English Archives - Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine

Pennsylvania Polymath: Samuel Stehman Haldeman

Posted by Iren Snavely on Jun 8, 2020 in | Comments Off Samuel Stehman Haldeman was a pioneer in American science with an uncompromising empirical bent who made definitive contributions in geology, metallurgy, zoology and the scientific study of language. His groundbreaking lifework touched nearly seven decades of science and included identification of one of the oldest fossils in Pennsylvania, elucidation of a plan for an anthracite coal furnace for...
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Setting Boundaries: The Penn-Baltimore Agreement

Posted by Richard Saylor on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments By 1730 violence had broken out between Pennsylvania and Maryland colonists over conflicting border claims. On May 10, 1732, Charles Calvert (1699–1751), Fifth Lord Baltimore and proprietary governor of Maryland, established a provisional agreement with William Penn’s sons, John (1700–46), Thomas (1702–75) and Richard Sr. (1706–71), proprietors of Pennsylvania, to survey their mutual border. At...
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Pennsylvanians in Allied Country Units During World War I

Posted by Richard Saylor on Dec 13, 2016 in | Comments Off World War I began in Europe in July 1914, shortly after Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, on June 28. Initially the United States remained neutral as the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria) fought against the Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, Russia and Italy). It was not until April 1917 that the...
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Young William Penn

Posted by Russ Chamberlayne on Dec 13, 2016 in | Comments Off There’s an old idiom that says “the child is father of the man,” but this is complicated by the stage between childhood and adulthood – adolescence. The usual image of William Penn is of a pious, peaceable Quaker who rejected anything loud, proud or worldly. But his upbringing took place in the extremism, violence and carnality of mid-17th-century England. By the end of...
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William Penn’s Side Chair

Posted by Kyle Weaver on Dec 13, 2016 in | Comments Off Pennsylvania founder and first proprietor William Penn lived in his colony for a total of only four years during two trips of two years each, 1682-84 and 1699-1701. Even before his first visit he had engaged his agent to purchase from the Lenapes land along the Delaware River that would become Pennsbury Manor, intended to be his permanent summer home in America. As fate would have it, however,...
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Pennsylvania Dutch by Mark L. Louden

Posted by Patrick Donmoyer on Sep 1, 2016 in | Comments Off Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language by Mark L. Louden Johns Hopkins University Press, 504 pp., cloth $59.95 The controversy over the origins, identity and persistence of one of America’s most misunderstood minority languages has been positively settled by Louden’s unparalleled presentation of Pennsylvania Dutch, for which even the proper name has been the subject of...
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Lenape Country by Jean R. Soderlund

Posted by Douglas Miller on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off Lenape Country Delaware Valley Society before William Penn by Jean R. Soderlund University of Pennsylvania Press, 272 pp., $39.95 In Lenape Country, Jean R. Soderlund, professor of history at Lehigh University and editor of William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania, 1983), masterfully recounts the story of the strong, proud and, at times, fierce people who once...
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Columbia County is Diversity

Posted by Craig Newton on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off From the time of the earliest settlements during the Revolutionary War era to the present day, Columbia County has been three separate neighborhoods-the southern region (Catawissa and Centralia); the northern area (Benton and Millville) and the north bank of the Susquehanna River (Bloomsburg and Berwick). They are distinguishable by varied physical environments, ethnic origins and social...
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The Last Frontier: Venango County Indians, Oil, Ghost Towns

Posted by Carolee Michener on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off Venango County. Its name is derivation of a the Seneca Indian word earliest for explorers “French and Creek.” Its earliest explorers and settlers were the French, shortly followed by the English. At one time, the territory was claimed simultaneously by France, and the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. But Venango County’s rich history bespeaks vigorous pioneering a spirit...
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Mystery of the Monongahela Culture: Archaeology at Foley Farm

Posted by James Herbstritt on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off In 1939, anthropologist Mary Butler identified and formally named the Monongahela Woodland Culture, a prehistoric Indian way of life centered in the Monongahela Valley of southwestern Pennsylvania, western Maryland and parts of northern West Virginia. Dr. Butler’s reasons for naming this prehistoric Indian culture were, in part, based on archaeological investigations sponsored by the...
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