Lycoming County: Many Call It Romantic

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lycoming County: Many Call It Romantic Its heritage is so rich that it’s hard to adequately­ – and accurately – portray the roles Lycoming County has played in the Commonwealth’s history. Since its settlement in the mid­-eighteenth century, it has had, according to Sylvester K. Stevens, author of the 1946 guide to the Keystone State’s sixty-seven counties, My Penn­sylvania, “one of the most...
read more

Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor From Here to Hollywood I am so glad that you featured an article about Jimmy Stewart before he died [see “Keystone Born, Hollywood Bred: ‘Movie Buff’ David Mallery Reviews the Acting Careers of James Stewart and Grace Kelly” by William C. Kashatus in the Winter 1997 edition]. In his inter­view, Mr. Mallery touched on so many things that later appeared in the actor’s...
read more

The Pennsylvania Lumber Museum Preserves an Industrial History

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Pennsylvania Lumber Museum Preserves an Industrial History In the heart of Pennsylvania’s northern tier forests, between Galeton and Coudersport, in Potter County, is one of the most unusual interpretive centers that preserves the heritage of an era during which the Com­monwealth led the world in the production of lumber. Situated on one hundred and sixty acres, the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum chronicles the days when white pines and hemlock trees...
read more

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,...
read more

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...
read more

Rediscovering the People’s Art: New Deal Murals in Pennsylvania’s Post Offices

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Rediscovering the People’s Art: New Deal Murals in Pennsylvania’s Post Offices On a February morning in 1937, artist George Warren Rickey (1907-2002) and a group of four men met at the post office in Selinsgrove, Snyder County. Armed with cloth-covered rolling pins, the men attached Rickey’s mural entitled Susquehanna Trail to one of the lobby’s end walls. After six hours, they transformed the entire blank white wall, from marble wainscoting to ceiling, into a...
read more

Bucktail Monument, Driftwood, PA.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bucktail Monument, Driftwood, PA. This sounds as if the Bucktails were coming don’t it?” asked an unknown writer to Miss Bessie McPhee of Pittsburgh in a postcard mailed on April 6, 1908, at Driftwood, the second — and last — incorporated borough in Cameron County. Today a community of one hundred residents, Driftwood was incorporated as a borough in 1872; the county seat, Emporium, was incorporated in 1864. The postcard bears a...
read more

Lock Haven Hospital, Lock Haven, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lock Haven Hospital, Lock Haven, Pa. This burned since you were here [and] suppose you read of it,” wrote a Mrs. A. McClintock to Mrs. E. H. MacKee, of Buffalo, New York, on a postcard depicting the Lock Haven Hospital in Lock Haven, Clinton County. The postcard was postmarked September 2, 1908, at Lock Haven. Built in 1903 at a cost of $42,000, the Lock Haven Hospital was destroyed by fire five years later, on July 28, 1908....
read more

Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost Camp meetings, evangelistic Christian gatherings conducted under large tents and pavilions, originated in the United States in the early nineteenth century. These outdoor revivals lasted several days during summer months. One of the Commonwealth’s earliest rural revivals was conducted by the Methodist Episcopal Church in Clinton County. The grounds were laid out in 1869 at Pine (or Pine...
read more

This Is a Beautiful, Bountiful Earth: Joseph Trimble Rothrock and the Preservation of Penn’s Woods

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on This Is a Beautiful, Bountiful Earth: Joseph Trimble Rothrock and the Preservation of Penn’s Woods The lush, verdant woodlands characteristic of Pennsylvania’s landscape are almost entirely second-growth forests, in existence roughly for less than a century. Had it not been for the groundbreaking work of many conservationists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Keystone State’s present terrain would be dramatically different. One of the most important of those...
read more