Amos trades up -- Eilenshpiggel and his shenanigans -- John the blacksmith visits the devil -- Tales tall and taller -- Graven images & the legends that grow around them -- Pennsylvania German humor -- A true ghost story.
Lancaster County, PA connections : evidence of persons residing in other states or countries with a connection to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania : compiled from deeds recorded in Lancaster from 1770 to 1830
Willow Bank Mill was originally called Eby's Mill and is now called Snavely's Mill. It's on Hammer Creek in the Lexington area of Lancaster County, a few miles north of Lititz.
Summary
"Untangling the ownership of Willow Bank Mill and its rebuilding after an 1849 fire."
"By following the story of my great-grandmother Isabella Ford's life, and adding to it with information from available sources, I have been able to get a better understanding of the circumstances of Lancaster's free blacks. Her story provides a sense of life in mid-nineteenth century Lancaster County and shows how free black families held their own, despite an environment that was often unfriendly and that restricted their opportunities by both law and custom."
"One of the best known legends from York County, Pennsylvania, is Toad Road and the Seven Gates of Hell. What is the real story? Where are the Seven Gates of Hell? Where is Toad Road? Extensive research and on site exploration is combined to dispel urban legends while revealing stranger truths. Journey beyond the Seventh Gate and into other weird places in York, Lancaster, and Adams Counties. Explore Hex Hollow, Chickies Rock, lonely graveyards, and old iron forges. Read true tales of bigfoot creatures, witches, ghosts, werewolves, and flying phantoms. Sometimes they haunt the woods behind you. Sometimes they are in your own back yard." [from the publisher]
"As the 300th anniversary year of the arrival of Jacob Boehm to the Pequea Settlement and the 225th anniversary of Boehm's Chapel approached, I felt a need to mark the occasion by collecting and preserving tidbits about the Boehm family, the chapel, and the present Boehm's UMC congregation. The Reverend Abram Sangrey, a WWII era pastor of Boehms's Episcopal Church, had written two histories, 'Martin Boehm' and 'The Temple of Limestone', before the 1991 Bicentennial Celebration, which offered insight into the formative years at Boehm's." [preface]
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography v. 141, no. 2
Summary
"Christopher Demuth's early years in the Moravian community of Bethlehem, which included the traumatic transition from its "General Economy," shaped and helped prepare him for a new career in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Trained in carpentry and millwork, Demuth went on to be the most successful tobacconist in Lancaster, specializing in snuff, which he sold throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. His extensive operation demonstrates Lancaster's importance as a production and distribution node, as well as the significant role that Pennsylvania tobacconists played in the state and national economy decades before tobacco was grown commercially in the states." [abstract]
A railroad for the "Southern End" : Pictures, timetables, rare documents and all the news of the Little, Old & Slow, Pennsylvania's first narrow gauge railroad
A long time ago, a narrow gauge railroad was built through southern Lancaster and Chester Counties, in Pennsylvania, bringing an alternative to horses, buggies and ox carts, on muddy deeply rutted roads. "Ole Peachy," as many of the locals called it, served no major industries. Instead, it made do with poultry, eggs, butter, cattle, cream and passengers, becoming a vital link for the farmers of, and visitors to, the "Southern End ." This is the story of how , despite great odds against it, this short line managed to survive for 47 years. [from the book cover]
