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. 

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.