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Jebediah Hotchkiss, Confederate Mapmaker, and Lykens Valley School Teacher?
Few men were as important to the Army of Northern Virginia as Jebediah Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss had served the army throughout the war, and gain notoriety with “Stonewall” Jackson as a mapmaker. In early...
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Gettysburg Photo Essay: The First Day
Commemorating the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg through photographs. All were taken on the battlefield west of Gettysburg, in the area that saw much of the fighting on July 1, 1863. A storm on...
View ArticleCivil War Cannons: Canister Shot
Let’s end this summer project with a bang. How about 18 rounds of canister shot fired from a Civil War bronze cannon? Canister rounds consist of several dozen iron balls packed into the barrel of a...
View ArticleCan You Run
By The Steeldrivers A great song I discovered this summer about slaves escaping the South to join the Union army. Thousands would eventually do the same, fighting for the freedom of their brothers and...
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Historical Basis for the Geographical Area of the Civil War Research Project
The geographical area encompassing the Civil War Research Project was not arbitrarily chosen. There is a long-standing historical, economic and cultural identity in the parts of three counties that...
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Government Shutdown Affects Tourism and Civil War Research
A quick walking trip around center city Philadelphia at noon on Columbus Day exposed the economic effects of the on-going government shutdown. In Philadelphia, the Mid-Atlantic Branch of the National...
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Over the River and Through the Wood
“Over the River and Through the Wood” was originally written as a 6-verse poem in 1844 by abolitionist and Indian-rights advocate Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880). The poem is about Thanksgiving, not...
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Christmas 1863
The Christmas Day 1863 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer was dominated by a new Christmas story by Charles Dickens, Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings, which consisted of four pages of text (“quadruple...
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Ten Questions to Ask at Historic Sites
Lies Across America -What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong, by James W. Loewen, published in 1999, is the sequel to Lies My Teacher Told Me. In it, Loewen takes up from the historical distortions he...
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Why Are There Ku Klux Klan Uniforms in Gratz?
Displayed on the second floor of the Gratz Historical Society Museum is an offensive exhibit that has been the object of many complaints from visitors and volunteers over the years of its existence....
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Schuylkill Banks – Reclaiming a Civil War-Era Dump
In October 2014, Philadelphia residents and visitors were treated to the opening of a new section of the Schuylkill River Trail – a “boardwalk” in the river running from Walnut Street to South Street...
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The 150th Anniversary of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln – The Lincoln...
The “Lincoln Flag” of the Pike County Historical Society Today marks the 150th Anniversary of one of the great tragedies in American history – the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This post...
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Why Was There a Cross-Burning in Elizabethville?
On Thursday evening, 22 January 2015, a hate crime occurred in Washington Township, just outside the Borough of Elizabethville, at the home of a young African American woman. The woman, who had moved...
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Poems of the Civil War – Memorial Day 2015
For Memorial Day, 2015 — OVER THEIR GRAVES Henry Jerome Stockard (1858-1914) Over their graves rang once the bugle’s call, The searching shrapnel and the crashing ball; The shriek, the shock of...
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The Yeager Family in the Civil War (Part 7)
In 1912, the Hon. James Martin Yeager wrote and published A Brief History of the Yeager, Buffington, Creighton, Jacobs, Lemon, Hoffman and Woodside Families and Their Collateral Kindred of...
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The Tragic Death of Frank Fenstermacher, 1879
Frank Fenstermacher is buried at Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading. According to information available in the Civil War records, he served honorably in the 50th Pennsylvania Infantry, Company C, as a...
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Christmas and the Spirit of Giving
In this Christmas season, don’t forget to reward your local historical society with a tax-deductible gift. That gift can either be monetary, goods, or services. To determine whether a historical...
View ArticleThe Draft of 1861 and the Second Amendment
Further proof that the Second Amendment originally applied specifically to a “well regulated militia” and not individuals collecting personal arsenals of unregulated weapons for their own protection...
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The Illegal Takeover of the Gratz Historical Society
Lois Schoffstall – Nothing can be done unless she approves it. Today’s post presents evidence of the illegal takeover of the Gratz Historical Society by Lois Schoffstall and Charles Schoffstall....
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“Cooking the Books” at the Gratz Historical Society
Charles Schoffstall – Is he “cooking the books?” In the post of 14 March 2016, the By-Laws of the Gratz Historical Society were discussed in relation to Annual Meetings to show how Lois Schoffstall...
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