Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Not a member yet
8360 research outputs found
Sort by
Newly Available and Processed Collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Full text linkWhat 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/ fnding-aids and http://discover.hsp.org
Book Review: Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence by Ken Miller
No full textBritish and Hessian prisoners of war were confned in Reading, Lebanon, Lancaster, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Frederick, Maryland; and Winchester, Virginia. Lancaster was the primary detention site, entertaining these “dangerous guests” almost continuously from 1775 through 1783. Ken Miller’s case study of interaction between prisoners and their reluctant Lancaster hosts is set within a thoroughly researched social history of the community and of the changes outside events—from the French and Indian War through the Revolution—brought to Lancaster
Brewing Trouble: Federal, State, and Private Authority in Pennsylvania Prohibition Enforcement under Gifford Pinchot, 1923-27
Full text linkFor many Americans in the 1920s, the adoption of national prohibition marked an experiment in government. To some, the public commitment to outlaw the traffic in alcoholic drinks was an intrusive and futile attempt to interfere with local conditions, customs, and the individual liberty of American citizens. Others considered the growth in public responsibility mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to be a necessary step toward reform and efficiency. At the state level, national prohibition represented a further administrative challenge. State governments were expected to cooperate with federal enforcement agents and to construct state-level enforcement mechanisms that would support and augment national efforts while customizing enforcement to local circumstances. Rarely in the early twentieth century did public policy traverse so dangerously the intersections between local, state, and national sovereignty and collide so dramatically with popular resistance. State-level prohibition enforcement in the 1920s prompted innovations in public-policy administration and outlined the limitations of government authority in the institutional network of modernizing America
An Almost Friend: Papunhank, Quakers, and the Search for Security amid Pennsylvania\u27s Wars, 1754-65
Full text linkPapunhank wanted no part of war. The community he had gathered of Delawares, Nanticokes, and Munsees in the early 1750s hung in the balance as violence raged across major portions of the British and French mainland colonial empires from 1754 to 1765, even seeping to the edges of imperial centers in Quebec, Montreal, and Philadelphia. In Pennsylvania, within Indian country and colonial settlements alike, religious leaders struggled to map out paths for their peoples to avoid destruction. Papunhank’s followers coalesced around his reform message, which combined an emphasis on the wisdom of ancient native ways with a willingness to benefit from the resources other communities possessed. From his town of Wyalusing along the north branch of the Susquehanna River, Papunhank pursued various strategies to maintain the community’s viability amid a decade of war, none more important than searching for key allies who could aid his people politically and spiritually. Naturally, he sought productive relationships with other Indians, especially larger numbers of eastern Delawares and the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. But he also endeavored to make himself valuable to the Pennsylvania government and to explore connections with Euro- American pacifist Christians. Ultimately, Papunhank joined himself and a portion of his community to the Moravians, but not before seriously considering a close attachment to the Friends. During the first half of the 1760s, his band and influential members of the Society of Friends were drawn to one another, each believing the other had something valuable to offer. Crafting an alliance appeared to hold great promise. Yet, in the end, that promise dissipated almost as quickly as it arose, and Papunhank and Philadelphia Quakers went their separate ways
Introduction
Full text linkFor more than a century, fossil fuels have defned the lives of every American, and few states have contributed more to this bounty than Pennsylvania. The commonwealth’s diverse energy resources have been repeatedly connected to markets and converted into power and commodities. Pennsylvania has been a place where innovators attempted pioneering techniques and developed new technologies. Although its energy history has exerted a signif cant toll on Pennsylvania’s environment and citizens, it has also enabled the state to lead the nation into and through the industrial age. Today, as yet another energy frontier emerges—natural gas mined from shale—investigating ways that various energy forms were developed in Pennsylvania is particularly compelling. Thus, a special issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography on Energy in Pennsylvania is timely
Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774–1776
No full textBook Review of Our Lives, "Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence", 1774–1776. By RICHARD R. BEEMAN
The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered
No full textBook Review of "The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered." By LAURA AURICCHIO
Angel Patriots: The Crash of United Flight 93 and the Myth of America
No full textBook Review for "Angel Patriots: The Crash of United Flight 93 and the Myth of America" by Alexander T. Riley (review
Book Review: Over the Alleghenies: Early Canals and Railroads of Pennsylvania by Robert J. Kapsch
No full textIn Over the Alleghenies, Robert Kapsch has produced a detailed narrative history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s internal improvement program between 1826 and 1858. During these years, Pennsylvania struggled to construct, maintain, and operate a technologically sophisticated but f nancially precarious system of canals, railroads, and improved river navigation that reached into all corners of the state. The impetus for the system came from Pennsylvania boosters’ desires to compete with New York’s Erie Canal for the trade of the Great Lakes and Ohio River valley in the 1820s, but the political exigencies of constructing the Main Line between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh required the simultaneous construction of branch lines along the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and other smaller streams. The system was ultimately unsuccessful in fulflling its original mission because it was too technically, fnancially, and politically precarious to beat the Erie at its own game. But, as Kapsch points out, the Pennsylvania system pioneered a number of important technologies, particularly in railroad construction and operation, and many of its branches played locally important economic roles. The history of such a system represents an important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania
Book Review: Making Good Neighbors: Civil Rights, Liberalism, and Integration in Postwar Philadelphia by Abigail Perkiss
No full textIn Making Good Neighbors, Abigail Perkiss presents a detailed history of West Mount Airy, one of the frst neighborhoods in the nation to embrace racially integrated living, and explores the self-conscious efforts of the West Mount Airy Neighbors Association (WMAN) to draw local, national, and international attention to the efforts of its well-educated and historically minded community members