Against All Odds: Chevalier Jackson, Physician and Painter

Posted by Louis Waddell on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Against All Odds: Chevalier Jackson, Physician and Painter After he had observed his seventieth birth­day, Dr. Chevalier Jackson described downtown Pittsburgh of 1865, his birthplace, as dark, gloomy, and dirty. His recollec­tions of 1888, the year he es­tablished a medical practice in an old tailor shop on Sixth Avenue, were particularly vivid. All winter long we lived as in a dark, cold, damp cellar. The sun was visible, on an average, four days in a...
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A Pennsylvania Yankee in King George’s Court

Posted by David Glixon on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Pennsylvania Yankee in King George’s Court They were an odd pair. One was a commoner, a native Pennsylva­nian and son of an innkeeper on a busy road between Chester and Philadel­phia; the other, a king who could trace his royal ancestry through several centuries. In spite of their disparate back­grounds and the tumultuous period during which their countries were pitted against each other, the American colon­ist and the monarch of Great...
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John O’Hara: The Child Becomes the Man

Posted by Richard Robbins on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on John O’Hara: The Child Becomes the Man He had dreams,as do all boys. At the age of twelve, he was “looking forward to the day when, like Clint Shaefer, he would own his own Mercer; when, like Al Cullum, he would be on his way to Yale; when, like Bill Ulmer, he would know the 16th Arrondissement better than the third ward.” They were Pottsville fellows, Shaefer, Cullum, and Ulmer – and so was the boy. He was John...
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Plagued! Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Plagued! Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 On August 5, 1793, Dr. Benjamin Rush was summoned to the waterfront residence of fellow physician Hugh Hodge, whose daughter had recently taken ill. For days Rush had been treating Philadelphians for a serious outbreak of influenza and had assumed that this was yet another case. But when he found the small girl on her deathbed, gasping for breath and vomiting black bile, Rush instinctively knew...
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The Fairmount Water Works: “One of the Very Prettiest Spots the Eye Can Look Upon”

Posted by William Owen on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Fairmount Water Works: “One of the Very Prettiest Spots the Eye Can Look Upon” Error and the human condition, being bound tightly together, generally keep a sullen kind of company. Yet as unpromising as that pair might seem, their offspring sometimes attain startling beauty. Certainly the grace and charm of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Water Works, on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, derive both from the human condition and the fitful attempts to improve it....
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Remember the Ladies: Women and the American Revolution

Posted by Chadwick Harp on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Remember the Ladies: Women and the American Revolution Today, American women are barred by law from most combat roles, but they have played a part in battle since the American Revolu­tion, a tradition that continued through the Civil War, the World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam Conflict, the invasion of Panama in 1989 and, most recently, the Persian Gulf War. During the Civil War, at least four hundred women – those actually caught and...
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“Dapper Dan” Flood, Pennsylvania’s Legendary Congressman

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Dapper Dan” Flood, Pennsylvania’s Legendary Congressman During the early morning hours of Friday, June 23, 1972, U. S. Representative Daniel J. Flood sat work­ing in his Washington apartment when news of the devastation in his congressional district in northeast­ern Pennsylvania reached him. Rains of tropical storm Agnes had caused the Susquehanna River to rise forty feet. Water was pouring over the dikes protecting the twenty-two communities...
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Currents

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents White Elephants Baseball historians generally consider Connie Mack (1862-1956) the paragon of managers. His knowledge of the game, professional disposition, and ability to acquire and, more importantly, manage players captured the attention of sports enthusiasts during a time when the national pastime was riddled with scandal, permeated with intemperance, and punctuated by rowdyism. Connie Mack...
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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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David McNeely Stauffer’s Little Known Legacy to Lancaster

Posted by C. Moore on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on David McNeely Stauffer’s Little Known Legacy to Lancaster “Nothing con­tributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.” A passage from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 clas­sic Frankenstein may be a most unlikely source, but these words characterize the equally unlikely life of Lancaster County native David McNeely Stauffer (1845-1913). Born in Richland...
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