Category: The Historical Society of Frankford

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Historical Society of Frankford April Meeting

Centennial of the Ferko String Band

The April program of the Historical Society of Frankford will be a celebration of the centennial of the Ferko String Band.

The meeting will be presented with a live audience, with masking and social distancing, and will also be shared remotely by way of YouTube and Facebook. That’s at 7:30 pm at the Society, 1507 Orthodox Street, on April 12. There is no charge, though contributions are welcome.

Ferko Captain Anthony Calenza will lead a group of veteran string band performers for a quick trot through the distinguished record of one of the most celebrated Mummer string bands. A moment of delight during a troublesome time.

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October Program from the Historical Society of Frabkford

The October program of the Historical Society of Frankford will be live-streamed at 7:30 on October 12, 2021.  Political Science Professor Stephen E. Medvec, Ph.D., of Holy Family University, will discuss the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

After President Jefferson purchased the French claim to a substantial portion of North America, he commissioned fellow Virginians Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to go exploring, and report back on the native tribes, wildlife, and terrain.

This turned out to be one of the great non-military adventures of American history, and also a Tale of Two Cities, because while the expedition was to set out from Charlottesville, only Philadelphia had outfitters with sufficient supplies and equipment. Furthermore, as Mr. Jefferson was President of the American Philosophical Society (APS) at the same time that he was President, the Journals of the Expedition ended up in the Special Collections Library of APS in Philadelphia, where Prof. Medvec studied them in order to produce this talk.

This program will remain available as a video on both Facebook and YouTube indefinitely.

 

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Historical Society September Program

The Historical Society of Frankford (HSoF) will present its September program, live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube, at 7:30 pm on September 14, 2021.

John Buffington will discuss some of the current activities at HSoF, and then read a paper, “The History of the Dummy Car,” by Thomas Creighton, first delivered to the Society on January 28, 1916. Dummy cars were self-propelled, powered by steam engines, and they replaced horse-drawn street cars for transportation between Frankford and Philadelphia in 1863. They served that purpose until they were replaced by electric trolleys in 1893. Thomas Creighton had first-hand recollections of the dummy cars in operation, and also collected stories from the operators.

This program will remain available as a video on both Facebook and YouTube indefinitely.

 

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Historical Society Program May 11th

For our May meeting, presented via live stream on Facebook and YouTube on May 11 at 7:30 pm, John Buffington will talk about the history of Frankford Arsenal, a National Historic Register site, which also has 9 buildings specifically listed on the Philadelphia Historic Register, from the near-disaster of American military inadequacy in the War of 1812, through base closure in 1971 and privatization in 1977, to current status, threats, and opportunities.
As always, we invite you to comment and post questions in either platform’s comment section, however this time we will do something a little different. At the close we will invite viewers to post questions and comments to be addressed live about the potential for the Historical Society of Frankford to intervene more aggressively in situations like the current lamentable state of Buildings 2 and 3 at the Arsenal. So please stay tuned to the end, especially if you think that we aren’t doing enough on preservation emergencies.
Find it on their Facebook page or follow this link to YouTube:  link
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The Story of Wistar Park

The Historical Society of Frankford live streamed Fred Prescott’s presentation of the Story of Wistar Park last night in place of their regular monthly in person meeting.

Fred is our former neighbor from Griscom Street and his roots go way back in Frankford history.  He packed a lot of history into this video.  Take a look.