An etching published in 1858 depicted the Robert Crozier house and William Penn’s original brewhouse at Pennsbury Manor. Pennsbury Manor Virtually from its founding, settlers and visitors to the Philadelphia area perceived possibilities for a thriving brewing industry there. Thomas Budd, in 1685, wrote, “I do not question but that we might make good strong sound Beer, Ale and Rum, that would keep well to Barbadoes . . . I question not but if it be well brewed in a seasonable time of the Year, and put up in good Casks, but it will keep good to be Transported from Delaware River to those Islan ..read more

Sherlock Holmes pulls one over on the residents of Hope Canyon in this scene from The Double-Barrelled Detective Story. The characters, from left, are Wells Fargo Ferguson (Paul Benedict), Judge Parker (Ray Reinhardt), Shadbelly Higgins (Louis Waldon), Sherlock Holmes (Jerome Raphael), Sheriff Fairfax (Robert Winston), Byrne Piven (Bill Stone), and H.S. Stevens (Severn Darden). Director Adolfas Mekas is on the far right. Karl Bissinger Papers, University of Delaware Library Nestled among the hills of Somerset County, the one-street village of Baker-Whiteley epitomizes the many small-scale co ..read more

James Forten, circa 1818. It is unknown who painted this watercolor profile portrait of Forten, but some historians speculate that it may have been created by African American painter Robert Douglass Jr., who was a friend of the Forten family in Philadelphia. Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania James Forten “is not the most well-known of Revolutionary War–era patriots,” Stephan Salisbury observed in The Philadelphia Inquirer of November 14, 2021. The qualification enabled Salisbury to emphasize the importance of Forten’s contribution to the construction of the United States ..read more

For 50 years, Pennsylvania Heritage has played a significant role in bringing the history of the Keystone State to a public audience. Like its parent agency, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC), the magazine operates with the vision that “Pennsylvanians see history as relevant to their lives.” *** I was only 12 when I first held an issue of Pennsylvania Heritage in my hands. It was a special Commemorative Bicentennial Edition, published in June 1976. I knew that significant moments of the American Revolution took place in Pennsylvania — from the signing of the Declaratio ..read more

Smythe Park at Mansfield State Normal School in daylight in the era of the first “illuminated” night game. Mansfield University Archives   On a pleasant autumn evening in 1892, Mansfield Normal School and Wyoming Seminary ushered football out of the dark ages by playing the greatest game never seen. The schools clashed on September 28 in what is acknowledged today as football’s first night game, although the primitive illumination scarcely pierced the darkness. Not only did the thousands of fans at Mansfield’s Smythe Park strain to follow the action on the dimly lit field, but the playe ..read more

Colored postcards, such as this one from the mid-1890s, captured the green serpentine stone facing the main building and the added north and south wings. Collection of Anne E. Krulikowski   The West Chester University campus originated in 1871 as one building situated on 10 acres. This multipurpose building, the sole campus structure for 20 years, housed all the functions of the normal school: boys’ and girls’ dormitories, faculty quarters and home for the principal’s family, classrooms, study rooms, administrative offices, laboratories, library, dining room, infirmary, kitchens, laundr ..read more

Harold Carmichael by sports artist Dick Perez. Courtesy of Dick Perez On November 4, 1979, the Philadelphia Eagles faced the Cleveland Browns before a packed house of 69,000 die-hard fans at Veterans Stadium. Although both teams boasted 6–3 win–loss records and were vying for their seventh victory of the season, everyone’s mind was on Harold Carmichael’s streak of consecutive games with at least one pass reception. Carmichael, the Birds’ gangly wide receiver, did not even know that he had a streak until two years earlier, when a local television sportscaster told him that he was closing in o ..read more

The smog, trapped by a temperature inversion, veils a street in downtown Donora. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   They couldn’t breathe. During five days in autumn of 1948, the industrial town of Donora, Pennsylvania, became an environmental and public health nightmare when what the national media called a “killer smog” took the lives of nearly two dozen people who died struggling to breathe. “We have had the worst fog in the last four days in [the] history of Donora. About 18 persons have died from as[th]ma from the fog and acid fumes from [the] Zinc Works,” resident and coal miner Walter Gil ..read more

The natural spring-fed Eagles Mere Lake is the center of the Allegheny Mountain cottage resort founded in the late 19th century. This circa 1913 postcard view shows the south side of the lake. Pennsylvania State Archives, MG-213 For more than a century and a half, Pennsylvania wayfarers have left their homes after Memorial Day to vacation at their summer cottages. Whether by horse, train or automobile, the trip to the summer cottage has been an established part of the season for urban, rural and suburban families. Escaping the heat for the bucolic mountains or sunny beach was, of course, a p ..read more

A $17 million facelift gave the 1929 Lancaster station and its entrance driveway a fresh look in 2013. Photo, Dan Cupper   For 30 years, from the 1890s to the 1920s, the citizens of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, fought bitterly over the need for a new train station and where to locate it. The New York–Chicago main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) ran in a more or less direct line from Philadelphia to Harrisburg — except for a looping 2½-mile-long diversion through downtown Lancaster that the townspeople had demanded in the 1830s when the state built its Philadelphia & Columbia Rai ..read more