Executive Director’s Message

Access. It’s a word mentioned more often than not in conversations about the goals and purposes of public history. It’s a word that poses significant and challenging questions. How can we expand our programs and services to reach wider audiences? How can we make history more meaningful and engaging for scholars, visitors, and readers? How can we satisfy, efficiently and effec­tively,...
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Shorts

The first exhibition in Philadelphia devoted to identifying and honoring African American women tap dancers, “Plenty of Good Women Dancers: African American Women Hoofers from Philadelphia,” features glamorous photographs and dancers’ vivid recollec­tions portraying the golden age of swing and rhythm tap of the 1930s and 1940s. “Plenty of Good Women Dancers”...
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Letters to the Editor

Quite a Rau I was intrigued by John C. Van Horne’s article on William Herman Rau in the Fall 1996 issue of Pennsylvania Heritage [see “‘The Greatest Highway to the West’: Photographer William H. Rau Documents the Pennsylvania Railroad”]. I edit a similar magazine in Alabama, and we have exchanged copies with your magazine for years. I always enjoy seeing what our...
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Shorts

“A Patchwork of Pennsylvania” at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Saturday, June 7 [1997], will explore the state’s quilt heritage. Harrisburg quilt makers will explain the materials and demonstrate the techniques of the craft. Visitors may meet and lunch with Lucinda Cawley, Lorraine Ezbiansky, and Denise Nordberg, authors of the book, Saved for the People of Pennsyl­vania:...
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Currents

Let’s Motor! Although Detroit has earned the title of “Motor City,” Pittsburgh was home to twenty automobile makers at the turn of the century, manufacturing such notable vehicles as the Penn 30 Touring Car, the Standard Model E Touring Car, the Keystone Six-Sixty, the Brush Model D Runabout, and the Artzberger Steam Surrey. Several of these automobiles attracted widespread...
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Pennsylvania State Archives

A popular destination for researchers, historians, and genealogists from throughout the world, the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg safeguards millions of government records, dating to the 1681 Charter granted to William Penn by King Charles II. Holdings also include manuscripts, photographs, maps and drawings, court dockets, papers of prominent Pennsylvanians and their families,...
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Bookshelf

Guide to Genealogical Sources at the Pennsylvania State Archives by Robert M. Dructor Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1998 (374 pages, paper, $12.95) The Pennsylvania State Archives acquires, preserves, and makes available for study the valuable public records of the Commonwealth, with particular attention given to the official records of state government. In fulfilling its...
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Bookshelf

The King of the Movies: Film Pioneer Siegmund Lubin by Joseph P. Eckhardt Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. (286 pages, cloth, $55.00) That immigrant Jews exerted a profound impact on the growth of American cinema is well known and has been the subject of considerable scholarship. However, the country’s first Jewish movie mogul, Siegmund “Pop” Lubin (1851-1923) of...
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Shorts

An intensive eight-day study tour examining the England of Pennsylvania founder William Penn (1644-1718) will be conducted under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Heritage Society in Octo­ber 2000. Participants, led by historian Larry E. Tise, will visit the Church of Ail Hallows Barking, where Penn was bap­tized and where, in 1999, Governor Tom Ridge and PHMC Chairman Janet S. Klein presented a...
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Cook Forest

I was about four years old when the first cabins were rented out at Cook Forest, only one to a family, because there were only four or five. My parents decided to rent one of the cabins and a tent for a week for our family of six. My memories of this cabin are that it was very small and dark and that I was afraid to go to sleep at night, although I knew my parents were right outside the cabin....
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