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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Cottage, Williamson School

Inspired by the Quaker ideals of hard work, faith, and modest lifestyle, Isaiah Vansant Williamson (1803–1889), a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and philanthropist, founded the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades in Middletown Township, Delaware County, the year before he died. He established the school to provide financially disadvantaged young men with an opportunity to become...
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Saving Documents Today for Future Generations

For three years, from 2008 through part of 2011, the archival staff of the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg, administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), has been involved in an initiative to improve the management of the Commonwealth’s historical records maintained by its sixty-seven county governments. Known as the Itinerant Archivist Project, the program...
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