Notes From Annals of Luzerne County, A Year’s Residence in the United States of America and Other Sources, 1818-1900

Authors

Alfred L. Shoemaker

Document Type

Notes

Files

Date

1950

Keywords

poems, food, architecture, barns, Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, sauerkraut

Description

Handwritten notes by Alfred L. Shoemaker from various sources including Annals of Luzerne County and A Year's Residence in the United States of America, copied circa 1950. The notes include a poem by a Methodist preacher entitled "Mush and Milk," descriptions of Pennsylvania barns, and an account of Pennsylvania Dutch dialect and customs.

Corresponds to:

Packet 758-1

Transcription

Annals of Luzerne County by Stewart Pearce [Phil., 1866]

pp. 419-422 poem Mush and Milk by a Methodist preacher, formerly resident of Luzerne Co.

Bob Burns applauds the Scotchman’s haggis
And tells how well it fills their baggies
John Bull brags much of beef and stout,
And Dutch folks of their speck and crout,
Let me, in verses Hudibrastic,
Stretch my muse like gum - elastic,
To sing the praise of mush and milk,
That ne’er made saint or sinner wilk.

Witches - pp. 511-514.

American Agriculturist, May, 1868, pp. 180-181.

Thatching with straw

A Year’s Residence in the United States of America by William Cobbett, London, 1818. Feb. 16, 1818.

pp. 63-64 [Description of Pa. Barn] ‘Big Barns, and modest dwelling houses. Barns of stone, a hundred feet long and forty wide, with two floors, and raised roads to go into them, so that the wagons go into the / p. 64 / first floor up-stairs. Below are stables, stalls, pens, and all sorts of conveniences. Up-stairs are rooms for threshed corn and grain; for tackle, for meal, for all sorts of things. In the front (South) of the barn is the cattle yard. These are very fine buildings. And, then, all about them looks so comfortable, and gives such manifest proofs of ease, plenty and happiness! Such is the country of William Penn's settling!”

America Picturesque and Descriptive by Joel Cook. Philadelphia, 1900.

p. 184 … Everywhere in German Pennsylvania …

p. 186 “Journeying up the Schuylkill, we pass the flourishing manufacturing towns of Conshohocken and Norristown and come into the region of the “Pennsylvania Dutch,” where the inhabitants, who are mostly of Teutonic origin, speak a curious dialect, compounded of German, Dutch, English and some Indian words, yet not fully understood by any of those races. These industrious people are chiefly farmers and handicraftsmen, and they make up much of the population - [p. 187] of eastern Pennsylvania, while their "saurkraut" and "scrapple" have become staple foods in the State.

Notions of the Americans [Phil., 1811] pp. 305-306 on Pa. Dutch.

Language

English and Pennsylvania German

Rights Statement

This item is available courtesy of the Ursinus College Library Special Collections Department. It is not to be copied or distributed for commercial use. For permissions which fall outside of educational use, please contact the Special Collections Department.

Recommended Citation

Shoemaker, Alfred L., "Notes From Annals of Luzerne County, A Year’s Residence in the United States of America and Other Sources, 1818-1900" (1950). Alfred L. Shoemaker Folk Cultural Documents. 186.
https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/shoemaker_documents/186