Susanna Wright: Poet and Polymath on the Susquehanna

Posted by on Apr 17, 2026 in | Comments Off on Susanna Wright: Poet and Polymath on the Susquehanna   No right has man his equal to control, Since, all agree, there is no sex in soul; Weak woman, thus in agreement grown strong, Shakes off the yoke her parents wore too long. Those lines of poetry, written in a rigidly paternalistic 18th-century America, establish Susanna Wright (1697–1784) as one of America’s early supporters of women’s equality. More subtly, the poem, entitled “To Eliza...
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Getting Pennsylvania on Speaking Terms

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on Getting Pennsylvania on Speaking Terms Following Alexander Graham Bell’s famous exhibition of the telephone at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, a sprawling telephone network would soon connect people in every corner of the United States. The telephone quickly became a popular communication tool among merchants and business owners who valued its instantaneous nature, such as John Wanamaker, who first installed...
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Raising Philadelphia by Justin McHenry

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on Raising Philadelphia by Justin McHenry Raising Philadelphia The Making of America’s First Great City, 1750–1775 by Justin McHenry Brookline Books, 224 pages, hardcover $32.95 McHenry’s appetite for research and his passion for storytelling combine here to illuminate threads of history and biography into readable stories for a broad audience. Focusing on Philadelphia’s transformation into a cultural and political epicenter...
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She Devils at the Door by Eliza Smith Brown

Posted by on Aug 9, 2024 in | Comments Off on She Devils at the Door by Eliza Smith Brown She Devils at the Door by Eliza Smith Brown Carnegie Mellon University Press, 360 pages, paperback $29 The United States Women’s Suffrage Movement was a tenuous battle that took nearly eight decades to be realized. Women across the country saw this fight pass from themselves to their daughters and granddaughters in hopes that women would be seen as more than custodians of home and hearth. Eliza...
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Women Healers by Susan H. Brandt

Posted by on Jul 25, 2023 in | Comments Off on Women Healers by Susan H. Brandt Women Healers Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia by Susan H. Brandt University of Pennsylvania Press, 312 pp., hardcover $39.95 In this deeply researched and well-written book, Susan H. Brandt reveals women’s central place in the intricate healing networks that flourished in the first decades of Philadelphia’s existence. Casting her net widely, she examines the...
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Summer on the Trails 2023

Posted by on Jul 25, 2023 in | Comments Off on Summer on the Trails 2023 Life gets more hectic on the Trails of History during the summer, our busiest season for visitation. Summer camps are planned at about half a dozen sites, mostly in July and August. Numerous special events are scheduled, many taking advantage of warm weather for outdoor activities and larger crowds. Be sure to check the PHMC online events calendar and Trails of History social media platforms and...
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2022 Trails

Posted by on Dec 16, 2022 in | Comments Off on 2022 Trails With what feels like record speed, it’s once again time for our look back at the past year. Our steady rebound from 2020’s COVID-19–related site closures and event cancellations continued into 2022, with ongoing efforts to balance staff and visitor safety with everyone’s desire to get back out onto the Pennsylvania Trails of History. Visitation levels that started to increase in 2021 have...
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The Plastic Club: Advancing Women Artists for 125 Years

Posted by on Dec 15, 2022 in | Comments Off on The Plastic Club: Advancing Women Artists for 125 Years In 1898 The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America noted an unusual development in Pennsylvania. “There are in America many clubs for the furtherance of art interests — painters’ clubs, sculptors’ clubs, illustrators’ clubs — from which women are excluded. Philadelphia possesses an art club that excludes men. The Plastic Club, formed in the spring of 1897, has on its list of one hundred...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Dec 15, 2022 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter As Pennsylvania Heritage moves into its 49th year of publication with this issue, we present three features about Keystone State phenomena that are marked by longevity and progression through the years. One of the highlights of the first wave of the movement for women’s rights in Pennsylvania was the 1897 founding of the Plastic Club for women artists in Philadelphia. At the time, most women who...
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Sylvania Electric Products

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Sylvania Electric Products Nestled in the valley of the Driftwood Branch of the Sinnemahoning Creek sits Emporium, the seat of Cameron County. Emporium was known for industries that were prominent in other central Pennsylvania towns: lumber, coal, dynamite, iron smelting and tanning. By the early 20th century, however, the borough made a name for itself as the home of Sylvania Electric Products, which produced...
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