Old Chapel, Bethlehem, Northampton County

As of this writing, Moravian Bethlehem is still on the U.S. Tentative List to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If you're not familiar with the term, these are locations around the world which have been recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They have been determined to be unique landmarks with distinctive geographic and historical identities, which have cultural significance "of outstanding value to humanity." Right now, Pennsylvania only has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites to its name - Independence Hall in Philadelphia and Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece outside of Pittsburgh - so if the Moravian Community is selected for the honor, it will become our third. It's a process that takes years; they've been working toward this since 2002. You can keep tabs on the whole thing here - it's very exciting! I have every intention of being there for whatever celebration they decide to have for the occasion.

Well, with all the explorations I've been doing of other counties, I realized that I haven't done a Moravian Bethlehem blog post all year. So I'd say we're way overdue. This one is a little more picture-heavy than some of my posts, because I just couldn't bring myself to stop at three like I usually do.

Barnett's Fort, Lower Paxton Township, Dauphin County

Welcome to July! I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.

We're going to head back to Dauphin County today, thanks to some photos that were sent to me by John Robinson, a retired employee of the PHMC. Most of what John emails me comes from Beaver County, but this time he also sent a picture which actually connects to a previous post in this blog. My longtime readers may remember when I wrote about the Blue Mountain Forts two years ago, and the post concluded with the observation that I hadn't learned as much about them as I would have liked. It also mentioned the names of five confirmed forts which were part of this chain; there's apparently a sixth but I couldn't find a source which identified it for sure (although it may have been Fort Lebanon). All of those forts have historical markers of their own, and today we'll be taking a look at one of them.

Philip Livingston, York, York County

June is winding down with a heat wave, although they're saying today should be the last day of it in this area. I certainly hope so. 

I'm doing my best to ignore both the heat and the threat of thunderstorms. Instead, I'm casting my thoughts back a few months to a much more temperate day, when my best friend Andrea and I went exploring in York County. Today's quest features the first York marker I actually caught; I turned the car down a random street in hopes of reaching the city's Colonial Quarter, and she caught sight of the marker. She's very good at spotting them from the passenger seat, which is extremely helpful since I have to, you know, pay attention to the road.

The odd thing about today's subject is that he isn't from Pennsylvania at all. But he has a marker here, for tragic reasons.

Durham Furnace, Durham Township, Bucks County

As you might have seen on the Facebook page for the blog, there was no post last week; I came down with a sinus infection that made me very sleepy and unable to focus. Sorry for the delay! We're back to business as usual now.

Before I get started on the subject of last-week's-post-turned-this-week, I do want to give a shout to the Herstory Club, which you might recall accepted me into its ranks last fall. This month's blog theme is medieval history, and I had the chance to make my first contribution! I introduced the Herstorians to one of my favorite historical figures, Princess Gwenllian of Wales; they seemed to really enjoy it and I hope you enjoy it too. Thanks for the opportunity, team!

Back in March, my husband Kevin and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Most things were still kind of locked down, though, so we decided to just go for a nice drive and enjoy the scenery. The roads brought us down to Bucks County, to where George Taylor had once been the ironmaster, and we got out of the car and snooped around with our phone cameras for a bit. (We must look like weird tourists.)

Northkill Amish, Bernville, Berks County

Things have been a little quiet here lately, except for some unsettled weather patterns doing what they do to me. Nothing new there. I'm getting ready for my upcoming week's vacation, half of which will be spent running around in search of new history tidbits; the other half will be spent doing, well, as little as possible to be honest. 

I see by my list of planned blog posts that it's time for a visit to Berks County (hello to my pals in the Berks History Buffs) so off we go. We're heading back to the lovely community of Bernville, but this time we're just a mile from the neighboring community of Shartlesville; it's so close that I scratched my head a little bit about where exactly the marker is located. If you are, or I should say were, at all familiar with the now-closed and much-lamented attraction Roadside America, the marker is located very close to the exit from their parking lot. In fact, the property which held Roadside America was once part of the farm which was the site of this post's major event.

Harriet A. Baker, Allentown, Lehigh County

I've done quite a bit of traveling lately in this blog, so it's nice to return to my home county for a bit of a breather. This is one of the markers I collected on my last birthday, and the subject is an interesting one. I could wish that slavery wasn't part of our country's history, but it's one of those chapters that we have to acknowledge. The woman at the heart of today's quest was never a slave herself, but the reality of slavery impacted her for most of her life and shaped who she was and who she became.

Bailey's Printshop, Lancaster, Lancaster County

I had to delay this week's quest by a day because we had such strong and lengthy thunderstorms yesterday. As my longtime readers know, I'm one of those 'walking barometer' type people and severe weather conditions make me ill. But in one respect this was a good thing: because the post is going up a day late, I get to tell you about something that was posted this morning. Martha Capwell Fox of the National Canal Museum did an article about Laury's Island, using my book as her reference, and gave me a cool shout-out for my work! (I don't know where she found the picture she uses in the article, which I'd never seen, but it's a great image.) Thanks, Martha, you started my day off right!

For this week's quest, after a couple of weeks of visiting new places, we're heading back to some lovely familiar territory in Lancaster. If you're like most people, the mention of a "colonial printer" undoubtedly brings up a mental image of Ben Franklin, churning out copies of Poor Richard's Almanac and issues of the Pennsylvania Gazette. And you're not wrong. But in Lancaster, there was another man whose printing press contributed to the birth of our nation.