Bellefonte, Centre County

It always throws me off a little when there are five Wednesdays in a month, because it means one extra blog post sneaks in there. Next week is my birthday, and I'll be taking some time off from work for the occasion - not so much to celebrate getting older, but in order to get moving on a couple of projects I've been trying to get underway. If all goes well, I should be making an announcement in the next few weeks that I never expected I would be making, but here we are.

Go ahead and indulge your imaginations. No, I'm not having a child or getting another pet, but beyond that, feel free to go wild.

Anyway, for this final quest in August, we're heading out to almost the exact middle of the state for another visit to the adorable borough of Bellefonte. This time we'll just find out why the community itself is significant - it actually has two (identical) historical markers of its own.

St. Joseph's Church, Hazleton, Luzerne County

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been finding August to be rather topsy-turvy. We've had a lot of things going on around here which have drastically interfered in my ability to focus on writing. It's not helping me get the first blog book finished, that's for sure! But my birthday's coming in a few weeks and I'll be taking some time off for that, so I'm hoping to make use of at least a couple of those days. This will be the first year since the blog began that I'll be doing a post on my actual birthday (when I will once again be fortymumble years old); hopefully I'll have something special for the occasion. Or at least something amusing.

For today, I looked at my list of completed posts and realized that we haven't visited Luzerne County since April, so I thought it might be time to do just that. Let's take a ride up to Hazleton and visit the oldest Slovak Roman Catholic church this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Hotel Fauchère, Milford, Pike County

Yes, friends, you read that correctly - quite unexpectedly, I'm debuting my first marker post for Pike County this week! My bff Andrea's aunt recently took a trip out that way with her boyfriend, and he was so kind as to stop and grab a couple of pictures for her to send to me. Their timing was amazing, because I had literally just been trying to decide what to do for this week's post when the text came through. Thanks again, Jeff and Donna!

This is an interesting one, because the exact nature of the historical significance isn't immediately apparent. But as it turns out, it's a rather unique one.

Betsy Ross, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

Coming to you live from the blog's department of "Did That Actually Happen?" is the latest in unexpected developments. I check my blog's statistics regularly, and I recently noticed a curious uptick in hits on my 2020 post about the Dorsey Brothers. I wasn't sure why that would be until I received a private message on Facebook. The person contacting me was Tommy Dorsey's granddaughter Joanne - someone found my blog and shared the post with the surviving family members! She was able to give me a little bit of information that was missing from my post and had nice things to say about my work. As you can imagine, it was pretty exciting to hear from someone connected with one of my subjects.

Who knows, maybe it'll happen again.

Also, you might have noticed another link over on my sidebar - the blog now has a store! Well, sort of. It's all stuff I designed, mostly history themed, and you can get my designs on a variety of shirts and other products. I don't actually have anything for sale with the blog's logo on it, but if that's something anyone would want I can certainly make that happen. Please click on the link sometime and see if there's anything that catches your eye; any profits I make go toward paying my bills so I can keep doing this project that I love.

Today's post is a name I'm sure most if not all of my readers will recognize. Americans all learn in elementary school that Betsy Ross is credited with designing and making the first flag for the United States. She was indeed a real person, and her house in Philadelphia is one of the popular tourist stops in "America's Most Historic Square Mile." Much of the information I'm about to share with you actually comes from the signage throughout her house. I didn't actually get to go inside, because of time constraints on the day of my being there, but I'm hoping to make another trip and get more photographs to add to this post in the future.

The Haines Shoe House, Hellam Township, York County

I'm a day late and a dollar short, but I did finally remember to get the August newsletter up and out! Subscribers, be sure to check your email. If you're not a subscriber, get on that you can click here and read it.

Last week I shared with you my adventures with bff Andrea as we attended the marker dedication for the Haines Shoe House in York County. As promised, now I'm going to tell you about the house itself.