Trailheads

This blue wool nurse’s coat and skirt were worn by Bertha Wold during her service in the U.S Army during World War I and were later donated to the Pennsylvania Military Museum along with other items, such as her canteen, mess kit and gas mask.
Pennsylvania Military Museum, PHMC (coat, MM75.2.14; skirt, MM75.2.15A)

Charter Day – always the second Sunday in March – kicks off the spring season on the Pennsylvania Trails of History. Public program schedules start to fill up, and the influx of school group visits reaches its peak. Spring lambs and other animal babies make their appearance at sites with livestock programs, and our many gardens show signs of new life as well. For up-to-date information on programs and events, check the Trailheads blog (patrailheads.blogspot.com) or your favorite site’s calendar of events page. Here’s a glimpse at activities on the Trails of History.

Exhibits

As we mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment expanding women’s right to vote in the United States, the Pennsylvania Military Museum has been highlighting Pennsylvania women who served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The museum is currently exhibiting the uniform of Bertha Johanna Wold (1888–1984), known as “Barta” in her native Norwegian. Wold’s family settled in Potter County in 1890. After high school, she attended Dickinson Seminary (now Lycoming College) in Williamsport and later graduated as a registered nurse from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia. When the United States entered World War I, Wold resigned as director of the health program at Drexel Institute and volunteered for service as a nurse with the U.S. Army in France. Curator Jennifer Gleim’s exhibit text notes that Wold’s postwar career included teaching miners and their families in Jefferson and Indiana counties about citizenship, cooking and nursing and serving as an instructor of nurses at the Post-Graduate Hospital in New York City. After retirement in 1955, Wold returned to Potter County and wrote a memoir of her nursing career, which included being called to attend Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early years of his polio diagnosis. Due to the relatively fragile nature of textiles, Wold’s uniform, which she donated to the museum in 1975, will rotate off exhibit at the end of April.

Other exhibits on the Trails of History this spring include part two of Thrown, Fired and Glazed: The Redware Tradition from Pennsylvania and Beyond at Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum through December and Picturing a More Perfect Union: Violet Oakley’s Mural Studies for the Pennsylvania Senate Chamber, 1911–1919, on view through April 26 at The State Museum of Pennsylvania.

Post Oak, Quercus obtusiloba, a watercolor botanical image by Graceanna Lewis, is one of a collection of her paintings in the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum. It depicts new growth, a green stem with nine dark green leaves, and tiny clusters of acorns growing from the end of a twig.
Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, PHMC (LM80.5.2)

Collections Highlight

In 1893 Graceanna Lewis (1821–1912) accepted a commission from Pennsylvania Commissioner of Forestry John A. Woodward to create a series of 50 watercolor paintings of leaves for the commonwealth’s exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Lewis, born in Chester County to a Quaker family, took an early interest in natural history, researching plants and birds and making numerous illustrations for lectures and publications. She was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the Delaware County Institute of Science, and the Delaware County Forestry Association. Lewis’ watercolors won a bronze medal at the exposition and were exhibited again at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Eventually, they made their way into PHMC’s collections, and several are included in the core exhibit at the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum.

Curator Joshua Fox notes that in addition to Lewis’ work as a naturalist and teacher, she was an active abolitionist, helping to operate her family’s Chester County farm as a waystation on the Underground Railroad; she was later active in the temperance and women’s suffrage movements. A state historical marker dedicated to Graceanna Lewis is located on Kimberton Road in Phoenixville, Chester County.

Amy Killpatrick Fox is a museum educator in PHMC’s Bureau of Historic Sites & Museums. She writes a weekly blog also called Trailheads at patrailheads.blogspot.com.