Montour County: The Little County that Persevered

Posted by Ethel Hinkel on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Montour County: The Little County that Persevered Despite its size, Mon­tour County – with an area measuring one hundred and thirty square miles, making it the smallest county in the Commonwealth – claims an undeniably large role in the cultural, political and indus­trial development of Pennsyl­vania. Organized less than a century and a half ago, the county lays hold to a number of distinctions which hallmark its place in...
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Crawford County: Welcoming the 21st Century

Posted by Anne Stewart on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Crawford County: Welcoming the 21st Century We passed over some good land since we eft Venango, and through several extensive and very rich meadows, one of which, I believe, was nearly four miles in length, and consid­erably wide in some places. Twenty-one year old George Washington, who would in time become a major landholder and land specula­tor, described Crawford County in 1753 as he carried a dispatch demanding the com­mander of the...
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Centre County

Posted by Vivian Hench on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Centre County Centre County, as its name implies, geographically is Pennsylvania’s central county. The first known residents to inhabit its lands were the Munsee and Shawnee Indians from the Delaware River. Before 1725 these Indians began to move westward, first to the Susquehanna, later to the Ohio. The Iroquois, who claimed the Susquehanna country, assigned one of their chiefs – a man best known...
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Courageous Cumberland County

Posted by Louis Waddell on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Courageous Cumberland County Anxious to persuade a Scottish cleric, the Rev. Charles Nisbet, to become the first president of Dickinson Col­lege, its founding trustee Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote the Presbyterian worthy in 1784, describing central Cumberland County. The town of Carlisle lies 120 miles to the westward of Philadel­phia and about 18 miles from the river Susquehannah. It consists of about 300 houses, most of which...
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Poor John Fitch, The Inventor Few Remember

Posted by Ian De Silva on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Poor John Fitch, The Inventor Few Remember Philadelphia, August 22, 1787. With the promise of some relief from their intense debate and the heavy summer air, delegates to the Constitutional Convention strolled a few blocks from the State House (now Indepen­dence Hall) to the banks of the Delaware River. Along the river puffed an oddity, a curiosity that the statesmen had never before seen: a steam-operated boat­ – the first of its...
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The Valley That Changed the World: Visiting the Drake Well Museum

Posted by Jane Ockershausen on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Valley That Changed the World: Visiting the Drake Well Museum “They’ve struck oil!” They were only three words, but they thundered triumphantly throughout the valley along northwestern Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek during the days following the long-anticipated breakthrough – one that would change the world forever – on an otherwise quiet Saturday in August 1859. To many it was a miracle, one on which great fortunes would be...
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A Farewell to Arms: The Passing of the Philadelphia Navy Yard

Posted by Don Wambold on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Farewell to Arms: The Passing of the Philadelphia Navy Yard Not only is the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, established in 1794, the oldest naval shipyard in the country’s history, but it is distinguished as the oldest continually operated public – that is, government – shipyard in the United States. The history of this sprawling complex is an integral part of both state and local heri­tage, as well as of the founding of the United States...
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Firm Foundations in Philadelphia: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Ties to Pennsylvania

Posted by Frank Muhly on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Firm Foundations in Philadelphia: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Ties to Pennsylvania For a century and a half, from 1807 until the early 1960s, the celebrated expedition undertaken by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) between 1803 and 1806 was generally perceived to be strictly a western United States phenomenon. Historians and educators who discussed it in their writings or in their teaching usually described the twenty-eight month ordeal as beginning...
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On the Cutting Edge

Posted by Joseph Pirro on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on On the Cutting Edge When the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society was founded on December 21, 1849 – and for the following seventy years – nearly all figure skating around Philadelphia took place outdoors, most often on the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. An ice skating fad swept America and Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life –...
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