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Henry H. Houston
Henry H. Houston (October 3, 1820 – June 21, 1895) was a leading Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist. He worked in iron and transportation industries and invested in oil and precious metal concerns. He sat on boards of a number of railroad organizations and he was trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and Washington and Lee University. He developed Wissahickon Heights, an exclusive community in western Chestnut Hill. Early life Henry Howard Houston was born on the Houston farm near Wrightsville, Pennsylvania on October 3, 1820, the son of Susan (Strickler) and Samuel Nelson Houston. He had an older brother and three younger sisters. During his childhood, he also grew up in Columbia, Pennsylvania. He was of Scottish-Irish heritage, his ancestors immigrated to Colonial America in the early 18th century. Career When Houston was 14, he became a clerk at John S. Futhey's merchantile house in Wrightsville, which supplied construction materials for a tow bridge, Sus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wrightsville, Pennsylvania
Wrightsville is a borough in York County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,257 at the 2020 census. Wrightsville borough has a police department, historic society, and a volunteer fire company. History According to a plaque at Samuel S. Lewis State Park, which overlooks Wrightsville and the Susquehanna River, Wrightsville was among George Washington's choices as the location of the capital of the United States. The world's longest covered bridge, at , once spanned the Susquehanna from Wrightsville to neighboring Columbia in Lancaster County. Built in 1814, it was destroyed by high water and ice in 1832. A replacement bridge was burned the night of June 28, 1863, by state militia during the Gettysburg Campaign in the American Civil War. Confederate troops under John Brown Gordon formed a bucket brigade to save the town from fire. Yet another replacement covered bridge was destroyed by a windstorm a few years later. The final bridge, the Pennsylvania Railro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia, Germantown And Chestnut Hill Railroad
The Connecting Railway was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, incorporated to build a connection between the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad and the PRR in the city of Philadelphia. Construction and assembly Connecting Railway The PRR controlled the Philadelphia & Trenton, and had originally intended to directly connect the two lines through the heart of Philadelphia. However, attempts to buy out and demolish buildings in the right-of-way led to riots, and the Philadelphia & Trenton was forced to end at Kensington. To resolve the problem, Connecting Railway Company was incorporated May 15, 1863, and between 1864 and June 1867, constructed a connecting line between Frankford Junction on the Philadelphia & Trenton and Mantua Junction (now Zoo interlocking) on the PRR mainline, passing through what is now North Philadelphia. Bustleton Branch On July 18, 1863, the Frankford and Holmesburg Railroad was incorporated to build a line from Frankford to Holmesburg. This would h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and community outreach. Considered the first learned society in the United States, it has about 1,000 elected members, and by April 2020 had had only 5,710 members since its creation. Through research grants, published journals, the American Philosophical Society Museum, an extensive library, and regular meetings, the society supports a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the sciences. Philosophical Hall, now a museum, is just east of Independence Hall in Independence National Historical Park; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. History The Philosophical Society, as it was originally called, was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, James Alexander (lawyer), James Alexander, Francis Hopkinson, John Bartram, Philip Syn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pennsylvania Steel Company
The Pennsylvania Steel Company was the name of two Pennsylvania steel companies. The original company was established in late 1865 by: J. Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Samuel Morse Felton Sr., recently retired president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and Nathaniel Thayer III of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Felton, named president in January 1866, chose the 100-acre site of modern-day Steelton, Pennsylvania to build the first steel mill, purchasing land from Henry A. and Rudolph F. Kelker after obtaining the Bessemer process, Bessemer license from Burden Iron Works in Troy, New York. Alexander Lyman Holley, the steel pioneer who first brought this process to America, was chosen to build the mill, and mansion for Felton, which was completed in 1867 along the banks of the Susquehanna River and next to the Pennsylvania Canal, and became operational on May 15, 1868. It consisted of blast furnaces and a Bessemer process mill. The company ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cumberland Valley Railroad
The Cumberland Valley Railroad was an early railroad in Pennsylvania, United States, originally chartered in 1831 to connect with Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works. Freight and passenger service in the Cumberland Valley in south central Pennsylvania from near Harrisburg to Chambersburg began in 1837, with service later extended to Hagerstown, Maryland, and then extending into the Shenandoah Valley to Winchester, Virginia. It employed up to 1,800 workers.Cumberland Valley Railroad Historical Marker - Behind the Marker During the American Civil War the line had strategic importance in supplying Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley. It also ran the first passenger sleeping car in the U.S. on the Chambersburg-Harrisburg route in 1839.Philip Berlin Historical Marker - Behind the Marker The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) gained control of the CVRR as early as 1859, and officially purchased it on June 2, 1919. The PRR's successor, the Penn Central, closed all railway facilities in C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Navigation Company
The International Navigation Company (INC) was a Philadelphia-based holding company owning 26 ships totaling 181,000 tons and carried more passengers than either Cunard or White Star, when the company was reorganized as International Mercantile Marine in 1902. INC was formed in 1871 with the backing of the Pennsylvania Railroad to operate foreign flagged vessels on transatlantic routes to Philadelphia. Clement Griscom, the company's general manager, entered into an agreement with the Belgian Government to establish the Red Star Line to operate a mail service out of Antwerp to Philadelphia and New York. This subsidiary would provide most of the company's profits for the next 30 years. In 1873, Griscom also took over the management of the American Steamship Company, a Philadelphia-based passenger and cargo service to Liverpool that was also backed by the Pennsylvania Railroad. This company, known as the American “Keystone” Line was unprofitable because of the substantially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Refining Company
Atlantic Petroleum was an oil company in the Eastern United States headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a direct descendant of the Standard Oil Trust. It was also one of the companies that merged with Richfield Oil Corporation to form the "AtlanticRichfield Co.", later known as ARCO. After an unsuccessful spinoff from ARCO, Atlantic was acquired by Sunoco in 1988. The remainder of ARCO was later acquired by BP, but BP later sold most of Arco's retail assets and brand name were sold to Tesoro, renamed 'Andeavor' in 2017. The Arco brand is now owned by Marathon Petroleum. History Early years & Standard Oil Atlantic was founded as the "Atlantic Petroleum Storage Company" in 1866 in the then-fledgling oil business. In 1874, the company, now known as "Atlantic Refining", was purchased by John D. Rockefeller and integrated as part of Standard Oil. The acquisition gave Rockefeller a major presence on the East Coast in his growing empire. In 1886, after acquiring many o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Union Army
During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. state, states. It proved essential to the preservation of the United States as a working, viable republic. The Union Army was made up of the permanent Regular Army (United States), regular army of the United States, but further fortified, augmented, and strengthened by the many temporary units of dedicated United States Volunteers, volunteers, as well as including those who were drafted in to service as Conscription in the United States, conscripts. To this end, the Union Army fought and ultimately triumphed over the efforts of the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War. Over the course of the war, 2,128,948 men enlisted in the Union Army, including 178,895 United States Colored Troops, colored troops; 25% of the white men who s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies the state as a part of the Mid-Atlantic regionMid-Atlantic Home : Mid-Atlantic Information Office: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics" www.bls.gov. Archived. It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north and east, Maryland to the east and northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. West Virginia is the 10th-smallest state by area and ranks as the 12th-least populous state, with a population of 1,793,716 residents. The capital and largest city is Charleston. West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key border state during the American Civil War. It was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state, the second to sepa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Mining In Colorado
Gold mining in Colorado, a state of the United States, has been an industry since 1858. It also played a key role in the establishment of the state of Colorado. Explorer Zebulon Pike heard a report of gold in South Park, present-day Park County, Colorado, in 1807.A. H. Koschman and M. H. Bergendahl (1968) ''Principal gold-Producing Districts of the United States'', US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 610, p.143. Gold discoveries in Colorado began around Denver; prospectors traced the placer gold to its source in the mountains west of Denver, then followed the Colorado Mineral Belt in a southwest direction across the state to its terminus in the San Juan Mountains. The Cripple Creek district, far from the mineral belt, was one of the last gold districts to be discovered and is still in production. Denver-area placers On June 22, 1850, a wagon train bound for California crossed the South Platte River just north of the confluence with Clear Creek and followed Clear Creek w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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