“The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened to Us Country People”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on “The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened to Us Country People” On a Halloween night early in the 1930s, a barn caught fire a few miles from Corry, Erie County. A passer by, Harry Burrows, hurriedly tied his horse and ran to help free the trapped animals. In the excitement no one noticed that the farm’s hired man was missing, but later they learned that his kerosene lantern was the cul­prit in starting the fire. “Some time, some way, he knocked...
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With a Camera in the Sky: Samuel W. Kuhnert, Aerial Photographer

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on With a Camera in the Sky: Samuel W. Kuhnert, Aerial Photographer Sixteen years after Orville and Wilbur Wright mastered the age-old dream of flight, a World War I army surplus biplane buzzed high above the City of Harrisburg. City residents paused in their labors, gawked at the airborne marvel, this rare phenomenon, the airplane. They could not know that, high above them, a man holding a bulky wooden camera hung precariously out of the open cockpit, taking...
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Cambria County: Coming Full Circle

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Cambria County: Coming Full Circle Located in the highlands of west­-central Pennsylvania and amidst forbidding mountains – the Allegheny escarpment and the Laurel Ridge standing sentinel on its eastern and western borders­ – the territory that would become Cambria County was not easily accessible to early Pennsylvanians. Migrants bound westward during the second half of the eighteenth century avoided its...
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Adams County: Tranquility Regained

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Adams County: Tranquility Regained One of Pennsylvania’s smaller counties, both in size and population, Adams County developed much the same as similar settlements along the Atlantic Seaboard. Its growth during the past two and a half centu­ries has been governed by its own particular circumstances, including location, terrain, soil, climate, vegetation, min­eral resources and the accom­plishments of the immigrants and...
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The Battles Bank: When Honesty Was Collateral and Chickens Paid the Interest

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Battles Bank: When Honesty Was Collateral and Chickens Paid the Interest On the day the pri­vately owned R. S. Battles Bank in Girard, Erie County, closed, it had been in operation for eighty-seven years. For nearly a century its owners had steadfastly offered services to their depositors despite panics, recessions, depressions, robberies, even a presidential proclamation. Oddly enough, the doors of the vine covered brick building were ultimately closed in 1946 by...
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The Depression Strikes Indiana County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Depression Strikes Indiana County The Great Depression of 1929-32 without question was one of the watershed periods in American history. Joseph Alex Morris once wrote that “people later would speak of ‘before 1929’ or ‘after 1929’ as Noah’s children may have spoken of the days before and after ‘The Flood.'” The personal deprivation and social upheaval of those times sent shock...
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America’s Dream Highway

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on America’s Dream Highway Almost no one could have foreseen, fifty years ago, that an experiment in trans­portation engineering mean­dering across the rugged southern Alleghenies could profoundly affect the way tens of millions of Americans tra­vel. But from the very day it opened on October 1, 1940, the Pennsylvania Turnpike did just that – despite the fact that its first section ran from nowhere to nowhere. The...
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A Voice in the Wilderness

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Voice in the Wilderness In his book Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War, journalist-historian Richard J. Walton singled out one letter to exemplify the many messages received by Wallace in March 1947 after his speech criticizing the declaration of the “Truman Doctrine.” The letter was written by Josiah William Gitt, publisher of The Gazette and Daily in York, which would, the following year,...
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Ninety-Five Years of the Pennsylvania Society: A “Who’s Who” of Business and Politics

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ninety-Five Years of the Pennsylvania Society: A “Who’s Who” of Business and Politics From industrialist Andrew Carnegie to television personality Mister Rogers, The Pennsylvania Society has both honored and drawn its energy from prominent personages of the Commonwealth’s civic, business, academic, entertain­ment, and government circles for nearly a century. Best known for its legendary annual December awards dinner that lasts for but a few hours each year, the organization...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Forging A New Deal: Johnstown and the Great Depression, 1929-1941 by Curtis Miner Johnstown Area Heritage Association, 1993 (81 pages, paper, $7.95) Published to accompany a major museum installation by the same title (see “Currents,” spring 1994), Forging A New Deal: Johnstown and the Great Depression, 1929-1941, is a richly written and copiously illustrated exhibition catalogue...
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