Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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The Mason-Dixon Survey at 250 Years: Recent Investigations
No full textThe year 2013 marked the 250th anniversary of the 1763 start to the iconic land survey by Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason. This survey culminated in the border along the southern edge of Pennsylvania, now known as the Mason-Dixon Line. There has been little to report in the way of new information about the Mason-Dixon Survey—that is, until recently, when the exact location of the frst survey point was re-established. Research involving the original 1700s property deeds, insurance surveys, journal entries by Charles Mason, and City of Philadelphia Commissioners Reports, along with modern re-surveying of the area by professional surveyors, mathematical calculations by these same surveyors, and global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, combined to allow the recovery of the frst survey point calculated by Mason and Dixon. It was from this point that they proceeded to establish the Mason-Dixon Survey
Newly Available and Processed Collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
No full textWhat follows are descriptions of some of the collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that have either been acquired within the past year or more fully processed and therefore made more available and accessible to researchers. Full f nding aids and catalog records for these processed collections, and many others, can be found online at http://hsp.org/collections/catalogs-research-tools/finding-aids and http://discover.hsp.org
The Philadelphia Country House: Architecture and Landscape in Colonial America
No full textThis is a book review for the April 2016 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Sisterly Love: Women of Note in Pennsylvania History
No full textThis is a book review for the April 2016 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
“Same Struggle, Same Fight”: Yellow Seeds and the Asian American Movement in Philadelphia’s Chinatown
No full textYellow Seeds was a bilingual Chinese-English community newspaper published intermittently from 1972–77 by a radical student group of the same name based in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Several extant copies are held in the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, by the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, and by former members. Additionally, digitized issues from 1972–75 are available online.1 The newspaper, like the larger Asian American movement of which it was a part, provides a lens into not only the specifi c politics of “Save Chinatown” activism in Philadelphia in the 1970s but also the multivalent nature of Asian American identity and activism during this period, the transnational and pan-Asian consciousness of activists, and the generational concerns of young people of color working in culturally conscious ways against US racism and imperialism
Teaching the Religious History of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
Full text linkUntil 2006, when faculty in the Departments of History and Religion at Temple University designed the course Religion in Philadelphia, no university in Pennsylvania offered a course specifically on the religious history of the state. The following essay outlines the rationale for a course on religion in Philadelphia, the issues involved with teaching such a course, available texts and resources, and possible field trips and assignments. It also describes how the course has been adapted for online instruction and suggests how part(s) of it might be used in a more general course on the history of Pennsylvania or American religious history
An Authentic Archival Experience for the College Classroom in the Digital Age
Full text linkOne of the most treasured experiences of historians is archival research, and yet university professors frequently struggle with viable ways to include archival research in their lecture courses. Further, historians, who are generally focused on the content of documents, often fail to provide students with a sense of the process by which historical documents and artifacts are gathered, preserved, and made available. This essay describes a partnership among faculty at the University of Scranton, the Lackawanna Historical Society, Weinberg Memorial Library, Scranton Public Library, and Everhart Museum to create an archival-based digital project for a course on the Civil War and Reconstruction. The students from the course uncovered uncataloged Civil War–era documents and artifacts, preserved, digitized, and transcribed them, and organized them into an online collection. The project acquainted students with local, firsthand historical accounts; introduced then to the complexity of recreating history from archival sources; exposed them to careers in archives, museum studies, and librarianship; and forged a partnership between university students and local institutions
Notes and Documents
Full text linkWhat follows are descriptions of some of the collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that have either been acquiredwithin the past year or more fully processed and therefore are more available and accessible to researchers. Full f nding aids or catalog records for these processed collections, and many others, can be found online at http://hsp.org/collections/catalogs-research-tools/f nding-aids and http://discover.hsp.org/.
William Redwood Account Books, 1749–1814 (bulk 1775–90)
Marriott C. Morris Collection on Cycling, 1839–1937
National Grange Mutual Insurance Company Records,circa 1850–circa 1988
Junior League of Philadelphia Records, 1912–2009
Stiefel Family Papers, circa 1920–2007
Print Club Archives, 1915–93
Frank L. and Edith Cadwallader Howley Papers, circa 1870–circa 1970
Philadelphia Fellowship Commission Phonograph Recordings Collection, circa 1945–53
Joseph Lockard Papers, 1928–88
Tony Reese Papers, circa 1953–2013
Folklife Center of International House Records, circa 1970s–circa 200
Locating Philadelphia’s Water-Powered Past
Full text linkIn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, watercourses were critical to processing and power for manufacturing, and Philadelphia County once had numerous creeks that mill proprietors exploited. A series of scaled surveys undertaken by Philadelphia County offcials when new roads or alterations to existing roads were proposed provides visual documentation of the importance of rivers and creeks to early industry. These records, part of the holdings of the Philadelphia City Archives, begin in the early years of the county. Much of the collection predates detailed, large-scale maps and thus is a unique record of the region’s development as well as a vital adjunct to textual material such as deeds and newspapers. Captured on a number of surveys are the dams, millponds, and raceways that became the power systems of early endeavors in textile and paper production, among other industries. The plans, drawn by district surveyors, also boast a certain degree of artistry; color washes and outlines or generic sketches of houses, stables, barns, inns, bridges, and the occasional church are common features. Striking on some of the plans as well are the topographical details that signal a county once flled with hills and valleys, its varied terrain making even small rills powerful when water descended. Surveyors mapped the land to facilitate the construction of county infrastructure, simultaneously documenting the landscape that such construction helped to obliterate