Year in Review 2008: The New Deal in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Year in Review 2008: The New Deal in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Heritage, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the Pennsylvania Heritage Society celebrate the 75th anniversary of the New Deal.   Winter An Activist Government in Harrisburg: Governor George H. Earle III and Pennsylvania’s “Little New Deal” Forty Fort Meeting House: The Architecture of a Union From the Ashes at Boyertown—Safety Legislation for All Hands on...
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Extreme Makeover: History Edition

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Extreme Makeover: History Edition Extreme might be a hyperbole but the current restoration of the interior of the Rapp House at Old Economy Village in Ambridge, Beaver County, is a significant undertaking nevertheless. The project will provide a substantive update to the initial restoration work in the 1960s. Old Economy Village presents the remarkable story of the Harmony Society, a Christian communal group with roots in what...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, as Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft edited by Edward Steers Jr. and Harold Holzer published by the Louisiana State University Press, 2009; 179 pages, cloth, $24.95 Pennsylvanian John Frederick Hartranft (1830–1889) was a decorated Union general — he received the Medal of Honor for his actions during...
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PHMC Highlights

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on PHMC Highlights In May, visitors witnessed a reenactment of World War II field life in the 1944–1945 European theater of operations as American, Allied, and German soldiers set up a bivouac on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg, Centre County. Reenactors who portrayed Allied small squad tactical operations against Nazi opposition included Tom Gray, Caitlin Williamson, and Doug Hartman;...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Building Harrisburg: The Architects and Builders, 1719–1941 by Ken Frew published by the Historical Society of Dauphin County and the Historic Harrisburg Association, 2009; 396 pages, cloth, $75.00 Ken Frew spent thirty years researching and writing Building Harrisburg: The Architects and Builders, 1719–1941, and the investment of time and effort, as well as considerable talent, has resulted in...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Soldiers to Governors: Pennsylvania’s Civil War Veterans Who Became State Leaders by Richard C. Saylor published by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2010; 196 pages, cloth, $59.95 The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) safeguards a literal treasure trove of artifacts and documents associated with the American Civil War and six veterans of the war who later...
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This Is a Beautiful, Bountiful Earth: Joseph Trimble Rothrock and the Preservation of Penn’s Woods

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on This Is a Beautiful, Bountiful Earth: Joseph Trimble Rothrock and the Preservation of Penn’s Woods The lush, verdant woodlands characteristic of Pennsylvania’s landscape are almost entirely second-growth forests, in existence roughly for less than a century. Had it not been for the groundbreaking work of many conservationists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Keystone State’s present terrain would be dramatically different. One of the most important of those...
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Illuminated Manuscript at Ephrata Cloister

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Illuminated Manuscript at Ephrata Cloister Among the many treasures surviving from Ephrata Cloister, founded by Conrad Beissel (1681–1768) in 1732, are Germanic-style buildings, impressive books, and beautifully illuminated manuscripts, including one which combines two significant arts practiced in the eighteenth-century religious settlement in Lancaster County: music and the Pennsylvania German art of fraktur. Beissel developed a system...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Harmony in Wood: Furniture of the Harmony Society by Philip D. Zimmerman published by the Friends of Old Economy Village, 2010; 214 pages, cloth, $60.00 Creators of an immensely successful nineteenth-century utopian society, the Harmonists, led by George Rapp (1757–1847), emigrated from Germany and first settled Harmony in Butler County in 1804, moved west to Indiana ten years later where they...
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State Street, Harrisburg

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on State Street, Harrisburg One hundred years ago, on May 20, 1911, a self- proclaimed “business man in the Capitol City,” identified only as C. O. S., wrote to Lial Phillips of Leechburg, Armstrong County, on a postcard bearing an image of Harrisburg’s State Street, looking west from the State Capitol toward the Susquehanna River. Although the sender’s remarks are brief and desultory, the postcard’s image is not. It...
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