When I heard a news broadcast that 40,000 women had joined the Ukrainian fighting forces, I immediately thought of Doylestown’s famous daughter, Margaret Mead. Her 1928 book, “Coming of Age in …
I have always wondered about the whole chunks of history that have eluded us and disappeared into the mists of time because no one considered them important enough to record. Perhaps because I …
Christmas 2022 will be remembered by generations of Bucks Countians as that one when the mercury sank to 3 degrees (at least at our house) and we had no internet service, no television, no landline. …
Live Nativity scenes are popping up all over the globe. Even for those of the most hardened of hearts the living reminder of Christ’s birth can create a moment of reverence and peace – the …
A tiny pooch with a heart-shaped patch of black on her tail end had a story to tell and a Nockamixon Township grandmother had a need to tell it.The peak of the pandemic, said Bonita …
Journalists like me often get to see things or do things not generally available to the public — happier things I will always treasure and tragic ones I wish I could erase from my memory.
On a gorgeous autumn afternoon during a cemetery walk, Philip McCarty of Norristown and Donald Moran of Upper Black Eddy, who had not met before, discovered they were fourth cousins, descendants of Nicholas Buck, a Revolutionary War soldier.
It was a kind of “Come, Josephine, in my flying machine” moment with the promise of going “up. up a little bit higher.” But it was not Josephine. Instead it was 96-year-old George …
Halloween is approaching. It’s a day the ancient Celts believed the veil separating the world of the living from that of the dead was exceedingly thin, allowing the dead to pass through.
A man who was once a groundskeeper at a camp for deaf children. A woman who toured that camp with her son’s Cub Scout troop in the 1990s. An excavator who recalls an old hand-drawn plot plan …
Long an American citizen, Grant Ross still, and unashamedly, felt a tear welling up when he heard Queen Elizabeth II had died on Sept. 8. The genial Scotsman, general manager of the Black Bass …
Ninety years ago a group of unemployed, uprooted, but determined World War I veterans descended on a 105-acre property near Top Rock, high above the Delaware River in Nockamixon Township.
What happened to Robin Robinson? Under cover of the pandemic’s homebound isolation, she went from popular and dedicated Bucks County Recorder of Deeds to a social media influencer as star of “It’s the Rosenthals” on both Instagram and Tik Tok.
Amy Hollamder, very much a 21st-century woman, lives in a wool mill built in the early 19th century and wants to share her passion for the past with everyone.
Frank Willis wasn’t wearing his buckskins when he spoke at a program sponsored by the Durham Historical Society. The temperature was soaring but it was a bit cooler for his program in the iconic …
“How much does it cost?” the innocent shopper asks. The cynic replies with his own question: “Are you buying or selling?” Caveat emptor, indeed. I am beginning to think merchants who score …
Ukraine is burning. Our children’s dead bodies are riddled with bullets. COVID, the bloody shape-shifter, is still stalking our world, and I am wishing for the wisdom of our Native Americans to be …
June 9, 1791. A single gunshot. A man fell to the floor in a frontier cabin in New York. He was Col. Arthur Erwin, probably killed by a Wild Yankee after serving in Bucks County’s Militia and surviving the Revolutionary War.
Jeff Finegan and I share a family name and a love of history but we are not related. He does, however, have a longstanding literary relationship with George Washington. He’s the author of the “I …
The Durham Historical Society now has a 5.6-pound cannonball with an interesting provenance. The cannonball was found “beneath the lowest floor of the Old Durham Furnace.” Described as “solid …
