Philip Livingston, York, York County

June is winding down with a heat wave, although they're saying today should be the last day of it in this area. I certainly hope so. 

I'm doing my best to ignore both the heat and the threat of thunderstorms. Instead, I'm casting my thoughts back a few months to a much more temperate day, when my best friend Andrea and I went exploring in York County. Today's quest features the first York marker I actually caught; I turned the car down a random street in hopes of reaching the city's Colonial Quarter, and she caught sight of the marker. She's very good at spotting them from the passenger seat, which is extremely helpful since I have to, you know, pay attention to the road.

The odd thing about today's subject is that he isn't from Pennsylvania at all. But he has a marker here, for tragic reasons.

Durham Furnace, Durham Township, Bucks County

As you might have seen on the Facebook page for the blog, there was no post last week; I came down with a sinus infection that made me very sleepy and unable to focus. Sorry for the delay! We're back to business as usual now.

Before I get started on the subject of last-week's-post-turned-this-week, I do want to give a shout to the Herstory Club, which you might recall accepted me into its ranks last fall. This month's blog theme is medieval history, and I had the chance to make my first contribution! I introduced the Herstorians to one of my favorite historical figures, Princess Gwenllian of Wales; they seemed to really enjoy it and I hope you enjoy it too. Thanks for the opportunity, team!

Back in March, my husband Kevin and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Most things were still kind of locked down, though, so we decided to just go for a nice drive and enjoy the scenery. The roads brought us down to Bucks County, to where George Taylor had once been the ironmaster, and we got out of the car and snooped around with our phone cameras for a bit. (We must look like weird tourists.)

Northkill Amish, Bernville, Berks County

Things have been a little quiet here lately, except for some unsettled weather patterns doing what they do to me. Nothing new there. I'm getting ready for my upcoming week's vacation, half of which will be spent running around in search of new history tidbits; the other half will be spent doing, well, as little as possible to be honest. 

I see by my list of planned blog posts that it's time for a visit to Berks County (hello to my pals in the Berks History Buffs) so off we go. We're heading back to the lovely community of Bernville, but this time we're just a mile from the neighboring community of Shartlesville; it's so close that I scratched my head a little bit about where exactly the marker is located. If you are, or I should say were, at all familiar with the now-closed and much-lamented attraction Roadside America, the marker is located very close to the exit from their parking lot. In fact, the property which held Roadside America was once part of the farm which was the site of this post's major event.

Harriet A. Baker, Allentown, Lehigh County

I've done quite a bit of traveling lately in this blog, so it's nice to return to my home county for a bit of a breather. This is one of the markers I collected on my last birthday, and the subject is an interesting one. I could wish that slavery wasn't part of our country's history, but it's one of those chapters that we have to acknowledge. The woman at the heart of today's quest was never a slave herself, but the reality of slavery impacted her for most of her life and shaped who she was and who she became.