Howard L. Barnes, Dean of Philadelphia’s Amateur Historians

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Howard L. Barnes, Dean of Philadelphia’s Amateur Historians Howard L. Barnes claims that Frankford is the oldest settlement in Philadelphia. Historians in neighboring Germantown dispute him, contending theirs to be the oldest community in the Quaker city area. How­ ever, no one has proven him wrong – nor can one, especially when he produces the original land deed of his beloved home­town, which dates to 1660. That would make Frankford not only the...
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Nellie Bly (1864-1922)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Nellie Bly (1864-1922) When Nellie Bly died January 27, 1922, at the age of fifty-eight, New York’s Evening Journal eulogized her as “the best reporter in America.” A rebellious child of Michael Cochran and his second wife, widow Mary Jane Kennedy Cummings, she channeled her noncon­formjty and fire into becoming one of the most notable journalists of all time. At a time when most female reporters...
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Roberto Clemente (1934-1972)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Roberto Clemente (1934-1972) On New Year’s Day, 1973, Vera Clemente stood vigil on Piñones Beach, east of Puerto Rico’s San Juan Airport. When it became known that her husband, Roberto Clemente, died in an air­plane crash during a humanitarian mission, the memory of “The Great One” would touch people from the Keystone State to South America. Clemente gave Pittsburgh and baseball eighteen years and...
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Fred Waring (1900-1984)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fred Waring (1900-1984) In her 1997 book, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, Virginia Waring declared her late husband “The Man Who Taught America How to Sing.” In his foreword to the book, Robert Shaw (1916-1999), world-famous choral conductor known for his classical and secular repertoire, wrote, “It is certain to me that tours of the Bach B Minor Mass and the Mozart Requiem would not have been...
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Tom Mix (1880-1940)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Tom Mix (1880-1940) Even before Hollywood producers glamorized the silver screen image of the American cowboy, huge audiences were mesmerized by touring cowboy shows, the most popular of which was William F. (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody (1846-1917) and his Wild West Show, which traveled the country for more than thirty years, from 1883 to 1916. With authentic Native Americans, skilled riders, sharpshooters,...
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Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) Despite being the busy wife of a physician, mother of three sons, and victim of fragile health, Pennsylvania native Mary Roberts Rinehart became one of the most popular and highest-paid writers in America. Between 1908 and 1953, she churned out fifty-four books, mostly “whodunit” novels, which enthralled readers worldwide. In her 1980 biography, Improbable Fiction: The Life of Mary...
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Jonas Salk (1914-1995)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Jonas Salk (1914-1995) “Young man, a great tragedy has just befallen you,” newscaster Edward R. Murrow told Dr. Jonas Salk in the spring of 1955. “What’s that, Ed?” Salk asked. “You’ve just lost your anonymity,” Murrow replied. Salk, a self-made medical scientist, instantly gained world fame with the announcement that he had developed an effective vaccine for...
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Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920) On Tuesday, April 6, 1909, Robert Edwin Peary accomplished an achievement worthy of the legendary explorers of history. Exhausted from sleep deprivation, in temperatures of forty degrees below zero, after sailing thousands of miles on the ship Roosevelt, with teams of dogs, and with the knowledge that more than 750 men had died in failure, Peary, along with Matthew Henson, four Eskimos, and...
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Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973) Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them” wrote one of twentieth-century Amer­ica’s best-known historians and biographers, Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973). Born in Haverford, Mont­gomery County, she is best known for her narratives of...
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George W. G. Ferris (1859-1896)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on George W. G. Ferris (1859-1896) Around the world, Ferris wheels often symbolize the carefree days of summer. Yet, the engineer who “re-invented the wheel” is less remembered. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on February 14, 1859, one of ten children of George W. G. and Martha Edgerton (Hyde) Ferris. In 1864, the senior Ferris sold the family’s 1,200-acre dairy farm for the...
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