Lenape Country by Jean R. Soderlund

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Lenape Country by Jean R. Soderlund Lenape Country Delaware Valley Society before William Penn by Jean R. Soderlund University of Pennsylvania Press, 272 pp., $39.95 In Lenape Country, Jean R. Soderlund, professor of history at Lehigh University and editor of William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania, 1983), masterfully recounts the story of the strong, proud and, at times, fierce people who once...
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Forest County: What Better Name?

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Forest County: What Better Name? Never a promised land, flowing with milk and honey, Northwestern Pennsylvania – a part of which later became Forest County­ – seemed to repel early settle­ment. Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, whose diary ac­count reveals the first intimate knowledge of the terrain and the Indian inhabitants, did not extol the area nor its original residents locals to any high degree. Like all...
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A Walk of Injustice

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Walk of Injustice Just before sunrise on Monday, September 19, 1737, a strange gathering of Indians, white settlers and professional woodsmen assembled beneath a mam­moth chestnut tree along the Durham Road in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The Indians were Minsi and Shaw­nee of the Delaware Nation, along with two of their chiefs, Tisheekunk and Nutimus; the white settlers were men anx­ious for Pennsylvania to...
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Centre County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Centre County Centre County, as its name implies, geographically is Pennsylvania’s central county. The first known residents to inhabit its lands were the Munsee and Shawnee Indians from the Delaware River. Before 1725 these Indians began to move westward, first to the Susquehanna, later to the Ohio. The Iroquois, who claimed the Susquehanna country, assigned one of their chiefs – a man best known...
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Indian Queen of the Wyoming Valley

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Indian Queen of the Wyoming Valley A vision hangs over the Wyoming Valley of Northeastern Pennsylvania and over the long course of the Susquehanna River beyond the New York border. This vision is that of a gray-haired figure with a face of light tan, lined from age and the cares of a hard life. The eyes are wide and darkly cruel, and the mouth is agape in a terrifying scream. The slim but commanding body, slightly bent, is...
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Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least The history of the Key­stone State’s sixty­-seven counties is often quite similar to family histories. Its portrait is a rich composite of Native American legend and lore, early trans­portation, marine and mari­time heritage, industry and industrialists, pioneers, capitalists and the working classes, religious communes, inventors and the Industrial Revolution …. And the county, whose...
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