Editor’s Letter

Posted by Kyle Weaver on Mar 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter This issue of Pennsylvania Heritage marks the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into the First World War in April 1917. The focus comes as part of PHMC’s Pennsylvania at War initiative, a multiyear commemoration of the centennial of World War I and the 75th anniversary of World War II. The Keystone State contributed significantly to the Allied effort in World War I, with more than...
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Paesano: The Struggle to Survive in Ambridge

Posted by Frank Serene on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Paesano: The Struggle to Survive in Ambridge For nearly three-quarters of a cen­tury, Lucy Derochis, my grandmother, has struggled successfully to preserve and convey her Italian heritage while living in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Her cultivation of familial closeness was rewarded when family members gath­ered to celebrate her eighty-ninth birthday on March 13, 1980. The dur­ability of the tight and close structure of an Italian-American...
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Fayette at the Crossroads

Posted by Walter Storey on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fayette at the Crossroads Fayette County has always been at the crossroads, both literally and figuratively, its destiny shaped by its location, the incredible riches of its natural resources and the vi­tality of a people descended from al­most every nation of Europe. It has a son of dual personality, geo­graphically divided between mountains and lowlands, historically divided into two almost equal eras of economic...
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The Last Frontier: Venango County Indians, Oil, Ghost Towns

Posted by Carolee Michener on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Last Frontier: Venango County Indians, Oil, Ghost Towns Venango County. Its name is derivation of a the Seneca Indian word earliest for explorers “French and Creek.” Its earliest explorers and settlers were the French, shortly followed by the English. At one time, the territory was claimed simultaneously by France, and the colonies of Virginia and Pennsyl­vania. But Venango County’s rich history bespeaks vigorous pioneering a spirit...
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Back to the Land! Pennsylvania’s New Deal Era Communities

Posted by Joseph Conwill on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Back to the Land! Pennsylvania’s New Deal Era Communities The economic collapse of 1929 ushered in a decade fraught with deep, often tremu­lous, questioning of the na­tion’s development and future. Many were the cries to re­turn to the land. As a result, two all-new rural communities founded in Pennsylvania in the mid-1930s – Norvelt, in Westmoreland County, and Penn-Craft, in adjacent Fayette County – remain today as testimony to...
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Bucks County

Posted by Terry McNealy on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bucks County As one of the three original counties of Pennsylvania created shortly after William Penn arrived in his nascent colony in 1682, Bucks County has a heritage that reaches back to the very beginnings of the Commonwealth. Long before Penn’s arrival, the intrepid settlers of the Dutch and Swedish colonies farther down the Delaware River had ex­plored the wooded banks of the river as far as the...
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Historical Sketch of Greene County

Posted by Louis Waddell on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Historical Sketch of Greene County Greene County lies in the southwestern corner of the state. Its many hills, the distinguishing feature of the countryside, grow more pronounced as one travels from the eastern to the western areas. The old Washington Waynes­burg Railroad, traveling through the hills, was famous for its 178 sharp turns, each of which jolted the passengers. There were some who took the trip just for the roller...
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“The Public Is Entitled to Know”: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick

Posted by Brent Glass on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on “The Public Is Entitled to Know”: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick On Saturday, July 23, 1892, Russian immi­grant and New York anarchist Alexander Berkman burst into the office of Henry Clay Frick in down­town Pittsburgh, stabbed him three times, and shot him in the ear and neck. Frick fought back and, with his secretary’s assistance, eventually subdued his assailant. Although he had sustained several serious wounds to his legs and chest, Frick insisted...
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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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Lost and Found

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost Following World War II, the United States Steel Corporation’s massive Homestead Works in Allegheny County employed nearly fifteen thousand work­ers. The sprawling works, site of the infamous Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, closed in July 1986 and demolition began soon after. But all is not lost. While much of the plant is gone, there are plans to pre­serve the Pinkerton Landing, site...
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