During the Great Depression in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps was created to provide jobs to young, unemployed, single men. The CCC planted trees, built roads and dams, developed state parks, and fought forest fires. Joining us to talk about African Americans in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Pennsylvania are Paul Fagley, an Environmental Education […]

Join It’s History! on a tour of the historic Brinton 1704 House in Delaware County. Built in 1704 by William Brinton, Jr., the house has 22-inch thick stone walls and was built to resemble English medieval architecture. We’ll see how 18th century Quakers lived as we tour the historically furnished great hall, bedrooms, and basement […]

The USS Becuna was launched in 1944 and conducted five war patrols during World War II. The submarine was credited with sinking 3.5 Japanese merchant ships. The Becuna’s service continued into the Cold War until it’s decommissioning in 1969. Join It’s History! for a tour to learn what life was like aboard a submarine.

As British settlers moved into Pennsylvania’s south central region in the early 1700s, they brought enslaved people with them. As slavery was dying out in the eastern part of the state it would continue to thrive in what is now Cumberland, Adams, Franklin, and York counties. In this episode of The African American Experience, we […]

The PA State Archives is home to more than 250,000,000 documents including Pennsylvania’s original Charter, the 1780 Gradual Abolition Act, Native American treaties, state land records, and railroad industry documents. Join It’s History! to learn more about these historic documents and how archivists select, process, and manage the collection.

In this episode of the African American Experience we look at black life in Erie through the experiences of the Lawrence family. The family arrived in Erie in the mid-1800s and went on to play a prominent role as entrepreneurs, musicians, and teachers in the 20th century. Joining us is Johnny Johnson, a member of […]

This is the first book-length, critical analysis of Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s actions at the Battle of Gettysburg. The author argues that Longstreet’s record has been discredited unfairly, beginning with character assassination by his contemporaries after the war and, persistently, by historians in the decades since. By closely studying the three-day battle, and conducting an […]

Frank Furness (1839-1912) has remained a curiosity to architectural historians and critics, somewhere between an icon and an enigma, whose importance and impact have yet to be properly evaluated or appreciated. To some, his work pushed pattern and proportion to extremes, undermining or forcing together the historic styles he referenced in such eclectic buildings as […]

Idlewild was developed by Pittsburgh’s Mellon family as a picnic grove to boost traffic on the Ligonier Valley Rail Road. When C.C. Macdonald took the helm in 1931, rides, entertainment and other attractions came to Idlewild over the next half century, along with the adjacent Story Book Forest. After joining the Kennywood family of amusement […]

During the early eighteenth century, three phratries or tribes (Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf) of Delaware Indians left their traditional homeland in the Delaware River watershed and moved west to the Allegheny Valley of western Pennsylvania and eventually across the Ohio River into the Muskingum River valley. As newcomers to the colonial American borderlands, these bands […]