Caroline Burnham Kilgore, Legal Crusader

Posted by on Aug 29, 2025 in | Comments Off on Caroline Burnham Kilgore, Legal Crusader Caroline “Carrie” Burnham Kilgore (1838–1909) was a trailblazer in the fight for women’s rights in the legal profession, but she was not alone. Many women in Pennsylvania faced the same barriers she did, struggling for decades against systemic exclusion from law schools and the bar. Kilgore’s success in 1885, when she became the first woman admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania, was part of a...
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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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“From My Own Observation and Familiar Acquaintance”: Phebe Earle Gibbons Introduces the Pennsylvania Dutch to the World

Posted by on Jun 4, 2021 in | Comments Off on “From My Own Observation and Familiar Acquaintance”: Phebe Earle Gibbons Introduces the Pennsylvania Dutch to the World   “It was on a Sunday morning in March, when the air was bleak and the roads were execrable, that I obtained a driver to escort me to the farm-house where an Amish meeting was to be held,” wrote Phebe Earle Gibbons (1821–93), describing a Lancaster County Amish religious gathering in the late 1860s. “The floors were bare, but on one of the open doors hung a long white towel,...
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Reform Takes a Village

Posted by on Dec 3, 2020 in | Comments Off on Reform Takes a Village Lewisburg native Mary Moore Wolfe (1874–1962) was one of Union County’s most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. After graduating from Bucknell University in 1896, she quickly made a name for herself as an accomplished physician and advocate for women’s rights. In 1914 Wolfe joined with other suffragists to establish the Woman Suffrage Party of Union County and served as its charismatic...
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After Suffrage: Pennsylvania’s Inaugural Class of Women Legislators

Posted by on Nov 25, 2020 in | Comments Off on After Suffrage: Pennsylvania’s Inaugural Class of Women Legislators “For one born and reared as this writer was in hidebound Pennsylvania, it is startling to find eight women in the Legislature of that State. Moreover, to learn from their men fellow-members of the natural way they take their place and do their work.” – Ida Tarbell, 1924 “I believe these eight women are going to make an impression. I believe they are going to ask themselves on...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Nov 23, 2020 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter This edition of Pennsylvania Heritage was produced mostly through teleworking, as all of us in the Keystone State — and the world — have been in the midst of what already has become one of the most momentous episodes in contemporary history. In the devastating weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, every realm of human existence has been profoundly affected. As we continue through the crisis, history...
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The Women’s March to Perry Square in Erie

Posted by on Oct 20, 2020 in | Comments Off on The Women’s March to Perry Square in Erie The tranquil view of Perry Square on this circa 1915 postcard belies the flurry of activity that occurred here on July 8, 1913, when one of the earliest women’s suffrage marches in Pennsylvania took place. On that day hundreds of supporters answered the call of Erie suffragist Augusta Fleming, president of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Equal Franchise Association, to march for women’s rights...
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Trailheads

Posted by on Jun 8, 2020 in | Comments Off on Trailheads With more than 20 sites and museums on PHMC’s Pennsylvania Trails of History, each year is full of events, tours, programs and visits. Historical milestones are commemorated — such as the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings during World War II or the centennial of Pennsylvania’s ratification of the 19th Amendment — and “everyday” history is remembered in artifact exhibits, cooking...
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Daisy E. Lampkin: Activist for Racial and Gender Equality

Posted by on Jun 4, 2020 in | Comments Off on Daisy E. Lampkin: Activist for Racial and Gender Equality Daisy E. Lampkin (1883–1965) dedicated her life to advancing the rights of  women and African Americans in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. Born Daisy Elizabeth Adams in Washington, D.C., she spent her childhood in Reading, Berks County, before moving to Pittsburgh in 1909 and marrying restauranteur William Lampkin in 1912. She began her public career at the height of...
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From Temperance to Suffrage with WCTU in Bellefonte

Posted by on Apr 23, 2020 in | Comments Off on From Temperance to Suffrage with WCTU in Bellefonte   The Women’ Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) building, also known a Petrikm Hall, on High Street in the Bellefonte Historic District has a fasci­nating history and links to the women’s suffrage movement. Petrikin Hall, as depicted in this 1910 postcard, was completed in 1902 to serve the needs of WCTU’s Bellefonte chapter and was designed to house an auditorium, stage...
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