Lycoming County: Many Call It Romantic

Posted by Michael O'Malley on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lycoming County: Many Call It Romantic Its heritage is so rich that it’s hard to adequately­ – and accurately – portray the roles Lycoming County has played in the Commonwealth’s history. Since its settlement in the mid­-eighteenth century, it has had, according to Sylvester K. Stevens, author of the 1946 guide to the Keystone State’s sixty-seven counties, My Penn­sylvania, “one of the most...
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America’s Dream Highway

Posted by Dan Cupper on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on America’s Dream Highway Almost no one could have foreseen, fifty years ago, that an experiment in trans­portation engineering mean­dering across the rugged southern Alleghenies could profoundly affect the way tens of millions of Americans tra­vel. But from the very day it opened on October 1, 1940, the Pennsylvania Turnpike did just that – despite the fact that its first section ran from nowhere to nowhere. The...
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Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least

Posted by Michael O'Malley 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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Two Gentlemen of Vision

Posted by Alan Tabachnick on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Two Gentlemen of Vision Henry Janssen and Ferdinand Thun, whose small textile company grew mto the multi-million dollar Wyomissing Industries, were not only prominent industrial­ists, but also visionaries and idealists. With their unique, progressive approach, the two were largely responsible for the development of Wyomiss­ing, Berks County, one of the first planned industrial com­munities in Pennsylvania. Although...
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Berks County: Diamond of the Schuylkill Valley

Posted by Louis Waddell on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Berks County: Diamond of the Schuylkill Valley Since 1811, when Schuylkill County was created to include part of what had been northern Berks County, Berks has been distinguishable by its diamond shape. It approxi­mates a geometric diamond or lozenge – an equilateral paral­lelogram without right angles. Its history also seems diamond-like, as it has com­bined a very hard, cutting, and persistently pragmatic charac­teristic with a...
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Howard L. Barnes, Dean of Philadelphia’s Amateur Historians

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Howard L. Barnes, Dean of Philadelphia’s Amateur Historians Howard L. Barnes claims that Frankford is the oldest settlement in Philadelphia. Historians in neighboring Germantown dispute him, contending theirs to be the oldest community in the Quaker city area. How­ ever, no one has proven him wrong – nor can one, especially when he produces the original land deed of his beloved home­town, which dates to 1660. That would make Frankford not only the...
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Teetering on the Brink of Rebellion?

Posted by Gerald Eggert on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Teetering on the Brink of Rebellion? Nineteenth century Harrisburg’s most rousing labor disorders erupted in July 1877 as part of the wave of spontaneous railway strikes sweeping the nation. The rioting that disrupted the quiet city overlooking the broad Susquehanna River was part of the country’s first wide­spread labor upheaval. The Great Railway Strikes, in turn, were a product of the Panic of 1873, then in its...
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Clatter, Sproing, Clunk Went the Trolley…

Posted by Joseph Eckhardt on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Clatter, Sproing, Clunk Went the Trolley… On a balmy autumn day in 1923, a young boy riding his pony along the banks of the Schuylkill River near Valley Forge stumbled upon the mortal remains of a once-famous movie star. De­spite the mud and tangle of weeds, he recognized her at once. She was well preserved and the boy wondered-as he raced back to his grandfather’s house in nearby Audubon-if the carcass couldn’t be salvaged....
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Bookshelf

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Harrisburg Industrializes by Gerald G. Eggert The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993 (412 pages, cloth, $35.00) In 1850, Harrisburg-state capital and county seat-was a community not unlike many others in the United States, employing most of its citizens in trade and commerce. Unlike its larger neighbors, Pittsburgh to the west and Philadelphia in the east, Harrisburg had not yet...
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No Summer Solstice: War Stories of the Home Front Survivors

Posted by Catherine Quilman on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on No Summer Solstice: War Stories of the Home Front Survivors War stories. Before epic movies and documentaries changed its connotations, the phrase once implied a personal exchange, the kind that took place in barber shops, on porches, or in front of the court house on hot summer afternoons when the fish weren’t biting. They were the kind of stories that grew better in the telling, each time preserving another aspect, perhaps, of a day in a...
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