Author :
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 182 pages
File Size : 33,53 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Country life
ISBN : 9780271042008
Author : Sally Ann McMurry
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 18,97 MB
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 0271021071
Rural Pennsylvania's landscapes are evocative, richly textured testimonies to the lives and skills of generations of builders&—architects as well as local builders and craft workers. Farmhouses and barns, silos and fences, even field patterns attest to how residents over the years have had a sense of place that was not only functional but also comfortable and aesthetically appropriate for the time. From Sugar Camps to Star Barns tells the story of one such place, a landscape that evolved in southwestern Pennsylvania's Somerset County. Sally McMurry traces the rural life and landscape of Somerset County as it evolved from the earliest settlement days. Eighteenth-century residents were a forest people, living on sparsely built farmsteads and making free use of the heavily forested landscape. The makeshift sugar camp typified their hardscrabble lives. In the nineteenth century, the people of this area turned to farming. Prompted by the ''market revolution'' that had come to Somerset County, they pursued a highly varied agriculture, combining a subsistence base with robust production of commodities shipped to distant cities. Their landscape reflected this combination of the local and the cosmopolitan&—a combination that reached its full expression in the distinctive two-story banked farmhouse with double-decker porch, flanked by a substantial Pennsylvania barn. The twentieth century brought a more industrialized agriculture to Somerset County. But the shift to profit-and-loss farming also meant the accentuation of landscape elements specific to market products. The magnificent ''star barns'' of this era overshadowed the houses, and ancillary structures, such as ''peepy houses'' and silos, spoke to the pressures of efficiency and mass production. The subsequent rise of coal mining helped to stimulate this trend, both by supplying local markets and by creating an incentive for farmers to visually distinguish their landscapes from those of the coal-patch towns. Illustrated with over 100 photographs, maps, drawings, and diagrams, From Sugar Camps to Star Barns demonstrates how much we can learn about the economy and culture of a particular place simply by being attentive to the built landscape.
Author : Pamela Riney-Kehrberg
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 441 pages
File Size : 15,51 MB
Release : 2016-04-14
Category : History
ISBN : 1135054983
The Routledge History of Rural America charts the course of rural life in the United States, raising questions about what makes a place rural and how rural places have shaped the history of the nation. Bringing together leading scholars to analyze a wide array of themes in rural history and culture, this text is a state-of-the-art resource for students, scholars, and educators at all levels. This Routledge History provides a regional context for understanding change in rural communities across America and examines a number of areas where the history of rural people has deviated from the American mainstream. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding of the interplay between urban and rural areas, a knowledge of the regional differences within the rural United States, and an awareness of the importance of agriculture and rural life to American society. The book is divided into four main sections: regions of rural America, rural lives in context, change and development, and resources for scholars and teachers. Examining the essays on the regions of rural America, readers can discover what makes New England different from the South, and why the Midwest and Mountain West are quite different places. The chapters on rural lives provide an entrée into the social and cultural history of rural peoples – women, children and men – as well as a description of some of the forces shaping rural communities, such as immigration, race and religious difference. Chapters on change and development examine the forces molding the countryside, such as rural-urban tensions, technological change and increasing globalization. The final section will help scholars and educators integrate rural history into their research, writing, and classrooms. By breaking the field of rural history into so many pieces, this volume adds depth and complexity to the history of the United States, shedding light on an understudied aspect of the American mythology and beliefs about the American dream.
Author : Simon J Bronner
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 2856 pages
File Size : 21,22 MB
Release : 2015-03-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1317471946
American folklife is steeped in world cultures, or invented as new culture, always evolving, yet often practiced as it was created many years or even centuries ago. This fascinating encyclopedia explores the rich and varied cultural traditions of folklife in America - from barn raisings to the Internet, tattoos, and Zydeco - through expressions that include ritual, custom, crafts, architecture, food, clothing, and art. Featuring more than 350 A-Z entries, "Encyclopedia of American Folklife" is wide-ranging and inclusive. Entries cover major cities and urban centers; new and established immigrant groups as well as native Americans; American territories, such as Guam and Samoa; major issues, such as education and intellectual property; and expressions of material culture, such as homes, dress, food, and crafts. This encyclopedia covers notable folklife areas as well as general regional categories. It addresses religious groups (reflecting diversity within groups such as the Amish and the Jews), age groups (both old age and youth gangs), and contemporary folk groups (skateboarders and psychobillies) - placing all of them in the vivid tapestry of folklife in America. In addition, this resource offers useful insights on folklife concepts through entries such as "community and group" and "tradition and culture." The set also features complete indexes in each volume, as well as a bibliography for further research.
Author : Sally McMurry
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 18,76 MB
Release : 2011-03-08
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0812204956
The phrase "Pennsylvania German architecture" likely conjures images of either the "continental" three-room house with its huge hearth and five-plate stoves, or the huge Pennsylvania bank barn with its projecting overshoot. These and other trademarks of Pennsylvania German architecture have prompted great interest among a wide audience, from tourists and genealogists to architectural historians, antiquarians, and folklorists. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have engaged in field measurement and drawing, photographic documentation, and careful observation, resulting in a scholarly conversation about Pennsylvania German building traditions. What cultural patterns were being expressed in these buildings? How did shifting social, technological, and economic forces shape architectural changes? Since those early forays, our understanding has moved well beyond the three-room house and the forebay barn. In Architecture and Landscape of the Pennsylvania Germans, 1720-1920, eight essays by leading scholars and preservation professionals not only describe important architectural sites but also offer original interpretive insights that will help advance understanding of Pennsylvania German culture and history. Pennsylvania Germans' lives are traced through their houses, barns, outbuildings, commercial buildings, churches, and landscapes. The essays bring to bear years of field observation as well as engagement with current scholarly perspectives on issues such as the nature of "ethnicity," the social construction of landscape, and recent historiography about the Pennsylvania Germans. Dozens of original measured drawings, appearing here for the first time in print, document important works of Pennsylvania German architecture, including the iconic Bertolet barns in Berks County, the Martin Brandt farm complex in Cumberland County, a nineteenth-century Pennsylvania German housemill, and urban houses in Lancaster.
Author : Simon J. Bronner
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 590 pages
File Size : 23,54 MB
Release : 2017-02-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1421421399
This comprehensive encyclopedia—the first of its kind—maps out three hundred years of German history and culture in Pennsylvania and beyond. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Destined to become the standard reference on Pennsylvania Germans (also known as the “Pennsylvania Dutch”), this book is the first survey of this extensive American group in nearly seventy-five years. Nineteen broad interpretive essays written by a distinguished group of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, and folklorists tell the rich and nuanced story of Pennsylvania German history and culture. United by a distinct (and distinctly American) language, the Pennsylvania Germans have been slower to assimilate than other ethnic groups. This sweeping volume reveals, though, that the group is much less homogenous and isolated than was previously thought. From architecture, media, and farming techniques to food, folklore, and medicine, the Pennsylvania Germans and their descendants display a wide range of cultural variation. In Pennsylvania Germans, editors Simon J. Bronner and Joshua R. Brown broaden the geographical and social coverage of the group, touching both on Pennsylvanian communities and the Pennsylvania German diaspora, including settlements in Canada and Mexico. They also expand historical coverage of the Pennsylvania Germans to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beautifully illustrated, this volume—while paying tribute to the historical and cultural legacy of the Pennsylvania Germans—is the most comprehensive book on the subject to date. Contributors: R. Troy Boyer, Simon J. Bronner, Joshua R. Brown, Edsel Burdge Jr., William W. Donner, John B. Frantz, Mark Häberlein, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, Donald B. Kraybill, David W. Kriebel, Gabrielle Lanier, Mark L. Louden, Yvonne J. Milspaw, Lisa Minardi, Steven M. Nolt, Candace Perry, Sheila Rohrer, and Diane Wenger
Author : Lorett Treese
Publisher : Stackpole Books
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 28,46 MB
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 9780811731423
A guide to western Pennsylvania's rural heritage museum in Somerset that recalls the fervent spirit that settled the Pennsylvania frontier. The site features historic and reproduction buildings and a museum that illustrate the history of agriculture and the evolving technology that continues to advance farming in this region. Pennsylvania Trail of History Guides: Each handbook in this continuing series focuses on one of the historic sites or museums administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, with a concise history of the subject, detailed tour of the grounds, and full-color photographs.
Author : Gabrielle M. Lanier
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 20,90 MB
Release : 2005-01-18
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780801879661
"Gabrielle M. Lanier challenges prevailing characterizations of the region as culturally monolithic and reassesses its role in the formation of a distinctly American identity through the history, geography, and architecture of three of the valley's diverse cultural landscapes. Through narratives of individual lives, aggregate data from tax rolls and censuses, archival research, and close analysis of the built vernacular environment, Lanier examines the unique ethnic, class, and religious constitution of each subregion, as well as its racial diversity, political orientation, economic organization, and cultural imprint on the landscape."--Jacket.
Author : David G. Smith
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 451 pages
File Size : 35,48 MB
Release : 2014-12-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0823263967
This groundbreaking Civil War history illuminates the unique development of antislavery sentiment in the border region of south central Pennsylvania. During the antebellum decades every single fugitive slave escaping by land east of the Appalachian Mountains had to pass through south central Pennsylvania, where they faced both significant opportunities and substantial risks. While the hundreds of fugitives traveling through Adams, Franklin, and Cumberland counties were aided by an effective Underground Railroad, they also faced slave catchers and informers. In On the Edge of Freedom, historian David G. Smith traces the victories of antislavery activists in south central Pennsylvania, including the achievement of a strong personal liberty law and the aggressive prosecution of kidnappers who seized African Americans as fugitives. He also documents how their success provoked Southern retaliation and the passage of a strengthened Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Smith explores the fugitive slave issue through fifty years of sectional conflict, war, and reconstruction in south central Pennsylvania and provocatively questions what was gained by emphasizing fugitive protection over immediate abolition and full equality. Smith argues that after the war, social and demographic changes in southern Pennsylvania worked against African Americans’ achieving equal opportunity. Although local literature portrayed this area as a vanguard of the Underground Railroad, African Americans still lived “on the edge of freedom.” Winner of the Hortense Simmons Prize
Author : Pauline Greenhill
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 864 pages
File Size : 30,51 MB
Release : 2008-12-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0313088136
From the stone age to the cyber age, women and men have experienced the world differently. Out of a cosmos of goddesses and she-devils, earth mothers and madonnas, witches and queens, saints and whores, a vast body of women's folklore has come into bloom. International in scope and drawing on more than 130 expert contributors, this encyclopedia reviews the myths, traditions, and beliefs central to women's daily lives. More than 260 alphabetically arranged entries cover the lore of women across time, space, and life. Students of history, religion and spirituality, healing and traditional medicine, literature, and world cultures will value this encyclopedia as an indispensable guide to women's folklore. In addition, there are entries on women's folklore and folklife in 15 regions of the world, such as the Caribbean, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Entries provide cross-references and cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected bibliography of print and electronic resources. Students learning about history, world cultures, religion and spirituality, healing and traditional medicine, and literature will welcome this companion to the daily life of women across time and continents.
