Little Italy in the Great War by Richard N. Juliani

Posted by on Oct 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on Little Italy in the Great War by Richard N. Juliani Little Italy in the Great War Philadelphia’s Italians on the Battlefield and Home Front by Richard N. Juliani Temple University Press, 302 pp., paper $37.95 With this work Richard N. Juliani, a professor emeritus of sociology at Villanova University, provides an admirably researched microhistory that explores how Philadelphia’s Italian Americans responded to the demands of World War I, the...
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Soldiers of Production: Berwick’s Honey Tanks Contribute to the Allied Victory in World War II

Posted by on Apr 16, 2020 in | Comments Off on Soldiers of Production: Berwick’s Honey Tanks Contribute to the Allied Victory in World War II   One hundred years before Adolf Hitler’s troops invaded Poland, Mordecai William Jackson and George Mack established a foundry in Berwick, in Pennsylvania’s Columbia County, to manufacture farm implements. From these humble beginnings grew a larger company that by the turn of the century joined 12 railroad equipment-manufacturing firms (in six other states) and became the American Car...
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Trailheads

Posted by on Feb 25, 2020 in | Comments Off on Trailheads History never truly sleeps on the Pennsylvania Trails of History, but winter is generally a slower season with reduced schedules and fewer programs and events. Charter Day, the celebration of Pennsylvania’s founding (the second Sunday in March), is the traditional start to our spring season. As the weather warms, activity increases at the sites and museums. The landscape loses its dull winter...
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Paesano: The Struggle to Survive in Ambridge

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Paesano: The Struggle to Survive in Ambridge For nearly three-quarters of a cen­tury, Lucy Derochis, my grandmother, has struggled successfully to preserve and convey her Italian heritage while living in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Her cultivation of familial closeness was rewarded when family members gath­ered to celebrate her eighty-ninth birthday on March 13, 1980. The dur­ability of the tight and close structure of an Italian-American...
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Whiskey Run: Where Coal Dust Mixed with Murder

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Whiskey Run: Where Coal Dust Mixed with Murder In an overgrown valley about 12 miles west of Indiana and one mile from West Lebanon lies the site of a mysterious R&P (Rochester and Pittsburgh) coal town known as Whiskey Run. For over fifty years, the community of Whiskey Run has been synonymous with violence, secrecy and unsolved murder. Even the source of the town’s name is uncertain, with several versions vying for authenticity....
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Life in an Industrial Boom Town: Monessen, 1898-1923

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Life in an Industrial Boom Town: Monessen, 1898-1923 In reading about our nation’s past, we often forget how different life was for our ancestors. We read about historical figures and movements, but rarely – except in excellent historical novels – do we gain a glimpse into the living environment. We also tend to for­get that there are many past environ­ments, each producing its own style and pace of living. During the late...
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Cambria County: Coming Full Circle

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Cambria County: Coming Full Circle Located in the highlands of west­-central Pennsylvania and amidst forbidding mountains – the Allegheny escarpment and the Laurel Ridge standing sentinel on its eastern and western borders­ – the territory that would become Cambria County was not easily accessible to early Pennsylvanians. Migrants bound westward during the second half of the eighteenth century avoided its...
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Northampton County: From Frontier Farms to Urban Industries – and Beyond

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Northampton County: From Frontier Farms to Urban Industries – and Beyond Sweeping across southcentral Pennsyl­vania lies the Great Valley and nestled in its northeastern corner is mod­ern Northampton County. Bordered on the east by the Delaware River, on the south by South Mountain and the piedmont, and on the west by the valley of the Lehigh River, the three hundred and seventy-two square mile re­gion is one of gently rolling hills and wooded valleys, with...
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Ethnic History: Of the Children, by the Children, for the Children

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ethnic History: Of the Children, by the Children, for the Children Interest in the study of history is drifting in conflicting directions. The teaching of Pennsylvania history in schools is steadily declining and enrollment in history classes at all levels including college has slipped. The growing idolization of exact sciences such as physics and chemistry and quantif­ication has discredited the sometimes subjective perceptions of historical studies. On the...
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Women in Pennsylvania … The First Two Hundred Years

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Women in Pennsylvania … The First Two Hundred Years In the past two hundred years thousands of women have contributed significantly to the social, economic, political and cultural richness of Pennsylvania. An encyclopedia could barely sketch their contributions. Since this article cannot possibly present a complete picture of women’s history in our state, it will survey the changes in women’s roles with brief accounts of a few famous...
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