The Privy Bottle, Part 2
This article is the second part in a series. The first part may be read here. After purchasing the privy bottle on eBay, it was taken to a bottle expert—Harry M.—who has collected thousands...
Tagged: Williamsport
The Privy Bottle, Part 1
This two-part article tells the fictional story and true facts about a bottle recently discovered in a privy in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. The year was 1875. Mr. Smith, from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, had taken the train...
Home Remedies
Recently my father, Mark Hagenbuch, handed me a recipe book once owned by Bessie Mae (Robbins) Sechler (b. 1888, d. 1973). It was previously in the possession of Harold Sechler (b. 1923), who is...
Oh, The People We Don’t Know! Part 2
The Hagenbuch Family Archives have a large number of unidentified photos, and many of these could be featured in future articles. Numerous ones are portraits—people with identities lost to time. Some are interesting to...
The Family Bible: Part 1
Family Bibles are interesting pieces of memorabilia. They often have other pieces of memorabilia stuck between their pages, such as dried plants, braided hair, noted verses, and funeral cards. My mother’s Bible always lay...
Dear Diary
Along with letters, baptismal certificates, newspaper articles, old histories, and other ephemera, diaries can be a very important part of learning about past generations. Knowing this, when I retired in 2008 I purchased a...
