Armstrong County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Armstrong County Editor’s Note: With this article, this magazine begins a series to highlight historical events and persons within various counties. Focus will also be directed at the counties’ historical societies.   Kittanning, the seat of Armstrong County, is the oldest identified Indian town in Western Pennsylvania. While the state is planning celebrations to commemorate the Revolutionary...
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The ‘State’ of Allegheny

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The ‘State’ of Allegheny One of the first centers of the organization of the Re­publican party and scene of its first national conven­tion in February, 1856, Allegheny County was strongly for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860. As the vote count proceeded, one of the leaders kept sending telegrams to Lincoln’s home in Illinois, keeping him up on the news that “Allegheny gives a majority of …...
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Women in Pennsylvania … The First Two Hundred Years

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Women in Pennsylvania … The First Two Hundred Years In the past two hundred years thousands of women have contributed significantly to the social, economic, political and cultural richness of Pennsylvania. An encyclopedia could barely sketch their contributions. Since this article cannot possibly present a complete picture of women’s history in our state, it will survey the changes in women’s roles with brief accounts of a few famous...
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Pittsburgh’s Designing Women

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh’s Designing Women A man does not marry an artist, but a housekeeper …. I put away my brushes; resolutely crucified my divine gift, and while it hung writhing on the cross, spent my best years and powers cooking cabbage.” So wrote Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815-1884) of Wilkinsburg, Allegheny County. Swisshelm’s bittersweet memoirs recall the painful sacrifice that she made to the Victorian code of...
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Nellie Bly (1864-1922)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Nellie Bly (1864-1922) When Nellie Bly died January 27, 1922, at the age of fifty-eight, New York’s Evening Journal eulogized her as “the best reporter in America.” A rebellious child of Michael Cochran and his second wife, widow Mary Jane Kennedy Cummings, she channeled her noncon­formjty and fire into becoming one of the most notable journalists of all time. At a time when most female reporters...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Profile: Nellie Bly The biography of Nellie Bly appearing in Profiles in the Winter 2003 edition states that Elizabeth Jane Cochran adopted the pseudonym from a song written by Stephen Foster in 1870. Just to set the record straight, Foster died in 1864. According to Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture, Foster wrote Nellie Bly in 1850. One of...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Nellie Bly Thank you for the most interesting “Pro­files” in the Winter 2003 edition featur­ing Nellie Bly. The article failed to men­tion, however, that Nellie Bly was recent­ly honored with a commemorative thir­ty-seven-cents-postage stamp by the United States Postal Service (USPS). According to Francia G. Smith, vice president and consumer advocate for the USPS, “the Postal...
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