Marker Dedication: Haines Shoe House

There has been so much going on around here lately that I feel a little head-spinny. But before I tell you about my latest adventure out in the world, I do have a fun announcement to make. I was recently contacted by John, the lovely gentleman who runs Mainly Museums, which is a crowdsourced blog dedicated to showcasing museums around the world. He likes my work (yay!) and invited me to do a series of articles about the Pennsylvania museums I encounter in the course of my research. Since blathering about Pennsylvania history seems to be what I do best, I of course said yes and my first article went live yesterday. My regular readers will know that I wrote about Eckley Miners' Village Museum here on the blog last year, and because I enjoyed it so much, I kicked off my MM series with the same subject. I'll be contributing two articles per month to the MM collective, so watch for future links and meanwhile check out the rest of the site; they're still pretty new but they've got a lot of talent in the pool.

Meanwhile, last week I mentioned that my bff Andrea and I were off to attend another marker dedication. I'll tell you about the actual Haines Shoe House in next week's post, but for today, here's everything that went down while we were in York. We met so many cool people!

Irving Female College, Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County

My bff Andrea and I are spending part of today attending the marker dedication for the Haines Shoe House in York County. So next week I'll be telling you about our adventures, and then the following week I'll be telling you about the marker and the house. That'll bring us into August, and those of you who subscribe to the monthly newsletter will be getting a big one because I may have sort of forgotten to send the one for July. (If you're not subscribed, there's plenty of time to sign up before the new one comes out - just use the handy little form on the right side of the blog. It's 100% free.)

Meanwhile, for today, I thought I'd head back to Cumberland County and take a look at a very interesting institute of higher learning. It's not a school anymore, but for a few decades it was one of the best places for a young woman to be educated, and at a time when only about 2% of women were attending college at all, that was an especially noteworthy feat.

John A. Sutter, Lititz, Lancaster County

First, thank you to everyone who shared last week's post about the Marshalls Creek explosion and the search for surviving relatives and friends of the victims. If you haven't seen it, please do check it out and pass it on to anyone you think might be able to help with that.

For this week's quest, we're heading out to Lancaster County thanks to some help from my pal Jon, the Hometown Historian. We both were researching this gentleman last year, and we had amusingly opposite experiences. I was in Lititz on a bitterly windy day in February and was able to get photos of the marker, while he was there later in the year and was able to get photos of the gravesite. But I hadn't found the grave, and he hadn't found the marker, so naturally we teamed up and traded pictures. You can find the video he made in my sources section at the bottom of the post. Thanks, Jon!

Marshalls Creek Explosion, East Stroudsburg, Monroe County

This is an unusual one for me, because I'm pretty sure this is the first time I'm writing a post on this blog about an event which happened within living memory. I hadn't been born yet when the terrible explosion happened on route 209 in Marshalls Creek (or Middle Smithfield Township, or East Stroudsburg - the area seems to have three different names, which isn't unusual around here), but I know several people who had. If my grandparents were still with us, I'll bet my grandfather would have been able to tell me a lot about it.

Last week I shared my experiences at the marker dedication at the spot on the highway where six people were killed in horrendous circumstances. This week, we're going to have a look at those circumstances, and I'll be asking my readers for their help concerning the victims.