The Solitude, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

Two weeks ago, I promised my Facebook followers that whichever of two post subjects they did not select would be the focus of this week's update. Having given my attention to the heavily requested David Tannenberg, I now take us back to Philadelphia to visit a mansion in the middle of the zoo.

I visited the Philadelphia Zoo with my husband last summer, and wrote about it on a very cold day when I was in need of some sunshine. At the time, I didn't give too much focus to the beautiful Colonial mansion in the middle of the grounds, because it has its own marker and I knew I'd be telling you all about it in another post. And here we are.

David Tannenberg, Bethlehem, Northampton County

Once again I polled my Facebook followers to see which of two subjects they wanted me to cover this week. By a two-thirds margin, they voted for this one.

Burnside Plantation is a magnificent colonial estate nestled in a part of Bethlehem which, until I undertook this particular marker quest, I had never occasioned to visit. It's sort of tucked out of the way. The road leading to it branches off from Schoenersville Road, and this week's marker is found at the entrance.

Carbon County

I'm not sure how commonly this is known, but did you realize that every one of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, in addition to being home to many other markers, has a PHMC marker of its very own? I've been trying to figure out the best way to talk about these, but as is so often the case, I'm probably overthinking the matter and I'm just going to treat them like the other markers.

The marker for each county is found in the vicinity of the county courthouse, and the community where the county courthouse is located is known as the county seat. (The lone exception to this rule is Philadelphia County, which consists entirely of the city of Philadelphia - it is its own county seat.) So if you haven't had occasion to wander past the courthouse of a given county, odds are you've never seen one of these markers.

(Edit: Karen Galle, of the PHMC, tells me in a comment below that Montgomery County actually does not have its own marker.)

Rock Ford, Lancaster, Lancaster County

Happy April! Pennsylvania is finally starting to get warm(ish)!

First, another shout out to Karen Galle, the director of the PHMC’s historical marker program. She recently updated their official blog with some info about new markers that are being erected this year, thus ensuring that I will continue to have blog subjects for years to come, and at the very end she gave a lovely shout-out to MarkerQuest! You can read the post, which is quite interesting, here.

If you read my post last year about the First Reformed Church of Lancaster, you may remember that I said I'm in that city at least once a year for Zenkaikon, the local annual gathering of pop culture enthusiasts. We were together once again at the end of March, so a big hello to any of my Z-pals who are reading this! While I was there with my usual guest star party members Rachel and Andrea, we took some time between panels to collect a few more signs for this blog. Today's subject was unexpected - we stumbled upon it while traveling between our hotel and the convention, and of course made the detour to get photos.

Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Northampton County

A special shout-out hello to Karen Galle, the director of the PHMC’s historical marker program, who recently emailed to say how much she's enjoying MarkerQuest! She suggested that I start including the county in the name of each blog post as well as the community, which makes sense to me, so thank you for the idea.

Words might be my bread and butter, but in today's post, I rely more heavily on photographs than I normally do. That's because it's sort of hard for me to adequately describe the treasures of the Moravian Archives.

First School Slate Factory, Slatington, Lehigh County

For this first post written in my new residence, I'm going back to the county of my birth, to the hometown of my grandmother and her sisters. Slatington gets its name from the local deposits of slate, which have been used over the years to make many things. In particular, it's been used to make school chalkboards, which is what today's post discusses.

Hanover Resolves, Grantville, Dauphin County

My apologies to anyone who missed me updating on schedule two weeks ago - we had some very bad weather and it affects me pretty intently. We're having some this week too, but I couldn't let another 'blog day' go by without an update.

Today's post is a slightly odd one, however. I don't have any photos to share except for the picture of the marker itself. But I did learn some interesting things while writing this, and I hope you find them interesting too.