The Hidden History of Chester County: Lost Tales from the Delaware and Brandywine Valleys (PA)
Mark E. Dixon has lived in the Delaware Valley since 1987, when he moved from Texas to a Drexel Hill apartment complex whereAmerican 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 had 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 needed a pair of gloves. Those tales provided a window into the area s history, later expanded by Dixon's joining the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which is practically an historical society itself.