Blog

With wedding season among us I thought it would be fun to talk about the history of the wedding dress. The most common, and highly debated part of dresses is their color. Were they always white? The answer, not at all.

In 1870 at the age of twenty Adolph Brugger left his home in Baden near the black forest in Southern Germany. He left not by choice but because he was under the threat of forced enlistment in the neighboring Prussian Army. He and his family decided it was better to leave than to fight in France for a cause in which he did not believe. Once the decision was made to leave for America Adolph knew he could never return. Not having enough savings of his own, his older brothers John and William helped pay for the journey. He sailed down the Rhine River towards the Netherlands and across the North Sea to Liverpool, England. There he negotiated passage to the United States aboard a four-mast boat. After a long journey at sea he arrived in Halifax, Newfoundland, and then traveled on to New York City. There he arrived at Battery Park and Castle Garden in a time before Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. After passing through immigration in Castle Garden, he made his way to Hudson River Train Station. He boarded the train bound for the west and his destination on the great lakes, Erie, Pennsylvania.

“Erie can justly lay claim to being the incubator of the national sport.” This is according to John G. Carney’s 1957 book “The Saga of Erie Sports”.  That is quite a statement!  He writes that when the French arrived in the area in the mid-1700s, they found the native people playing the game of lacrosse.  When the British later arrived, they played cricket.  The combination of the two sports eventually turned into the game of baseball.

Born in Waterford, Pennsylvania, in 1837, Vincent was named Strong for his mother’s maiden name. The Vincent family moved to Erie when he was a boy. He worked for a time in his father’s iron foundry and then attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. It was at Trinity that Vincent met his future wife, Elizabeth Carter. After an altercation in which a man insulted Elizabeth and Vincent attacked him, Vincent moved to Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study law. After graduating in the middle of his class in 1859, he returned to Erie to “read law” in the office of William S. Lane on W. 6^th Street. The house that was the office still stands today.

Hallo liebe Leser!  I attended a workshop at Old Economy Village near Pittsburgh recently.  The program was on unlocking the stories of German immigrants to the United States by studying family documents, books, and objects. Plus, it was a wonderful opportunity to network with others in the museum business.  The 2000 census claims that 20% of Americans have some ethnic connection to Germany.  With a name like Rebecca Weigert-Weiser (both German), I decided the workshop was the right one for me!

Tracing its roots to a handful of companies that illuminated downtown streetlights-from dusk until an hour after the saloons closed in some spots-the Pennsylvania Electric Company (Penelec), a FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) utility, marked its 100^th anniversary on June 10, 2019.

What began long ago as a tiny company in Philipsburg, PA, with 16 customers along 2 miles of line, Penelec evolved into a modern electric utility with more than 700 employees servicing nearly 600,000 customers throughout a sprawling 17,000-square-mile service territory, the largest footprint of any FirstEnergy utility.

Recently we received a donation from Stephen Manheimer from New York. These items relate to General Marquis de Lafayette and his visit here to Erie, Pennsylvania where a banquet was held in his honor. These are important to us because Lafayette played such a significant role in the American Revolutionary War. Although he was a French aristocrat and military officer, he aided the Americans in many of the major battles during the war. Upon returning home to France, Lafayette then played a key role in the French Revolution. He was considered a national hero to both his native France and to the newly ordained United States of America.

Have you ever heard of the village of Hatch Hollow in Amity Township, Erie County? I have because I grew up near to there, but any resemblance to a village is long gone.