Mount Gretna’s Spirit Lives On

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Mount Gretna’s Spirit Lives On Mount Gretna in Lebanon County is an enduring gem of a historic village that offers visitors a rare opportunity to experience an unembellished, Victorian-era lifestyle that shuffles on in similar fashion today. Cloistered within a 16-mile slice of forested rocky hills surrounded by a patchwork expanse of farmland between Lancaster and Hershey, Mount Gretna came to life in 1892 as a village (now...
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News and Notes

Posted by on Jul 27, 2016 in | Comments Off on News and Notes York Inter-State Fair The York Inter-State Fair was honored on September 10 [1978] with the official historical marker. Dr. Homer T. Rosenberger, member of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, presented the marker to fair president, Glenn E. Bailey, on behalf of the Commission. Robert J. Sugarman acted as President Carter’s representative at the dedication.   Visitors...
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“Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”

Posted by on Apr 12, 2016 in | Comments Off on “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” Stephen Foster is widely considered to be America’s first great songwriter. He was born in Lawrenceville, Allegheny County, near Pittsburgh, on July 4, 1826. His first composition was published when he was 18 years old, and he would go on to write more than 250 songs, hymns and instrumental works during his lifetime, becoming the most important composer of popular music in 19th-century America....
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The Gender of Assimilation: The Carlisle Indian Industrial School Experiment

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on The Gender of Assimilation: The Carlisle Indian Industrial School Experiment In his celebrated 1702 book Magnalia Christi American (The Glorious Works of Christ in America), Puritan minister Cotton Mather described local Native Americans. “The men are most abominably slothful; making their poor Squaws, or Wives,to plant and dress, and barn, and beat their Corn, and build their Wigwams for them; which perhaps may be the reason for their extraordinary Ease in Childbirth,”...
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The Young Lady of Lewisburg Grows Up

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Young Lady of Lewisburg Grows Up The year is 1864. It is summer. The time is morning. Enter Sallie Meixell, a young woman. Wearily, Sarah Rebecca Meixell trudges up the stairs to the attic of her parents’ home in Lewisburg, lugging the cradle Annie Cowden had used. After returning it to its proper place, she gratefully sinks down and falls asleep until noon. Upon awakening she hurries to McMahon’s Store to purchase...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Fancy That! “Capricious Fancy: Draping and Curtaining, 1790-1930,” an exhibition tracing the history of design sources for draping and curtaining American and European interiors during the span of nearly one hundred and fifty years, will open at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia on Monday, December 6 [1993]. On view will be a selection of rare books, prints, and trade catalogues drawn...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts On Saturday, May 14, 1994, guides at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site will demonstrate traditional sheep­-shearing methods with both period and modern hand-held tools. They will also discuss the importance of farms and farming practices to an 1830s industrial community. To obtain additional details, write: Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, 2 Mark Bird Ln., Elverson, PA 19520; or...
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Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost Conceived and funded by industrialist and philanthropist Henry Phipps (1839-1930), the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park opened, without ceremony, in December 1893. The original complex – which cost more than one hundred thousand dollars – was designed and erected by Lord and Burnham of Irving­ton-on-the-Hudson, New York, a firm noted for its construction...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts “Abstraction to Figuration: Selections of Contemporary Art from the Pincus Collection” is an exhibition of works of art drawn from the collection of David and Gerry Pincus currently on view at the Palmer Museum of Art on the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University. An exhi­bition of post-1945 American painting, sculpture, and photography, “Abstraction to...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Wrecks and Rescues In the early nineteenth century, the shore posed great danger to sailing ships seeking to reach port. The long and lonely approaches to coastal cities, such as Philadelphia, were poorly marked stretches of sand dunes and salt marshes with a few isolated settlements. Unexpected storms with winds blowing from the northeast could suddenly force a ship onto perilous sandbars...
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