The Easter Egg: A Flourishing Tradition in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Oct 9, 2020 in | Comments Off on The Easter Egg: A Flourishing Tradition in Pennsylvania The hen cackled in the early morning light as the door of the chicken coup opened and the boy walked in with his basket. He had risen before dawn to help with the farmwork as usual. But on this most suspicious of days, Karfreidaag, or Good Friday, gathering the eggs was no mere ordinary task. As on all other mornings, the boy deftly reached under the clucking hens, soothing the birds with a few...
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Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style

Posted by on Dec 2, 2013 in | Comments Off on Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1836–1903) was nothing if not determined. In 1872, as editor of The Index, the nation’s leading free-thought magazine, he began to muster the full force of his small army of subscribers against what was being called “the God-in-the-Constitution amendment.” A philosopher and theologian, he sought to reconstruct theology in accordance with scientific methodology. From the...
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Ernest: Life in a Mining Town

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ernest: Life in a Mining Town In 1904, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company began deep mining in Ernest, Pennsylvania. In 1965, the industry there came to an end. Between these two dates, people lived out their lives in this small community northwest of Indiana, where for over sixty years every facet of existence revolved around the digging of coal from the hillsides surrounding the town. But what was life like in a...
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Lawrence County

Posted by on Nov 28, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lawrence County Bart Richards, the unofficial historian of Lawrence County, indicates that little of historical significance has occurred in the county. He points out that it has had no wars, Indian uprisings, or great discoveries to its credit. Very few of its citizens have qualified for the pages of Who’s Who. Therefore, this history is the story of average, ordinary people striving to make a better...
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Martin Ritt Takes on The Molly Maguires

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Martin Ritt Takes on The Molly Maguires Far from the glitter and glamour of Hollywood, in a remote mountain range of Pennsylvania, the film industry’s best and brightest gathered in the late 1960s to make a film that has been described as a dismal financial failure and, ironically, an extraordinary critical suc­cess. Before cameras whirred in and around the communities of Hazleton, Luzerne County, Jim Thorpe, Carbon County,...
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Violence and Vigilantes: The KKK in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Violence and Vigilantes: The KKK in Pennsylvania It was a warm, muggy day in early August 1921 in Philadelphia when F. W. Atkins of Jacksonville, Florida, and W. J. Bellamy of Cincinnati, Ohio, rented an office in the Bellevue Court Building to quietly recruit members for “a great and patriotic crusade to save the nation.” Their goal was to organize a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Posing as a prospective KKK initiate, a...
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Meet Don Yoder: Dean of Folklife Scholars

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Meet Don Yoder: Dean of Folklife Scholars In 1710, Hans Joder, originally from Canton Bern in Switzerland, arrived in Pennsylvania and made a home in the fertile Oley Valley of southeastern Pennsylvania. Twenty-eight years later, Johannes Cronister of Franconia in northern Bavaria, whose grandfather had been a Protestant fugitive from Lower Austria, came to the province and settled in the region that would later become Adams County....
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Philadelphia’s Sainted Katharine Drexel: “Mother and Servant of the Indian and Negro Races”

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Philadelphia’s Sainted Katharine Drexel: “Mother and Servant of the Indian and Negro Races” On Thursday morning, January 27, 1887, the Drexel sisters of Philadelphia attended a private mass conducted by Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) in Rome’s fabled Vatican. As members of one of the wealthiest and most devout Catholic families in the United States, the three young women — Elizabeth, age 31, Katharine, age 28, and Louise, age 23 — were also given a rare audience with the pontiff. The...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf The Philadelphia Mummers: Building Community Through Play by Patricia Anne Masters published by Temple University Press, 2007; 232 pages; cloth, $74.50, paper, $22.95 Every New Year’s Day since 1901, the Philadelphia Mummers have presented a spectacular show of shows that raucously snakes and shimmies its way through city streets. The Mummers Parade includes music, dance, comedy, and mime, along...
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William Penn’s Pennsylvania: A Legacy of Religious Freedom

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on William Penn’s Pennsylvania: A Legacy of Religious Freedom In a letter written August 25, 1681, William Penn (1644–1718) described his new colony to friend and fellow Quaker James Harrison (circa 1628–1687). He hoped that in the development of Pennsylvania “an example may be set up to the nations.” The colony would serve as a “holy experiment,” a place where people of different ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs would find a peaceful home. His...
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