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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“I Would Have… A Brew House”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on “I Would Have… A Brew House” The quality of the beer in his new colony was important enough to William Penn for him to include it in his descrip­tion of Pennsylvania to entice prospective settlers. “Our Drink has been Beer and Punch, made of Rum and Water. Our Beer was mostly made of Molasses, which well boyld, with Sassafras or Pine infused into it, makes very tolerable drink; but now they make Mault, and Mault Drink...
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Plagued! Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Plagued! Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 On August 5, 1793, Dr. Benjamin Rush was summoned to the waterfront residence of fellow physician Hugh Hodge, whose daughter had recently taken ill. For days Rush had been treating Philadelphians for a serious outbreak of influenza and had assumed that this was yet another case. But when he found the small girl on her deathbed, gasping for breath and vomiting black bile, Rush instinctively knew...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Pennsylvania Trail of History Cookbook By the Editors of Stackpole Books and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Stackpole Books and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2004 (127 pages, paper, $19.95) With recipes provided by the more than two dozen historic sites and museums administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), the Pennsylvania...
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