Daniel J. Flood, Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this week's quest, I do want to share something of historical interest with my readers. My acquaintance Mary, who manages the Facebook account Photos of the Lehigh Valley, is as passionate about preserving local history as many of us here. She has established a petition to try to save the farm which once belonged to Rev. Abraham Blumer. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because I wrote about him a few years ago; he was one of the courageous farmers who smuggled the Liberty Bell out of Philadelphia and into Allentown for safekeeping. His farm along Lehigh County's Jordan Creek has been neglected and is in danger of being demolished, but we're hoping it can be preserved and restored for use as an educational site. If you'd like to help us with this goal, please check out Mary's petition by clicking here and adding your name.

On with the blog post, then. This week I'm heading up to scenic Luzerne County, which I've not visited in quite some time, to learn about a man whose claims to fame include controversy, folk heroism, and one extraordinary mustache.

Jenkins' Fort, West Pittston, Luzerne County

I ended up taking last week off from blogging, due to chronic medical nonsense. It's annoying, but sometimes I have to concede defeat for a day or so. On the bright side, I'm in the home stretch on the new book. I had hoped to be finished in time for my birthday, but now it's looking more like the end of September or very early October. I found some cool stuff (or at least I think so) that ended up causing a handful of updates and edits and rewrites, so I'm still plugging away when time and energy permit.

Speaking of history books, I will once again be signing copies of Laury's Island at the Laurys Station Community Day festivities this coming Saturday, September 20th. There will be food trucks, local wineries, craft vendors, a big raffle, live music, fun stuff for kids, community programs and nonprofits (including a camper full of kitties!), and, well, me. Everything kicks off at noon at the Laurys Station fire company headquarters; you can get the details here.

Meanwhile, this week the quest map leads us back to Luzerne County for the first time in a while. Like nearly all of the colonial forts, this one is long gone, but not forgotten.

Sugarloaf Massacre, Sugarloaf and Conyngham, Luzerne County

Recently, the Luzerne County Historical Society's Facebook page began doing "Marker Mondays," in which they take a weekly look at one of the PHMC historical markers in their county. As I joked with my own Facebook followers, "A weekly look at PHMC markers? Why does that sound familiar?"

Well, I promised them that I would do a Luzerne County post in the relatively near future, and that's what we're doing today. Let's travel back to 1780, and learn about a tragedy which befell a company of militia from Northampton County.

Before I get started, I do want to clarify up front that a number of sources don't entirely agree with each other about names and other pieces of information. I've done the best I can to tell the basic story. All I try to do with each blog post is give my readers a fair understanding of the subject, and then if anyone wants to learn more, they're welcome to do their own research into the deeper lore. (This sometimes results in me coming back to correct a post later, when they share their findings with me, and I have no problem doing that! In fact, it happened recently with regards to my post about the Packer Mansion.) So if anything recorded here turns out to not be completely accurate, it's because of the conflicting details in the various sources.

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.

Saints Peter and Paul Lutheran Church, Freeland, Luzerne County

It's very cold today, though at least it's not as gloomy as it was yesterday or is expected to be tomorrow. It has me thinking back to the much sunnier and more temperate day I enjoyed when I was last in Luzerne County. 

I had a great time on my visit to Eckley Miners' Village, except for one tiny thing: by the time I had finished walking the length of the little patch town, I was very hungry, and the souvenir shop only sold things like candy bars and bags of chips. I asked our tour guide if he could recommend a place for me to get lunch once I left the village, but before he could answer, another gentleman on the tour piped up and encouraged me to drive roughly three miles to the community of Freeland, and eat at the Freeland Diner.

This turned out to be a great tip and I again thank the gentleman for his recommendation. Not only was the food there very good and quite reasonably priced, but Freeland is home to one of my markers, so I was going to have to go there at some point anyway. (Also, if you visit the diner's website, you can actually see a picture of the booth where I was seated, which amuses me more than it probably should.)

Interestingly, not only did I conduct both the Eckley quest and this one on the same day, but they're actually related.

Eckley Miners' Village, Weatherly, Luzerne County

Recently I did something that I haven't done in a while. As I mentioned last week, the PHMC held a free admission day this past Saturday at all of the historical sites they personally superintend. Well, it happened to work out that nobody was available to go with me for one reason or another, so I ended up going all by myself to my destination of choice up in Luzerne County. I don't often go on quests alone, mostly for health reasons, but I had a great day with beautiful weather and was even able to make a couple side quests to collect additional markers.

My main objective was to pay a visit to Eckley Miners' Village Museum, which I have long wanted to see; and after carefully navigating some hairpin turns up into the mountains, I reached my destination in time to join the 11 a.m. walking tour. Our tour guide was a wonderful retired miner who has been doing research about the region for more than fifty years. He was lovely (I regret not getting his name) and I learned a lot from him. I apologize to my mobile readers, because I took so many pictures in Eckley that this post has more than the usual number.

Lehigh Path, Drums, Luzerne County

My sister Lisa went hiking a couple of weeks ago, and while husband Kevin and I were collecting markers in Lebanon County on our way to have lunch with our fellow Sherlockians, she was up in Luzerne County sending me pictures of the Lehigh Path.

William G. McGowan, Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County

The weather's continuing to be a thorn in my side. Over the weekend we had temperatures close to 70 degrees, then thunderstorms on Monday, and now it looks like a blizzard here. I know this is Pennsylvania, where the forecasts are made up and the seasons don't matter, but it's getting to be a bit much.

This post has been a tricky one to write - not because it's a delicate topic or anything, but because there's just so much information that it's a real challenge to distill it all into an easy-to-follow article. I don't remember Ma Bell; the major event of this post took place when I was a small child. So in order to understand the life's work of the man in this week's quest, I first had to do a lot of reading about that whole situation.

Wilkes-Barre Fort, Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County

I can't believe it's already November! Only a handful more blog posts before I do my annual retrospective post and look ahead to 2022. Hopefully I have enough material to get me through the winter months, especially if the snow is heavy and I can't go looking for more, although it would be nice if I can manage one more marker collecting quest before the days get too cold.

This blog is sort of a cross between a hobby and a job. It's both and it's neither all at once. I take it very seriously, because much of my personal identity is bound up in being a writer; but at the same time, I can't take it too seriously or I'll never have any fun with it, and life has enough things in it that aren't fun without volunteering for more. 

(On that note, thank you for the kind remarks I received following last week's post, with regards to the passing of my dear friend Jessica. I am very appreciative of all my readers who reached out to offer their condolences; it meant a lot.)

Today's post is one of those with which I've had a bit of fun. The subject itself isn't particularly amusing or anything, but the wording of the marker kind of is. See, almost without fail, the wording of the historical markers is sensible and easy to understand; this is a good thing, because otherwise most people would ignore them more than they already do. But today's marker is a little different - I kept reading the text and just sort of blinking at it. Why would Pennsylvania have had a fort which protected the courthouse of a county in Connecticut? On what map does that make any kind of sense?

Well, as it turns out, there was once a series of minor wars between Pennsylvania and Connecticut. If this is the first you're hearing of such a thing, don't feel bad, because I never heard about it either.

Min L. Matheson, Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County

Excited to announce that I've been added to another online collective of history bloggers! You can now find MarkerQuest at the History Creatives Hub. There's a wide variety of historical subjects being offered by the members of this group, so be sure to take a good look around and see what catches your eye. If you have or are interested in starting a historical blog of your own, the site owner has some very useful information and suggestions to help you get started.

Moving on to today's quest, we're going to have a look at a significant figure in the fight for workers' rights in the early 20th century. This one took me a while to write, because there was a lot of information for me to absorb and distill about this dedicated woman.

American Institute of Mining Engineers, Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County

As I mentioned recently in my post about Colonel Jacob Stroud, I was invited to attend a historical event in Wilkes-Barre. It so happens that the organization celebrating their 150th anniversary also has one of these markers, so this is the perfect time to do my first post from Luzerne County.