The Hidden History of Delaware County: Untold Tales from Cobb's Creek to the Brandywine

by Mark E. Dixon, Randall Miller (Foreword by)

Overview

Andrew Wyeth is renowned for his paintings of the Chadds Ford countryside, but what about the his brother, the inventor of the plastic soda bottle? Then there is Bill Haley of Booth's Corner who, along with the help of a few Delaware Valley teenagers, came up with a new sound called rock-and-roll. With a fascinating and occasionally uproarious collection of his Main Line Today magazine columns, author Mark E. Dixon explores the forgotten corners of Delaware County's history. From the Upper Darby abolitionist who conducted more than two thousand people on the Underground Railroad to the Sun Shipyard press stunt that landed heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey in hot water, these offbeat histories will delight visitors and locals alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609490652
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	12/03/2010
Series:	Hidden History
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	1,066,730
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Mark E. Dixon has lived in the Delaware Valley since 1987, when he moved from Texas to a Drexel Hill apartment complex where American Bandstand's Dick Clark once lived. Though not himself a native, he grew up hearing about the beautiful city of Philadelphia"? from his mother, who moved here in 1945 to do social work and ended up marrying a Hahnemann University medical student from Michigan. And the roots go deeper: Dixon's mother chose Philadelphia based on stories told by her grandmother. In 1886, Dixon's great-grandmother, a descendant of some of the region's earliest settlers, was a shopgirl at Wanamaker's Grand Court, opposite city hall in Philadelphia. And there, though it was surely against John Wanamaker's rules, great-grandmother let herself be romanced by, and later married, a midwestern Quaker who was in town on business but needing a pair of gloves. Those tales provided a window into the area's history, later supplemented by Dixon's joining the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which, he observes, is practically a historical society itself. The public relations job that drew Dixon to the area vanished in a spectacular corporate bankruptcy three years later. Eventually, he returned to work as a writer, this time, freelance, building on earlier experience as a reporter for newspapers and trade publications. The stories in this book are columns that he began writing for Main Line Today magazine in 2003. Dixon and his family live in Wayne."

Table of Contents

Foreword Randall M. Miller 7

Acknowledgements 11

1688: A Parable of Preemptive War 13

1715: God's Footstool 19

1778: Standing on Sandy's Shoulders 25

1813: Empathy 30

1847: Listen to the Tadpoles Sing 36

1850: Got Lightning Rods? 42

1855: Ellwood Takes a Drive 47

1864: Progress Be Damned 54

1867: Getting Ready for Martin 59

1874: Fear of Splinters 64

1898: Wading in Cold Water 69

1901: R. Brognard Okie and the McMansion Craze 74

1911: Eddystone, Gateway to Sri Lanka 79

1915: Anna and the Tax Man 85

1917: Tiptoe around the Powerful 90

1918: The Importance of Matching Shoes 96

1937: Preparing for Change 101

1941: The Great Marcus Hook Swindle 106

1942: The End of Compromise 112

1955: What Kids Want 118

1964: Hey, Hey, LBJ 124

1973: The Odd Couple 129

1975: A Different Sort of Service 134

Reading List 141

About the Author 143