Old Economy Village: The Centennial of the First Site on the Pennsylvania Trails of History

One hundred years ago, on February 3, 1916, the Beaver County Court of Common Pleas, in an escheat case, awarded the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 6 acres of land that had been part of the town of Economy. World War I was raging in Europe, and with the United States’ entrance in the war the following year, the state had little time or money to deal with a newly acquired historic site. In 1919 the...
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Introducing… Team Heritage

Behind every successful maga­zine, there’s a hard-working, dedicated staff – a team, really. All good publications demand teamwork, and Pennsylvania Heritage is no exception. There’s a deadline on every horizon, editorial calendars that seem to project endlessly into the future, and production schedules that resemble a multi-dimensional Rube Goldberg device. The individuals who...
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Bookshelf

Saved for the People of Pennsylvania: Quilts from The State Museum of Pennsylvania by Lucinda Reddington Cawley, Lorraine DeAngelis Ezbiansky, and Denise Rocheleau Nordberg Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1997 ($14.95, paper, 67 pages) Since its founding in 1905, The State Museum of Pennsylvania has collected nearly two million artifacts and objects which docu­ment and interpret...
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Radium City, U.S.A.

In the spring of 1921, the preeminent French physicist Marie Curie (1867-1934) traveled from her home in Paris to the United States where, on Friday, May 20, she attended a White House ceremony during which President Warren G. Harding presented her with a key symbolizing a gift of one gram of radium from the women of America. Costing one hundred thousand dollars, this tiny amount of radium would...
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Pennsylvania’s Slavic Hero: Judge Blair F. Gunther

Thousands of Slavic refugees and their descendants who have carved out a better life in the United States may owe their lives to western Pennsylvania’s Judge Blair F. Gunther (1903-1966). After Poland faced horrific Nazi brutality during World War II and the murder of thousands of the country’s army officers by the Soviet secret police, Gunther fought to expose the atrocities and...
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Cumberland Willis Posey Sr., Entrepreneur

Cumberland Willis Posey Sr. (1858-1925) never let his circumstances define him; instead, he turned them into opportunities – not just for himself but also for his community. Born on August 30, 1858, to former slaves Elizabeth Willis Posey and Alexander Posey, he grew up in Port Tobacco, Maryland. His mother died when he was seven years old, and his father, a minister, moved the family to...
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