Those bastards in Limerick. I have no pretty words for Limerick Township, Montgomery County, PA.
I got the call this morning and half an hour ago this was posted on Facebook:
190 years of history
7 years of battles
4 hours to be erased
Today, the Hood Mansion was torn down. We were able to rescue the date stone and a few interior pieces – the rest will end up in a landfill.
We were given less than 24 hours notice of the permit being filed – this comes after the property was recently sold yet again to another shell corporation based out of the Bronx.
It will be replaced with a data center warehouse – yet to be officially approved. More on that later.
All of us here at EPPS have worked tirelessly since 2017 to save this incredible piece of American history on a shoestring budget. This is a tragic failure in our country to continue to allow pieces of our shared past to be erased for corporate interests that contribute nothing to our sense of place and community. Preservationists aren’t magicians, and it takes many parties working together to try and save what we can. Unfortunately it’s difficult if not impossible to fight the corporate machine.
We can rest easy knowing we gave it our best shot up until the very end, but as a great friend and mentor of mine once said about the field of preservation:
“You’ll lose more than you save”
Thank you to everyone who has supported us in this fight for many years, and a heartfelt apology to the Hood Family, whose contributions to our society clearly didn’t matter enough to the powers that be.
Please stay tuned to our pages for an additional press release.
So hopefully now the data center and environmental activists wake the hell up about what is happening in Limerick. Thus far they have been strangely silent given the environmental impacts.
Congratulations Limerick Township you feckless bunch of nitwits. You have just taken a step closer to making your area like Louden County, Virginia and all it entails. Hope the realtors who brokered these deals choke on the commissions.
I am really sorry Hood Mansion. We all tried. Please tell your spirits to haunt away.
Eight years ago yesterday, my husband and I asked a structural engineer who specializes in historic properties (among other things) to look at the ruin of Ebenezer AME on Bacton Hill Road in Frazer/East Whiteland Township. He reviewed the exterior. It’s not safe to go into the ruin – very unstable.
In 2023 I lamented the state of the ruin and said everything had the engineer told me a few years ago now that I passed along to East Whiteland Township and East Whitehead Historical Commission was sadly happening. The walls have never been shored up, and the development going along around it is taking a toll. Time, weather, and circumstances are not friends to this site.
I also had said then that before COVID hit, there was a lady from the National Trust for Historic Places I had connected with who seemed interested. Her name was Lawana Holland-Moore. I have tried following up since, but nothing, not even a reply. (Sigh.) Who knows? Maybe she will see this post and renew her former interest. There are so many historic places and structures at risk, but I just wish this place would matter for more.
Then last year (September, 2023), East Whiteland erected a local historic marker. It made me hopeful. It was at that ceremony that some members of a local AME Church (Mt. Zion AME in Devon, PA) helping out with saving Ebenezer thanked me for my activism efforts over the years. No one had publicly done so ever at that point. Pastor April Martin and Bertha Jackmon. Coming from them that really meant something special to me.
At the recent October 10th, 2024 East Whiteland Township Board of Supervisors meeting, I was also thanked in absentia by the East Whiteland Historic Commission and the Chair of the Supervisors, Scott Lambert, for my efforts dating back to 2013 or so. These comments occurred in the midst of an update I never thought would happen: funding for stabilizing the ruin of Ebenezer has been found between the township and the AME Church. It sounds like the project will start soon.
I couldn’t zoom or attend the meeting, so it was just today I watched the video of the meeting. I literally started to cry when I heard about stabilization becoming a reality. And I admit to being a little misty eyed over being recognized by my township. I am neither thanked nor recognized positively very often. Usually I am chided and berated and more for daring to blog and have opinions.
Ebenezer is very personal to me. When I first moved to Chester County to be with my husband, I quickly became obsessed with the ruins of Chester County. We drove past Ebenezer often. It was overgrown and tumbling down. I thought it was a farmhouse in decay. Then one day when we were headed towards Elverson to see friends, my husband told me to bring my camera and we would stop for a few minutes.
Stopped we did. I still remember walking through the dead weeds to the rear of what I thought was a farmhouse ruin. Then I saw Joshua. I think I held my breath at first. He was a Civil War soldier. Then I started to look in the weeds around some more, and I realized this was a burial ground. Then it hit me: this must be a church ruin. How could people not care?
That was 2013. And that is when I started looking into what I would eventually learn was Ebenezer AME.
The origins of the AME Church go back to the Free African Society which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. Richard Allen was born a slave in 1760 in Delaware. He was owned and then freed by Benjamin Chew, who was a prominent lawyer and Chief Justice of the Commonwealth from 1774-1777.
Ebenezer was a very early AME church, and Bishop Richard Allen was still alive (he died March 1831) when the Quaker, James Malin, probably decide he would deed the land to the AME Church so Ebenezer could be built (June 1831.) Ebenezer is quite literally perhaps the second oldest AME site in the country, except for Mother Bethel AME in Philadelphia. So you can see given the age of Ebenezer AME in East Whiteland, Chester County, PA that it is truly part of the early days of a church and religion founded in Philadelphia. Bishop Richard Allen died in 1831, just months before Ebenezer came to be after Joseph Malin deeded the land. According to the deed transcript, it was for a church and a burial place. My research indicates the first church was built (or finished) by 1835.
Members of this community have been documented as former slaves. Their ability to construct this church demonstrates the prosperity and commitment of this community.
The trustees of the Ebenezer AME church purchased the land in 1831 from James Malin. The oldest gravestones found in the cemetery date from the early 1830’s. The congregation disbanded for a time between 1848 and 1871 during which time the building fell into disrepair. By June 22, 1873 the church had been rebuilt and rededicated. It continued to be used until 1970…Now it is abandoned.
A stone building, dilapidated and crumbling from the outside in, still stands on Bacton Hill Road….The gravestones which surround the building clearly show that it was a church. Nearly all the headstones have fallen downhill and lie, face up crumbling from the wind and rain.
Records show that this church, formerly named the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, was built in 1832 on what was originally known as the Yellow Springs Road. A celebrated gospel church, it was regularly attended by Negroes who lived and worked on Bacton Hill. Very few of the lives of these people, who were once a great part of the history of East Whiteland, have ever been chronicled.
Early tax records for Chester County show a listing of “free men”. Actually these “free men” were colored slaves who had been given their freedom from bondage when they reached the age of 38. Later on, the age of freedom was lowered to 23 years of age and finally a state law granted that any person born in the state of Pennsylvania was a guaranteed free man.
The farmers of Valley Hills would often give these free men, after their term of bondage was up, a small plot of land for their own upon the hills in Bacton. On these, the former slaves built small log cabins or stone buildings. Many ran small farms while still working during the day timbering the summit of Bacton Hill and carting lumber down to the Great Valley for the lime kilns.
Think about it: these free and freed men who lived and worked around Bacton Hill built a church, and eventually a stone building was built. In 1989 when the paper was written, 80 graves were documented. When the next Eagle Scout documented graves, I believe he only documented 26. Some of the graves disappeared. Sinking into the murky and often swampy land (several springs are underneath apparently, and there are also interestingly old clay pits somewhere way off to the rear of the graveyard on another property), and it would also sadly not surprise me if other headstones had simply been removed. Yes, people steal from the dead and that includes headstones. That’s why East Whiteland PD has kept an eye on the headstones and grave yard in the past.
Anyway, riots and “disturbances” between 1848 and 1870 caused the church to not be used as much and it apparently fell to ruin the first time. But in 1872 the old church was brought back to life and reopened December 8th, 1872. “Important” clergymen were reported as having been present, and in June of 1873 the church was re-dedicated as Ebenezer African American Methodist Church.
At this point the church remained in use until 1910. Then the church may not have been used again until the 1940s. In the 1940s it was reported to have been some sort of a big thing at the church to celebrate it’s history. It was said people from all over Chester County gathered with “prominent” members of the A.M.E. Church. It is believed that is when the church was electrified. After the church stopped being used, and the woods and swampy marsh grass grew up around it, and a mobile home ended up next to it.
Some of the family names on the gravestones are the same as families still living in Malvern Boroughand in Chester County!
For the past many years at this point, I have been writing about this. I see the importance of this site intertwined with its 184 years of individual history combined with the 200+-year-old history of the AME Church founded by freed slave Richard Allen. (The AME Church as all know celebrated its 200th anniversary this year in Philadelphia.)
The parcel’s 1832 deed of trust transfers ownership of the land from James Malin, a prominent Quaker farmer involved in the Underground Railroad, to three African Americans – “Samuel Davis, Ishmael Ells, and Charles Kimbul” – for the purpose of constructing a church with a burial ground in East Whiteland.
Ebenezer’s floor was a raised platform on stone piers, according to research by archival consultant Jonathan L. Hoppe, for the Chester County Historical Society. Its single room had a door facing the road; opposite was the raised pulpit. The interior walls were covered in wainscoting.
I first photographed Ebenezer in 2013. Then a few more times after that times including in June 2016 when the Inquirer article was in process. Then a second time, October 1, 2016. i placed the Philadelphia Inquirer articles. They are among my favorite articles and Kristin Holmes did an amazing job.
Inquirer reporter Kristin Holmes with former Chair of the East Whiteland Historic Commission and neighbor, Tim Caban. Tim was instrumental in the early days of my ruin obsession. And he has always remained a sounding board and wealth of knowledge.
And we have to speak about Hiram. Hiram Woodyard was a Township resident and former slave who served in the Union Army as a teamster. He was a leader in the African American community and is buried at the Ebenezer AME Church. His home still stands on Congestoga Road. Other homes he built still stand. He was an inhabitant of Bacton Hill.
And we have to talk about friends I made along the way who died before they could see Ebenezer get this far. The late poet A.V. (Ann) Christie and Al Terrell.
Ann I met shortly after I started my vision quest on Ebenezer. She had been battling breast cancer but showed up at my door one day with a boy scout report and the Conestoga Turnpike book written by my friend author, artist, and historian Catherine Quillman who is a true Chester County treasure who shares her knowledge so freely and with an open heart. It is because of Catherine I was able to prove my suspicion that although the property had been abandoned, it really wasn’t and the AME Church and more specifically probably Mother Bethel still owned it.
Ann died in April, 2016. She was so wonderful a human. I actually do have some of her poetry in my personal library. In her obituary story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, John Timpane wrote:
Poet and friend Leonard Gontarek offered a poetic remembrance of Ms. Christie by e-mail: “Like the poet herself, A.V. Christie’s poetry is precise, elegant and generous. In her poems she gives us a model of the universe: If we possess integrity and trust the world, truth will come through. If we know the world deeply enough, we will see the logic of happiness and sorrow. If we listen carefully, we will hear the music coaxed from the dusk and fallen magnolia flowers, the pond, the clouds, and her beloved robins. It will be the music we hear as knowledge becomes wisdom.”
This is a poetry of grace and holy light.
Ann loved Ebenezer, and had at one point lived quite nearby. She grew frustrated with trying to engage people about Ebenezer. She was responsible for organizing and often paying for a few clean ups.
Then I met Al Terrell. He also lived nearby. We became friends after bonding over the same black Civil War Soldiers. He visited Joshua and Hiram too. When and said he was going to get Boy Scouts and volunteers in there to clean up AND would get the AME Church to say OK, I was so glad to hear it, but didn’t hold out much hope. The Boy Scouts were from the Willistown Troop. And there were others. Bible study folks from Al’s bible study and Lee’s Lawn Service. And more. And this was just the beginning. Al threw himself into this the last couple of years of his life. He helped get the Veteran’s Day ceremony November 19th, 2016.
November 19, 2016 is when we held the Veteran’s Day Ceremony at Ebenezer to honor the black Civil War Soldiers there and others. It made front page news of The Daily Local. That was such an emotional day for me at that site, I cried. And I have no ancestors buried there, just my black Civil War Soldier Joshua Johnson whom I discovered one day many, many years ago in a pile of weeds that I thought were surrounding an abandoned farmhouse.
EAST WHITELAND >> During a humble autumn afternoon, a small ceremony paid homage to a long since abandoned graveyard housing African-American Civil War veterans, and others whose names have been lost to time and erosion.
For Bruce Reason and Al Terrell, the sight of the cleaned up Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church cemetery on Saturday was a welcome one.
Reason, 56, of East Whiteland pointed to one of the legible headstones bearing the name of one African-American Civil War veteran, Joshua Johnson, 1846-1916, and said he was related.
“It feels great,” he said about the site of the cleaned up cemetery. “I waited years for someone to come along (and clean up the graveyard).”
The person who came along and led the clean-up effort was Henderson High School sophomore Luke Phayre.
Phayre, a member of the Willistown Boy Scout Troop 78, had been looking for a project to complete so he could become an Eagle Scout….And Terrell, himself a former assistant scoutmaster working on rejoining the troop, suggested to Phayre that he clean up the graveyard as his own son, Andrew did almost two decades earlier.
“I thought it was a great thing to do, to honor the soldiers buried here,” Phayre said. “You couldn’t even see this (gravesite) from the street.”
The gravesite and the ruins of the old church sit alongside North Bacton Hill Road, near where the road intersects with Route 401.
Starting in August, Phayre and other volunteers worked to figure out who technically owns the abandoned property, get permission from the owners, and to clean up the graveyard and crumbling stone church laden with overgrown nature.
His efforts were recognized Wednesday when at 1 p.m., a ceremony led by the commander of the West Chester American Legion Post 134, retired Air Force Capt. Howard Crawford.
The ceremony also served as a way to honor the dead. It included a color guard presentation, gun salute, and memorial prayer.
Members of several different organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Marine Corps League participated in the ceremony. Three East Whiteland police officers were also present.
On that day I do not recall any members of the then East Whiteland Historic Commission or township supervisors, but I will always remember the members of East Whiteland Police Department who showed up to be part of the honor guard and keep the traffic in check…on their own time.
Then things slowed down, and Al Terrell died. I knew that November of 2016 that he knew something was not right with his health but he didn’t speak about it. And then shortly after Christmas that year, Al contacted me and said he wanted me to promise not to ever give up on Ebenezer. He was insistent, and that was not his way. Then one day in January, 2017 when I was sitting in my living room talking with my friend Tom Casey, my phone rang. It was Kimberly Boddy, a wonderful woman I have since lost touch with, but who at the time had helped with research because of other research she was doing.
And Kimberly has a really cool Chester County heritage as she is the granddaughter of the late Lee Carter, who was a self-taught Chester County artist who also had what I think was called the Road To Freedom Museum at one time. The Daily Local wrote about an exhibit of Lee Carter’s paintings in Coatesville in 2015.
I still remember sitting in my living room and saying to Tom, “I can’t believe it. Al can’t be gone.”
Al and I had been talking about trying to get someone with special radar equipment into the graveyard to properly map the graves once and for all those last times we spoke. Ground Penetrating Radar.
I still miss Al. And Ann.
Al in November, 2016 saluting our soldier, Joshua.
Things kind of slowed for a while until new blood and energy on the historic commission reinvigorated them as well as real interest from the supervisors in East Whiteland. Now I will freely admit it has been touch and go with the East Whiteland Historic Commission and me for years. Some people like me, some merely tolerate me, and a couple I have felt quite clearly dislike what they perceive as my interference on their patch so to speak. Then Pastor April Martin and AME historian Bertha Jackmon also had more time for Ebenezer, and now here we are. A historic marker and money for the ruin stabilization. This is a God is Good thing. I spent a lot of years feeling quite despondent about this site, until things started to happen.
I will note that to date I have never ever had a reply to any of the many emails (and some phone calls) sent over time to Philadelphia Mother Bethel’s Mark Kelly Tyler. Shame on him because before Mother Bethel, as one of his callings was Bethel AME in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He has talked a good game in interviews with the Inquirer, etc., but he has apparently never thought humble Ebenezer AME at 97 Bacton Hill Road in Frazer was important enough in spite of the inextricable and irrefutable links to Mother Bethel? Pity. But hey, he’s got his plum now as a newly elected officer of some importance in the AME Church as per the Inquirer this August and allow me to quote with some feeling of irony:
The Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church in Society Hill, was elected as an officer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) at its General Conference this week in Columbus, Ohio.
He was elected to become one of nine general officers: executive director of the Department of Research and Scholarship and historiographer of the AME Church, which has its headquarters in Nashville.
The election took place on Monday. The Tennessee Tribune posted the results, noting that six new bishops and nine general officers were elected. (There are at least 20 bishops in charge of geographical districts.)
“As I step into the role of historiographer / executive director of the Department of Research & Scholarship of the global AME Church, I find this moment to be bittersweet,” Tyler wrote in a text from Ohio Wednesday afternoon….In an interview earlier this month, Tyler said the new position would require him to resign as pastor at Mother Bethel AME, at 419 S. Sixth St., where he was appointed the church’s 52nd pastor in 2008.
He said he would remain at Mother Bethel for at least two to three months until a new pastor is appointed by the church leadership.
In his new role, he will have two offices, one in Philadelphia and one in Nashville…Tyler said he has always loved history, and he hopes to create a major documentary film about the church, possibly with PBS.
Gosh Rev. Tyler, history? Imagine that. So, a reminder that some of the earliest history of your church is here in East Whiteland Township at 97 Bacton Hill Road in Frazer, as well as elsewhere in Chester County. Maybe now you will have time for those emails? Return phone calls? Sadly I have my doubts, but hey, that’s on you. (And yes I am being deliberately pissy and unapologetically so.)
Today I got to see photographs that I never knew existed. We had read letters my late father in law had sent home during World War II, but we never saw the photos, because like most veterans, he never really spoke about it. He came home in one piece, he put this away and went to college on the GI Bill and started his life.
My father was too young to have been a World War II vet. He was just a little boy when World War II was being fought. I had friends whose fathers were World War II veterans, but looking through these photos was like looking through a History Channel program on World War II.
When you look at the photos, and I never knew really before this, that my late father in law liked to take photos as much as I do.
So this was his world, then. I found it very moving. And it really makes you think about what these boys (because they were boys and they were often teenagers) did and how many never came home.
This prompted me to think about the world we live in today and the things you see people protesting about and how they even behave on social media, and they don’t even realize that these were some of the young men who fought for them to maintain those rights to do so.
This was a part of time that my late father-in-law put away, so I couldn’t ask him how many of these friends of his came home from his unit or battalion, or whatever you want to call it, because I saw these photos for the first time posthumously. This is something my late friend Anna would have found fascinating, because her late father was also a World War II vet.
This gives us all a sober reminder of what people fought for around the world then, so so many others including politicians could act like idiots today.
I guess this is what we call perspective. This is yet another reason to me why this upcoming election is so important. We also can’t let down the memories of these people who fought and bled through the entirety of the history of our country so we could be free and live free.
We can’t really tell the stories of all of these unknown young men staring out at the harsh reality of a world war as teenagers in the 1940s, but we can damn well respect their memory by making sure we vote. And if that means some of you have to secretly scurry into a voting booth and vote for a Democrat for president because you know as a Republican, your choice is repugnant, just get to it. Vote in memory of these young men captured in a moment in time, vote for your sons and daughters today.
After all, this is why we vote, and why it’s so important. We vote to ensure that the horrible atrocities of the past don’t come forward again into the present and future.
Don’t bother to tell me to cover the number it’s a FAKE number calling people.
So is this a JD Vance directive I wonder? Or just more campaign stupidity? No wait scratch that because JD Vance wants everyone pregnant,barefoot, in the kitchen having babies and married because everything else is wrong. Vance takes the idea of spawn tax to a whole new level.
Spawn Tax was my concept of life when I was a cog in the wheel of corporate America. If you were single or did not have kids you always got short shrift when it came to vacation days and holidays…even family funerals. Gosh a precursor to the faux hillbilly, huh?
Neil Young was or is a history teacher from Great Valley Middle School that many kids liked. Some didn’t which is why he ended up as a teacher of TikTok.
It bothers me when you see recent Great Valley graduates and even seniors who are 18 liking his social media posts and thinking he’s the cool teacher running for something. They don’t grasp the rabbit hole that he has fallen into.
That robo-text is part of it. That text is equal parts stupid and offensive. Just like his pandering to extremism groups who dress up in gas masks at school board meetings and now wearing absurd Wonder Woman outfits like they are champions of other than their own echo chambers and bubbles of pseudo reality and even pseudo feminism since they are really ready for The Handmaid’s Tale.
This former teacher turned politician had the opportunity to be a good candidate because he is supposed to be a student of history as a teacher. But somewhere this guy lost his way. He thinks wild conspiracy theorists are the way to go. People he admires also includes Scott what’s his name who is busy pushing false information on voting and elections in Luzerne County including fear mongering over “illegal aliens” and whether they are secretly voting.
Ok this is like JD Vance and the eating of cats and dogs and hating Haitians in Ohio.
So this is what this baby faced teacher turn politician believes? Has he been through his district? Does he realize how many immigrants live in his district? From his studies as a history teacher does he realize that this very country is founded and built on the legacy of former immigrants? How in the Sam hell does he think we all got here anyway unless were Native American or some other indigenous peoples native to what comprises the United States? Where does Neil Young think all of our founding fathers came from?
He tries to say he’s all for women’s issues. Does he understand how many women have issues with Trumpublican politics including Republican women afraid to speak up? Again, as a former history teacher he’s supposed to be what? A student of history? Did he forget about the whole thing in US history about women’s rights?
This is at whose altar Neil Young worships at:
Neil Young has a daughter and he’s ok with the above? He wants her to have The Handmaid’s Tale life? Well all I can say is how sad.
But meanwhile if you are a single looking to mingle, his text messages are what bad Lifetime movies are made of. 🤣
Voting for Neil won’t save anything. Not even him. His most teachable moment? He doesn’t get it, which is pretty sad for a history teacher.
Perhaps it’s time for Neil to head back to school?
I’m rambling west for something that interests me. And it has nothing to do with Pennsylvania or Chester County Pennsylvania.
Today, I am taking my readers to a place I have never been but want to see some day. It’s a place where it is literally one of the last great open spaces of this country in the American west. It’s in a state where a few Pennsylvanians I know have settled. Including in some of the historic parts like Fort Collins and Villa Grove and elsewhere. Some came for the larger suburbs near Denver, other near resorts like Aspen. There are actually quite a few Pennsylvania ex-pats who call places in Colorado home that I can think of.
Someone I know in that part of the world sent me this story. Remarkably, a news station in Denver covered it. I say remarkably because this is Villa Grove, Colorado. In Saguache County. Population? According to my research literally like 260 – 300 people, but maybe only 30 full time residents. It’s a tiny frontier town 4.5 hours from Denver I believe so a news crew covering this is huge.
Residents in this tiny town don’t want an almost 200 foot cell phone tower taller than any tree a few hundred feet front where they live and less. Can you blame them? No one wants to live in the shadows of those wires here . Think of it as a giant abstract metal penis on a plain.
VILLA GROVE, Colo. — Nearly a third of the full-time residents who live in the small town of Villa Grove in Saguache County are now suing county commissioners after the approval of a 195-foot-tall cell phone tower in town. The county wants to build a massive telecommunications tower right on the edge of town, just a few hundred feet from the few homes there are in the picturesque town outside of Salida.
“Even our trees, which are the tallest things in town, are only about 60 feet,” said Paula Maez, one of the plaintiffs suing the county commissioners. “I’ve never sued anyone in my life, but I felt strongly enough about this that I stood up and will continue to stand up.”
Maez said there are only around 30 full-time residents in Villa Grove. There are no stoplights and only a handful of stores. Most people who live here have been here for decades…. “We recently had our Saguache County commissioners approve conditional land use for a cell phone tower that’s going in just to the northeast of here, basically right on top of our little town,” Maez said. “195 feet of metal monstrosity.”
Commissioners and the cell phone company both say that the tower would help with cell phone service in the rural area. However, the lawsuit hoping to stop the tower states it would only impact cell service within a five-mile area.
9NEWS wanted to talk to the Saguache County Commissioners about why they approved the cell phone tower even after more the half the town showed up to commission meetings to speak out against it. Their attorney said they won’t be talking about it.
So Saguache County, you don’t want to talk about it to the affected residents, media, or anyone else about a MAJOR decision to affect a small tight knit community that I bet you ignore as often as possible? Gosh, that’s so wonderful of you! (Yes, dripping sarcasm here.)
And this tower will have limited practical impact or value since it will only improve MAYBE a five mile radius?
Seriously ? Makes you ponder another question doesn’t it? Exactly WHO is getting paid WHAT to shove this cell tower in, Saguache County, CO?
Given this website (link right after this paragraph) I have to wonder since Villa Grove is an unincorporated town if this county is getting ready to tart the town up for their profit? It sounds very Yellowstone the TV series as a motive, but heck most things like this are about money, aren’t they?
Villa Grove has hot springs nearby they say, and beautiful vistas, why not fill the county coffers and make it super tourista, right? County profits? And I’m not saying that to be anti-progress, I’m saying that because progress that works needs resident input and participation. Duh.
The town of Garibaldi was established by the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in 1870.[2] The town served as the southern terminus of the Rio Grande’s narrow-gaugePoncha Pass line from 1870 to 1890.[2] The town was named for ItalianrevolutionaryGiuseppe Garibaldi.[2] The Garibaldi Post Office opened on June 13, 1870.[5] The town’s name was changed to the less political Villa Grove on January 19, 1872.[5] The spelling of the town’s name was changed to Villagrove on October 12, 1894, and back to Villa Grove on July 1, 1950.[5]
Saguache County Colorado has issues if you dig around for articles, so maybe the thought that it is all about the money in the San Luis Valley is not so far fetched? And Villa Grove is considered the northern gateway to the San Luis Valley?
A couple of years ago there was a Live Nation music festival around Villa Grove called Seven Peaks Music Festival. Supposedly drew thousands of people to this tiny town? But then Dierks Bentley got fickle and moved it? Or does he always just move it around? Or was trendy Red Rocks his goal all along?
Well, that article makes you wonder doesn’t it but again I ask and it’s a pretty simple question: if an idyllic tiny frontier town in Colorado doesn’t want a cell phone tower in that town where else can I go? And is it really necessary RIGHT THERE?
And as is the case in any article in any paper across the country, politicians will talk a good game, but are they actually talking to and with their constituencies? It seems like in this case, the Saguache County commissioners here are merely ignoring these residents. If these are residents living there and paying taxes, why do they have to play mother May I with everything ?
And let’s talk about the natural beauty of the area as well as it being one of the last frontiers. I point out to you an article from 2009.
A Pennsylvania photographer is among the souls who’ve been branded by the high valley’s exquisite light.
Kathy Hettinga – who grew up in Alamosa and now is a professor of art at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pa. – has returned to the San Luis Valley year after year, responding to its mystical lure and desolate beauty. She’s taken more than 10,000 photos in the valley’s historic cemeteries, recording the graves of generations of residents, some of them prosperous, most of them poor. She’s captured the plastic flowers, the plaster and enamel saints, the wood and metal and concrete crosses that mark the graves, and the churches that bear silent witness to the mortal comings and goings of the faithful.
A fraction of Hettinga’s 15 years worth of photos has been compiled into the book, “Grave Images: San Luis Valley.” She wrote the text and also helped design the book…. “I have a studio in Colorado (near Villa Grove). I still do consider the valley home,” Hettinga says during a phone interview. “I go there every summer and last year I was on sabbatical and spent a lot of time in the valley. I got to see the aspen and the beautiful light.
“The light in the San Luis Valley is really special: There’s the big sky, the 8,000-foot-elevation valley floor, the clear air – there’s a lot less atmosphere. Growing up, I loved it.
I think there’s a lot going on here. And I think, keeping a community the way the community wishes to be kept is not high on the priority list of Saguache County. To that end, they offer zoom meetings and I encourage nationwide media to attend it September 3 and anyone else who is interested in helping a small town preserve their way of life without a close to a 200 foot metal penis plunked in their town. Take a peek at their agendas and see how you can register. They can try to deny you but legally they cannot. It’s a public meeting.
I searched the county website for Saguache and came up virtually empty as to information on this cell tower. I guess I’m just used to the websites around here that when you have a land use issue like that, the municipality or the county will have documents up that people can look at as to who wants to do what basically and where and how you provide input. I found mentions on one agenda, but I don’t find meeting recordings after the fact unless I’m not looking in the right place. Except, I don’t think this is the most sunshine, friendly county government is it?
I’m not quite getting the executive session on an issue that’s kind of public? Does the county on the land in this little town where the cell tower is going up?
As for the two LLCs mentioned – I didn’t find too much either, which is not unusual. There are LLCs all over the place.
So that’s all I’ve got and this is literally a Nancy Drew mystery and it’s kind of concerning because this is the kind of thing that happens in more places than anyone wants to acknowledge. But I think a little frontier town in Colorado deserves a little sunshine here because this will affect their town and their properties and their way of life. And if people are saying yeah, we have cell phone service why do we have to have this giant tower? It makes a person wonder why the crickets as in political crickets as in no one is telling these people that are about to be directly affected much of anything? It’s only going to affect 5 mi.² or something than what is actually being planned for this area by that county?
People wonder where series like Yellowstone and 1923 and more get their inspiration. Isn’t the inspiration from life, history, current events?
So Taylor Sheridan? I think we have a new story for you. 👇 Yeah Villa Grove, Colorado why not contact him?
You know how random memories float to the surface? I remember a farmhouse with a barn my aunt and uncle rented when I was quite small in Paoli off of Lancaster Ave, Route 30. My uncle was a corporate America guy from that era and while climbing the corporate ladder they were transferred around for years until settling eventually back in the Philadelphia area, but this was during a period of (if I remember correctly) being in between Cincinnati, Ohio and someplace in Florida.
I remember the house they rented at that time was on it’s own road off of Lancaster Avenue. I do not necessarily remember it being marked and I do not believe it was South Valley Road. I think it was on the right heading west. Mind you this was around 1968 – 1970.
It’s amazing the postcard images that show up on Ebay.
It was a white farmhouse, probably 19th century but I do not know. It was a large house, there was a barn to the side. I remember open space like a field across from the house which was on this road or lane.
The house (white with black shutters) had a big front porch, and inside it had a pretty staircase. There were also back stairs off of the kitchen. I remember a back staircase off of the kitchen and back of house. I spent one weekend there or a few days with my cousins one summer, but not my sister, she was a toddler just walking. We had one Thanksgiving I think it was there. I remember the grown-ups and any high chair kids in the dining room and the kids table was a card table with a white tablecloth. I remember the dinner because that was the first time I ate black eyed peas.
It was a cool house, and I remember at some point after my aunt, uncle, and cousins moved back out of state, the property was torn down for a store or stores. I believe it was gone before the Bicentennial.
It was a pretty big house and I often wondered what happened to it. So if anyone has any memories of a house like that with a barn to the side that is no more, please let me know. Below are two old images of two inns that are no more from the general vicinity, that remind me of my memory of the house. I also don’t know if this house may have had something to do with either the Dingee or Biddle farms which if memory serves were horse farms in the area.
This was put out by the Daily Local as an article. It’s really an Op-Ed, but that is on whoever the current editor is, not the writer. It is miscategorized.
Part of the headline talks about “echoes of unity cross party lines.” I have to ask are they echoes or just a convenient use of politics? In my humble opinion, give it a few days, and it’ll be back to business as usual with politics.
What happened over the weekend on July 13th, 2024 was extraordinarily disturbing. And I still do NOT like Trump, but I do NOT think what happened was O.K. Not one little bit.
I have not liked Trump since he was just a sleazy real estate developer getting TV interviews. That has never changed and he’s still that same person. But he didn’t deserve an assassination attempt.
If you don’t want Trump as president, then stand up and use the power of your vote, use the power that our forefathers literally fought, blood, and died, for they fought for our freedom of choice. If we choose apathy over the unique power of a democracy in the ability to vote, we get the government we deserve.
I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around the concept that the person who did this was 20 years old. Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, PA.
Then someone reminded me that this was the age of the person who shot up Sandy Hook Elementary years ago.
Adam Lanza of Newtown, CT. He also killed his mother that same day he shot up an elementary school.
No one really knows at this point who Matthew Crooks was and they have found no manifesto. But his parents, like Adam Lanza’s mother was, appear to be gun enthusiasts. They also are apparently licensed professional counselors through the Pennsylvania social work board. The New York Times reports him as quiet and he played video games and liked coding. He had recently completed some kind of engineering associates degree at a community college, and was working as an aid in nursing home, and had few friends. I don’t like what video games have done to this country, so I have to wonder if a clue is there?
A UK paper says Crooks was bullied badly in high school. Another article somewhere said he had moved out of his parents’ house at one point? Yet another article referenced that his parents were actually registered Democrats although I don’t know what that has to do with anything?
I also am going to wonder completely out loud why his parents didn’t have these guns locked up away from him? Gun ownership is a responsibility. He was 20 and it was his father’s gun, so what gives there?
So someone who was not even legally old enough to drink within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, shot a former US President? Given the age, he hadn’t even ever voted yet in a presidential election either, had he? I remember being 20, and I can’t say the guns or shooting people entered into the equation at that stage of my life.
Of course I truly wonder how he got that close? How is that he got up on that building (where media reports say some sort of law enforcement was inside) and When the crowd first spotted him as you can see in media reports, why didn’t officials basically act immediately? My opinion on this and I’m not an expert in law-enforcement or security, or pretend to be, is kind of common sense: this is an area of Pennsylvania that is heavily pro-Trump. I can’t help but wonder if that is exactly why they never expected this?
A lot of times, political candidates, regardless of who they are, will deliberately choose locations where they know they literally have a fan base. And my opinion is they never expected something like this might happen there.
I also think that what happened, while horrible should not make one political candidate over another a martyr.
I also think that people need to remember more, the innocent bystanders who were injured, and the man who lost his life. The man who was killed literally took a bullet for his family. His name was Corey Comperatore. His family is grieving and reeling from the loss.
There were also two others injured. This should not have happened. And yet it has.
This craziness has been building since January 6, 2021 in my opinion. And we cannot forget the election season before. It was ugly and it was nasty and the vitriol and rhetoric from the Republican side was abhorrent in a lot of cases. And then we have January 6. And former President Trump did not deserve to be shot, because no one should be, however, we have to look at the tone that has been set in this country don’t we?
Even the most minor elections since the last presidential election have been nasty. In our area, in particular, we are rife with various extremist groups people on both sides of the aisle, riding the crazy train. Well the crazy train led us to Butler, PA on July 13, 2024.
Well stop the damn train, people, we didn’t sign up for this craziness. I just don’t understand how people can even think this was OK at all. You look at the people on social media, who basically have lost jobs and positions within their communities for social media posts after this event. And this event was an attempted assassination.
Now I’ve had people try to start with me over my opinions about former President Trump and even about this event. So can I be any more clear? I am not going to think it’s OK that this man is turned into a martyr because of this assassination attempt however, I also am not going to think it’s OK to shoot someone running for political office.
It is not OK that this happened.
It is not OK that our country is devolving into chaos.
As Americans, we have to fight to stop this. And I don’t mean literally fight as in raise arms or a Civil War. We all studied it in high school and even college, remember?
Mind you it is sometimes really hard for people to remember the actual history in this country, because so many people go out of the way to hide it. And if we hide what happened, or pretend it didn’t happen, we are doomed to repeat a bad pattern. That’s why history matters and needs to be discussed, not hidden.
What I am saying is we need to fight with the power of our vote. I have been somewhat disgusted listening to people even within my own family who have said that they’re not going to vote in November because they just “can’t. ”
Not voting is not the answer. Voting 100% the way a political party has told you how to vote is also not the answer.
Americans have been devolving since 2000 when it comes to elections and that is my opinion it is also my opinion that people need to literally stop being sheeple. Take a few minutes and re-discover your own intellectual curiosity, and do your research. Don’t base your decision on what you see on social media, don’t even base your decision on what I’m saying as my opinion. Do your own goddamn homework and learn about candidates.
Get active in your communities because no one is going to do it for you.
Reject extremist groups like Klanned Karenhood who are complete 100 percent hypocrites anyway.
Reject fake news. Again do your own research from credible sources.
As Americans, we need to believe in ourselves and our country. We need to reject wanton violence, including the events of January 6, 2021. We need to reject attempted assassinations of politicians, NO MATTER WHO THEY ARE.
Instead of sowing the seeds of heat, we need to pull the weeds of hate.
You don’t have to like my opinion, but our founding fathers and the first amendment allow me to have it. I don’t believe in people who foment hate and nationwide discord.
Here in Pennsylvania we were founded by William Penn and Quaker values and sensibilities. It’s time to stop the madness and get back to those values and roots. besides, it’s too goddamn hot to hate so much.
Again (and I am being deliberately repetitive here) if we choose apathy or to look the other way over the unique power of a democracy in the ability to vote in free elections, we get the government we deserve. And then we stop being Americans.
So West Whiteland has realtors on their historic commission and I know they want the house saved. I wish they could find a preservation buyer that could budge the demolition by neglect owners off of the property before it is too late.
There was a rumor a few months ago that someone once again was interested in buying the house but guess like all the other attempts, the demolition by neglect owners didn’t go through with it?
There are also a couple of trees in really bad shape.
The place has zero security it seems like and does the place look safe and secured?
West Whiteland has that property maintenance code, right? Maybe they can sit on the owners to NOT just let this gem rot?
It has been a long, long time since I wrote about Shiloh. Shiloh is a sad story: a cemetery where the headstones and remains of an extraordinarily important AME church were bulldozed away in Westtown because a former property owner wanted to. But all the souls and remains of the dead are still there. The current property owner is also seemingly uninterested in the history and the languishing dead in now unmarked graves, which is sad.
Today between 11 AM and 1 PM on the steps of the old Chester County Courthouse at 21 West Market Street there is a ceremony to honor the 14 AME soldiers still on site at what use to be Shiloh AME in Westtown. It’s funny, I mentioned to an advocate for this site that this would be the perfect location a few weeks ago to get attention to the history languishing.
You are invited! Please Share.The Forgotten USCTs of Shiloh AME Church & Cemetery: A Day of Honor and Memory
Saturday, May 25, 2024, 11AM – 1 PM
In front of the Historic Chester County Courthouse
21 West Market Street
West Chester, PA 19380
FREE – Open to the Public!
Presented by the Friends of Shiloh AME Church and Cemetery
Featuring:
o Rev. Dr. Richelle Forman Gunter, Associate Minister
St. Paul’s Baptist Church, West Chester
o Speaker – Dr. Cheryl Renée Gooch, author of
Hinsonville’s Heroes: Black Civil War Soldiers of Chester County, Pennsylvania
o Robert Ford USCT 54th Massachusetts Co. B, Reenactor
o Speaker – Dr. Tonya Thames Taylor, Professor of History West Chester University
o Representative Headstones of 14 United States Colored Troops (USCTs)
Buried at Shiloh
o Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
More Information Attached:
– Shiloh AME brochure
– Inquirer Op-Ed, Friday, May 17, 2024,
“Black Civil War veterans in an abandoned Chester County cemetery deserve a memorial”
JOIN US!
shilohAMEfriends@gmail.com
It’s hallowed ground treated in the most unhallowed way. This happens far too often. Could this space be saved and properly remembered? Yes, but the current property owner doesn’t want people on his property. It’s sad but that is his choice.
It just gives you pause. There are 140 graves that never moved when the church closed in the 1920s and a subsequent but not current owner bulldozed the crumbling remains of the church built in 1817 was bulldozed in the 1960s. Think about it, the AME Church was only about 23 years old when this was built and slavery was not yet abolished. This is truly one of the earliest AME sites in the same state where the AME church was founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia. This site pre-dates Ebenezer in Frazer on Bacton Hill Rd.
I tried to write about Shiloh in 2016 when I was told that there was going to be a cleanup of the site. I was invited to it. Yet when I wrote a post people freaked out. So I killed the post and haven’t said boo since.
Only ONE grave survived thanks to a neighbor.
These hallowed grounds matter. People’s ancestors are buried there. Here’s hoping Westtown can get the property owner to come around.
My photo from a Westtown Day either 2016 or 2017 at Oakbourne.
400 Leopard Road. It’s on the corner of Sugartown Road and Leopard Road. There are a lot of houses around here that I love and this has always been one of my favorites. I think it was part of an estate I just can’t remember which one but it’s all in that general vicinity where Tarleton is and everything else.
If this house probably didn’t have close to 2 foot stone walls, it probably wouldn’t still be standing.
This old Redfin listing shows you what it looked like when it was for sale a few years ago:
I know work was being done on it but I just have to ask. Was this an accident? I’m not a fire expert, but it sure makes you wonder given how horrible the flames were shown on TV, right?
I was by this house quite recently on my way to Penn Medicine in Radnor for a medical appointment and I saw a coming soon sign that showed up on one of the reports. I looked up the realtor and they’re out of Delaware, which is a little far afield for the Main Line. With all the really good realtors to choose from on the main line, I am surprised that guy would be listing a property like this.  except now, I’m guessing this guy is out a listing 
I can tell you that if this house didn’t have almost 2 foot thick stone walls, it wouldn’t be standing today. But I hope this is actually investigated and not just swept under the carpet, because Easttown tends to sweep things under the carpet that they find uncomfortable.
This was such an incredibly interesting, and I think beautiful house. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but I love this house I have always loved driving by it, and I hope it rises from the ashes.
Sign me wondering if where there is smoke there is fire and not just a house fire? I think this is suspicious as hell.
If anyone has photos from today, feel free to message my blog’s Facebook page. I am also interested in publishing the history of this, so if any of you history, buffs, have old photos of this property, and can tell me what estate it was part of or its history I would also be appreciative.
3:00 PM 5/4/24 Update from Elizabeth Gaul who grew up in the house:
My family lived in Breeze Hill from 1963-1984. We are saddened by the news of this devastating fire and hope it will be feasible to salvage it. It was a truly wonderful place to grow up.
A correction, if I may, regarding its history. Our late mother, who taught history at AIS Lower School for 30+ years, would want the record straight:
No enslaved persons ever hid in the house. It was built several years post-Civil War so that would be impossible.
The staircase in question is a back stairway, which was a fairly typical feature for a larger home of this period. Not at all hidden, although part of it was blocked off to create a linen cupboard. We used it regularly. The third floor attic also had another entrance to it off the main staircase.
*Photo is of Breeze Hill from Sugartown Road, circa 1900. Note the windmill, which served to pump water from the spring house to the main house. When we lived there, that water still supplied the house, but via electric pump.
4:00 PM Update: thanks to realtor Tracy Pulos we have the history of the house – also note, this would be somebody far more appropriate than the guy on the sign to have sold his house:
Here is a history of this property which was given to me by a past owner. The address was 1226 Sugartown Rd. for many years, vs. 400 Leopard Rd. (address was changed to the side street vs. main street within the past 10 years.)
This lovely, historic Easttown Township residence was constructed by Joseph W. Sharp for his younger sister, Rachel, in 1864-1865, right at the end of the Civil War. Born in 1828 in Philadelphia, Sharp was the eldest son of Joseph Sharp and Hannah Lindsay. A successful Quaker wool merchant, the elder Mr. Sharp purchased approximately 250acres in Easttown prior to his untimely deathin 1848. In the absence of will disposing of his assets, the Easttown property was split equally among his four children, Joseph W., Rachel and two younger sons. As theeldest, Joseph W. also inherited his father’s business. Over the next few years, Joseph purchased the other three portions of his father’s original holdings from his three siblings, paying them, according to historical records, fair market value for their property. As both Joseph and Rachel were unmarried at this time, Rachel residedwith Joseph and was the mistress of his household. By 1857,Joseph had attained considerable success andconstructed an imposing Victorian country estate “Hawthorne,” which has been restored andis located at 521 Leopard Road in Berwyn, just down the street from Breeze Hill. Joseph went on to become a leaderin Berwyn, contributing tothe establishment of numerous civic organizations and was one of the founders of the Berwyn National Bank. He was thefirst gentleman to commute from Berwyn into Philadelphia each dayutilizing the newly-constructed “Main Line” train, and was a partner in what is now Hajoca Corporation, an earlyleader in the nascent indoor plumbing industry. In 1865, Joseph married Sidney Serrill Bunting. Oral family history indicates that Sidney and Rachel did not get along well, so Joseph commenced the construction of Breeze Hill (so named for its location and the presence of a refreshing breeze during this non-air conditioned era) for Rachel some time before his wedding. As the home wason theSharp family property, it didnot receive a separate deed at the timeof construction, but is shown on Pennsylvania Railroad maps dating to 1873. Already on the property was a two-story stone spring house, the top floor of which was occupied by tenant farmers on the estate. It is believed that this structure was built in 1837 and the spring provided a supply of clean water for the main house. The four car garage/carriage house was originallyconstructed as a barn, alsobefore 1865; careful examination of the walls inside show signs of stalls and a ladder to the full, second floor which was surely originally used as a hayloft. Local historical records indicate that Leopard Road was a well-travelled path on the Underground Railroad. Previous owners of Breeze Hill found evidence of a hidden stairway in a second-floor bedroom that led to a third floor space inaccessible by any other means, which lends credence to that fact that the property was a stop for slaves fleeing the South. Rachel Sharp and other family members lived at Breeze Hill until 1888. When Joseph Sharp’s eldest daughter, Mary Bunting Sharp, married William Morris of Villanova in 1888, the young couple moved into Breeze Hill, where they lived until 1942. Joseph Sharp and his wife subdivided Breeze Hill from their larger property and deeded it to their daughter for “$1 and her natural love and affection” in 1901, when it became legal for a married woman to own property in her own name in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Either Mary’s parents were trying to keep the property in the Sharp family or didnot particularly like their son-in-law– who knows?) Since the departure of the Sharp family, numerous owners have made changes and improvements to Breeze Hill to bring it to its current condition as a thoroughly charming modern family home. It retains the large deep windowsills created by the 18” solid stone walls, 5 fireplaces, beautiful moldings and vintage touches that bespeak its historic origins, but boasts a cook’s kitchen, five bathrooms, an enormous light-filled family room and great flow for entertaining
