The Little Cub That Roared

The Piper Cub is a very small airplane, especially by today’s standards. When parked on an airport tarmac, a person of average height standing beside it can easily see over its wing, which forms the roof of the cockpit. It accommodates a pilot and one passenger. No space is wasted. The forward, or pilot’s seat, is narrow and cramped. The passenger seat directly behind the...
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Letters to the Editor

From Here to Hollywood I am so glad that you featured an article about Jimmy Stewart before he died [see “Keystone Born, Hollywood Bred: ‘Movie Buff’ David Mallery Reviews the Acting Careers of James Stewart and Grace Kelly” by William C. Kashatus in the Winter 1997 edition]. In his inter­view, Mr. Mallery touched on so many things that later appeared in the actor’s...
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Shorts

“A Portrait of an American City: 200 Years of New Castle History,” chronicling the founding and settlement of the first community laid out in present-day Lawrence County, is on exhibit at the Lawrence County Historical Society through May 1999. Laid out by John Carlysle Stewart in 1798, New Castle was incorporated as a borough in 1825 and recognized as a city in 1869. “A...
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Current and Coming

Steel Poetry Inspired by the various aspects of the steel industry in Bethlehem, Mildred T. Johnstone (1900-1988) created unusual canvas embroideries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As the wife of Bethlehem Steel Corporation executive William H. Johnstone, she had the singular honor of being the first woman to tour the compa­ny’s steel mills. Although the mills have grown silent,...
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All in the Family: The Riches in Woolrich

John Rich II received a “warm” welcome when he visited winter logging camps in the dense forests of northern Pennsylvania in the early nineteenth century. Tough, hardened lumberjacks valued the one bit of comfort and protection from frostbite that Rich proffered from the back of his mule cart: a simple pair of woolen socks. From those humble beginnings, Rich engaged in a trade that...
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Bucktail Monument, Driftwood, PA.

This sounds as if the Bucktails were coming don’t it?” asked an unknown writer to Miss Bessie McPhee of Pittsburgh in a postcard mailed on April 6, 1908, at Driftwood, the second — and last — incorporated borough in Cameron County. Today a community of one hundred residents, Driftwood was incorporated as a borough in 1872; the county seat, Emporium, was incorporated in 1864. The postcard bears a...
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Exhibit: Pennsylvania’s Civil War

Recently opened by the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh is a major exhibit providing visitors with an in-depth look at Pennsylvania’s significant contributions to the Union during the American Civil War. In addition to highlighting these efforts and important conflicts such as the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania’s Civil War showcases Pittsburgh’s role as the “Arsenal of the...
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The Bucktails

Three days after the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on April 15, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued an emergency call for troops to help defend the nation’s capital. Thomas Leiper Kane (1822–1883), scion of a prominent Philadelphia family, helped raise a mounted rifle regiment in Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier counties of Cameron, Elk, McKean, and...
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Lock Haven Hospital, Lock Haven, Pa.

This burned since you were here [and] suppose you read of it,” wrote a Mrs. A. McClintock to Mrs. E. H. MacKee, of Buffalo, New York, on a postcard depicting the Lock Haven Hospital in Lock Haven, Clinton County. The postcard was postmarked September 2, 1908, at Lock Haven. Built in 1903 at a cost of $42,000, the Lock Haven Hospital was destroyed by fire five years later, on July 28, 1908....
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Lost and Found

Lost Camp meetings, evangelistic Christian gatherings conducted under large tents and pavilions, originated in the United States in the early nineteenth century. These outdoor revivals lasted several days during summer months. One of the Commonwealth’s earliest rural revivals was conducted by the Methodist Episcopal Church in Clinton County. The grounds were laid out in 1869 at Pine (or Pine...
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