Pushing William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” to Its Limits: Ephrata Cloister

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pushing William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” to Its Limits: Ephrata Cloister On the banks of the Cocalico Creek in northern Lancaster County a group of remarkable individuals established Ephrata, one of colonial Pennsylvania’s most unusual communities. A place of intense spirituality, unconventional way of life, literary and artistic brilliance, and medieval-style architecture, Ephrata was the center of a religious society whose principles gave William Penn’s...
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Fanny M. Jackson and Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fanny M. Jackson and Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth This idea was deep in my soul. Where it came from I cannot tell. It was in me to get an education and teach my people.” The sentiment was written nearly a century ago, in 1912, by Fanny M. Jackson Coppin (1837-1913), principal of Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth (ICY). All but forgotten today, Coppin and her distinguished career of nearly four decades at the Institute for...
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A Friend Among Quakers

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Friend Among Quakers On the balmy evening of May 3, 1784, Anthony Benezet affectionately bade farewell to his wife Joyce. Philadelphia’s most admired Quaker reformer, suffering from a prolonged illness, realized that death was near and took to his bed on the second story of their modest Chestnut Street residence. “We have lived long, in love and peace,” he comforted his spouse of forty-eight years....
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Susquehannocks, Catholics in Seventeenth-Century Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Susquehannocks, Catholics in Seventeenth-Century Pennsylvania With its seemingly endless vistas of shopping malls, housing developments, technology parks, truck terminals, and warehouses, it’s hard to imagine Pennsylvania’s lower Susquehanna River valley a vast, undisturbed wilderness. Yet, little more than two centuries ago, the region was home to a group of Native Americans generally called the Susquehannocks, but also known as the Minqua, the Andaste,...
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All’s Fair: Philadelphia and the Civil War Sanitary Fair

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on All’s Fair: Philadelphia and the Civil War Sanitary Fair Share...
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