Roland Curtin was founder of the Eagle Ironworks and patriarch of the Curtin family that included a son who was Pennsylvania’s governor during the Civil War. Curtin, a native of Ireland, moved to the Bald Eagle valley in 1797. He lived in Milesburg initially but later moved to Bellefonte, Centre County’s new seat of government, […]
George Washington Atherton — Penn State’s “second founder” — was the longest-serving president in the institution’s history. During nearly a quarter-century, from 1882 to 1906, Atherton took a failing college and transformed it into a stable institution poised for growth in the twentieth century. For all his work in building Penn State, however, perhaps his […]
Evan Pugh was the first president of the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania, the fledgling institution that, under his leadership, would become Penn State. Pugh’s great accomplishment did not come easily. Beginning in the early 1850s, state agricultural societies fueled a movement to establish agricultural colleges. These new institutions seemed oxymoronic to some — college […]
Andrew Gregg Curtin was the governor of Pennsylvania during the Civil War and one of President Abraham Lincoln’s staunchest supporters. Curtin was born in Bellefonte on April 22, 1815. His father, Roland Curtin, owned the Eagle Ironworks, and his mother, Jane Gregg, was the daughter of U.S. Senator Andrew Gregg, Curtin’s namesake. Curtin attended Bellefonte […]