehired in December, an indication of chaos in his absence. Although he apparently retired about 1940, his interest in the museum continued. He was somewhat defensive in a letter dated January 1948 in which he offered several items to the museum: “Don’t say Deisher does not get old – he is down and out at 81 [though] in my mind about 50.”
In addition to museum staff, notable scholars, dedicated collectors and the man off the street have all contributed to the collections. Samuel G. Gordon, intrepid curator of minerals at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, unwittingly contributed to the State Museum inasmuch as he supplied specimens to John S. Frankenfield, whose mineral collection was purchased in 1973. On one of his expeditions Gordon fought both greedy African miners and angry German supervisors to secure a spectacular find of azurite crystals, a sample of which the museum eventually obtained. The two greatest American paleobotanists, Leo Lesquereux and David White, cataloged the museum’s important Isaac James fossil plant collection relating to the anthracite region. By good luck or good judgment, employees of Bethlehem Mines collected excellent samples of the now-exhausted rock and ore bodies at Cornwall, which are valuable both for the exhibits at that iron furnace and the reference collections at the State Museum.
The inter-relationships of various museum collections are demonstrated by the fact that the primary object in the collections from the first geological survey conducted in the years 1836-1842 is not a specimen (most of those found their way to Harvard University when the state was unable to pay for the work of the survey teams) but a painting. George Lehman, draftsman for a Somerset County expedition in 1840, sketched one of the campsites which William van Starkenborgh later worked into an oil painting now in the fine arts collection. However, more than 16,000 rocks and minerals gathered during the second Pennsylvania geological survey (1874-1889) now contribute their weight to the earth science collections – and storage problems.
An elaborate silver service is yet another excellent example of how collections can relate to one another. John Fritz was so successful as general superintendent of the Cambria Iron Works that upon his departure in 1860 his employees presented him with ten elegant pieces of sterling silver made by R. & W. Wilson, Philadelphia silversmiths. Besides the fact that industry (although probably accidentally) thus supported fine hand craftsmanship, the tray acquired for the tea and coffee service is engraved with the machine Fritz invented to produce iron rail. A collection of Fritz’s rail sections, now featured in the exhibits of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, was also given by the inventor’s descendants.
The Railroad Museum undoubtedly displays the most spectacular group of vehicles in the Commission’s collections, but the State Museum houses everything from a late nineteenth-century bicycle to an airplane. The wheeled collection even includes firefighting apparatus and charming wood and wicker carriages designed to give baby an ostentatious dose of fresh air in all weathers. The majority of the vehicles are horsedrawn, from dashing lightweight recreational sleighs to the bow-bellied Conestoga wagons which lumbered across both state and nation. One of the most handsome and historic carriages displayed at the State Museum is the gleaming black Berlin which belonged to Simon Cameron. Lincoln’s secretary of war. Personal transportation of the motorized era was also elegant, as is demonstrated by the 1912 Delaunay-Belleville-Brewster town car. a vehicle once owned by Philadelphia financier Edward T. Stotesbury and one of eight donated by the family of A. Atwater Kent, Jr., an early Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commissioner. Less attractive, but certainly as important in telling Pennsylvania’s transportation history, are business or industrial vehicles, such as a battery-charged electric truck which hauled ice around Lancaster from 1910 to 1948, or the ten-and-a-half-ton 1917 Cyclone mobile drilling rig mounted on a 1927 GMC truck at Drake Well Museum.
Transportation, significant in Pennsylvania’s history, is just one of the themes depicted on the magnificent 162 piece silver service made for the U.S.S. Pennsylvania in 1903 by the J.E. Caldwell Company of Philadelphia. Other vignettes engraved on the major serving pieces show the oil, anthracite and lumbering industries, as well as significant military endeavors and historic buildings. The battleship’s silver service not only relates to military history, but, because it was commissioned by the General Assembly, is one of the many items of state for which the museum is now the repository.
The gushing description of the capitol buildings included in Morgan’s 1858 Annals of Harrisburg noted that portraits of Columbus and Americus Vespucius, as well as a small marble eagle in the Senate chambers, had been given by a Commodore Elliott. (All three objects are now in the Pennsylvania Collection of Fine Arts of the State Museum.) Although the reasons for Ellicott’s gift were not explained, the commodore did report that the eagle was carved out of a bit of pillar from the ruins of Alexandria, Egypt, by a common sailor who “was a most excellent seaman, but strongly addicted to intemperance when on shore.”
A recent donation to the fine arts collection is a full-length portrait of George Washington, painted at the command of the Senate to decorate its chamber about 1827. The capitol was destroyed by fire in 1897 and documents, furnishings and art objects were briskly evacuated from the burning structure. William Reeder’s painting depicting the Indians burning John Harris, founder of the capital city, was among the items rescued by the state and it is now displayed at the Governor’s Home with other artworks and furnishings from the Commission’s collections. Other items were hurriedly carried into surrounding homes for protection and never reclaimed. One can only hope that the companion portrait to Washington’s likeness of founder William Penn was also “adopted” and may yet return to the Commonwealth as have other items. The back room of a fire company which had helped to fight the blaze just recently yielded several benches from the old capitol; several are now being used in the refurbishing of the building.
Several items from the capitol had been diverted from state ownership prior to the fire. The 1852 volume, The Pictorial Sketch Book of Pennsylvania, illustrated and described the chair of the Speaker of the House, the very one John Hancock used while president of the Continental Congress: “It is a plain, but withal a very elegant chair. The wood, if we remember correctly, is black walnut. It is still in a tolerably good state of preservation, but time and constant use are beginning to attack its points.” Nevertheless, it continued to serve in the House until scholars working on the restoration of Independence Hall prior to the Centennial made a foray to Harrisburg and took away the chair, the silver inkwell used in the ceremonial signing of the Declaration of Independence and an original desk. These furnishings are now safeguarded by the National Park Service at Independence Park.
Whether items of state or of everyday life, objects do tell stories and each has its own history. An interesting example is the head of a 24-point deer (the largest known killed in Pennsylvania) which was deposited in the museum for safekeeping by the hunter before he left for Korea in 1949. The man never returned to claim his prized trophy and the head is now on loan to the State Game Commission headquarters. In similar seemingly random fashion – for reasons often obscure to those who follow-certain pieces are chosen for protection by their owners, or simply survive having reached the quiet safety of an attic corner or closet shelf. Some have been faithfully preserved, even when their guardians did not know exactly what they were protecting. “Grandmother’s bed cover,” when fully opened, was handsomely worked with a version of the Pennsylvania State Seal, signed and dated by the donor’s grandmother’s grandmother. A pair of “saddlebags,” given together with a wedding dress of 1850, proved to be elaborately needle-worked pockets from an earlier date.
The fact that a brown satin vest is pinned with a handwritten note relating that it was worn at a reception for General Washington during the Whiskey Rebellion does not make it a better vest, but is a tangible record of the importance the participants attached to the event. The locks of George Washington’s hair, splinters from Penn’s pulpit, or a nail from Thomas Jefferson’s beloved Monticello may seem slightly ridiculous as artifacts, but they do reveal a real desire of people to “touch” history through the veneration of objects bearing associational values. Donors give those things to museums both for personal satisfaction and in the belief that they contribute to a better understanding by future generations.
While all Americans have been touched by history, some literally “touched” history in the form of its material remnants, and the objects did not survive long enough to receive museum care. The 1905 Army and Navy Register reports that of two Revolutionary colors presented to the state, one was supposed to have been made by Betsy Ross and the other captured from the Hessians: “For many years the two flags stood side by side, and while the American flag was unharmed, the other was carried away in bits by relic hunters until nothing was left but the staff.” The Ross flag was placed in the protection of a glass case, an unfortunate testimony to the necessary museum policy of encasing most objects in its care. Later presented by Gov. Andrew Curtin to the Pennsylvania Daughters of the American Revolution, the flag’s subsequent fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
The State Museum continues to collect and protect historical, archaeological and natural science objects related to the Commonwealth. Since 1945 the museum has been administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which is empowered to purchase or “to receive for and on behalf of the Commonwealth, gifts or bequests of relics and other articles of historical interest.” Donations have always been a major source of artifacts and are now the primarily means by which the collections grow. Possible additions, whether by purchase or gift, are carefully reviewed for their documentation, condition, possible duplication of present holdings and relevance to Pennsylvania. Many apparently common items have interesting histories and are as significant for exhibits and interpretation as the rare and obscure.
Of particular importance to today’s curators is the expansion of the holdings of twentieth century objects to accurately tell the story of our present to yet unborn citizens of the Commonwealth. By collecting, our penchants, interests, desires, our idiosyncrasies and our quirks will someday be exposed to future generations of museumgoers through the stacked shelves of objects mirroring our tastes and our times. The challenge of past generations to collect and preserve materials for reference and exhibit is regarded as an unbroken chain, to be handed through the present staff from our predecessors to our successors. Although our present selective acquisitioning may amuse, perplex or mystify those who follow and seek a key to the past through the objects and artifacts spanning several centuries, hopefully the cautious accessioning, the ardent care and the diligent documentation of the canvases, the silver, the swords and arms will be justified and appreciated.
For Further Reading
Alexander, Edward P. Museums in Motion. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1979.
Bazin, Germain. The Museum Age. New York: Universe, 1967.
Bell, Whitfield J., Jr. and others. A Cabinet of Curiosities: Five Episodes in the Evolution of American Museums. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967.
Coleman, Laurence Vail. The Museum in America: A Critical Study. 1970. Reprint. Washington, D. C.: American Association of Museums, 1939.
Sellers, Charles Coleman. Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art. New York: Norton & Co., 1980.
Cathryn J. McElroy, curator of decorative arts at the William Penn Memorial Museum in Harrisburg since 1976, received her M.A. as a Fellow in the Winterthur Program of Early American Art and Culture through the University of Delaware. The author, also chairman of the WPMM’s Museum Services Division, wishes to acknowledge the assistance of all the State Museum curators in the preparation of this article, with special thanks to Bruce S. Bazelon, Commission registrar.