One doesn’t think of Edgar Allan Poe as a Pennsylvanian, but the Boston, Massachusetts native did live in Philadelphia from 1838-1844.
It was a time in which some observ...
Stephen Collins Foster was born on the Fourth of July 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — in what’s now the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pit...
Army Sgt. John Preston Donaldson of Butler, a Commissary Sergeant during the Civil War, was at the Village of Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, when Confederate Ge...
The philanthropic impact of Andrew Carnegie continues to this very day.
To cite just one example, the Carnegie Free Library of Braddock, the first of its kind, was recen...
Seventy-years after her death, Philadelphia’s “Saint Kate” still marvels.
Born Catherine Marie Drexel (it’s uncertain when the spelling of her first name changed) on Nov....
Elizabeth Cochran was the daughter of prominent Armstrong County businessman and community leader Michael Cochran and the widowed, former Mary Jane Kennedy. Born on May 5...
George Westinghouse was a natural inventor and tinkerer whose work literally helped illuminate the world at the end of the 19th century.
From his youth working for his fa...
America has always loved its cowboys.
Even before the frontier was declared closed in the late 19th century, people voraciously consumed dime novels that told fictional s...
Marian Anderson’s life was filled with moments where she was told “no” because of her race — but that didn’t stop her.
Anderson was a Philadelphia native, born in the cit...
