Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Category: Cemeteries (Page 1 of 2)

Celebrating Concord Township and the Spring Valley AME Church

This week’s 2022 Community Initiative Award winner spotlight is on Concord Township’s preservation of the Spring Valley AME Church  in Delaware County.

This project in Delaware County caught the eagle eye of one of my colleagues last year from some press reporting and I’m glad it did. She just happened to be the SHPO’s reviewer for most projects that were undertaken with funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), particularly using Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money.

Using CDBG funds for historic preservation – like Concord Township did – is a great way for communities to invest in the older and historic places that matter to them and that tell their full stories.

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Reflecting on Year One of the Pennsylvania Baseline Survey

In late 2020, PA SHPO launched an ambitious, large-scale architectural survey called the Pennsylvania Baseline Survey, with a goal of adding approximately 27,000 new resources in 52 different counties over three years. In Year One, over 7,000 new records were added to PA-SHARE – just from Baseline Survey! Read on to learn about a few of the interesting finds…

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Reinterpreting the Underground Railroad: The Sherman’s Dale Discharge Former Slaves’ Graves Site

In my short time as an archaeologist working in southeast Pennsylvania, I’ve learned that every basement, crawl space, and root cellar older than 1860 was at one time, a stop on the Underground Railroad (UGRR).  This of course is not true, but the mythologies of the UGRR are born out of the fact that the region played an important role in the network as the first free state north of the Mason-Dixon line. 

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