McCoy Home, Lewistown, Mifflin County

As promised in last week's post, this week I'll be taking my first shot at Mifflin County! It's always exciting when I get to do the first post from a county on this blog. The photos in this post all come courtesy of Kaylee Lindenmuth, the driving force behind the Shenandoah Sentinel. She's got to be one of the hardest-working young people in modern media and I genuinely do not know when she finds the time to sleep, much less send me pictures. But she had to take a road trip recently and was kind enough to provide me with some fodder for blog posts, so thank you, Kaylee!

This one's for all my readers who are fans of military history, since the family who lived in this house had not one but two generations of high-ranking soldiers. And yes, they were the real McCoys! (Probably not related to the one who started that expression though. But maybe?)

Captain C. V. Gridley, Erie, Erie County

Before I get into today's quest, I just wanted to extend my thanks to St. John's Episcopal Church of York. That's the place where the York Liberty Bell is housed, and they shared the link to my post in their latest e-newsletter. I really appreciate that and I hope the congregation enjoyed reading the article!

As some of my longtime readers might recall, I'm an occasional volunteer with FindAGrave.com. In recent weeks, through our mutual work on that site, I unexpectedly made contact with my distant cousin Ron Bauerle. Ron, according to his researches, is my mother's eighth cousin through her father's line; like us, he's descended from Philip Kratzer, one of the earliest settlers of Emmaus. Much to my surprise and delight, he checked out this blog and offered to send me pictures of markers from his home county, which I gladly accepted since who the heck knows when I'll be able to go there myself. So thanks to his contributions, today we're going to learn about a sailor in the Spanish-American War, and the origin of a certain well-known military catchphrase of the time.