Henry Chapman Mercer, Doylestown, Bucks County

Back in June, on a much finer day than what my area is experiencing currently, my best friend Andrea and I took a ride down to visit Doylestown, in Bucks County. I can't tell you why I'd never been there, although I'd driven through it a number of times - usually on the way to Peddler's Village. Anyway, as it turns out, Doylestown is adorable and very... I think the word I want to use is quaint. We had a really delicious meal at La Dolce Vita da Franco, where we sat outside in a little walled dining area; highly recommend, would eat there again. But our primary objective was to acquaint ourselves with a length of Doylestown colloquially known as the Mercer Mile.

The Mercer Mile gets its name from a man who designed three very distinct buildings. I think I would have liked this guy, because we seem to have a lot in common. This includes, but is by no means limited to, a love of dogs (my "little brother" is sitting beside me as I write, because I'm dogsitting for my parents) and a love of castles (I don't have one of those, but he did).

Oley Moravians, Oley, Berks County

Before we get into this week's quest, I want to give an update on a situation I had mentioned to my readers six months ago. Back in March, when we visited the Christ Little Tulpehocken Church, I shared the news of a Berks County family cemetery which was under threat from a warehouse developer. I'm pleased to tell you that as of last week, the Historic Kemp Burial Ground has been saved! The developer will still build their warehouse, but the cemetery is not to be moved. Not only that, but the agreement states that the developer will make some improvements to the burial ground, such as replacing the worn-out gate and providing an American flag. This is a tremendous victory and very exciting! Our local news has the details here. Congratulations to everyone involved!

(Edited to add: I am not one of the people involved. I do not have any further information than what has been shared publicly. If you want to know more, please check out the Facebook group; you can find a link at the website.)

One more quick shout-out before we get started; I collected this marker last month, while on the way home from a Sherlockian gathering in Reading. I've mentioned in other posts that I belong to the White Rose Irregulars, which meets (in non-pandemic times) four times a year to discuss the Great Detective, and our coordinator is Denny Dobry, who has a magnificent recreation of Sherlock's apartment in his basement. My stepdad Ravi and I were out to attend his wonderful open house in August; I hadn't seen it in several years, and Ravi had never seen it at all, so this was a great experience for us both. (If you're curious, check out this blog post from a couple years ago, made in preparation of another open house.)

Now, as to today's subject matter, it was a tiny bit confusing to me at first, but it's a good example of why the PHMC's current project to update certain markers is so important. This one is, unfortunately, just a little bit behind the times.

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.