Tag: Dauphin Co

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James Doty Letter To Arthur Shoemaker

I’m coming down the home stretch on publishing the letter that James K. Doty wrote to his cousin Arthur (Clell) Shoemaker in 1965. I have been working on documenting this letter for at least 4 years. I’m still looking for an obituary on James K. Doty, who died in 1981, in California. Once I find that, I’ll be able to index the whole book and get it published.

The letter started as a 20 page, handwritten letter. It is now about 100 pages with all the documentation and the index. I’m still working towards a Christmas publication date.

This will be a nice addition to the book that we just published in September on the “Revolutionary War Patriot Homes of Dauphin County, PA”. It has been a good seller and is just wonderful for anyone who has ancestors in Dauphin Co.

I’ll never be a James Patterson, publishing 10 books a year, but I’m hoping this will at least be a worthwhile effort to document some of our family.

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Revolutionary War Patriot Homes

Our local DAR Chapter has been working on documenting Revolutionary War Patriot Homes that are still in existence in Dauphin Co., PA.  We have made a good start, but have opened up to the remainder of the State of Pennsylvania to add additional homes that have been found.  I have received a few names and am now putting together a talk on some of these homes.  The purpose is to keep them preserved for future generations.

If you go on line at HABS or the National Registry of Historic Places you will find information about some of these homes.  With that and copies of the deeds, you can put together quite an interesting story.  You can also find some disturbing news, such as the very old, Mendenhall Inn was demolished in 2002 and replaced with a new building.  This is the kind of thing we want to keep from happening to these historic old homes.  By making people aware of the age and history of these homes, we hope to help preserve them.

If you know of any old homes that were occupied in the 1700 or early 1800s by a Revolutionary War veteran, let me know.  We would love to document and preserve their history.