By Don Yoder

Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series

Co-published with the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania German Society

Fifteenth-century Germany was the birthplace of movable type and of one of its powerful consequences, the broadside. These mass-produced printed sheets allowed both the Renaissance and the Reformation to spread with previously unimaginable speed, and when German immigrants made their way to North America, the cultural significance of the broadside followed. Don Yoder’s Pennsylvania German Broadside examines the history and legacy of these printed sheets within the Pennsylvania German community.

The author defines a broadside as any piece of paper printed on one side that is intended to be given away or sold. Where some experts have narrowed—and, in Yoder’s opinion, distorted—the definition of the broadside to focus primarily on song and ballad broadsides, Yoder’s definition encompasses a much wider range of material. In this more comprehensive approach to the medium, not only “street literature” but also such documents as elegies, spiritual testaments, and certificates of birth, baptism, confirmation, and marriage are all considered legitimate broadsides that tie the individual to the culture of the community. After tracing the migration of the broadside from Germany to America, the author dedicates each of ten chapters to a specific broadside subject, including medical broadsides, political and military broadsides, sale bills, posters, house blessings, and “letters from heaven.”

Yoder recently donated a vast collection of Pennsylvania German broadsides to the Library Company of Philadelphia. These artifacts, part of the Roughwood Collection, will go on display in September 2005 as the centerpiece of a broadside exhibition at the Library Company. More than a catalogue of the exhibition, this book explores the history and cultural significance of the broadside, illuminating the ways in which it both reflected and influenced Pennsylvania German life.

Intended for historians, collectors, and general readers, The Pennsylvania German Broadside features more than 200 illustrations and an engaging, accessible text. It is the first book devoted specifically to Pennsylvania German broadsides.

Don Yoder is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. He is past president of the American Folklore Society and co-founder of the Pennsylvania Folklife Society.

September 2005 | 9 x 11
384 pages | 23 color/211 b&w illustrations
History

The Soldiers' Revolution
Pennsylvanians in Arms and the Forging of Early American Identity

By Gregory T Knouff

What did the American Revolution mean to the ordinary soldiers who fought in it? Were they inspired by high-minded ideals of liberty and democracy, or were they seeking the material and practical rewards—bounties, land, and political advancement—that victory might bring them? We know much about the philosophical positions expressed by America’s Founding Fathers, but the common people did not necessarily share the Founders’ ideas. The Soldiers’ Revolution looks to those who took up arms in Pennsylvania to reveal the rich tapestry of local interests that led a nation to war.

Many rank-and-file Revolutionaries left behind records of their experiences—everything from letters and journals to pension applications and loyalist claims. These records bring to light the soldiers’ widely ranging ideas and opinions about the war, about themselves, about the enemy, and about the American nation. In Pennsylvania enlisted men defined their communities through various local interests. This general localism was, ironically, one of the few shared popular Revolutionary ideals. Moreover, the experience of military violence was critical in defining broader ideologies of citizenship that contributed to ideas of an emerging American identity—an identity that privileged white men above Indians, African Americans, and women. "Tories," meanwhile, were forced to shed their local perspectives and embrace other ideas in keeping with imperial interests.

The Soldiers’ Revolution offers us a rare glimpse into the everyday world of the American Revolution. We see how the common experience of war drew soldiers together as they began the long process of forging an identity for a fledgling nation.

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Gregory T. Knouff is Assistant Professor of History at Keene State College in New Hampshire. He has contributed chapters to two Penn State Press books: Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland (1998) and Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods (forthcoming).

| 2004 6 x 9 inches |
History - American,
Hardback: $45.00 short | 0-271-02335-X

Edited by Billy G. Smith

"Billy Smith brings together an impressive group of scholars who examine poverty in a wide range of settings. The resulting essays are remarkable not only for their inclusiveness but also for the way they give a truly human face to the poor. Down and Out in Early America is an important contribution to the scholarship on early America." —John K. Alexander, University of Cincinnati
It has often been said that early America was the "best poor man’s country in the world." After all, wasn’t there an abundance of land and a scarcity of laborers? The law of supply and demand would seem to dictate that most early American working people enjoyed high wages and a decent material standard of living. Down and Out in Early America presents the evidence for poverty versus plenty and concludes that financial insecurity was a widespread problem that plagued many early Americans.

The fact is that in early America only an extremely thin margin separated those who required assistance from those who were able to secure independently the necessities of life. The reasons for this were many: seasonal and cyclical unemployment, inadequate wages, health problems (including mental illness), alcoholism, a large pool of migrants, low pay for women, abandoned families. The situation was made worse by the inability of many communities to provide help for the poor except to incarcerate them in workhouses and almshouses. The essays in this volume explore the lives and strategies of people who struggled with destitution, evaluate the changing forms of poor relief, and examine the political, religious, gender, and racial aspects of poverty in early North America.

By Anne M. Ousterhout

"The Most Learned Woman in America is a delightful addition to the growing corpus of knowledge that we have concerning America’s ‘Founding Mothers.’ Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson was famous in her time, virtually unknown in our own. Yet, as Anne Ousterhout points out in her painstakingly researched work, she was a woman who was known in her own right; she was never merely an appendage of the men to whom she was related. Fergusson’s literary salon in Philadelphia placed her at the very center of the cultural and intellectual world of colonial America." —Sheila Skemp, University of Mississippi
During the era of the American Revolution and long after, the name Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson was well known in Philadelphia, recognized as belonging to one of British North America’s most illustrious women of letters. One admirer dubbed her "the most learned woman in America." In this, the first full-length biography of Fergusson, Anne M. Ousterhout brilliantly captures the life and times of America’s first great female savant.

Born in 1737 to a wealthy family, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson excelled from an early age. Although women in her day were denied higher education, Fergusson read widely, educating herself in literature, history, and languages, even reading classical literature in the original tongues, an unusual ability for a colonial woman. She wrote prolifically—often until midnight or later, spending but a few hours sleeping—and published her poetry. Her journals of a trip to England and Scotland circulated widely among admiring Philadelphians. During the 1770s she hosted a Saturday evening salon at her home that was unrivaled in the colonies for its brilliance.

Yet despite her achievements, Fergusson’s life was fraught with financial woes, bad romances, and treasonous plots that hounded her throughout her life. After her father forbade her marriage to Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son, she secretly married Henry Hugh Fergusson, a British Loyalist who left her before the Revolution. Henry’s actions, together with Elizabeth’s own political indiscretions, earned her potent enemies, leading to the confiscation of her family estate, Graeme Park. Although she eventually succeeded in reclaiming her property, her reputation was tarnished in the process. Her efforts to justify her actions were tireless, alienating friends and making the last fifteen years of her life miserable.

The Most Learned Woman in America masterfully narrates Fergusson’s efforts to live an appropriately genteel life, even as she struggled against the limits that her society placed on its women. In the process, we can begin to understand the conflicts—internal and external—that women of the Revolutionary generation faced.

Anne M. Ousterhout was Professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University when she died in 1997. She is the author of A State Divided: Opposition in Pennsylvania to the American Revolution (1987).

| 2004 6 x 9 inches |
Hardback: $35.00 short | 0-271-02311-2

Edited by Randall M. Miller and Wiliam Pencak

Co-published with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Keystone State, so nicknamed because it was geographically situated in the middle of the thirteen original colonies and played a crucial role in the founding of the United States, has remained at the heart of American history. Created partly as a safe haven for people from all walks of life, Pennsylvania is today the home of diverse cultures, religions, ethnic groups, social classes, and occupations. Many ideas, institutions, and interests that were first formed or tested in Pennsylvania spread across America and beyond, and continue to inform American culture, society, and politics. This book tells that story—and more. It recenters Pennsylvania in the American historical narrative.

Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth offers fresh perspectives on the Keystone State from a distinguished array of scholars who view the history of this Commonwealth critically and honestly, using the latest and best scholarship to give a modern account of Pennsylvania’s past. They do so by emphasizing the evolution of Pennsylvania as a place and an idea. The book, the first comprehensive history of Pennsylvania in almost three decades, sets the Pennsylvania story in the larger context of national social, cultural, economic, and political development. Without sacrificing treatment of the inßuential leaders who made Pennsylvania history, the book focuses especially on the lives of everyday people over the centuries. It also magnifies historical events by examining the experiences of local communities throughout the state.

Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth is divided into two parts. Part I offers a narrative history of the Commonwealth, paying special attention to the peopling process (the movement of people into, around, and out from the state); the ways people defined and defended communities; the forms of economic production; the means of transportation and communication; the character, content, and consequences of people’s values; and the political cultures that emerged from the kinds of society, economy, and culture each period formed and sustained. Part II offers a series of “Ways to Pennsylvania’s Past”—nine concise guides designed to enable readers to discover Pennsylvania’s heritage for themselves. Geography, architecture, archaeology, folklore and folklife, genealogy, photography, art, oral history, and literature are all discussed as methods of uncovering and understanding the past.

Each chapter is especially attuned to Pennsylvania’s place in the larger American context, and a Foreword, Introduction, and Epilogue to Part I explore general themes throughout the state’s history. An important feature of the book is the large selection of illustrations—more than 400 prints, maps, photographs, and paintings carefully chosen from repositories across the state and beyond, to show how Pennsylvanians have lived, worked, and played through the centuries.

This book is the result of a unique collaboration between Penn State Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), the official history agency of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Together they gathered scholars from all over the Commonwealth to envision a new history of the Keystone State and commit their resources to make imagining and writing a new history possible.

Randall M. Miller is William Dirk Warren ‘50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University and President of the Pennsylvania Historical Association.

William Pencak is Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University and Editor of Pennsylvania History, the journal of the Pennsylvania Historical Association.

November 2002
9 x 10.25 inches,
Hardback: $49.95 short | 0-271-02213-2
Paperback: $29.95 trade | 0-271-02214-0
A Keystone Book

Civilians and Society in War

By Wayne Bodle

Of the many dramatic episodes of the American Revolution, perhaps none is more steeped in legend than the Valley Forge winter. Paintings show Continentals huddled around campfires and Washington kneeling in the frozen woods, praying for his army’s deliverance. To this day schoolchildren are taught that Valley Forge was the “turning point of the Revolution”—the event that transformed a ragged group of soldiers into a fighting army. But was Valley Forge really the “crucible of victory” it has come to represent in American history? Now, two hundred and twenty-five years later, Wayne Bodle has written the first comprehensive history of the winter encampment of 1777-78.

The traditional account portrays Valley Forge in the 1770s as a desolate wilderness far removed from civilian society. Washington’s army was forced to endure one of the coldest winters in memory with inadequate food and supplies, despite appeals to the Continental Congress. When the mild weather of spring finally arrived, the Prussian baron Friedrich von Steuben drilled the demoralized soldiers into a first-rate army that would go on to stunning victories at Monmouth and, eventually, at Yorktown.

Bodle presents a very different picture of Valley Forge—one that revises both popular and scholarly perceptions. Far from being set in a wilderness, the Continental Army’s quarters were deliberately located in a settled area. And although there was a provisions crisis, Washington overstated the case in order to secure additional support. (A shrewd man, Washington mostly succeeded at keeping his army supplied with food, clothing, and munitions. Farmers from the interior provided food that ensured that the army didn’t starve.) As for Steuben’s role in training the soldiers, Bodle argues that it was not the decisive factor others have seen in the army’s later victories.

The freshness of Bodle’s approach is that he offers a complete picture of events both inside and outside the camp boundaries. We see what happens when two armies descend on a diverse and divided community. Anything but stoically passive, the Continentals were effective agents on their own behalf and were actively engaged with their civilian hosts and British foes. The Valley Forge Winter is an example of the “new military history” at its best—a history that puts war back into its social context.

Wayne Bodle is Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Pennsylvania History, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and The William & Mary Quarterly.

December 2002
6.25 x 9.25 inches
History - American,
Hardback: $35.00 trade | 0-271-02230-2