Charter Day 2018

The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) will celebrate the commonwealth’s 337th birthday on Charter Day, Sunday, March 11, with free admission to many of the historic sites and museums along the Pennsylvania Trails of History.

For this significant anniversary in Pennsylvania history, the Anthracite Heritage Museum will feature free admission to the museum, family activities, and a lecture titled Silk That Spanned the World: The Silk Industry in Eastern Pennsylvania 1880-1990 by Martha Capwell Fox, curator/archivist with the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, will speak at 2 pm.  The museum opens at noon.

Silk That Spanned the World: The Silk Industry in Eastern Pennsylvania 1880-1990

In 1913, the United States became the world’s leading producer of silk goods. The same year, Pennsylvania surpassed New Jersey—essentially, Paterson, New Jersey—as the leading American silk manufacturer.  Every county in the Commonwealth had at least one silk mill, though the industry was concentrated east of the Susquehanna River, particularly in Lehigh, Northampton, and Berks counties. By the mid-1920s, the value of Allentown’s silk production—over $53.5 million—was larger than that of any Pennsylvania county. The Depression, competition from Southern and foreign textiles, as well as the advent of synthetics, all combined to shrink the local industry steadily but it persisted in Pennsylvania until the second half of the 20^th century.  The talk will include a short video that was shot in the last silk mill in the Lehigh Valley.

Martha Capwell Fox has been the Historian and Archives Coordinator for the National Canal Museum/Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor since 2012. She was the assistant to the NCM Collections Manager from 2003-2005, and guest curator of the NCM exhibit “Behind the Seams: The Silk Industry in Eastern Pennsylvania.”  Martha presented three papers at Canal History and Technology Symposia, on the silk industry in the D&L Corridor, a biographical sketch of 19^th century entrepreneur Jose de Navarro, and an industrial history of Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, the site of the first commercially successful anthracite iron furnace. She was a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Speaker from 2004 to 2006. Also a professional writer and editor, Martha worked in magazine publishing at National Geographic and Rodale, Inc. and has published four books on local historical topics and three young adult histories on swimming, auto racing, and the Vatican. Her most recent book, Geology, Geography, and Human Genius: the Industrial History of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, will be released later this year. She is a graduate of American University with a dual degree in international relations and U.S. history.