Podvia, Mark W.

Canals, Railroads, Philadelphia, and the Struggle for Internal Improvement in the Cumberland Valley, 1825-1837

In April 1825, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the construction of the "Public Works," a state-built system of canals and railroads designed to provide improved transportation throughout the Commonwealth.  The most vital portion of the Public Works was the "Main Line," a 395-mile long series of canals and railroads built to link the state's largest city, Philadelphia, with the important western city of Pittsburgh.

The Sadler/Levinson Curtilage

The need for a dormitory to house Dickinson School of Law students was recognized as early as 1898, twenty years before the Law School moved from its original home in Emory Hall, located at the corner of South West and West Pomfret Streets, into its current home in Trickett Hall on South College Street in Carlisle.

Walter Harrison Hitchler

On 14 September 1906 William Trickett, dean of the Dickinson School of Law, wrote a letter offering a faculty position to a young lawyer then living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trickett proposed that the young man—Walter Harrison Hitchler—teach courses in criminal law and equity. "I think you will like the work," wrote Trickett. "It will be useful to you, and may be the initiation into a career as professor of law, that may be lifelong and honorable."