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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The Early Years of Reading Socialism

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Early Years of Reading Socialism Socialist candidates were often elected to local public office in the early twentieth century. and it was not unusual for members of the party to serve as mayors and councilmen in some towns and cities. In I 912, it was estimated that approximately 1,200 Socialists held offices across the country. Though many held very minor posts, Socialists often believed that their movement would continue to...
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Live From Pittsburgh

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Live From Pittsburgh It was the evening of Tues­day, November 2, 1920. In Pittsburgh’s cold, rainswept streets, patient crowds stood waiting for the Harding-Cox presidential election returns to be posted on newspaper bulletin boards. Meanwhile, across town in a makeshift shack atop one of the Westinghouse Company’s factory buildings in the city’s Turtle Creek section, Leo H. Rosenberg began...
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The UMWA Wins America’s Approval: John Mitchell and the Anthracite Strike of 1902

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The UMWA Wins America’s Approval: John Mitchell and the Anthracite Strike of 1902 Labor leader John Mitchell’s reputation seemed to precede him no matter where he traveled during the summer of 1902. Coal miners throughout northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite region referred to the boyish-looking thirty-two-year-old president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as their beloved “Johnny d’Mitch.” His photograph hung in their homes beside...
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My Day at the Bargaining Table

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on My Day at the Bargaining Table Our family consisted of seven children, my mother, who had emigrated from Italy in 1908, and my father, who was born in Carbondale, Lackawanna County. We lived in a small anthracite (or hard coal) mining town, Old Forge, also in Lackawanna County. Dad began working as a breaker boy in the coal industry when he was fifteen years old. After years of such hard labor, Dad began to try to rectify the...
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Birdhouse by J. Warren Jacobs

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Birdhouse by J. Warren Jacobs J. Warren Jacobs (1868-1947), of Waynesburg, Greene County, was an artist, essayist, poet, bird watcher, and woodworker. A versatile individual, he fashioned cabinets, display cases, and furniture for his library and the “J. Warren Jacobs Museum of Applied Oology,” housed in two rooms on the second floor of the family’s residence on South Washington Street in Waynesburg. He...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna published by the Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2008; 126 pages, paper, $14.95 Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna, one of Pennsylvania’s foremost political analysts, opens with an explanation of how the Democratic Party...
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