Daniel Brodhead and Dansbury Mission, Monroe County

Well, it's Wednesday, and you know what that means - besides the fact that my vacation is over, that is. (It was a very hot trip. But we had a great time; we visited ancient Mayan ruins, and I even held a sloth!)

This week I'm doing a double quest in the mountains of Monroe County. The two markers are in separate communities, so initially I thought they would each get their own post; but they are so connected that it made more sense to put them together.

I won't lie - this one was tricky to research. Google kept turning up results for the wrong person, or the wrong location, because of similar names. I think all my information is now correct, though, thanks in no small part to the resources of the Monroe County Historical Association. 

A. Mitchell Palmer, Stroudsburg, Monroe County

Between the winter weather and a rather annoying sinus infection, I haven't felt too terrific lately. I hope my readers are in better shape! I'm certainly not sorry to be saying goodbye to January, and they're promising warmer temperatures for the first week of February, so fingers crossed.

I'm sure that as cold as it is here, though, it's much colder up in Monroe County at the gateway to the Poconos, where today's marker stands by the county courthouse.

Fort Hamilton, Stroudsburg, Monroe County

First, hello to anyone who is finding their way here for the first time after my book signing this past Saturday! Thank you very much to everyone who turned out to see me. I had a really good time and they're hoping I'll come back again - maybe with a new book. We'll see what shakes out in the coming months.

I'm trying to get a little ahead of myself (instead of constantly feeling like I'm running behind) because the winter holidays are approaching, and since I'm in retail, you can imagine that my free time tends to be at a bit of a premium. So I'm doing my best to create a little bit of wiggle room in terms of having blog posts ready to fire up on a Wednesday. For this week's quest, we're heading back up to lovely Monroe County to have a look at a colonial fort which isn't there anymore.

Monroe County

As my Facebook followers may have seen, last week my husband and I celebrated his birthday by traveling down to Lancaster, one of our favorite cities, and touring President Buchanan's beautiful home at Wheatland. Kevin drove, and because he's an indulgent sort, he kept pulling over every time he spotted a marker, so I was able to catch a couple that I still needed. I also got plenty of pictures for the post I'm going to be doing next month about Wheatland itself.

Moving on to today's quest, I decided to revisit my trip to Stroudsburg from this past spring and learn more about Monroe County itself.

Colonel Jacob Stroud, Stroudsburg, Monroe County

I'm delighted to report, as my Facebook followers have seen, that I've been invited to a historical event up in Luzerne County later this month! A gentleman named Michael Korb very kindly reached out to let me know that they're going to be installing a plaque in Wilkes-Barre to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. It's not one of my markers (they already have one of those, so you can guess what I'll be doing while I'm there), but he thought it would be of interest to me and my readers. If the name of the organization sounds vaguely familiar, that may be because I've mentioned it before in this blog - David Thomas, the Welsh ironmaster considered the father of my hometown, was its first president. The ceremony is to take place at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 16th, in the Public Square of Wilkes-Barre, and you can read the details here. So if you're in the vicinity, grab your face mask and come enjoy a socially distanced historic event. (And look for me.)

As for this week's quest, it's my first post from Monroe County! I'm hitting all kinds of new places lately, between the restrictions easing up and the contributions from guest photographers, and I'm very pleased about it. Today's quest is from a few weeks ago, when my best friend Andrea and I took a little road trip to Stroudsburg. For some reason, despite being only about thirty miles away, Stroudsburg has always seemed like it's incredibly far off; I guess it's because it's considered a gateway to the Poconos. (Then again, as I think I've mentioned in another post or two, my sense of distance is inexplicably skewed.) What I found was a charming, quiet community with a rich history of which they are justifiably very proud.

Stroudsburg dates its origins back to colonial times, and has a Moravian connection which I'll be discussing in more detail in a future post. They actually have two different markers for the man who gave his name to the community, so we're going to hit them both.