High on a Mountain: Pennsylvania’s Legacy of Country Music

Posted by on Jun 4, 2020 in | Comments Off on High on a Mountain: Pennsylvania’s Legacy of Country Music In 1607 Great Britain commenced the establishment of two colonial plantations. One of these was Jamestown in Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America. The other was much closer to home. The Ulster plantation was formed in the nine northern counties of Ireland. The goal of the colony was, in part, to extend British and Anglican hegemony over the Catholic and...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 4, 2020 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter With the recent premiere of Country Music, director Ken Burns has launched another epic PBS TV docuseries that amplifies the significance of an enduring American institution. In this issue’s cover story, “High on a Mountain,” we follow up with a look at Pennsylvania’s key role in the evolution of country music and the state’s later contributions to the genre. Author Joe Baker takes us on a...
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Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania by Peter E. Gilmore

Posted by on Apr 14, 2020 in | Comments Off on Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania by Peter E. Gilmore Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770–1830 by Peter E. Gilmore University of Pittsburgh Press, 248 pp., hardcover $27.95 The Scots-Irish have always captured the imaginations of historians. Images of hardscrabble frontiersmen, ferocious both in their devotion to Presbyterianism and their hostility toward the Indians they hoped to displace from their new Canaan, have...
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The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania by Judith Ridner

Posted by on Mar 6, 2020 in | Comments Off on The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania by Judith Ridner The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania A Varied People by Judith Ridner Temple University Press/The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 140 pp., paper $19.95 The Scots Irish are recognized as among the largest non-English ethnic groups found in 18th-century Pennsylvania. But who, exactly, were they? In Judith Ridner’s eminently readable account, these migrants from Ireland’s northern province of...
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Keep the Boys in College! How World War I Produced a Penn State Football Legend

Posted by on Dec 13, 2016 in | Comments Off on Keep the Boys in College! How World War I Produced a Penn State Football Legend Pennsylvanians who remember Glenn Killinger (1898–1988) often envision the legendary coach of West Chester State Teachers’ College football and baseball teams during the decades that spanned 1933 to 1970. His name often comes up in conversations about Paul “Bear” Bryant as one of the two unbending football minds who led the North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters to one of the...
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Lebanon County: Small in Size – Rich in Heritage

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lebanon County: Small in Size – Rich in Heritage Lebanon County is located in the southeastern portion of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the center of the beautiful Lebanon Valley, which is formed by the Blue Ridge of the Kittatinny range of mountains to the north and the South Mountains, or Furnace Hills, to the south. Covering an area of 363 square miles, the county is inhabited by ap­proximately 100,000 people. Between the shale...
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Washington County: From Ice Age to Space Age

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Washington County: From Ice Age to Space Age Southwestern Pennsylvania was for centuries a happy hunt­ing ground for Indians who were living there as long as two thousand years ago. In fact, as the result of archaeological discoveries made at the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter near Avella between 1973 and 1975, University of Pittsburgh anthropologists have proven conclusively that Ice Age people roamed the forests of Washington County even...
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Warren County: Gem of the Alleghenies

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Warren County: Gem of the Alleghenies “To the south … an expanse of arable land upon the gentle slope from the volley to the distant heights, dotted with green fields, waving grain, fruitful orchards and farm buildings with ever and anon an oasis of growing timber, remnants of the dense growth of stately pine and hemlock that formerly forested the region, present an alluring scene of beauty and grandeur, excelling...
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York County: A Most Treasured Land

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on York County: A Most Treasured Land Planted squarely above the Maryland border, the gigantic horse’s hoof, which is the out­ line of York County, covers an area of 914 square miles, supporting a popula­tion of 300,000. Its eastern contour is delineated by the “long, crooked” Sus­quehanna, its pastern cleanly cut off by Cumberland County on the north, its outer edge defined by Adams Coun­ty on the west. This...
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Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy When Lancaster County was established on May 10, 1729, it became the proto­type for the sixty-three counties to follow. The original three counties­Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester – were created as copies of typical English shires. The frontier conditions of Ches­ter County’s backwoods, from which Lancaster was formed, presented knot­ty problems to the civilized English­men....
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