While the exact date of his birth remains a point of debate, John Abeel III was born to a Seneca woman and a Dutch trader, trapper, farmer and scout in Canawaugus on the ...
John Barry, the future “Father of the American Navy” was born on March 25, 1745, in Tacumshane, County Wexford, Kingdom of Ireland. Most sources report his parents as Jam...
Robert Fulton, who would develop the world’s first commercially successful steamboat, was born not far away from the Susquehanna River in Little Britain, Lancaster County...
It may not be known by all, but one man was influential in the founding of the University of Pittsburgh as well as Pittsburgh’s daily newspaper.
It’s been difficult to id...
Walter Lowrie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Dec. 10, 1784, to John and Catherine (Cameron) Lowrie. He was the fourth of the couple’s six children.
For many years, J...
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....
