Catching Up with October

Please be sure to check the PHMC Events Calendar for information on upcoming programs (in-person and virtual). I've included highlights for the coming week below. The Trailheads Rec Room pages to the right of your screen offer an array of online content generated by Trails of History sites. Also, if you're looking for a Covid vaccine provider, check out Vaccines.gov and enter your zip code.

Please note that staff and volunteers at Commonwealth of PA worksites, including the PA Trails of History, are wearing masks while indoors. Visitors are encouraged, though not required, to do so as well.

Join us on Oct. 26 (details below) to learn about the Roberts Torpedo (like the one used on this oil well), chainsaws, boarding axes, train couplers, machine guns, and sawmills (photo courtesy Drake Well Museum)

Trailheads HQ has been on a little break this week. Please be sure to check ahead to make sure there's been no change of plans, especially for this weekend's events (I'll catch up in the coming week). Thank you!

Upcoming Events (virtual and in-person)

Today, October 22

• Learn at Lunchtime (virtual): tune in for a variety of perspectives on special exhibits, programs, and initiatives, The State Museum of PA, 12:15-12:45 pm (L@L info)
• Haunted Lantern Tours (in-person): your guide will take you through shadowy rooms and halls of the Keith House and relate tales of the past, Graeme Park, 7-10:30 pm, tickets must be purchased in advance, this program also offered on Oct. 29 (Lantern Tour info and Oct. 22 ticket link)

Saturday, October 23

• Trains & Treats (in-person): visit historic locomotives, railroad cars and interactive exhibits and pick up treats along the way, Railroad Museum of PA, 10:30 am-3 pm, geared to kids age 3-12 and included in regular admission (Trains & Treats details)
• Historical Halloween (in-person): trick-or-treating long lantern-lit pathways and other family-friendly activities, Somerset Historical Center, 5-8 pm (Historical Halloween details)
• Spooky Lantern Tours (in-person): guides will take groups on an after-dark tour of the museum grounds with trick-or-treating and other activities, Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, 6:30-8:30 pm (Spooky Lantern Tours details)

Sunday, October 24

• Last Sunday Sewing Circle (in-person): bring sewing projects and hang out in the company of other needle arts enthusisasts, today's event is an exception to the usual last Sunday of the month schedule, Bushy Run Battlefield, 1-4 pm (Sewing Circle details)
• Beer Brewing & Garden Highlights (in-person): explore the recipes and plants that kept Pennsbury's early residents fed, Pennsbury Manor, 1-4 pm, included in regular admission (BB&GH details)

Tuesday, October 26

• PHMC Virtual Collections Showcase (virtual): this month's Halloween-adjacent theme is Most Dangerous Object, hosted by Railroad Museum of PA, 7-8 pm (Showcase info and registration)
• UPDATE: The Harmonist Connection (virtual): as part of an ongoing collaboration among Old Economy Village, Historic Harmony, and New Harmony this program will focus on Harmonist cemeteries and burial practices, 7-8 pm (Harmonist Connection info and registration)

Wednesday, October 27

• Explore! (in-person): learn about the rocks that make up Pennsylvania, The State Museum of PA, 11:30 am-12:30 pm, for kids in grades 3-5 and included in regular admission (Explore! info)

Thursday, October 28

• Curiosity Kids (in-person): discover the Giant Map of Pennsylvania and use your mapping skills during a scavenger hunt, The State Museum of PA, 11:30 am-12:30 pm, for kids in grades K-2 and included in regular admission, space is limited so sign up at the Ground Floor Information Desk when you arrive (Curiosity Kids info)

History: It's What We Do

Please be sure to check the PHMC Events Calendar for information on upcoming programs (still mostly virtual). The Trailheads Rec Room pages to the right of your screen have other online offerings that you may find interesting.

Monday, May 31, is Memorial Day. With current operating schedules, most Trails of History sites will be closed on Monday - but most are open this weekend, so please check the schedule of your favorite site.

The Pennsylvania Military Museum will be open from 10 am to 3 pm Friday through Monday - you can learn more about Pennsylvanians' military service while honoring those who did not return home from war. The monuments and memorials on the grounds are always a stark reminder of what it means to send troops into the fight.

Pennsbury Manor will be open for grounds-only visits on Memorial Day.

History Behind the Scenes

Yesterday, May 27, marked the 60th anniversary of Ephrata Cloister as a state property. As curator Kerry Mohn explains in the Facebook post below, "[I]n a brief ceremony in the Governor’s private office in the State Capitol, the deed for the grounds and buildings of the Ephrata Cloister was handed to Governor Arthur H. James, who in turn handed to the “heirs” of the Ephrata German Seventh Day Baptist Church a check for $15,000.00. The purchase also included artifacts."


Cornwall Iron Furnace recently shared an image of a map that has been a great tool for learning about the furnace complex and its environs. Reading this map and comparing to what's left to us today helps to document change over time. The community of iron furnace sites is a big one - this past weekend Cornwall staff participated in the 2021 Virtual Maryland Iron Festival, organized by Catoctin Furnace Historical Society (you can check it out on YouTube).


As you can see in this post from Old Economy Village, collections care involves many tasks, such as cleaning and inventory. Staff always try to be efficient by taking care of as many tasks as possible each time they touch an artifact. The work never ends.

Pulitzer Prize Winner to Speak at Anthracite Heritage Museum

Please check out the November program listings to see what else is happening on the Trails of History this weekend.

Tomorrow afternoon, Nov. 14, from 3:15 to 4:45, composer Julia Wolfe will talk about her Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio, Anthracite Fields, at the Anthracite Heritage Museum (AHM) in Scranton. As noted in an article in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Wolfe conducted some of her research at the museum, including interviewing AHM docent Barbara Powell about her experiences growing up in the hard coal region. Wolfe told Times Leader reporter Mary Therese Biebel that her conversations with Powell provided the inspiration for the "Flowers" portion of the oratorio, shedding light on ways that mining families added beauty to their daily lives.

Anthracite Fields, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music, was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia through Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, made possible by generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. Additional support was made possible through the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Alan Harler New Ventures Fund, The Presser Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Bang on a Can All Stars (photo provided by Wyoming Seminary)

Bang on a Can All Stars and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, conducted by Julian Wachner, will perform Anthracite Fields tomorrow night, 7:30 pm, at Wyoming Seminary's Kirby Center for the Creative Arts, Kingston (Wolfe will give a pre-concert talk at 6:30). Tickets are $10 online or at the door, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Anthracite Heritage Museum.

To learn more about Anthracite Fields and composer Julia Wolfe, check out this interview on NPR's "All Things Considered," visit Bang on a Can's website, or watch this brief clip:



In Other News...

On a related note, the State Museum's "Pennsylvania Icons" exhibit has opened. Among the objects are items carried by Marilyn McCusker, a roof bolter helper who became the first woman killed in a deep-mine accident when the roof of the Rushton Mine (Centre County) collapsed on Oct. 2, 1979. McCusker was a bituminous (soft coal) miner, but her story is similar in many ways to those told in the anthracite region about the dangers of mining.

Although leaf peeping season is pretty much over, there are still plenty of reasons to visit PA's northern tier. A new driving tour designed by the Greater Renovo Area Heritage Park Association features locations and public art related to the history of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the Lumber Heritage Region (the map was supported by LHR and other entities). Of course, one of the stops is the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, whose new exhibit (that I might have mentioned once or twice here in Trailheads) includes a section on the CCC and its legacy in northern PA. What I haven't mentioned (I don't think) is that the Visitor Center at the Lumber Museum will now be open year-round, so if you're in the area, be sure to stop in.

If you're more of an armchair tourist, you might want to see what's happening in Bucks County with new Google Street View Trekker tours that include Washington Crossing Historic Park. It took me a little while to figure out the navigation, but it was interesting once I did. Not a replacement, in my opinion, for being there in person, but a useful tool for anyone wanting to preview a visit.

Treats for History Lovers

As we're right on the cusp of the old month and the new, you'll find the October program listings and the November program listings on the side bar. Don't forget to turn your clocks back by 2 am Sunday, Nov. 1, for the end of Daylight Savings Time. "How quaint," I hear you say, "to have clocks that must be reset manually."

Depending on where you live in Pennsylvania (if you live in Pennsylvania), you may have trick-or-treaters at your door tonight or tomorrow. Or maybe they were on your doorstep last night and you're already elbow deep in the leftover candy (why is it soooo hard to get the quantities right?). This week's post features some items that came across my screen in the past couple of weeks. None of them is directly related to a specific Trails of History site, so I haven't quite known how to share them here. But it occurred to me that they should still be of interest to Trailheads readers, most of whom I assume to be, like me, history geeks true aficionados of high-quality historical goods. So here are a few calorie-free treats to start your weekend.

I have a handful of Facebook friends who are heavily into the textile arts (knitting and quilting, in particular), so I've seen several references to London's Victoria & Albert Museum and a collection of 1940s knitting patterns they recently posted on their website. With PHMC plans beginning to form for 100th-anniversary and 75th-anniversary commemorations of U.S. entry into WWI and WWII, it made me wonder if anyone out there knows of similar patterns produced for American knitters (if you do, please leave a note in the comments). The British versions include the usual mix of sweaters and hats, but there are also specialized pieces adapted for men and women in uniform.

Knitted balaclava, WWII-era

This also put me in mind of an unfinished pair of WWII-era hand-knit socks in the collection of the PA Military Museum. One sock was completed and the second was in process when the war ended, so the knitter, Ruth Davis, simply put them aside. I have always found them to be a powerful symbol of "the homefront," as well as a sense of a defined end to the war effort that has not been part of my experience in the late 20th or early 21st century. You can see a great photo of the socks on display at the PMM last Memorial Day weekend, posted by blogger "Domer in DC" (to save some of you having to look it up, a "domer" is someone who went to the Univ. of Notre Dame).

On a related note, Yale University has recently organized and made available a collection of 170,000 photographs created between 1935 and 1945 by the U.S. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI). The photos are housed at the Library of Congress, but Yale's "Photogrammar" project is making them more searchable (and is in process of linking photos by photographer, location, date, etc.). There are quite a few photos for Pennsylvania, including many showing homefront activities (such as scrap drives) and farming in Lancaster County before and during WWII. If you visit the Photogrammer website, I suggest you set aside some time, because you may be there awhile. UPDATE 11/6/15: It has been brought to my attention that there are some glitches with the Pennsylvania images where the county info is incorrect (for example, images from Bryn Mawr, Delaware County, are marked as being from Washington County and some images from Washington County are included with Cumberland County. So just be aware and double check if you're using these for anything other than entertainment. On the other hand, while looking at the Cumberland County photos, I found one from the U.S. Army medical field school in 1943 with a man wearing a knitted scarf, so that connected the dots of this post very nicely.

A recent link in my newsfeed (but I can't remember who shared it), led to the website of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which has been making topographical maps available for free download. They just finished a 2nd cycle of maps in September and most of the 50 states have at least some maps available (Alaska is in process). But this might be just the thing for the map lover in your life (or for yourself, of course).

Finally, there was a news item last week that should warm the heart of just about anyone involved with museums, whether you work at a museum or like to visit them (or both). NPR reported on a study by psychologists at Univ. of Oklahoma and Yale Univ. that compared how children and adults responded to different types of stories. At the risk of greatly oversimplifying the findings (you can read a fuller summary on NPR's website), researchers found that children in the study showed a greater preference for stories that were "real" and "factual" than for those that were "make-believe" or "fantasy," and adults showed some preferences for the latter. They theorized that there is a perceived difference between stories young children hear from older children or adults ("experts") and those they tell themselves or each other (in make-believe or play settings). Stories from experts help them learn new things about their world while stories with themselves or peers are about processing what they already know. I think this reinforces what lots of history museum folks know, which is that even young children respond enthusiastically to learning about the past and experiencing real places. In my unscientific opinion, I think it means we should be aware of the authenticity of programs and interpretation for children as well as adults and maybe look for opportunities to let adults engage in some make-believe. Hmmm, like dressing up for Halloween?