Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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Newly Available and Processed Collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Get PDFIncludes papers, letters and/or diaries from:Charles Jared Ingersoll Jay Cooke Elizabeth Sandwich DrinkerAndrew Atkinson HumphreysPisano and Siciliano FamiliesWister and Butler FamiliesStephen H. NoyesJoseph Boggs BealsHistorical Society of Pennsylvania Civil War PapersHistorical Society of Pennsylvania Collection of Academy of Nusic Programs, Playbills and Scrapbooks, 1857-197
Philadelphia Stories: America\u27s Literature of Race and Freedom. By Samuel Otter.
Get PDFThe central theme of Samuel Otter\u27s Philadelphia Stories is the idea that the one-time capital city of the United States was conceptualized from the outset as a social laboratory, the site of a large-scale social experiment. The idea of an experiment, which of course suffused much of the way early Americans thought about their new government and evolving social structure, drives an analysis that repeatedly emphasizes the self-consciousness that informed Philadelphians\u27 willingness to try new approaches to old problems, or, in some cases, their appetite to tackle the new problems that had been created and were emerging out of the new circumstances of race and democracy in the early United States. Although literary history forms the central axis of Otter\u27s analysis, he weaves together a diverse range of materials, including novels, social theory, politics, art and architecture, and social history to offer a fascinating account of the cultural, social, and intellectual history of Philadelphia from the American Revolution through the Civil War
The Ordeal of Thomas Barton: Anglican Missionary in the PennsylvaniaBackcountry, 1755–1780.By JAMESP.MYERSJR.
Get PDFJames P.Myers Jr.has written an engrossing account integrating biography and exegesis in The Ordeal of Thomas Barton. That said, Myers flirts with hagiography as he argues for a reform of Barton\u27s image from that of a possibly unprincipled young man, naive plagiarist, and propagandist to that of a well-respected minister and ultimately victim—a martyr, as Myers puts it,to the Revolution. Another key component of Myers\u27s argument is Barton\u27s significanceas an agent of church and empire on the frontier. Barton was essentially "a pro-prietary placeman"(37), and the crises of the 1750s to 1770s put such middle-men in extremely uncomfortable, even ethically untenable, positions. As such an establishment agent, Barton appears at times to have been simply a tool. Myers concludes, for instance, that Barton, despite his sympathetic portrayals of Native Americans and stated desire for missionary work among them, may have writtena pro–Paxton Boys screed because pushed to do so by proprietary and Church of England interests. Barton compromised his principals at that time, but according to Myers he redeemed himself in his own eyes—and those of his chronicler—by refusing to compromise his principles during the Revolution
Jay Cooke\u27s Memoir and Wartime Finance
No full textBetter known to American history as the gambling robber baron whose failed Northern Pacific Railroad triggered the Panic of 1873, Jay C. Cooke (1821–1905) was the father of modern war finance and a brilliant salesman of the fiscal obligations of citizenship. The son of an Ohio congressman, Cooke moved to Philadelphia in 1839, whetted his appetite for bond sales during the Mexican War, and "on the 1st day of January 1861 in one of the darkest hours of our country" established Jay Cooke & Co. in the heart of Philadelphia\u27s Third Street financial district. Cooke reflected on his wartime experiences a generation later in an unpublished memoir. Composed in the 1890s with the aid of his granddaughter and now on deposit at the Baker Library Historical Collections of the Harvard Business School, Cooke\u27s memoir offers invaluable insights into the history of Civil War Pennsylvania
Dr. Benjamin Rohrer\u27s Artifact Collection
No full textThe National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland, houses numerous letters, maps, medical supplies, and other artifacts pertaining to medical developments during the Civil War. Among these collections are the personal possessions of Dr. Benjamin Rohrer, a surgeon with the Tenth Pennsylvania Reserves. Dr. Rohrer\u27s artifacts, donated by Dr. Gordon Dammann, include his leather surgeon\u27s shoulder bag, a carte de visite, saddle bags, a spur, a Bowie knife, and a collection of twenty-seven letters and one map of Gettysburg showing the position of hospitals after the battle there. Rohrer\u27s Civil War story begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he left in August 1861 to fight for a "righteous cause," as mentioned in a letter to his brother dated August 18, and ends in the furthest reaches of Florida four long years later. Dr. Rohrer\u27s experience encompasses almost every phase of the medical system, ranging from time as a regimental surgeon to charge of a general hospital. He treated the wounded soldiers of the Tenth Pennsylvania Reserves at battles such as Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. Later he was transferred to Germantown, Pennsylvania, to operate the general hospital there. The final letter in the collection, dated May 9, 1865, reassigned Dr. Rohrer to Key West, Florida
GODBEER, The Overflowing of Friendship: Love between Men and the Creation of the American Republic
No full textMILANO, Remembering Kensington and Fishtown: Philadelphia\u27s Riverward Neighborhoods; The History of the Kensington Soup Society; and The History of Penn Treaty Park
No full textPRESTON, The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667–1783
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