Welcome Aboard the Party Train: The Pennsylvania–Texas Power Nexus

Posted by on Jan 14, 2026 in | Comments Off on Welcome Aboard the Party Train: The Pennsylvania–Texas Power Nexus As U.S. House Speaker and Vice President John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner (1868–1967) of Texas could attest, no congressional outing in the 1930s was complete without Pittsburgh’s Joe Guffey (1870–1959). In 1901, Guffey’s uncle, James, with money borrowed from the Mellon family, brought in Spindletop on the Gulf Coast. James Guffey midwifed the Texas petroleum industry — and provided the Mellons...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jan 14, 2026 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter With this edition of Pennsylvania Heritage, we begin our commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the year of American independence. In the coming months, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission and its Trails of History sites will be offering an array of related programs, exhibitions and events that you’ll hear about in these pages. This winter, The State Museum of Pennsylvania...
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The Making of a Leader: George C. Marshall

Posted by on Mar 17, 2023 in | Comments Off on The Making of a Leader: George C. Marshall During the second weekend of September 1939, Gen. George C. Marshall, the newly elevated chief of staff of the U.S. Army, made an official “homecoming” visit to his place of birth, Uniontown, Pennsylvania. As a result, two strands of history stood adjacent on the front page of the local newspaper, the Uniontown Daily News Standard. One headline announced the Nazi invasion of Poland with the...
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George Marshall by David L. Roll

Posted by on Dec 3, 2020 in | Comments Off on George Marshall by David L. Roll George Marshall Defender of the Republic by David L. Roll Dutton Caliber, 704 pp., hardcover $34 George C. Marshall grew up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, but his chosen path would take him far, both physically and conceptually. His notable service in the military spanned from Gen. John J. Pershing’s aide-de-camp in World War I to Army chief of staff during World War II. After the war, he served as...
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A Grande Dame Named William Penn

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Grande Dame Named William Penn A hotel is more than a place where people seek shelter, conduct business, entertain, work, play, make friends, and, perhaps, fall in love. It is so much more. It is a stage on which both small and large dramas of daily life are played out – where individuals celebrate the important occa­sions of their lives or where they may seek solitude. While all hotels are interest­ing places, a grand...
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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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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Famous Faces John W. Mosley (1907-1969), characterized by an admirer as “our most magnificent and beloved photographer,” was Philadelphia’s leading black photographer, whose images appeared in nearly every African American newspaper on the East Coast (see “His Eye Was On The Positive” by Richard D. Beards in the winter 1990 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage)....
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Saved for the People of Pennsylvania: Quilts from The State Museum of Pennsylvania by Lucinda Reddington Cawley, Lorraine DeAngelis Ezbiansky, and Denise Rocheleau Nordberg Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1997 ($14.95, paper, 67 pages) Since its founding in 1905, The State Museum of Pennsylvania has collected nearly two million artifacts and objects which docu­ment and interpret...
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Living for Reform

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Living for Reform For too long, Joseph A. Yablonski (1910-1969) – known to most simply as Jock – had seen things go wrong in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), once a respected labor union. He had served in its hierarchy but with an increasingly troubled conscience. What mattered to him most was that things had to change and he had to lead the charge to change them. He ardently believed that...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (297 pages, cloth, $30.00) In less than three-quarters of a century, the Connellsville coke industry, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, mushroomed from slight beginnings into a key supplier essential to the iron and steel industries. It then fell victim...
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