Lost and Found: The Rediscovery of Colonial Fort Halifax

As the fleet of bateaux slipped into the lee of what would come to be called Clemson Island and Lingle Island along the east shore of the mile-wide Susquehanna River, the smoke from the Armstrong family’s compound would have been visible to the men in the boats, as would the distinctive hook-shaped mouth of the creek that enters the river there. Aboard the 20-odd bateaux and several dugout...
read more

Northumberland County: The Mother County

Although named for the most northern of England’s shires, Northumberland County has been often called by many the “Mother County.” Organized on March 21, 1772, as Pennsylvania’s tenth county, at one time it encom­passed eighteen thousand square miles! The county once extended from the Lehigh to the Allegheny rivers, with the New York border as its north­ern boundary. Its...
read more

Digging Fort Hunter’s History

Over the past five years, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) archaeologists conducted investigations at Fort Hunter, the site of a French and Indian War fortification located six miles north of Harrisburg. Hundreds of fort period (1756-1763) artifacts have been recovered along with the identification of a water well, bake oven, and the remains of a road or defensive ditch. In...
read more