A Backward Glance at Thirty-Five Years Young

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Backward Glance at Thirty-Five Years Young Over the past thirty-five years, Pennsylvania Heritage has brought to readers hundreds of stories about the famous and the not-so-famous, of historic preservation struggles won and lost, and interviews with individuals who either shaped history or interpret it. Our thirty-fifth anniversary, which we’re observing with this edition, gives us a moment to pause and reflect on where we’ve been, where...
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Barbara T. Zolli on “A Drop of Oil”

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Barbara T. Zolli on “A Drop of Oil” Crude oil, found in abundance in northwestern Pennsylvania, held out many possibilities by the mid-nineteenth century. It burned when ignited, served as a practical lubricant, was thought to have medicinal properties, and had been used for various purposes by generations of Native Americans. That it might be in ample supply became apparent to many locals when it oozed from the ground and...
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Photograph at Shippingport Atomic Power Station

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Photograph at Shippingport Atomic Power Station A photograph labeled “Installation of the Final Closure Head,” taken at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, Beaver County, on October 10, 1957, is part of an important new accession documenting the construction and evolution of the world’s first full-scale atomic power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime use received by the Pennsylvania State Archives (PSA) on April 14, 2009. The facility...
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Harnessing the Power of the Wind: A Contemporary Use for a Historic Energy Source

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Harnessing the Power of the Wind: A Contemporary Use for a Historic Energy Source Much like the oil farms of the last century were for drillers and riggers, Pennsylvania’s wind farms are proving grounds for engineers and technicians as they harness wind power. The long-standing use of wind power that for centuries propelled sailing vessels has been transformed throughout the world to produce electricity. Farmers used wind power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth...
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A Trio of Philadelphia Maritime Painters

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Trio of Philadelphia Maritime Painters Oceans and seas have long challenged civilization’s adventurous spirit. Sailors and their ships have struggled against billowing winds and sweeping tides, as well as fires, piracy, collisions, and warfare. All of this has been celebrated in story and song — and in works of art. Artists of the day captured both the beauty and the rigors of those wonderful ships in their coveted canvases. Three of...
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“A Corn Song” Musical Score by Henry Thacker Burleigh

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on “A Corn Song” Musical Score by Henry Thacker Burleigh Manuscript Group 9, Pennsylvania Writers’ Collection, 1899–1970, at the Pennsylvania State Archives includes nine original musical scores by the noted African American composer, arranger, and baritone singer Henry Thacker Burleigh. Born in Erie, Erie County, on December 2, 1866, he was admitted to the National Conservancy of Music in New York City where he served as a copyist for Antonin Dvorak...
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Henry “Harry” T. Burleigh

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Henry “Harry” T. Burleigh Early Life in Erie One year after the end of the American Civil War, Henry “Harry” T. Burleigh was born in Erie, on December 2, 1866, into an African American family which still sang the songs of slavery. Burleigh was the son of Henry Burley and Elizabeth Waters. After her husband died, Elizabeth changed the family name to Burleigh. The younger Burleigh recalled that the slave songs were...
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Rising from the Muck: The Marshalls Creek Mastodon

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Rising from the Muck: The Marshalls Creek Mastodon For as long as I can remember, I have known of the little village of Marshalls Creek, near East Stroudsburg, in northeastern Pennsylvania’s Monroe County. My maternal grandparents, Bertha and Arthur Pflieger, rented a cottage each summer in the Poconos at the Cottage Colony, part of the Mountain Lake House, a popular resort for many New Yorkers and city dwellers during the 1940s and the...
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Lloyd Mifflin: Artist of the Susquehanna

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lloyd Mifflin: Artist of the Susquehanna While many artists have painted the majestic Susquehanna River, none were as devoted to studying, rhapsodizing about its beauty and, ultimately, painting it in its many moods as was Pennsylvania native Lloyd Mifflin (1846–1921). In many ways, Mifflin typified the romantic, if often improbable, late nineteenth-century image of the artist as an attractive, highly sensitive, elitist dandy who...
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Winter in Historyland

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Winter in Historyland Are any of our readers fans of Christmas in Connecticut, the romantic comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, and Sydney Greenstreet released by Warner Brothers in 1945? As I try to slip into the proper frame of mind to write about winter on the Pennsylvania Trails of History,® I’m suddenly reminded of my favorite scene in that classic movie. A model of mid-century domesticity,...
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