Wheatland, Lancaster, Lancaster County

It's been quite a hectic opening to September here. Between heavy rainfalls and my regular job being very busy, I was really worried that I wasn't going to be able to take my planned birthday trip to Gettysburg this past weekend. I'm happy to report, however, that the trip did indeed happen - my husband Kevin and I had a great time, we learned a lot, and I collected a bunch of markers in Adams County. Gettysburg is something I feel every American should see at least once; I don't have words for the experience, though I'll try to find some for a post later this month. 

Meanwhile, this is the blog post I had planned for the last week of August, but schedule conflicts just kept cropping up - as they did this past week too. It's taken me a lot of effort to finally get this thing posted! It's a bit more image-heavy than most of my posts, because there was just so much to see. These are pictures from Kevin's birthday trip back in July, when we visited Lancaster and took a tour of President James Buchanan's beloved home at Wheatland.

The Lehigh Canal, Easton, Northampton County

I found myself unable to update last week because of schedule conflicts, as you may have seen on Facebook. I intended to simply delay the post a day or two, but things just kept getting in the way, so I ultimately decided to delay last week's post until next week. Right now I'm sitting in the house listening to tropical whatever-it-is Ida drop a bunch of rain on my area. The worst weather is expected this afternoon, so it's currently a toss-up as to whether or not I'm going to be able to get to work. But at least I'm doing this work, and once this is live I'll be sending out the monthly email too. If you don't already receive that, please consider signing up with the form on this page! I only bother you once a month and it's free.

Since I'm already waterlogged anyway, let's take a ride over to Northampton County and visit the Lehigh Canal. 

Allentown, Lehigh County

I am once again trying to unsubscribe from weather. This time it's Tropical Depression Fred, which is crawling over Pennsylvania and threatening to dump rain on us. Hopefully it passes without much incident.

While I'm attempting to move as little as possible, let's take a virtual visit to my husband's hometown. The third-largest city in the commonwealth has, unsurprisingly, multiple markers to its name, all of them with the same information, and we'll take a look at what was originally just a little rural village. However, I must apologize - I only have a picture of the marker in this post at the moment, because I'm having difficulty uploading images to Blogger. I'll come back and edit in the future to add some more pictures.

White Cottage, New Brighton, Beaver County

We're at the start of a three-day heat wave here in eastern Pennsylvania, and I keep asking my Alexa how I can opt out of it but she doesn't have any helpful information. I hope everyone is keeping cool and safe.

For this week's quest, we're going to head back to Beaver County, where John Robinson has once again shared his beautiful photos of a marker and its subject. I'm going to be completely honest and say that until he sent me the pictures, I had honestly never heard of today's subject - either by her real name or by her pen name. However, I am also an author and most people have never heard of me either, so she and I have that in common. (Her marker calls her an "authoress" and also a "poetess," which I find oddly delightful.)

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.

Monroe County

As my Facebook followers may have seen, last week my husband and I celebrated his birthday by traveling down to Lancaster, one of our favorite cities, and touring President Buchanan's beautiful home at Wheatland. Kevin drove, and because he's an indulgent sort, he kept pulling over every time he spotted a marker, so I was able to catch a couple that I still needed. I also got plenty of pictures for the post I'm going to be doing next month about Wheatland itself.

Moving on to today's quest, I decided to revisit my trip to Stroudsburg from this past spring and learn more about Monroe County itself.

Paul Allman Siple, Erie, Erie County

As I'm writing this, Pennsylvania is obscured by a heavy haze which makes breathing a touch difficult. The western Canadian wildfires have sent their smoke all the way across the continent, much like the California fires did last year. I'm sending my best wishes to everyone affected and I hope that they get things under control quickly.

My longtime readers know that I pay close attention to the weather. I don't have much choice, because I'm one of those 'walking barometer' people; changes in the barometric pressure have an impact on me, sometimes a pretty severe impact. (In fact, I just heard a roll of thunder which explains a few things.) Today, courtesy of my distant cousin Ron Bauerle, we'll be taking a look at the life and work of someone else who paid close attention to the weather for very different reasons.