Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation Newsletter

Posted by on Mar 14, 2022 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation Newsletter Topics in the Spring 2022 Newsletter: PHMC Curators Highlight Prized Objects from Collections Robert Hill on John W. Geary’s Civil War Corps Badge Janet Johnson on Malkin Sunface Plate PHF Welcomes New Board Members  ...
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Unsung Hero of Gettysburg by Edward G. Longacre

Posted by on Mar 14, 2022 in | Comments Off on Unsung Hero of Gettysburg by Edward G. Longacre Unsung Hero of Gettysburg The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg by Edward G. Longacre Potomac Books, 316 pp., hardcover $34.95 So much has been written about the Battle of Gettysburg, it would seem as if there was nothing else to be said; Edward G. Longacre disagrees. In his extremely well-written and fully researched study, Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David...
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Meade at Gettysburg by Kent Masterson Brown

Posted by on Mar 14, 2022 in | Comments Off on Meade at Gettysburg by Kent Masterson Brown Meade at Gettysburg A Study in Command by Kent Masterson Brown University of North Carolina Press, 488 pp., hardcover $35 In Meade at Gettysburg, Kent Masterson Brown breaks new ground on a topic that is well-trodden. The Battle of Gettysburg has rightfully taken pride of place as a watershed moment in American history and is among the most studied events of the Civil War. Despite our...
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Thaddeus Stevens by Bruce Levine

Posted by on Dec 1, 2021 in | Comments Off on Thaddeus Stevens by Bruce Levine Thaddeus Stevens Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine Simon & Schuster, 309 pp., hardcover $28 In most respects a conventional biography, Thaddeus Stevens revisits the life and times of a consequential American character. Levine limns the forces that shaped Stevens’ sensibility and his commitment to racial justice as his most notable cause. Stevens’ family...
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“Drawing to Represent”: Lewis Miller of York, Chronicler of 19th-Century Life

Posted by on Jun 7, 2021 in | Comments Off on “Drawing to Represent”: Lewis Miller of York, Chronicler of 19th-Century Life Lewis Miller’s depictions of people and their everyday lives have been used repeatedly to illustrate 19th-century American life. Whether it is a flood of molasses flowing down the street or Simon Einstein bringing a load of cabbages to town to celebrate his election victory, Miller seemed to have seen it all, and he depicted many of these scenes during his long lifetime. Miller also recorded...
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Linton Park, Pennsylvania Folk Artist

Posted by on Jun 4, 2021 in | Comments Off on Linton Park, Pennsylvania Folk Artist   Linton Park (1826-1906) is recognized today as a significant artist in the primitive or folk tradition; however, his work was unknown during his lifetime. At his death, in fact, he had less than $100 to his name. He never married or had children, and his relatives and neighbors considered him an eccentric hermit. Evidence indicates that he was a self-taught painter, only beginning in the...
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From the Executive Director

Posted by on Jun 3, 2021 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director For a long time, the Smithsonian Institution has called itself “The Nation’s Attic.” The name conjures up its role as America’s memory. Storerooms hold bits and pieces of the lives of Americans, famous and less celebrated. That metaphor also works for us here at PHMC. We consider ourselves to be like a Pennsylvania version of the Smithsonian museums, capturing the broad history of the...
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Piecing Together Pandenarium: Archaeology at the Site of a Free Black Community in Western Pennsylvania

Posted by on Mar 22, 2021 in | Comments Off on Piecing Together Pandenarium: Archaeology at the Site of a Free Black Community in Western Pennsylvania In 1854 newly freed African American men, women and children hailing from a plantation in Ablemarle County, Virginia, arrived at a dusty country crossroads in northwestern Pennsylvania’s Mercer County. Estimates vary, but approximately 63 free people settled together on 100 acres of their own land. Local abolitionists prepared for the arrival by building houses along the hill, digging wells, and...
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“Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Feb 5, 2021 in | Comments Off on “Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, the City of Philadelphia unveiled a monument to Octavius V. Catto in a ceremony at the southwestern apron of City Hall. Catto was a cornerstone figure in Philadelphia’s early civil rights struggle — a recruiter of an African American militia during the Civil War, an instrumental figure in the victory to desegregate Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars, a...
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Untouched by the Conflict, edited by Jonathan W. White and Daniel Glenn

Posted by on Jun 8, 2020 in | Comments Off on Untouched by the Conflict, edited by Jonathan W. White and Daniel Glenn Untouched by the Conflict: The Civil War Letters of  Singleton Ashenfelter, Dickinson College edited by Jonathan W. White and Daniel Glenn Kent State University Press, 142 pp., hardcover $29 The title of this unique collection of Civil War letters draws from an influential work of modern scholarship. The editors observe in their introduction that it was social historian J. Matthew Gallman who...
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