Windows on Pennsylvania’s Natural Places: Restoring Mammal Hall at The State Museum

Posted by on Nov 5, 2019 in | Comments Off on Windows on Pennsylvania’s Natural Places: Restoring Mammal Hall at The State Museum At The State Museum of Pennsylvania, the beavers are busier than ever repairing their dam. The mountain lion gazes more intently at its prey, advancing stealthily upon a slanted tree trunk. And you might imagine you feel a chill as you approach the freshly fallen snow in the bison’s nighttime scene. If you haven’t visited the museum’s third-floor Mammal Hall recently, you’ll now notice that the...
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Humphry Marshall, Father of American Dendrology

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Humphry Marshall, Father of American Dendrology Humphry Marshall (1722-1801) has been called the Father of American Dendrology, the study of wooded plants. In 1785 he authored Arbustum Americanum, a catalog of American trees and shrubs following the Linnaean system of plant classification, the first publication of its kind. A stonemason by trade, Marshall took an early interest in botany. His cousin John Bartram (1699-1777), who had created a...
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A Country Seat on the Susquehanna: Wright’s Ferry Mansion

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Country Seat on the Susquehanna: Wright’s Ferry Mansion On the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River in southeastern Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Lancaster, Wright’s Ferry Man­sion was built in 1738 for a remarkable English Quaker, Susanna Wright. In 1726, when Susanna was twenty-nine, she purchased one hundred acres in this region on the fringes of Pennsylvania wilderness, then inhabited by a small tribe of Indians and known as...
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The Beauty and Bounty of Penn’s Wood

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Beauty and Bounty of Penn’s Wood Pennsylvania’s beauty – the gently sweeping valleys, the broad rivers, the rugged mountains and the rolling hillsides – is the bounty which lured waves of settlers to the New World more than three centuries ago. Founder William Penn, entrepreneur and seventeenth century land promoter, heavily advertised his province as “the land good, the air clean and sweet, the springs...
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Pittsburgh’s Park of a Century

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh’s Park of a Century Currently ranked first as the Most Livable City by the Rand-McNally annual survey, Pittsburgh is reveling in media exposure comparable to the boosterism of the town of Zenith which writer Sinclair Lewis satirized in his novel, Babbit. Accompanying the zealous, self-proclaimed promotion, however, has been a healthy dose of self­-examination, with the city’s less enviable qualities suddenly...
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A Flowering for the Ages

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Flowering for the Ages Botanists who classify and name plants are called plant taxono­mists, plant systema­tists, or systematic botanists, most of whom work in her­baria, a name first applied by Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the great Swedish systematist. A herbarium, the plant taxono­mist’s basic reference source, is a collection of preserved plant specimens, mostly pressed and dried (although certain specimens...
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William Darlington, A Man for Our Age

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on William Darlington, A Man for Our Age The first citizen of Chester County to receive the Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, William Darlington was one of the organizers of the Chester County Medical Society. Read out of Meeting by the Society of Friends for serving in the War of 1812, Darlington was elected to Congress in 1815 and was a member of the House of Representatives for six of the next eight years....
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Like Father, Like Son: The Extraordinary Bartrams

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Like Father, Like Son: The Extraordinary Bartrams An unusual man, of seemingly boundless talent and insatiable curiosity, John Bartram (1699-1777) was many things to many people. Although primarily regarded as a botanist, he might also have been considered a paleontologist, an archaeol­ogist, a geologist, a limnologist, a conchologist, an ethnologist, and so on. Like Thomas Jefferson, he was a prime example of that rare, almost unique,...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents White Elephants Baseball historians generally consider Connie Mack (1862-1956) the paragon of managers. His knowledge of the game, professional disposition, and ability to acquire and, more importantly, manage players captured the attention of sports enthusiasts during a time when the national pastime was riddled with scandal, permeated with intemperance, and punctuated by rowdyism. Connie Mack...
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Executive Director’s Letter

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Executive Director’s Letter In several months we will celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), organized in Philadelphia as the Pennsylvania Historical Commission on March 21, 1914. As I reviewed selected PHMC highlights of the timeline appearing in this edition (“PHMC Celebrates A Century of Service”), I was immediately struck by two themes. The first is the...
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