Does Food Define Heritage?
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...
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Remembering James H. Hagenbuch: a Helmet and a Lost Love
Last year, we published a five-part series of articles about the family, life, and death of James H. Hagenbuch (b. 1922, d. 1944), a paratrooper who was killed in action during the D-Day invasion....
What Did They Read?
Books, magazines, newspapers, fiction, nonfiction, autobiographies, biographies, historical fiction, pure history, romance, poetry—the list could go on and on of what people read. What we read is a reflection of our pleasures, our beliefs,...
Your Husband, Ben: Letters from the Civil War, Part 5
In the previous article in this series, Benjamin “Ben” Del Fel Hagenbuch (b. 1833) remained in camp with his unit near Hatcher’s Run, Virginia. He hoped for the end of the Civil War and...
Mary C. Hagenbuch’s Counterpane, Part 1
On June 4th, we received a message from Debbie Hagenbuch-Reese. First, Debbie gave us her lineage, descending through patriarch Andreas’ youngest son John (b. 1763). Then, she mentioned that she would like to attend...
Your Husband, Ben: Letters from the Civil War, Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, we met Benjamin “Ben” Del Fel Hagenbuch (b. 1833) who lived in Columbia County, Pennsylvania with his family. Ben joined the Union Army in 1861 and again in...
Birthday Celebrations
As Andrew wrote in last week’s article, we often get inspiration for articles from photographs. Fortunately, I started collecting photos from my Montour County, Pennsylvania family when I was very young, and over the...
Do What You Do (I Don’t Know What You Do)
When I was eleven years old, my parents purchased a video camera. Soon my sisters, cousins, friends, and I were making home movies. The films, with titles like The Detention Girl, had loose plot...
Doughnuts or Fastnachts?
In March of 2017, I wrote an article about Fastnachts, those holeless, wholesome doughnuts that appear every year in parts of Pennsylvania on Shrove Tuesday to usher in the Lenten season. So as not...
Plagues, Wars, and Despair
Although we know more than ever about Andreas Hagenbuch (b. 1715) and his family in Berks County, his early life in Germany, before he came to America in 1737, is shrouded in mystery. Information...
