Research Catalog

Popularizing Pennsylvania : Henry W. Shoemaker and the progressive uses of folklore and history

Title: Popularizing Pennsylvania : Henry W. Shoemaker and the progressive uses of folklore and history / Simon J. Bronner.
Author: Bronner, Simon J.
Publication: University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, [1996], ©1996.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	GR55.S53 B76 1996	Off-site

Description

xxii, 277 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

In many ways, Henry W. Shoemaker (1880-1958) embodies the spirit of the Progressive movement in America. A prominent reformist newspaper publisher in Pennsylvania, he used his wealth and position inherited from industrialism to promote the preservation of America's wilderness and native cultures. He fell in with such national leaders as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, who hoped to rekindle a rugged American nationalism.
He became America's first State Folklorist and a pioneer of national conservation.
Shoemaker's consuming passion was for preserving the cultural and natural heritage of his home state. He authored hundreds of pamphlets and books on Pennsylvania's nature, history, and folklore.
Today his memory lives on in the legends he helped promote, such as that of the Indian princess "Nita-nee," for whom Central Pennsylvania's Nittany Mountain is supposedly named, and his instrumental role in creating Pennsylvania's noted system of parks and forests and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
For this book, the first full-length biography of Shoemaker, Simon Bronner has located never-before-available private papers and interviewed many people who knew Shoemaker. Included are rare photographs and a sampler of Shoemaker stories. Bronner shows that Shoemaker deserves attention in any assessment of public history, conservation history, and Progressive Era politics.

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

ISBN

LCCN

95015354

OCLC

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries