Pennsylvania History

Early frontier expeditions in North America often relied on hunting of wild game to supplement carried food stocks. Typically, journals of these expeditions provided little to no information on the game species harvested or the numbers of animals taken. In September 1750, frontiersman Christopher Gist was contracted by the Ohio Company to “search out and discover the lands of the River Ohio…and to take an exact and particular journal of all your proceedings”. Gist’s journal was detailed on the lands, peoples, and resources he saw, including the species and numbers of wild game harvested to support the expedition. Five game species were harvested: bear, deer, “buffaloe”, elk, and turkey. I compare and contrast the value of each of these species in providing sustenance to the expedition and suggest that black bear provided the greatest food resource in quantity, quality (fat and protein), and potential portability once processed (e.g., “bear bacon”).

Welsh and Northwest English Quakers organized their settlement in the Delaware Valley to promote the spiritual development of their children and thereby built a rich agricultural economy that discouraged slavery locally while promoting it in the Atlantic World.

In an effort to level the educational opportunities and standardize the quality of instruction received in Pennsylvania, revisions were made to the school laws.  From 1834 until 1854, the state slowly weaned the local townships of their  independent local rights to manage their schools in support of creating a monitored and regulated education system controlled through county officials and state legislation.  In examining Adams County, a south-central, diversely inhabited county, the local difficulty to establish common schools reflects the persistent trial and error nature of the first twenty years of the public education experiment in Pennsylvania, which only succeeded after district power was undercut by state legislation.  State legislation formally standardized
the elements of educational instruction with set conditions,
therefore reducing the community‟s involvement in directly controlling their schools.

Významnú kapitolu dejín Kysúc predstavuje obdobie sprevádzané vysťahovalectvom do USA podnietené viacerými nevyhovujúcimi podmienkami v rámci Rakúsko-Uhorska. Príspevok sa zaoberá konkrétne problematikou vysťahovalectva z oblasti Bystrickej doliny koncom 19. a v prvých rokoch 20. storočia. Sleduje motívy migrácie a jej jednotlivé fázy, pričom obsahuje i štatistické údaje o migrantoch v danom období. Pozornosť taktiež venuje samotnému priebehu cesty do Ameriky a popisu konkrétnych cieľových miest, do ktorých vysťahovalci smerovali zväčša za účelom zárobku, či už natrvalo alebo s úmyslom vrátiť sa neskôr do pôvodnej vlasti. Súčasťou štúdie je i tabuľka emigrantov zo sledovanej oblasti, ktorá vychádza z údajov databázy imigračného strediska Ellis Island.
One of the most important chapters in the history of Kysuce is the period when emigration to the USA was very frequent. This was caused by many factors, mostly unsuitable conditions in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This paper deal particularly with emigration from the region of the Bystrica valley at the end of the 19th and in the first years of the 20th century. It stuedies the motives for migration and its individual phases, while also working with course of the journey to America and describes the specific target destinations, permanently or with the intentio to return to their homeland. The table listing emigrants from this region is also part of this study - based on data from the Ellis Island immigration centre database.

The Marine Science Consortium, founded in 1968 and now physically located in Wallops Island, Virginia, began with brainstorming sessions in the Science Department of Millersville State College in the early 1960s. Initially, the Science Department Chair, Alex Henderson, directed the exploration of possible delivery systems for marine science. In 1966, Henderson tapped B.L. Oostdam to design and implement a program suggested by that exploration Oostdam's background and personality defined the character of the resulting educational program.

The programs of The Marine Science Consortium presented challenges both theoretical and practical. Among the theoretical challenges were questions about the place of oceanography in college curricula, especially whether oceanography was an advanced study appropriate only to upper-level students. How oceanography should be taught from inland schools was another major question. Henderson and Oostdam's contention that college-level oceanography should be a “field science”, not merely a theoretical program or one with limited modeling of field experience, produced certain practical challenges, especially relative to Millersville's distance from marine environments and the expense of the tools required in marine research.

The solution to the practical challenges included the formation of an independent non-profit organization to circumvent funding regulations and of a consortium to distribute costs, the pursuit of federal research grant monies, of support relationships with federal agencies, of research opportunities with for-profit as well as non-profit and government agencies. The founding of The Marine Science Consortium closely followed the passage of major federal legislation regarding science, education, health and the environment, and, specifically, marine science, marine industries, and marine technology. Particularly significant were Public Law 89-454, briefly the “Marine Resources and Engineering Development Act of 1966” and Public Law 89-688, briefly the “National Sea Grant College and Program Act of 1966.”

The Clarion River is a major tributary of the Allegheny River in northwestern Pennsylvania. Abundant water and close access to forest resources fueled the rise of a heavy industry base along the upper Clarion River in the late 1800s, which at its height in the early 1900s included eight tanneries, eleven wood chemical plants, and a large paper mill. The Clarion River was the sink for the effluents from these industries which were discharged directly into river with no or minimal treatment. Cumulative effluent loading from the Clarion River’s main industries was estimated to exceed 25 million gallons daily in the early 1900s. In this presentation I gauge the relative impacts of these different industries on the environment of the Clarion River and show how the ebb and flow of industries set the stage for the eventual recovery of the river.

This is a draft biography I worked on for a project that looked at German-American entrepreneurs -- hence the idiosyncrasies in the presentation -- that was  never published. I've saved with the intention to use in my railroad history project. The whole draft may become two or three sentences and a few footnotes.

The Brule Sioux Chief, White Thunder, had three children who went to United States Indian Industrial School – or more commonly known as “Carlisle Indian School”. These three would ultimately show the ills of the Indian boarding school education: death, being forgotten, and assimilation. Using primary documents from the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center and historical context, a narrative of the education and experience unfolds. Includes Annotated Bibliography.

NOTE: This is a draft from an undergraduate paper to perfect Chicago-style formatting.

Italians immigrated to Western Pennsylvania in great numbers mostly to work in the mines and steel mills. Most came from southern areas of Italy. In Monessen, a steel town south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River, the first Italians came from the north, mostly Tuscany. As immigration continued more southern Italians arrived. How they got along is the subject of this essay.

Toby Creek is a tributary of the Clarion River in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. For nineteen years until 1882, the firm of Corbett and Wilson logged a 913 acre tract along Toby Creek using a series of three splash dams to transport logs by water to the Clarion River for processing and final transport. Historic images place one of the splash dams at the mouth of Toby Creek. This dam stood until the construction of Piney Reservoir in the 1920s. Field surveys conducted in 2010 located the remains of a second splash dam just above the mouth of Tarkiln Run. Remains include two rock walls spanning the distance from the stream to adjacent valley slopes and well-preserved, submerged wooden structures including mudsills, rock-filled log pens and a large panel constructed of plank. I discuss the history of “splashing” Toby Creek and the significance of the splash dam site in documenting regional logging history.

A brief survey of the art of raised and incised carving on the gunstocks of Kentucky rifles, also known as Pennsylvania rifles or American longrifles, seen through a selection of rifles dating from ca. 1770 to ca. 1845, mostly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Founded in 1732 by Conrad Beissel, the Ephrata Cloister was a celibate, ascetic, German-speaking, Sabbatarian commune in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. Its residents produced a large corpus of hymns and motets, and also published the third music treatise written in what is today the United States of America. Because Ephrata produced no heirs, its documents were scattered and its traditions were forgotten over the course of the nineteenth century. Although significant strides have been made in recent years to understand Ephrata’s theology, substantial lacunae remain in the study of its music.
This dissertation accomplishes four research tasks associated with Ephrata music. First, it provides a thorough descriptive catalog of all extant available Ephrata music manuscripts. This catalog is the first of its kind in this field, organizing music manuscripts according to their content. Next, the dissertation translates and analyzes the Ephrata music treatise, situating it within the history of music theory. It also examines Ephrata’s unorthodox use of a pedagogical tool for composition known as the règle de l’octave. Third, the study focuses on Ephrata music, discussing its content, style, and practice, proposing that hymns and motets were written in a workshop format, based on a set procedure of group composition. Finally, the dissertation explores the topic of authorship, and demonstrates that Ephrata music manuscripts provide evidence of America’s first female composers.

This thesis is a geographic and temporal case study of the carpentry and joinery trades present in the Delaware River Valley region from the period of Anglo-European settlements in the 1660s to about 1740. This examination of the region’s craft traditions emphasizes what its colonies share: patterns of settlement, ethnicity, kinship, religion, material richness, and commercial interdependence.

This study closely examined the construction of and materials used in case furniture produced in New Jersey or Pennsylvania individually, or in the larger Delaware River Valley region as a whole, revealing the persistence of Anglo-European craft traditions in colonial America, and a relative stasis in internal casework construction as a result of the apprenticeship system.
The similarity of construction and material found in these objects indicates the shared cultural expectations of craftsmen and their patrons, illustrative of the craft tradition of the Delaware Valley Region, not of any one colony.  It also speaks to the significant role of New Jersey's timber in intercolonial commerce. This further suggests that extant furniture defined as made within Philadelphia or Pennsylvania without any further details of maker and place of manufacture could have been produced anywhere in the Delaware River Valley, including New Jersey, Chester County, and the Lower Counties (Delaware). In addition to case studies examining furniture of this region, this study identifies over two hundred and fifty members of New Jersey’s woodworking trades who utilized the colony's material wealth and interpersonal resources for individual success.

This the second edition of a book that contains a indexed descendancy of Ludwig Riehl and Veronica Fisher down to their fourth great-grandchildren, with separate chapters for each of their four children who had progeny. It also contains a history of Ludwig, Veronica, and their descendants, and an explanation of the usage of the name "Riehl."  The second edition contains many corrections and additions. Please contact me if you have other corrections that need to be made to the book.

Periods and typologies are artificial boxes that archaeologists use to classify cultures and the artifacts that they used. Consequently, there is a need to re-evaluate old paradigms as new data become available, particularly when these paradigms are internally inconsistent. This thesis focuses on the Transitional period in western Pennsylvania and analyzes both the semantic division of cultural periods between 2900-900 BC and the types of projectile points used to define this period. Current descriptions of the Transitional period adequately describe eastern Pennsylvania but fail to adequately describe the material culture and point typologies of western Pennsylvania. Data from existing excavations and site reports are synthesized to compile a database of radiocarbon dates associated with diagnostic projectile points in order to establish an accurate seriation of point types. These data are visually represented as series of maps to show spatial, typological, and chronological variation. The thesis’ ultimate purpose is to create a consistent projectile point chronology that can be used as a framework to accurately date sites within this region on the basis of typology.

This article explores the ways in which Philadelphia banker Nicholas Biddle financed the political economy of cotton and slavery. Most historians have focused on Biddle's political interactions with President Andrew Jackson during the Bank War, either ignoring or minimizing the banker's southern investments in the late 1830s. By examining the complexities of the antebellum era credit system, we can see how Biddle and his business partners provided financing for, functioned within, and extracted profits from a region that depended to a significant extent on the commodification of land, cotton, and slaves. Biddle invested in the South because he saw the expansion of the Cotton Kingdom in lands once occupied by Native Americans and that would soon be worked by enslaved African Americans as consistent with his own nationalistic assumptions and as crucial to the recovery from the Panic of 1837, the bank's profits, and the restoration of American credit abroad.

This dissertation examines the process of immigration, community, and ethnic identity formation of Italians. It documents the meaning people attach to ethnic identity, how it evolves over time, and analyzes the flow between public and private domains by weaving gender throughout the discussion. Whereas the majority of ethnicity studies in the United States have focused on urban areas, this study looks at an ethnic population in a mid-size industrial town situated in a rural agricultural region. Adaptation was place specific. The new immigrants changed the social and political isolation of Reading and the city and region influenced the texture of the Italian community that evolved. Personal narratives and material culture data provide insight into understanding "inside" systems of knowledge and belief, in other words, how people construct their own history. This emic or folk view as well as symbols (both visual and verbal) encoded in the interrelated spheres of public and private life, provide key indications of intergroup and intragroup relations and cultural boundary creation, maintenance, and change over time. Differences (using the structural categories of gender, class, age, and generation) are revealed in ethnic experience by studying individuals in terms of their life histories and placing those histories in a broader framework of regional, national, and global economic-historical change. This approach reinforces the idea that ethnicity is an ideological strategy that changes over time and involves individual choice. The discussion moves from village life in Italy to settlement and family life in Reading, to the larger spheres of neighborhood and work, to organizational and institutional networks, and finally to the sphere of pageantry and ceremony. By transforming their self-identity as immigrants to Italian Americans, the generations created a unique past in Berks County. Italians created and shaped a collective history distinct from the mainstream cultural consensus through public ritual events--events of pageantry, ceremony and celebration. Over time, a popular ethnic memory emerged achieved through symbolic language, imagery, and enactment with which the diverse Italian population could identify.

Leading members of the Lithuanian Musar movement loved Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanów’s method of character refinement. But did they know where it came from?

Benjamin Franklin worked hard to refine his character, but it took a Polish rabbi to turn the founding father’s method into a book. This volume became one of the texts used by the Lithuanian Musar movement – but its origins have been consistently overlooked.

A publicação no final de 2015 da tradução para o português da biografia
de Benjamin Franklin pela Companhia das Letras, de Walter Isaacson, é uma curiosa expressão do atual estado da arte do mercado cultural de nosso tempo. Como numa síntese alegórica, se reúnem para materializar-se em um formato acabado de uma grande peça publicitária para ser comercializada nas prateleiras de grandes livrarias nacionais bem como em suas diversas plataformas virtuais em suas versões eletrônicas, o mainstream da produção ideológica que vigora
em nosso tempo – e que resiste e se transforma sem perder o controle do manche.

Coal mining generated enormous quantities of waste, including small pieces of unburnt coal and other non-economic materials. Waste from mines entered the Susquehanna River, mixed with naturally occurring sediments, and formed deposits of coal silt along the banks and mid-channel islands of the river. To understand the effect of coal silt on the river, I use processual archaeology to characterize and examine the Anthropocene – an informal geologic era defined by human induced changes to Earth’s ecosystems. What led to unburnt coal in the Susquehanna River? When did unburnt coal enter the Susquehanna River? I used data collected during a ten-week internship to answer these questions and define the occurrence and chronology of deposits of coal silt along the river. Archaeologists generally agree deposits of coal silt date to the late nineteenth century, but fine-tuning the date of deposition is not easy (Stinchcomb et al. 2013). To help solve the problem, I investigated two archaeological sites along the river – Fort Halifax and Calver Island. This thesis highlights reasons why archaeologists should take deposits of coal silt seriously. Considering the importance of energy to human economic and social life and the urgency of addressing contemporary energy problems, this thesis draws on evidence from the stratigraphic record to incorporate anthropological and archaeological
perspectives for studying the past, present, and future of energy development and industrialization.

This essay reads John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy in the generic context of the bildungsroman. Because the Rabbit series rests on the premise of showing a hero after the conclusion of his formal education, I argue that the four novels can be seen as a post-bildungsroman. This notion reconciles the tetralogy’s three-decade-spanning frame – which invites readings focused on character development (Bildung) – with Updike’s narrative decision to leave out the most formative period in Rabbit’s life: his adolescence. I discuss the large-looming absence of the high school, which Updike introduces as a kind of social laboratory or rehearsal space. This function is traceable in various of Updike’s unpublished juvenilia as well as the mythological high-school novel The Centaur. The second section of this essay discusses the strained relationship between Rabbit and his son Nelson, focusing on the bildungsroman topos of generational fears of epigonism. Finally, I turn to Updike’s often-debated use of an anti-intellectual character, lower than himself in social class and education, as a recording device for the historical era. This direction-based concept of writing ‘down to’ a protagonist is put into dialogue with Rabbit Angstrom’s pervasive ‘down-from’ trajectory, which stands in direct opposition with more conventional American bildungsromane.

[The John Updike Review 8.2 (2021): 49–76]

Thank you to Amanda Charland for creation of this pdf, and Roy Edwards, Kara Kozikowski, Jennifer Novotny, M.R. Wood, Elizabeth Pierce, Ryan K. McNutt, Terence Christian, Marjory Horne, Adrian Maldonado, and Christy McNutt for their help and advice with images, text, and formatting.

[NEW BLOG HERE! https://lovearchaeology.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/hugh-mercer/]

Described by the Massachusetts Historical Society as an 'interesting case study on historiography in the internet age', I try to move beyond the Wikipedia entry for Hugh Mercer using only online sources and providing the archaeological context for his life and times.

Hugh Mercer was a medical doctor who served as a battlefield surgeon's assistant for the forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden (1746) before fleeing to western Pennsylvania. Practicing as a frontier doctor, Mercer joined with the British militias to fight in the French and Indian War, which was the name given to the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War, a global conflict fought chiefly between Britain and France. It was during this period that Mercer became friends with fellow militia officer, George Washington.

After the ending of the war, Mercer followed Washington to Virginia, setting up a medical practice in Fredericksburg. When conflict with Britain broke out in 1775, Mercer fought with the American Patriots, becoming a Brigadier General and being involved in several major battles and campaigns alongside Washington. Leading one of the Patriots' wings at the Battle of Princeton, Mercer was cut down by the British, dying nine days later despite the best efforts of Dr. Benjamin Rush.

http://lovearchmag.tumblr.com/post/109687295380/what-the-internet-taught-me-about-hughmercer

This article fills some of the gaps in what is understood about production of M8A1 scabbards at the Pennsylvania Working Home for the Blind (Working Home). While
not intended to be a treatise on the Working Home, the article begins with some history to place M8A1 scabbard production in context with events influencing the Working Home’s operation. The article incorporates information from government contract reports; a history on the Pennsylvania Working Home for Blind Men compiled in 1990 by George H. Kettell, PhD; and, a 1967 Management and Operating Study on the Working Home by Arthur C. Kaufmann & Associates, Inc. (Kaufmann Report).

During a Phase I survey for a proposed industrial park, archaeologists discovered the buried remains of a nineteenth-century industrial structure, the Valentine Iron Ore Washing Plant. Subsequent Phase II and III investigations revealed not only the layout of the facility, but also the important role that Abraham S. Valentine and associates played in rejuvenating the nineteenth-century limonite iron industry of the United States. This article describes the insights that the archaeological
work has contributed to understanding the late nineteenth-century American iron industry.

Richard P. Roberts was the colonel of the Pennsylvania 140th regiment
from its organization in September 1862 until his death at Gettysburg in July
1863. During this time period, Captain David Acheson of Company C fostered a
“growing dislike” for the colonel that led him to portray the colonel negatively in
his writings. Unfortunately for the colonel’s reputation, Acheson’s letters have
been widely published, leading at least one historian to accept Acheson’s poor
opinion of the colonel as fact. However, other primary sources exist which
collectively demonstrate a positive regimental opinion of the colonel and further
suggest that Acheson’s criticisms of the colonel were largely unwarranted and
were a product of his own biases instead of an honest appraisal of the colonel’s
performance. In fact, Colonel Roberts performed his duties admirably and is
worthy of a commendation that, until now, the Acheson letters have largely
denied him.

Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) was the important link between the mysticism of Paracelsus and later mystics Jakob Böhme, Robert Fludd, the Pennsylvania theosophers Johannes Kelpius, Conrad Beissel and Georg Rapp, among others. It was later to be rediscovered by the Alchemists and Rosicrucian mystics of the Gold-und Rozenkreutz Order in Germany. The heritage descending from Weigel is an important source in the history of alchemy and was formative in the creation of what came to be known as Spiritual Alchemy. This edition represents the first English translation of this early spiritual alchemy classic. Translated by Russell Yoder and edited by Steve Feite. (70pp. illus. Masthof Press, 2018.)

The Upper Allegheny River of northwestern Pennsylvania was an important fisheries resource for the Allegany Seneca and Delaware tribes resident in the region. Fish were often harvested by spearing them while wading in shallow water, from canoes, or by large coordinated fish drives. Fish drives were typically done in river eddies during low summer flows and often involved whole villages. Drives were highly efficient and harvested large quantities of fish, much of which was dried or smoked for later use. Early Euro-American observers noted that many species of fish were taken with drives including warm-water species common in today’s river: bass, perch, pike and suckers. However, species unknown in today’s Upper Allegheny and rare in Pennsylvania were also taken, notably buffalofish (Ictiobus spp.) some of which were “so large that one man could not handle them”. In this talk, I’ll provide an overview of Native American fish drives of the Upper Allegheny River and discuss the scientific and human dimensions value of using early observational data in reconstructing past fisheries.

Over the course of his lifetime Frederick Douglass is known to have made three visits to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He nearly lost his life on one of those visits and was denied access to a hotel dining room on another visit. This paper details all three visits.

An understanding existed in families that women would take over certain duties when men could not perform the tasks, because of either their duties in government or business.  Women helped keep the shops and farms, which their husbands typically managed.  The women in colonial Pennsylvania were not much different from their counterparts in other colonies in how and when they found opportunities that expanded their limited legal sphere of influence, which included entering contracts for property, participation in commerce, and comprehensive management of their households.

Colonial women typically accepted their place in society without rancor.  Society still expected women to live up to certain expectations regardless of their economic level.  Almost every woman accepted her subservient position in the family and community.  Her religious beliefs defined her through her daily responsibilities as she maintained a household and bore children, all while she deferred to her husband in all things. 

A woman could and did work in the male sphere while married, but she did so in her husband’s name unless and until she petitioned the court for the right to do otherwise.  Despite society’s convention to marry, some women did not.  They took advantage of the freedom the law allowed them in matters of business.  Widows in particular no longer had a husband in their life to help with certain tasks commonly associated with men.  The widows who chose not to remarry supported themselves and their children with businesses commonly managed in their homes.

abstract: Norvelt is a New Deal subsistence homestead community in western Pennsylvania established to provide secure and comfortable homes, access to healthy food, and an affirming cooperative community to unemployed miners and their families. It succeeded in these aims, but its virtual exclusion of African American residents affirmed the racial prejudice and discrimination that permeated much of the New Deal. Creating an integrated community would have met with great resistance from white residents, who voted to exclude African American applicants, and from powerful regional voices already suspicious of what they considered to be a socialist experiment. Accommodating racial prejudice perpetuated injustices that denied African Americans access to opportunities avail- able to whites.