Trailheads

Posted by on Mar 25, 2021 in | Comments Off on Trailheads As 2021 comes into focus, PHMC’s Trails of History sites are providing exceptional service to the public through online offerings. The annual celebration of Charter Day, Pennsylvania’s birthday, will take place online. Our sites and museums continue to build their portfolios of virtual programs and tours, from lectures to trivia nights to online exhibits. Follow PHMC or your favorite site’s...
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Indian Hannah

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Indian Hannah Hannah Freeman is a name rarely found in history books, although her story and legend live on in southern Chester County. Known more popularly as “Indian Hannah,” Freeman is remembered in local lore as the last Lenape living in Chester County at the time of her death in 1802. She was born about 1730 on the Webb farm in Kennett Township not far from the Delaware border. Today the farm is part of...
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The Stetson Company and Benevolent Feudalism

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Stetson Company and Benevolent Feudalism Philadelphia, during the first three decades of the twentieth century, was known for its great industrial enterprise. The city called itself the World’s Greatest Workshop and was a leader in the manufacture of more than 200 different items. It ranked first in the nation in the pro­duction of hosiery and knit goods, carpets and rugs, locomotives, street railway cars, saws, surgical...
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Mifflin County: The Crossroads of the Commonwealth

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mifflin County: The Crossroads of the Commonwealth Mifflin County will celebrate its two hundredth birth­day on September 19, during a customarily beau­tiful month when glowing foliage sweeps over four hun­dred and thirty-one square miles of farms, small towns and wooded mountains. Ex­tending from Bear Gap to Kistler Borough through rug­ged and scenic valleys to the banks of the Juniata River, it’s just fifteen miles from the Seven...
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Ernest: Life in a Mining Town

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ernest: Life in a Mining Town In 1904, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company began deep mining in Ernest, Pennsylvania. In 1965, the industry there came to an end. Between these two dates, people lived out their lives in this small community northwest of Indiana, where for over sixty years every facet of existence revolved around the digging of coal from the hillsides surrounding the town. But what was life like in a...
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Pike County: A Peak of Natural Perfection

Posted by on Nov 28, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pike County: A Peak of Natural Perfection “I went through a constant succession of scenery that would have been famous had it existed anywhere in Europe.” – Washington Irving   Shaped roughly like a diamond, Pike County is situated in Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier, bordering the Delaware River on the cast across from the states of New York and New Jersey. The northwestern side of the diamond lies in Lake...
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Valley Forge: Commemorating the Centennial of a National Symbol

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Valley Forge: Commemorating the Centennial of a National Symbol It is June 17, 1893. Ten men are meeting at the venerable Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Gov. Robert E. Pattison has recently signed a law entitled “An Act Provid­ing for the acquisition by the State of certain ground at Valley Forge for a public park, and making an appropriation therefor.” He has carefully selected these individuals and commissioned them with...
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Pippin

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pippin Artistic reputations are – much like the stock market – hard to assess, and harder yet to predict. Such is the case with the career of Horace Pippin (1888-1946), a self-taught African American painter who lived in West Chester in southeastern Pennsylvania. An artist of national standing by the early 1940s, Pippin had made a meteoric rise from the local renown of his Chester County...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor “Dapper Dan” My congratulations on an outstanding issue of Pennsylvania Heritage for summer 1995! I have watched the magazine grow and mature, and this issue was the best yet. I was particularly impressed with the piece entitled “‘Dapper Dan’ Flood, Pennsylvania’s Legendary Congressman” by William C. Kashatus III. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy...
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Karl Mason (1915-1966)

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Karl Mason (1915-1966) If asked to describe his life’s work, those who remember Karl Mason would most likely exclaim, “He wanted to clean up the world!” If pressed to date the beginning of environmental regulation by a single state agency, many Penn­sylvanians would probably choose 1970, the year the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources – predecessor to the Commonwealth’s...
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