Civil War armored railroad cars (posted November, 2024)
Captain Petrie's Iron Clads; an article first-published in the 2016 issue of the "Journal of the Alleghenies." (452 KB pdf)
Old-time schools in Somerset County (posted November, 2024)
Click here to see a new web page that indexes the information I've collected on old-time schools in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Somerset County churches (posted November, 2024)
Click here to see a new web page that indexes the information I've collected on churches in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Tressler (posted November, 2024)
Several newspaper clippings and maps have been added to the bio page of Isaiah "Ike" Tressler (1850-1916).
Korns smokehouse (posted November, 2024)
Click here to see a new web page that consolidates all my photos of the Somerset County, PA smokehouse of Allen Lester & Gladys (Bittner) Korns, and includes a new photo of the smokehouse that was provided by Jane (Stevanus) Brocht.
The day dad found a dead man in the woods (posted July, 2024)
Click here to see newspaper articles about the day the remains of D. Baker were found on Big Savage Mountain.
New photos of Bedford County long guns (posted July, 2024)
In the Land of Used to Be (posted June, 2024)
Because the world has changed so much since I was born in 1953, I wrote a new book about country kids growing up in the time before cell phones, video games, and social media. I hope it will help the younger crowd understand how their Baby Boomer parents and grandparents lived, and I’m certain it will help my fellow Boomers remember their own childhood adventures, misadventures, and hijinks.
The book is a collection of memories from my childhood and covers both Somerset and Mercer counties. I would guess that about 35 percent of the content is about Somerset County, where my earliest memories were formed. After we moved to Mercer County, I still spent a good bit of time at the farms of my Somerset County relatives working, playing, and absorbing the culture.
My childhood friends and I were left mostly to our own devices, except for school and church. We had the entire countryside as our own to explore and made our own adventures — at first on foot, then on bicycle, and eventually by automobile. We took risks and made mistakes with various degrees of seriousness, and learned from the sometimes-unpleasant consequences. I guess you could say we got a lot of mistakes out of the way early!
Lepley gunsmiths (posted March, 2024)
A 1939 aerial photo of the Lepley farmstead that identifies the location of the stone house, gunsmith shop, barn, and smaller stone structure.
Our Mercer County, Pennsylvania neighbor's 1923 trip to California (posted March, 2024)
Our Real Life Adventure by Lela Painter.
