Pioneer Life; or, Thirty Years a Hunter: Being Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Philip Tome (Metalmark)

Biographies & Memoirs

Tome, Philip

Historical

Metalmark

The Penn State University Press is pleased to introduce Metalmark Books, a joint imprint of the Press and the University Libraries at Penn State. Books published under this imprint are selected from the collections of the University Libraries. They may be viewed online or ordered as print-on-demand paperbacks. Initially, books published under the Metalmark imprint will be chosen from the Libraries' extensive Pennsylvania holdings. Over time, the scope will broaden to include other significant out-of-print titles.These five Metalmark reprints preserve and make available once again some of the early writing of folklorist Henry W. Shomaker. He authored hundreds of pamphlets and books on nature, history, and folklore. He was publisher of several influential newspapers in Pennsylvania, including the Altoona Tribune and the Reading Eagle. He became the first state folklorist in America, one of the first chairs of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, and an influential member of the State Forest Commission and the State Geographic Board.

Pennsylvania Deer and Their Horns (Metalmark)

Literature & Fiction

Shoemaker, Henry W.

Literary

Published in 1916, this illustrated edition of Penn’s Grandest Cavern begins with several legends of Penn’s Cave and the surrounding area, followed by a description and history, all compiled and written by Henry W. Shoemaker. His description of the caverns reads like a travel guide, with information about not only the cave but also its formations, such as “The Lobster’s Claw,” “Statue of Liberty,” and “Garden of the Gods.” Shoemaker provided his readership with advice on the best ways to travel to the cave, including appropriate trains to take, and a review of the accommodations there. A history traces the ownership of the property and details its exploration and development into a tourist site. Shoemaker also noted how Penn’s Cave compared to other local caves and their development. This volume presents seven of Shoemaker’s stories relating to Penn’s Cave and Penn’s Valley, including two of his most famous legends: “The Legend of Penn’s Cave” and “Nita-nee: The Indian Maiden for Whom Nittany Mountain Was Named.”

Penn's Grandest Cavern: The History, Legends and Description of Penn's Cave in Centre County (Metalmark)

Religion & Spirituality

Pennsylvania Lion or Panther & Felis Catus in Pennsylvania? (Metalmark)

History

Americas

More Allegheny Episodes: Legends and Traditions, Old and New, Gathered Among the Pennsylvania Mountains (Metalmark)

Sensationalized history can be credited with inspiring generations of truth-seeking experts and enthusiasts. The tragedy of the Johnstown Flood was an oft-exploited event as writers and publishers hawked hastily written articles in original form or pirated collections. Where many of the articles lacked fact, they were rife with exaggeration and imagination. James Herbert Walker published one of the very first of these books, The Johnstown Horror, a pamphlet of some 40 pages. Experts cite the book as being sold in New York within a week of the disaster. Though the structure suggests the stories were gathered at rail stations in an apparent journey to the site, there has been debate whether Walker ever traveled to Johnstown. Yet the collection features accounts that do not appear in other publications following the flood. Later, expanded editions swelled to over four hundred pages and included well-crafted woodcuts. As the flood occurred near the end of the nineteenth century, the engraved drawings are often generously labeled as remnants of Victorian art. It is not clear whether the inclusion of the cuts was an aesthetic or monetary decision, considering the period's developments in photography. The final, massive collection of individual stories makes the book memorable, ranging from the accusations levied against wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists to the emergence of the Red Cross. So many unique details and personal chronicles capture the frantic mentality of a town, state, and nation trying to make sense of natural and yet not-so-natural disaster.

The Johnstown Horror!!!: Or Valley of Death, Being a Complete and Thrilling Account of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin

Walker, James H.

Publisher J. S. Ogilvie's History of the Great Flood gathers many first-person accounts of the Johnstown disaster of May 1889, offering a largely sensationalized compilation of articles and interviews concerning the event. (The title's declaration of 10,000 deaths should alert readers to treat Ogilvie's facts with skepticism—the official death toll from the Johnstown Flood was just above 2,200.) The book features a variety of illustrations, including morbid images of bodies deposited in trees, tragic scenes of hospital wards overflowing with flood victims, and depictions of rescue efforts among the ruins.The interest of this work lies in the blending of truth and myth in the narratives told by a traumatized community emerging from the floodwaters. This portrait of the memorialized Pennsylvania disaster is an especially valuable source for those in the fields of media studies, historiography, and trauma psychology.

History of the Great Flood in Johnstown, Pa., May 31, 1889, by Which over Ten Thousand Lives Were Lost

Ogilvie, J. S.

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, failed, unleashing a torrent of water that killed more than two thousand people and destroyed the city. Herman Dieck's Johnstown Flood, published shortly after the event, offers sensational stories of death, escape, sacrifice, and survival along with demographic reports and an investigation of several myths-such as the legend of a Paul Revere-like messenger on horseback racing down the valley, warning of the impending flood.The flooding of late May and early June 1889 was not limited to the Johnstown area. Dieck includes reports of rains that inundated many river towns of the mid-Atlantic region. His accounts of other catastrophic floods place the Pennsylvania disaster in historical perspective. The book also presents the tragic story of the Pennsylvania Children's Aid Society. The group's headquarters had been transferred from Philadelphia to Johnstown just before the flood; only two officers survived. Despite this devastation, reinforcements from the Philadelphia branch office were able to establish a new, greatly needed orphanage in what proved to be one of the most effective relief efforts after the flood.The Johnstown Flood gives a rich account of one of the worst disasters in America and the Keystone State.

The Johnstown Flood: A Thriving City of 30,000 Inhabitants and Many Great Industrial Establishments Nearly Wiped from Earth: Many Thousands Drowned or ... Hastings in Command in Johnstown (Metalmark)

Dieck, Herman

Travel

Johann Georg Hohman's Long Lost Friend compiled practical uses of mysterious folk magic and rural home remedies rooted in medieval Europe. First published in America in 1820, these methods derive from Christian theology and shamanistic practices often credited to German immigrants. The chapbook exposes the spells, charms, benedictions, incantations, amulets, talismans, palindromes, herbs, elixirs, potions of animal parts, and herbal remedies that might cure all manner of human afflictions, guard against witches and robbers, and protect cattle and crops. Legend has it that simply carrying this book of Christian magic helped to ward off supernatural forces.
The treatments featured in the book reflect the transfer of European culture and concerns to pastoral life in early Pennsylvania. What has become known as the art of powwow among Pennsylvania Dutch citizens and scholars is still practiced in some rural areas of the state. The collection is cited widely, from enthusiasts of African-American Hoodoo to theology scholars, and it preserves a fine example of ethnic heritage.

The Long Lost Friend: A Collection of Mysterious and Invaluable Arts and Remedies, for Man as Well as Animals: Of Their Virtue and Efficacy in Healing ... the First Time in the U.S. in the Year 1820

Hohman, Johann Georg

Reference

Henry W. Shoemaker (1880–1958) was known for his deep love for the wilderness and native cultures of Pennsylvania. The state’s first official folklorist, he wrote more than twenty books detailing Pennsylvania’s modern mythology. Pennsylvania Mountain Stories is perhaps Shoemaker’s definitive collection of folktales. 
The idea for this book came to Shoemaker during his college years, when he spent his vacations traveling through the mountains of Pennsylvania—on foot, on horseback, or by buggy. He claimed that he heard the stories, “mostly after supper,” from people he met at lumber camps, farmhouses, and backwoods taverns. “As so many of the tales are devoted to subjects of a more or less supernatural order they cannot very well be true,” he writes, but then hastens to add, “neither are they of the author’s invention.” 
In this ethereal space between fact and fiction, Pennsylvania Mountain Stories reveals the values, the passions, the obsessions of the people who told them. This volume, published under the Metalmark Books imprint, contains a facsimile reproduction of the 1911 edition, originally published by the Reading Times Publishing Company.

Pennsylvania Mountain Stories (Metalmark)

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