Allentown State Hospital, Allentown, Lehigh County

As I mentioned last week, husband Kevin and I attended the marker dedication ceremony for Allentown State Hospital this past Friday. My longtime readers know that I usually do separate posts for the ceremonies and the markers themselves; however, this event was probably the shortest of its kind that I've ever attended, and it just made more sense for me to combine it with the history behind the marker. So as a result, this post may be a little longer than usual.

History Endangered: Can the Shrine Be Saved?

This isn't the blog post I had intended to write today, but it's the one that I'm writing because... well, to put it bluntly, I'm upset.

A while back, my friend John, who lives in Allentown, contacted me to say that the Liberty Bell Shrine on Hamilton Street was in trouble. My regular readers may recall that the old Zion's Reformed Church is where the Liberty Bell was concealed for safekeeping during the American Revolution; for sixty years, a museum has been maintained in the church basement to celebrate this fact. Last summer they got a PHMC marker and I attended the dedication ceremony. At the time, attendance in the church was dwindling, due to an aging congregation, and they were expecting to sell the building.

John was letting me know that the museum was in danger of not surviving the forthcoming transition. As a member of the museum, I was concerned; however, due to various schedule conflicts I didn't have a chance to follow up on his tip, and what I had heard from other sources was that the buyers of the church were interested in maintaining the museum's presence, so I thought it was one of those things that would work itself out.

I have always been a little too optimistic.

Liberty Bell Hiding Place, Allentown, Lehigh County

We have returned triumphant from our trek to Altoona! Kevin and I collected a whopping 22 markers in five counties - Luzerne, Columbia, Montour, Centre, and Blair. (We almost added Union and Clinton Counties to the list, but I didn't have my lists handy for those.) It was a lovely trip and he very much enjoyed his birthday celebration, and was an absolute champion about asking me if I wanted to stop for markers. We visited a number of interesting places and I look forward to telling you all about them in future posts.

But first, we're picking up where I left off last time. In last week's post, I talked about my experiences attending a marker dedication earlier in the month at the "Liberty Bell Church" in Allentown. It was a fun event and I was glad to be there. Now this week, I can tell you about the actual history which led to the marker being put there.

Marker Dedication: Liberty Bell Hiding Place

Husband Kevin's birthday is this week, so we're getting ready to head out on our little road trip. The plan is to leave first thing in the morning tomorrow - if I can get my to-do list cleared! That includes updating this blog, of course, so here we are. As part of the lead-up to his birthday celebration, we attended the marker dedication in his home city of Allentown this past Saturday, where the beautiful Zion's Reformed United Church of Christ celebrated their very unique place in history.

Lots of churches have bells. Not too many have had bells underneath their floorboards.

Allentown, Lehigh County

I am once again trying to unsubscribe from weather. This time it's Tropical Depression Fred, which is crawling over Pennsylvania and threatening to dump rain on us. Hopefully it passes without much incident.

While I'm attempting to move as little as possible, let's take a virtual visit to my husband's hometown. The third-largest city in the commonwealth has, unsurprisingly, multiple markers to its name, all of them with the same information, and we'll take a look at what was originally just a little rural village. However, I must apologize - I only have a picture of the marker in this post at the moment, because I'm having difficulty uploading images to Blogger. I'll come back and edit in the future to add some more pictures.

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.

Lehigh County

I hope that all of my readers are safe and well during this unprecedented situation with COVID-19. My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected. 

Before we get into today's quest, I wanted to share the announcement of the 2020 historical marker selections. Of course, circumstances being what they are right now, it's hard to say when the dedication ceremonies for any of these will be taking place, but I'm looking forward to a time when that becomes possible again. I'm especially excited that the Liberty Bell Museum in Allentown will be receiving a marker, since I had been surprised to find that they didn't already have one, and I will definitely be attending that ceremony whenever it gets scheduled. And my thanks to Karen Galle for promoting this blog in the article!

Moving on to the main event here, I was looking through my remaining saved markers - I have enough material to take us through June, at least, thankfully. For today's post, I thought we might wander around the county of my own birth.

Abraham Blumer, Allentown, Lehigh County

I'm learning a lot about Pennsylvania history while doing this project, as you might expect. However, the lesson that I'm learning most often is that, as much as I know about the history of Pennsylvania, and Lehigh County in particular, I don't know as much as I think I do. I'm constantly being surprised.

I celebrated my birthday earlier this month, and my husband Kevin and I spent part of the day at the Lehigh Valley Zoo, of which we are members. (Hi, zoo friends!) It was a great day, with beautiful weather, and I got to feed Murphy the giraffe. As we were leaving, I checked the list of historical markers and realized that there was one more or less on our way home, so we headed for the Jordan United Church of Christ just off of route 309. I was puzzled, to be honest, because I've driven past that church many times over the years and I have never noticed a blue and gold historical marker.

Well, that's because there isn't one.