A Philadelphia Family

A Philadelphia Family PDF Author: David R. Contosta
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812214062
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Three generations of the Houston-Woodward family, one of the wealthiest and most influential in Philadelphia, have been leaders in politics, diplomacy, suburban planning, housing reform, land conservation, and historic preservation. In A Philadelphia Family, David Contosta analyzes the impact the Houstons and Woodwards have had economically, politically, and demographically on Philadelphia, a city known for its reserved and private leading families. The story of the Houston and Woodward families' continuing public service offers a unique perspective on Philadelphia history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Family founder Henry Howard Houston (1820-1895) was one of America's greatest post-Civil War entrepreneurs, a top executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad as well as a leading speculator in oil, mining, and other railroad ventures. Houston created a unique, planned suburb in Chestnut Hill, which his son Samuel and son-in-law George Woodward maintained and expanded in the twentieth century. Woodward, in particular, became an energetic crusader for housing reform. Other family members have distinguished themselves in government service and charitable work. Stanley Woodward served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, George Woodward was a state senator for 30 years, and Lawrence M. C. Smith was founder and owner of a prominent classical music station in Philadelphia.

A Philadelphia Family

A Philadelphia Family PDF Author: David R. Contosta
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812214062
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Three generations of the Houston-Woodward family, one of the wealthiest and most influential in Philadelphia, have been leaders in politics, diplomacy, suburban planning, housing reform, land conservation, and historic preservation. In A Philadelphia Family, David Contosta analyzes the impact the Houstons and Woodwards have had economically, politically, and demographically on Philadelphia, a city known for its reserved and private leading families. The story of the Houston and Woodward families' continuing public service offers a unique perspective on Philadelphia history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Family founder Henry Howard Houston (1820-1895) was one of America's greatest post-Civil War entrepreneurs, a top executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad as well as a leading speculator in oil, mining, and other railroad ventures. Houston created a unique, planned suburb in Chestnut Hill, which his son Samuel and son-in-law George Woodward maintained and expanded in the twentieth century. Woodward, in particular, became an energetic crusader for housing reform. Other family members have distinguished themselves in government service and charitable work. Stanley Woodward served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, George Woodward was a state senator for 30 years, and Lawrence M. C. Smith was founder and owner of a prominent classical music station in Philadelphia.

Colonial Families of Philadelphia

Colonial Families of Philadelphia PDF Author: John Woolf Jordan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philadelphia (Pa.)
Languages : en
Pages : 968

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History of the Penrose Family of Philadelphia

History of the Penrose Family of Philadelphia PDF Author: Josiah Granville Leach
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Report of Philadelphia Real Property Survey, 1934; Family Accommodations by Number of Rooms

Report of Philadelphia Real Property Survey, 1934; Family Accommodations by Number of Rooms PDF Author: United States. Work Projects Administration. Pennsylvania
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Housing
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia

Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia PDF Author: Allen Meyers
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738538280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia (JFCS) resulted from the merger of two important human service organizations in 1983: the Association for Jewish Children of Philadelphia and Jewish Family Service of Philadelphia. Helping one in four Jewish households in crisis and in need as well as thousands of others, JFCS plays a primary role in the Greater Philadelphia community. The earliest predecessor of JFCS, the Jewish Foster Home, opened in 1855 with five children in its care. Established through the leadership of Rebecca Gratz, the foremost American Jewish female leader of her day, it was the nation's first Jewish orphanage and heralded a record of compassion, skill, and innovation in community services. Today, JFCS reaches out to more than 41,000 individuals and families each year with a wide array of programs from adoption to senior services. Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia is the first illustrated history of this organization. With numerous historic photographs, including images from the 150th anniversary celebration in 2005, this book touches on all aspects of the organization's history: services, programs, staff, and fund-raising.

Statistics of Family Composition in Selected Areas of the United States: Philadelphia, Pa

Statistics of Family Composition in Selected Areas of the United States: Philadelphia, Pa PDF Author: United States. Social Security Board. Office of Research and Statistics
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Families
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Growing with America

Growing with America PDF Author: Jospeh M. Fox
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477166734
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
This book tells of a voyage of discovery by the author, a retired Bechtel chief process engineer and chemical engineering society director, whose previous writings concerned Methane Valorization and Fischer-Tropsch Reactor Design. Trying to explain why a thirteen year old boy would join a Quaker expedition to Philadelphia in 1686 he devises a fictionalized account that is eventually supported by genetic testing. Along the way he discovers, among his ancestors, a master carpenter turned politician, Americas first golf club owner and a doctor of whom it was written, There was a popular notion that he cured his patients. He finds a Young Squire who taunts the British with school pamphlets during the Revolutionary War and several Quakers who were sent off to Virginia during that war - much as we locked up the Japanese during World War II. While written as a family history, the reader will find tie-ins to Benjamin Franklins papers, to Shakespeares The Tempest, to a British diarist who wrote about William Wordsworth and to an anti-slavery tract by Fanny Kemble. The book sheds light on familys papers kept under wraps at historical libraries but leaves the final answers up to future generations. In the authors own words, "I became interested in Fox family genealogy as a result of a business trip to Bechtels London Office in 1974. While there as the process design manager for an Algerian Liquified Natural Gas project, I took the opportunity to visit the Friends Library on Euston Road. There I found a family tree called Descendants of Francis Fox of St. Germans, by Joseph Foster and also Anne Cressons biography of my own ancestor, Joseph Fox, who had been Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly during the Stamp Act uproar. I also located several books that seemed of immediate interest: The Journals of Caroline Fox 1835-1871, edited by Wendy Monk, and a biography, Caroline Fox, by Wilson Harris. These gave the approximate locations of several family estates out in Cornwall near Falmouth. There had been many famous visitors to these estates; men such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Mill and Carlyle, and Caroline Fox had described their conversations in her Journals. "I then convinced a fellow process design engineer, Bob Chu, to drive with me out to Falmouth over a weekend. There we found the closed offices of G. C. Fox & Company, shipbrokers, and the Fox Rosehill Gardens but no other sign of Fox activity. I was a little discouraged. Bob was intrigued, however, and insisted we investigate further. So on Sunday morning we drove further west and found the Glendurgan estate, with foxes on the gateposts and Mrs. Philip Hamilton (Rona) Fox about to start up a lawnmower in the garage. She immediately dropped what she was doing and led us into her house where notes were compared on family connections. One of Francis Foxs sons had sailed to Philadelphia in 1686 on the same ship as Justinian Fox, my own ancestor. "Bob and I then had a chance to tour the fabulous Glendurgan Gardens, just recently added to the National Trust. We also stopped off at Catchfrench, an estate in St. Germans, near Plymouth, where I sat in the ruins of the house where Francis Fox had lived in the mid-1600s. This was enough to send a chill up my spine and got me to thinking about recording all of this history. Back in London, Ronas second son, Charles Lloyd Fox, introduced me to more relatives. As is described in this book, our families have maintained this relationship ever since then. "Work on this book actually started in 1992 after I retired from Bechtel and my wife, Betty, died of Lupus, both in rapid succession. I joined a Creative Writing Extension Class run by U. C. Berkeley and, for my project, started the fictionalized account recorded in the first two chapters of this book. I had learned that Justinian had only been 13 years old when he joined t

An American Family

An American Family PDF Author: Ralph F. Warner
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450210635
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
An American Family is about the Warner family of Philadelphia's Blockley Township. R. David Warner Sr., the author, is qualified to write this book because he and his father are the twelfth and thirteenth generation of a family which settled on the shores of the Schuylkill River five years before William Penn laid out the city. Before his death in 1992, the author's father wrote a series of letters containing the stories told to him as a child in the early twentieth century. He researched the public records of both the Historical Societies and the Quaker Meetinghouse to build upon the actual accounts of his family members. He spent the last twenty years of his life collecting this historical information. In the mid-nineteenth century, the author's great-grandfather began building on the names and facts about family members. The information he gathered was also used to write this book. Actual letters written from the foxholes of the civil war are typical of the documents used to complete this book. Our past can only be retrieved from what we remember and from the historical records that have been kept. Without memories and without records, we have no personal history!

It Takes a Family

It Takes a Family PDF Author: Rick Santorum
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516781
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Among politicians of national stature today, there is perhaps none more respected as a principled conservative than Rick Santorum. In It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, Santorum articulates the humane vision that he believes must inform public policy if it is to be effective and just. An appreciation for the civic bonds that unite a community lies at the heart of genuine conservatism. Moreover, Santorum demonstrates how such an approach to political, social, and economic problems offers the most promise for those on the margin of life: the poor, the vulnerable, and minorities who have often been excluded from opportunity in America. Santorum argues that conservative statesmanship is animated by a sense of stewardship for an inheritance. But what do we inherit as Americans? And how can we be good stewards of that inheritance? Building on Robert Putnam's discussion of "social capital," the habits of association and trust that are the preconditions of any decent society, Santorum assesses how well, in the past generation, Americans have cared for the "fabric" of society. He explores in detail various dimensions of social and cultural connection that are the foundation of the common good. And he presents innovative policy proposals for the renewal of American society at all levels. Throughout his book, Santorum emphasizes the central role of the family—in contradistinction to the metaphorical "village" of the federal government, as promoted by Hillary Clinton—in achieving the common good. With a sustained argument touching on first principles throughout, this ambitious and original book is a major contribution to contemporary political debate. It Takes a Family further establishes Santorum as the leader of reform-minded civic conservatives in America.

The Beneficiary

The Beneficiary PDF Author: Janny Scott
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399185038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR "[A] poignant addition to the literature of moneyed glamour and its inevitable tarnish and decay…like something out of Fitzgerald or Waugh."—The New Yorker A parable for the new age of inequality: part family history, part detective story, part history of a vanishing class, and a vividly compelling exploration of the degree to which an inheritance—financial, cultural, genetic—conspired in one person's self-destruction. Land, houses, and money tumbled from one generation to the next on the eight-hundred-acre estate built by Scott's investment banker great-grandfather on Philadelphia's Main Line. There was an obligation to protect it, a license to enjoy it, a duty to pass it on—but it was impossible to know in advance how all that extraordinary good fortune might influence the choices made over a lifetime. In this warmly felt tale of an American family's fortunes, journalist Janny Scott excavates the rarefied world that shaped her charming, unknowable father, Robert Montgomery Scott, and provides an incisive look at the weight of inheritance, the tenacity of addiction, and the power of buried secrets. Some beneficiaries flourished, like Scott's grandmother, Helen Hope Scott, a socialite and celebrated horsewoman said to have inspired Katherine Hepburn's character in the play and Academy Award-winning film The Philadelphia Story. For others, including the author's father, she concludes, the impact was more complex. Bringing her journalistic talents, light touch, and crystalline prose to this powerful story of a child's search to understand a parent's puzzling end, Scott also raises questions about our new Gilded Age. New fortunes are being amassed, new estates are being born. Does anyone wonder how it will all play out, one hundred years hence?