Indian Hannah

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Indian Hannah Hannah Freeman is a name rarely found in history books, although her story and legend live on in southern Chester County. Known more popularly as “Indian Hannah,” Freeman is remembered in local lore as the last Lenape living in Chester County at the time of her death in 1802. She was born about 1730 on the Webb farm in Kennett Township not far from the Delaware border. Today the farm is part of...
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Chester County Welcomes Thee

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Chester County Welcomes Thee The history of Chester County constitutes a significant part of the history of Pennsylvania, both province and commonwealth, and of the history of the United States of America. At the beginning of our nation’s Bicentennial and on the threshold of our state’s and our county’s tricentennial celebrations, Chester County looks proudly upon its past accomplishments and with...
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Gardens Change with Time

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Gardens Change with Time William Penn’s wish that Philadelphia, the capital of his colony, should be a “Greene Country Towne” never was to come to fruition. The town’s settlers really preferred a re-creation of London in miniature. However, gardens and gardening have been an important aspect of the Pennsyl­vania heritage. Gardening has been practiced as a fine art and as a necessity based upon...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts The distinctively decorated furniture of Soap Hollow in Somerset County (see “Makers’ Marks and a Master’s Touch” by Edna V. Brendlinger and Robert B. Myers in the winter 1986 edition) is on view at the Southern Alleghenies Mu­seum of Art, Loretto, from Saturday, March 27, through Monday, May 31, 1993. Soap Hollow furniture, made during the second half of the nine­teenth...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts The seventeenth annual Conference on Black History will be conducted by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission on Friday and Saturday, May 13-14, 1994, in Erie. The theme of this year’s event is “African Americans at Work in Pennsyl­vania.” For additional information, write: 1994 Conference on Black History, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, P. O. Box...
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Isabel Darlington, Esq., Belle of the Bar

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Isabel Darlington, Esq., Belle of the Bar On a crisp day in late December 1897, the members of the Chester County Bar Association gathered on the front steps of the courthouse in West Chester for their annual group portrait. Three dozen lawyers posed solemnly before the camera, each mustachioed face a mirror image of the next. For the first time in its one hundred and fifty year history, there was something notice­ably different about...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts The Johnstown Area Heritage Association will host “Johnstown FolkFest ’95” from Friday through Sunday, September 1-3 [1995], in the community’s historic district of Cambria City. The Labor Day weekend event will fea­ture ethnic entertainment, tours of historic buildings, and cultural crafts. For more information, write: Johnstown Area Heritage Association, P. O. Box 1889,...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Thomas Eakins edited by John Wilmerding Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994 (212 pages, cloth, $49.95) “Frank,” “brutal,” “raw,” “uncompro­mising,” “diabolically realistic,” and “manly” were terms once used to describe the work of Philadelphian Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), one of the greatest American painters of the...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts “Making History,” a major exhibit illustrating how evidence from the past is discovered in documents, books, artifacts, objects, and photographs at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, will remain on view through Saturday, May 27 [1995]. The exhibit will also examine the ways in which selections drawn from the society’s extensive holdings have been used to...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Beaux’s Art Pennsylvania native Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) was one of the most important and successful portrait painters of her time (see “Artistic Ambitions: Cecilia Beaux in Philadelphia” by Tara Leigh Tappert in the winter 1996 edition). Among the significant commissions she completed in the early twentieth century was a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt’s...
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