William Penn’s Side Chair

Pennsylvania founder and first proprietor William Penn lived in his colony for a total of only four years during two trips of two years each, 1682-84 and 1699-1701. Even before his first visit he had engaged his agent to purchase from the Lenapes land along the Delaware River that would become Pennsbury Manor, intended to be his permanent summer home in America. As fate would have it, however,...
read more

Behind the Battle of Gettysburg: American Nursing Is Born

The battle of Gettys­burg cannot only be characterized as the turning point of the Civil War, for it was so much more. During the war, with casualties high and the need undeniable, women entered hospitals to care for the wounded, but – shockingly­ – were made to feel unwelcome. These resolute women, though, stood fast, and pro­ceeded to establish a new profession. When the war...
read more

Waging War Their Own Way: Women and the Civil War in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania’s recently conserved Civil War Muster Rolls, housed at the Pennsylvania State Archives, document the commonwealth’s contributions to the Union. Nearly 345,000 Pennsylvanians served in the U.S. Army during the war, or approximately 60 percent of the adult male population.1 A century and a half ago clerks carefully transcribed the names, ages, regiments, and brief...
read more

All’s Fair: Philadelphia and the Civil War Sanitary Fair


read more

U.S. Sanitary Commission Great Central Fair

Soon after the outbreak of the American Civil War it became apparent that sanitary conditions in camps and on the battlefields were less than ideal. A group of women in New York first organized efforts to improve conditions and provide comfort to soldiers. Similar groups throughout the North also began to form and it became clear that efforts would be more efficient if overseen by the federal...
read more

Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends

The Civil War in Pennsylvania: A Photographic History Written by a trio of savvy and inveterate collectors of photographs, artifacts, objects, and ephemera documenting the American Civil War and its associations with the Keystone State and its soldiers and citizens, The Civil War in Pennsylvania: A Photographic History (Senator John Heinz History Center for Pennsylvania Civil War 150, 2012,...
read more