Battlefield Pennsylvania by Brady J. Crytzer

Posted by on Mar 6, 2020 in | Comments Off on Battlefield Pennsylvania by Brady J. Crytzer Battlefield Pennsylvania A Guide to the Keystone State’s Most Sacred Ground by Brady J. Crytzer Westholme Publishing, 288 pp., cloth $28.00 Ironically, the soil of Pennsylvania, founded by pacifist and Quaker William Penn, was soaked with the blood of its inhabitants. Brady J. Crytzer’s Battlefield Pennsylvania documents the many battles waged in this state. Some near present-day...
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Frontier Rebels by Patrick Spero

Posted by on Mar 6, 2020 in | Comments Off on Frontier Rebels by Patrick Spero Frontier Rebels The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 by Patrick Spero W. W. Norton & Co., 268 pp., cloth $27.95 Frontier Rebels is a brief, engaging and elegantly written account of violence on the Pennsylvania frontier in the decade leading up to the American Revolution. Several recent historians have demonstrated that the Revolution had a strong western as well as...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Dec 17, 2019 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Welcome to the first issue of the 45th volume of Pennsylvania Heritage. Since the publication of the premiere edition of December 1974, more than 750 features on Pennsylvania history, culture and natural history by leading authors in their fields, as well as hundreds of columns and news items, have been printed in our quarterly magazine. In this anniversary edition we continue our tradition of...
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From the Executive Director

Posted by on Nov 4, 2019 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director As the state’s history agency, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission holds historic objects and documents in trust for the people of Pennsylvania. The breadth of these collections is staggering. Within the Pennsylvania State Archives, we preserve some of the oldest documents in the state, such as William Penn’s 1681 Charter, the 1682 Great Law of Pennsylvania, and 33 deeds starting...
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“Restless Progress in America”: Drawing the Mason-Dixon Line

Posted by on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments “When I found I had crossed that line,” recalled Harriet Tubman, “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything . . . I felt like I was in Heaven.” Such was the power of the Mason-Dixon Line. Within 75 years of its completion to resolve an eight-decade-long dispute between two colonial proprietors, a boundary line drawn in the 1760s by two English...
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Representing Pennsylvania’s “Precious Heritage”: Art of the State 50

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Representing Pennsylvania’s “Precious Heritage”: Art of the State 50 Art of the State is an annual juried exhibition that has been showcasing the work of Pennsylvania’s artists at The State Museum of Pennsylvania since 1968. The body of art that has been exhibited reflects half a century of creative endeavor in the Keystone State. Through the years, exhibitors have shared their ideas and engaged viewers in the categories of painting, photography, craft,...
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The Oshnock Archaeology Collection

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on The Oshnock Archaeology Collection Archaeologists at The State Museum of Pennsylvania plan to spend this summer entering thousands of Native American artifacts collected from western Pennsylvania into a database that will organize the objects according to specific sites and locations. It’s a lot of work, but not nearly as much as curators typically tackle when inventorying similar collections, thanks to the brothers...
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War in the Peaceable Kingdom by Brady J. Crytzer

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on War in the Peaceable Kingdom by Brady J. Crytzer War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756 by Brady J. Crytzer Westholme Publishing, 256 pp., cloth $28 The title of this book describes its content and contribution better than does the subtitle. The Delaware town of Kittanning on the Allegheny River was an important place – the residence of the war chiefs Shingas and Tewea (Captain Jacobs) and the source of multiple...
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From the Executive Director

Posted by on Mar 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director As a trained historian who has devoted his life to the preservation and teaching of American history, I am embarrassed to admit how little I knew about my own family’s history—only a few bits and pieces passed down from my parents. I was told that our family settled in the old Northwest Territory before Ohio became a state in 1803 and that some of my ancestors came from Pennsylvania. I...
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Digging Deep: 50 Years of Preservation Archaeology in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Sep 9, 2016 in | Comments Off on Digging Deep: 50 Years of Preservation Archaeology in Pennsylvania On a lovely morning in early autumn, I arrive at an old farm along the Susquehanna River to find Dr. Frank Vento in his natural element. That is to say, he is squatting down at the bottom of a backhoe trench some 8 feet deep, carefully examining the many layers of flood-deposited sediment left behind by the great river. Frank, recently retired from the faculty at Clarion University, is a...
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