Making Sauerkraut: A Pennsylvania Deitsch Tradition
It was hardly a surprise when, this past summer, my parents told me that they were going to start making their own sauerkraut. My family does, after all, have a reputation for tackling some...
It was hardly a surprise when, this past summer, my parents told me that they were going to start making their own sauerkraut. My family does, after all, have a reputation for tackling some...
The first few generations of the Hagenbuch family in America spoke a German dialect. This is evident from their wills which were written in Sütterlin – a form of German cursive script. German appears...
Many early American farmers distilled their own liquor, not just for their own consumption but also for additional income. According to Mount Vernon, where George Washington ran a sizable distillery, the average Virginia distiller...
Of all the different economic activities at the Hagenbuch Homestead, agriculture was the most important and this only increased with time. After acquiring the homestead property in 1741, Andreas Hagenbuch (b. 1715, d. 1785)...
Each year, when I sit down to write a retrospective on the previous 12 months of Hagenbuch.org, I find myself surprised by the number of fascinating pieces that have been published. Occasionally, I have...
What were you doing the summer of 2020? Personally, I hadn’t thought much about it. Then, a week ago I started browsing through some images in my digital archive. Many of these are photos...
On New Year’s Day, Linda and I were supposed to have friends of ours over for the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch meal of sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and pork. However, since it was just to be...
There was a time in American history when a dollar wasn’t always a dollar and when your local bank was more likely to have printed the paper money in your wallet than the federal...
In the late 1970s, historian James Burke hosted a documentary television program called Connections. In each episode, he traced the history of a modern scientific marvel from its humble beginning to fruition. For instance,...
Along with being an important genealogy resource, cemeteries enable us to remember and connect with those who those from previous generations. In my family, we enjoy visiting the graves of loved ones and picnicking...