Three Generations on the Underground Railroad: The Gibbons Family of Lancaster County

Posted by on Apr 16, 2020 in | Comments Off on Three Generations on the Underground Railroad: The Gibbons Family of Lancaster County Shortly after sunset, a fugitive slave from Maryland tapped on a window of a modest farmhouse near Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. Daniel and Hannah Gibbons walked swiftly to the door. The Quaker couple escorted the young man to the barn to sleep and in the morning summoned him back to the house. If the fugitive’s owner was in close pursuit, they would send him to another farm. If there seemed to be...
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Pennsylvania Stories – Well Told by William Ecenbarger

Posted by on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments Pennsylvania Stories – Well Told by William Ecenbarger Temple University Press, 244 pp., cloth $25 Ecenbarger has earned well-deserved praise and admiration for his work as a newspaper staff writer and freelance writer over the course of a Pennsylvania-based career of nearly 50 years. His previous book, Kids for Cash (New Press, 2012), detailed the corrupt juvenile justice system in northeastern...
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Ernest: Life in a Mining Town

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ernest: Life in a Mining Town In 1904, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company began deep mining in Ernest, Pennsylvania. In 1965, the industry there came to an end. Between these two dates, people lived out their lives in this small community northwest of Indiana, where for over sixty years every facet of existence revolved around the digging of coal from the hillsides surrounding the town. But what was life like in a...
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Soft Coal’s Soft-Spoken Diplomat

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Soft Coal’s Soft-Spoken Diplomat Wearing a straw boater, he rode in the passenger seat of the Cadillac, and forlornly surveyed the pick­eting miners who blocked the lane leading into the village of St. Benedict in Cambria County. He sig­naled his manservant – serving now as bodyguard and chauffeur as well – to proceed through the human blockade. Angry strikers taunted them, shouting obscenities, as they drove up the...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives by Joe William Trotter Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, editors The Penn State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1997 (519 pages; cloth, $45.00, paper, $19.95) Dedicated to “the African American people of Pennsylvania” and intended to honor “the historians who have diligently...
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The Aaronsburg Story

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Aaronsburg Story Thanks to Penn State coach Joe Paterno and his loyal fans, it’s not uncommon to find tens of thousands of motorists jamming Centre County roads on autumn weekends. Fifty years ago this fall – Sunday, October 23, 1949, to be precise – thirty thousand people from throughout the United States converged not in State College to enjoy a football game but in the considerably smaller...
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Breaking Down Barriers

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Breaking Down Barriers In the summer of 1957, William and Daisy Myers and their three children moved from their house near Philadelphia to the post-World War II development of Levittown, some twenty miles northeast of the city. Like millions of American families in the 1950s, they were seeking the highly touted amenities of suburban living (see “Picture Window Par­adise: Welcome to Levittown!” by Curtis...
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KKK Records

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on KKK Records Most records acquired by the Pennsylvania State Archives are obtained through regularly scheduled transfers of files no longer needed by an agency to conduct government business. When appraising records to determine if they possesses sufficient permanent or historical value to justify their transfer to the State Archives, archivists are looking for those that best document important agency...
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Violence and Vigilantes: The KKK in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Violence and Vigilantes: The KKK in Pennsylvania It was a warm, muggy day in early August 1921 in Philadelphia when F. W. Atkins of Jacksonville, Florida, and W. J. Bellamy of Cincinnati, Ohio, rented an office in the Bellevue Court Building to quietly recruit members for “a great and patriotic crusade to save the nation.” Their goal was to organize a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Posing as a prospective KKK initiate, a...
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Philadelphia’s Sainted Katharine Drexel: “Mother and Servant of the Indian and Negro Races”

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Philadelphia’s Sainted Katharine Drexel: “Mother and Servant of the Indian and Negro Races” On Thursday morning, January 27, 1887, the Drexel sisters of Philadelphia attended a private mass conducted by Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) in Rome’s fabled Vatican. As members of one of the wealthiest and most devout Catholic families in the United States, the three young women — Elizabeth, age 31, Katharine, age 28, and Louise, age 23 — were also given a rare audience with the pontiff. The...
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