“From My Own Observation and Familiar Acquaintance”: Phebe Earle Gibbons Introduces the Pennsylvania Dutch to the World

Posted by on Jun 4, 2021 in | Comments Off on “From My Own Observation and Familiar Acquaintance”: Phebe Earle Gibbons Introduces the Pennsylvania Dutch to the World   “It was on a Sunday morning in March, when the air was bleak and the roads were execrable, that I obtained a driver to escort me to the farm-house where an Amish meeting was to be held,” wrote Phebe Earle Gibbons (1821–93), describing a Lancaster County Amish religious gathering in the late 1860s. “The floors were bare, but on one of the open doors hung a long white towel,...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 3, 2021 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Twenty years ago, Pennsylvania became the setting for one of the most tragic but heroic episodes in recent U.S. history, when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a meadow in Somerset County after passengers fought back at al-Qaeda hijackers who had planned to use the aircraft for an attack on an unknown target in Washington, D.C. In this issue we mark the somber anniversary of 9/11 with the...
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The Inventor from Ercildoun: William Chester Ruth

Posted by on Oct 13, 2020 in | Comments Off on The Inventor from Ercildoun: William Chester Ruth It is apt to remember inventor William Chester Ruth (1882–1971) as a pinion in both his community and his machine shop and as a bridge between cultures and eras. The son of a man who had been enslaved until his 13th year and a woman from a distinguished free Black family, “Chester” displayed both confirmation of talent inherited from his parents and his own innovative path to the future. Steeped...
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Celebrities Discover Who They Are at the Pennsylvania State Archives

Posted by on Oct 30, 2019 in | Comments Off on Celebrities Discover Who They Are at the Pennsylvania State Archives Archivist Aaron McWilliams smiles and shifts his gaze toward the floor when asked about his brush with TV stardom. Every so often, a patron visiting the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, where he works, will ask him what it was like to appear alongside veteran Hollywood actor Steve Buscemi on a 2011 episode of Who Do You Think You Are? a reality series in which...
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The Amish by Steven M. Nolt

Posted by on Sep 9, 2016 in | Comments Off on The Amish by Steven M. Nolt The Amish: A Concise Introduction by Steven M. Nolt Johns Hopkins University Press, 52 pp., paper $16.95 In this brief but thoughtful book, Nolt leads his readers through the thicket of scholarship on Amish life to provide a concise introduction to America’s most distinctive religious community. He starts at the right place, delineating eight myths about the Amish that his book eventually...
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Baking Pennsylvania Dutch Style

Posted by on Sep 9, 2016 in | Comments Off on Baking Pennsylvania Dutch Style Regional American cuisine is fast becoming the hottest trend on the food scene today, and while we still hear a great deal about Cajun or the Southwest, one of the richest areas for culinary diversity is Pennsylvania. The Keystone Center for the Study of Regional Foods and Food Tourism, a nonprofit that has taken the lead in exploring the foods of our state, has identified five distinct culinary...
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Pennsylvania Dutch by Mark L. Louden

Posted by on Sep 1, 2016 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Dutch by Mark L. Louden Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language by Mark L. Louden Johns Hopkins University Press, 504 pp., cloth $59.95 The controversy over the origins, identity and persistence of one of America’s most misunderstood minority languages has been positively settled by Louden’s unparalleled presentation of Pennsylvania Dutch, for which even the proper name has been the subject of...
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A Glimpse of Mercer County

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Glimpse of Mercer County Mercer County, situated on the western edge of the state about midway between Erie and Pittsburgh. takes its name from Hugh Mercer, who emi­grated to Pennsylvania from Scotland. Mercer settled in Franklin County where he established a medical prac­tice, but he achieved prominence as a military man fighting in the French and Indian War and serving with Gen­eral Washington in the early campaigns...
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Juniata’s Hills: “Rolling Over Crags to Woodlands”

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Juniata’s Hills: “Rolling Over Crags to Woodlands” Oh, the hills of Juniata, Oh, her stony wooded hills, and her flower-scented valleys and her crystal streams and rills, Rolling over crags to woodlands, ‘Tis a sight worth far to go, Sun-kissed hills of Juniata, Oh, they thrill and still me so. The above lines are taken from the county poem (officially accepted as such during the 1981 Tercentenary celebration), written by the late Dr....
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The Furniture of Soap Hollow: Makers’ Marks and a Master’s Touch

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Furniture of Soap Hollow: Makers’ Marks and a Master’s Touch It’s been misidentified. Misunderstood. Misnamed. Mistreated. And mistakenly misla­beled by leading antiques dealers, knowledgeable collec­tors, magazine writers and curators of prestigious museums and institutions. Tt’s the little known, rarely encountered, but extremely important decorated furniture of Soap Hollow in southwest­ern Pennsylvania. To cognizant connoisseurs of antique...
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