Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (297 pages, cloth, $30.00) In less than three-quarters of a century, the Connellsville coke industry, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, mushroomed from slight beginnings into a key supplier essential to the iron and steel industries. It then fell victim...
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WWII Knitted Socks at Pennsylvania Military Museum

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on WWII Knitted Socks at Pennsylvania Military Museum During World War II, the American Red Cross sponsored a program to provide handmade garments for refugees and members of the military services by organizing volunteer sewing and knitting workshops. Ruth McDanel Davis, of New Brighton, Beaver County, newlywed bride of a soldier stationed overseas, volunteered for this home front program and knitted gloves, socks, and sweater jackets during three...
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Current and Coming

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Current and Coming Steel Poetry Inspired by the various aspects of the steel industry in Bethlehem, Mildred T. Johnstone (1900-1988) created unusual canvas embroideries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As the wife of Bethlehem Steel Corporation executive William H. Johnstone, she had the singular honor of being the first woman to tour the compa­ny’s steel mills. Although the mills have grown silent,...
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All in the Family: The Riches in Woolrich

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on All in the Family: The Riches in Woolrich John Rich II received a “warm” welcome when he visited winter logging camps in the dense forests of northern Pennsylvania in the early nineteenth century. Tough, hardened lumberjacks valued the one bit of comfort and protection from frostbite that Rich proffered from the back of his mule cart: a simple pair of woolen socks. From those humble beginnings, Rich engaged in a trade that...
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Invention of the Jeep

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Invention of the Jeep A state historical marker erected by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) serves to remind the world that Butler, located in western Pennsylvania, about thirty-five miles north of Pittsburgh, is the birthplace of the vehicle now universally known as the jeep, built by the American Bantam Car Company. The factory, formerly the American Austin Car Company, which had produced...
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#1 Extra Large Black

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on #1 Extra Large Black By the first light of dawn I could see my fencerow set held by a big skunk! It was Wednesday, November 17, 1943, the day after my sixteenth birth­day. I walked a four-mile trap line for skunk and possum from our farm near Millersburg in the Lykens Valley. Trapping was very important to me, as I had no other income; also, it was exciting, adventuresome, and challenging. I slowly walked up to the...
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Executive Director’s Message

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Executive Director’s Message Moving to Pennsylvania to become, in early February 2004, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) seems as much like a homecoming for me as it is a new beginning. Pennsylvania is a place where my family has deep roots among German farmers and Scots-Irish iron-workers. It is the place where I experienced history firsthand as a student at Bryn Mawr College...
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PHMC Highlights

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on PHMC Highlights PHMC leadership has recently been in the news. Executive Director Barbara Franco has been elected chair of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) for a two-year term. AASLH, based in Nashville, Tennessee, traces its roots to 1904. It provides leadership and support for members who preserve and interpret state and local history to make the past more meaningful for all...
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Restored Tank at Pennsylvania Military Museum

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Restored Tank at Pennsylvania Military Museum An exceptionally rare armored vehicle, an American version of a French tank, the Renault FT17, was manufactured for the Allied offensive abroad, but the signing on November 11, 1918, of the Armistice that ended World War I prevented it from seeing action — and spared it for posterity. Designed to house a machine gun, it is the only known example of its type in existence. J. William Richey, of...
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Art with a Purpose: Pennsylvania’s Museum Extension Project, 1935-1943

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Art with a Purpose: Pennsylvania’s Museum Extension Project, 1935-1943 Like other relief programs launched during the Great Depression under the aegis of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the goal of federal arts programs of the 1930s was two-fold: to rescue unemployed Americans from poverty and to produce something of public benefit. One of the unintended byproducts was controversy. In 1937, the Federal Art and Theatre Project unintentionally...
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