Leaf-raking season is here, but here's an arboreal chore to put that work into perspective.

This 1923 photograph shows workers hired by Pierre S. "P.S." du Pont (1870-1954) moving a beech tree from a nearby property to the north corner greenhouse of his Longwood Gardens estate.

The gardens had their roots in Peirce's Park, an arboretum created by Joshua (1766-1851) and Samuel Peirce (1766-1838), who planted their collections of native and exotic trees on the land near their family's farmhouse in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. After the brothers' death, the land remained in the family, but their arboretum deteriorated over the decades, as ensuing generations lost interest in the property.

In 1906, a lumber mill operator was contracted to remove the trees. But the park wound up being rescued by P.S. du Pont, who purchased the property in July 1906 with the goal of protecting the collection.

If Christmas Creep is real, surely the creepiest season deserves some creep of its own, no? This week's Hagley Vault offers a spooky campfire tale from the Ohio Bell Telephone Company's Ohio Story television and radio series, issued as a Halloween episode in 1947. 

In its time, the Ohio Story was the longest running regional scripted program in the nation, and at least 1,309 radio and 175 television episodes were produced. This episode of the series focused on the haunted history of the Piatt family's Mac-O-Chee castle in West Liberty, Ohio.

This recording is part of Hagley Library's Culley family collection of Cinecraft Productions audiovisual materials (Accession 2018.201). Cinecraft Productions was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty (Buehner) Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. 

The Hagley Digital Archives are alive and growing again, and one of it's newest additions is a recently acquired publication in our collection of rare pamphlets.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the world's first intercontinental radio transmission. On September 29, 1915, a U.S. naval radio station in Arlington, Virginia initiated a transmission to another naval radio station on Mare Island in San Francisco, California, which then relayed to Honolulu, Hawaii.

The demonstration was a joint public-private venture coordinated through defense contracts with the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T) and the Western Electric Co., using equipment installed at radio stations under Navy jurisdiction.