Montgomery County: The Second Hundred Years

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Montgomery County: The Second Hundred Years County histories, written in most cases during the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, serve as the starting point for most research in local history. Montgomery Coun­ty’s classic county history, by Theodore W. Bean, is no exception. History, however, did not stop as the final pages of that volume were written. Much has happened since. Just as the Centennial of our nation spurred...
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Siegmund Lubin: The Forgotten Filmmaker

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Siegmund Lubin: The Forgotten Filmmaker In Philipsburg, the summer of 1914 ended with a crash that could be heard for miles and seen around the world. On the slopes of Centre County’s Collision Field, a stadium formed by nature, five thousand festive, flag-waving spectators gathered to watch the wrecking of two great Pittsburgh & Susquehanna Railroad locomotives. Bands entertained the Labor Day celebrants with musical...
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Clatter, Sproing, Clunk Went the Trolley…

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Clatter, Sproing, Clunk Went the Trolley… On a balmy autumn day in 1923, a young boy riding his pony along the banks of the Schuylkill River near Valley Forge stumbled upon the mortal remains of a once-famous movie star. De­spite the mud and tangle of weeds, he recognized her at once. She was well preserved and the boy wondered-as he raced back to his grandfather’s house in nearby Audubon-if the carcass couldn’t be salvaged....
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf The King of the Movies: Film Pioneer Siegmund Lubin by Joseph P. Eckhardt Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. (286 pages, cloth, $55.00) That immigrant Jews exerted a profound impact on the growth of American cinema is well known and has been the subject of considerable scholarship. However, the country’s first Jewish movie mogul, Siegmund “Pop” Lubin (1851-1923) of...
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