The ‘State’ of Allegheny

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The ‘State’ of Allegheny One of the first centers of the organization of the Re­publican party and scene of its first national conven­tion in February, 1856, Allegheny County was strongly for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860. As the vote count proceeded, one of the leaders kept sending telegrams to Lincoln’s home in Illinois, keeping him up on the news that “Allegheny gives a majority of …...
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Pittsburgh’s Designing Women

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh’s Designing Women A man does not marry an artist, but a housekeeper …. I put away my brushes; resolutely crucified my divine gift, and while it hung writhing on the cross, spent my best years and powers cooking cabbage.” So wrote Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815-1884) of Wilkinsburg, Allegheny County. Swisshelm’s bittersweet memoirs recall the painful sacrifice that she made to the Victorian code of...
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Nellie Bly (1864-1922)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Nellie Bly (1864-1922) When Nellie Bly died January 27, 1922, at the age of fifty-eight, New York’s Evening Journal eulogized her as “the best reporter in America.” A rebellious child of Michael Cochran and his second wife, widow Mary Jane Kennedy Cummings, she channeled her noncon­formjty and fire into becoming one of the most notable journalists of all time. At a time when most female reporters...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Profile: Nellie Bly The biography of Nellie Bly appearing in Profiles in the Winter 2003 edition states that Elizabeth Jane Cochran adopted the pseudonym from a song written by Stephen Foster in 1870. Just to set the record straight, Foster died in 1864. According to Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture, Foster wrote Nellie Bly in 1850. One of...
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