Making History Blog
Local Families, Global Mysteries: Tangled Family Ties, Linking Pittsburgh & Manchuria
Since September 2016, I have been working as the Pitt Partner intern in the Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives at the Detre Library & Archives. As an intern,…
The Real Johnny Appleseed
Through centuries of American storytelling, the name Johnny Appleseed has become synonymous with the fortitude and bravery attributed to early American pioneers. While there are many conflicting versions of…
Cannonballs Unearthed at the Allegheny Arsenal
A backhoe operator excavating the site of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Arsenal for the construction of new apartments recently discovered hundreds of Civil War-era cannonballs. The contractor alerted the bomb squad…
Book Reviews: Spring 2017
Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 By Andrew E. Masich University of Oklahoma Press, 2017 39 B&W illustrations, 2 maps, 464 pp. Hardcover, $34.95 | Purchase Still the…
Investigating the Ray Sprigle Papers and Photographs
A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of Western Pennsylvania History. An image Ray Sprigle, most likely on his farm in Moon Township, with…
Chief Glenna Wallace: First Female Chief of the Eastern Shawnee
Glenna Wallace, chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, talks about the history of the ceremonial peace pipe tomahawk that belonged to the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. When Wallace…
Redd Up Pittsburgh!
Dishing some dirt on keeping Western Pennsylvanians clean “Brush, Broom, and Hammer.” Coming close on the heels of World War II, this posed photo of three of Pa Pitt’s…
Pittsburgh: The City of Bridges
Pittsburgh’s “Three Sister” Bridges, the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Street Bridges. The “Three Sister” bridges were part of a massive series of bridge-building campaigns begun in 1924 by the…
Advocacy on Record: The Collection of the ACC-PARC
A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2016 issue of Western Pennsylvania History. In powerful and profound ways, the archival records of human rights advocates stand…
Rodman’s Big Gun
Little Mountain Howitzer cannon next to the 20-inch Rodman gun as a featured attraction at the 1879 Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, Pa. The largest cannon of the Civil…