Old Jail and Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, Lancaster County

Hello, and welcome to the end of August. There should have been an update two weeks ago, but I ran into a lot of trouble following a visit from Tropical Storm Isaias, and I was too busy dealing with the fallout of a flooded basement to be able to give the blog the attention it deserves. In the meantime, Blogger changed its format, so I've also had to spend some time learning how to use the new tools; if anything looks 'off' as you read this post, please let me know so I can try to fix it.

To somewhat make up for the skip, I'm pulling out my folder of markers in Lancaster and giving you a double entry. The Old Jail of Lancaster once sat on the property now occupied by the Fulton Opera House, and there's a marker dedicated to each building, so it makes sense to write about them together. It's not always a pretty history, but the truth is that so much of history really isn't pretty, and it's not my job to make it look nice. It's definitely interesting, though, and it's a long one too, so let's get started.

Trucker's Mill, Slatington, Lehigh County

July is almost over, which is jarring to realize when you consider what a weird year this has been. The summer is flying, almost like 2020 itself is in a hurry to be finished. I hope my readers all continue to be well and safe.

Tomorrow would have been my maternal grandmother's 89th birthday if she were still with us, which is also hard to imagine, and she and my grandfather would be celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary. (Pop always said they got married on her birthday so he didn't have to worry about remembering two different dates. I always said he was the smartest man I ever knew.) So in honor of the occasion, I thought that this week I'd wander back over to Nana's hometown of Slatington, to talk about some of Pop's ancestors. It always sounded a little peculiar in my head, but while it's my grandmother who grew up in the little borough, it's my grandfather whose family founded the place.

The Dorsey Brothers, Shenandoah, Schuylkill County

I admit that I've never been a particular fan of jazz or big band music. I don't ardently dislike it or anything; it just isn't a genre to which I was exposed much when growing up, and as an adult I'm really more of a soft rock kind of person. So while I knew of the existence of the Dorsey Brothers, and was aware that they were pretty big names on the circuit, the name never meant much to me beyond an occasional pop culture reference. And I definitely never knew they were from Pennsylvania.

That changed last fall, when Kevin and I went to Knoebels and I collected some markers along the way. I already told you about Victor Schertzinger, who was born in Mahanoy City; maybe twenty minutes after I photographed his marker, we were passing through the town of Shenandoah and spotted two markers standing side by side in a bank parking lot. What do you know - Shenandoah is the hometown of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

Kinzua Viaduct, Kane and Mount Jewett, McKean County

Today's post is full of all kinds of special stuff! Not only am I about to announce the winners of the blog's first-ever giveaway, but it's also our first foray into the western side of Pennsylvania. The whole state is in the 'green phase' now, so it's a little easier to do some traveling to collect markers, but it also means I've gone back to work so finding the time to do that traveling is more of a challenge. 

More on that in a minute, however, because I'm sure that first you want to know who won the prizes! As you might recall, the prizes being offered included a copy of the Spring 2020 issue of Pennsylvania Heritage magazine, a replica of the Commonwealth's original charter, and a reproduction of a map showing the development of the counties. They were all purchased from the online store at Shop PA Heritage, and the purchase supports the continued work of the PHMC. (As noted on the giveaway page, the PHMC neither endorsed nor sponsored the giveaway.) Winners were chosen using the free spinner at Wheel of Names.

Congratulations to the following individuals: Stephanie Brown, John Robinson, and Warren Nast! I'll be contacting you directly via email to tell you about your prize and get your mailing address so I can send it to you. If you didn't win this time around, fear not; there's going to be another giveaway later this year, maybe in the fall as part of my birthday celebration.

Moving on to the focus of today's post, we're venturing west of the Susquehanna River for the first time, to the northern reaches of McKean County. I had fully intended to visit today's subject myself (and may yet), but because of all the shutdowns, a lot of plans got canceled or curtailed. You may recall that earlier this year, I did a post about Ole Bull's Colony in Potter County, courtesy of some photos provided by my sister Liza; the ones in today's quest log were provided by our other sister, Lisa. She stopped there on her way to Erie some while ago, before any of the COVID-19 stuff started happening, and was kind enough to share her photos with me so I could share them with all of you.

Thomas Mifflin, Shillington, Berks County

My best friend Andrea and I have both been feeling a little nostalgic for our annual trip to Lancaster, as I wrote in my last post. By happy coincidence, our boss asked us to drive down there last week to get some supplies from one of our sister stores. Naturally, that involved some marker hunting on my part, and I came home with a nice big haul of marker pictures. I think I got seven or eight in Lancaster itself, and also today's marker, which was only slightly out of our way in Berks County. It's been several months since I did a Berks marker, so we're overdue!

Lancaster County

I think my best friend Andrea is feeling a little wistful about our annual trip to Lancaster. Normally we're there every spring for Zenkaikon, but - like the vast majority of fan conventions - it was canceled because of COVID-19. We're planning to take a run down there sometime in the coming weeks to collect some more of my markers, but for this week's post she asked me to write about "something from Lancaster." So I thought, why not write about Lancaster itself?

Philip Ginter, Summit Hill, Carbon County

Update 10/1/2025: This post has been freshly updated and re-released! Find it here.

For today's adventure, we'll head back to Carbon County - haven't been there in a while - and read about a man whose name is spelled two ways. I first talked about Philip Ginter, or Ginder, in my post about the Carbon County marker, and at the time I promised I'd tell you more about him later. Well, it's later.