Originally published in 1913 by the Bright Printing Company, In the Seven Mountains belongs to Henry Shoemaker's robust corpus of tales and legends based on the folklore of Pennsylvania. This volume presents stories from the Seven Mountains, located in Mifflin, Centre, and Juniata Counties, through which Shoemaker traveled by carriage in 1912, stopping to speak with local residents and visit "scores of localities of historic and legendary" importance. In his distinctive literary voice, Shoemaker recounts colorful legends--tales of ghosts and hauntings, of elusive mountain lions...

Henry W. Shoemaker was already an established writer of Pennsylvania's popular folklore by the time North Pennsylvania Minstrelsy was published in 1919. While much of Shoemaker's previous work was literary folklore, this volume comprises his first collection of ballads and what has been argued to be one of his most significant contributions to the scholarly folklore conversation.

Compiled by Shoemaker over two decades, with the assistance of John C. French and John H. Chatham, this volume includes over one hundred songs and ballads from Union, Snyder, Centre, Lycoming,...

Published in 1916, Juniata Memories was Henry W. Shoemaker's eighth volume of Pennsylvania folklore. Written in the author's typical literary style, this volume includes twenty-six legends set in Central Pennsylvania and the Juniata Valley. These stories, "secured from old people, hermits, farmers, lumbermen, teamsters, hostlers, hunters, trappers, old soldiers, and their ladies," prominently feature the Stone, Kishacoquillas, and Penn's Valleys and the many towns that lie within and around them, such as Huntingdon, Lewistown, and Selinsgrove. The stories share a common theme with...

Black Forest Souvenirs was inspired by Henry Shoemaker's early experience in the Black Forest of Germany and the mystical draw of its vast expanse of hemlocks, spruces, and pines interspersed with lumbermen and roaming wildlife. On trips to Clinton, Potter, McKean, and Lycoming Counties in Pennsylvania between 1899 and 1902, Shoemaker discovered forests still intact, evoking the romantic ideal of the German Schwarzwald. However, upon returning to the mountains five years later, he found these forests desolated by the logging industry, practically a ruin--a vision far from the...

In this 1917 guidebook from the pre-automobile era, Henry Shoemaker breaks from his typical literary-folklore subjects to chronicle the natural and social landscapes of central Pennsylvania. The reader is introduced to the wildlife and the geographic features of Clinton, Centre, Mifflin, Union, Lycoming, Cameron, and Snyder Counties through Shoemaker's detailed narration and anecdotal notes. A staunch opponent of automobile tourism, Shoemaker urges his readers to avoid this "deadly, soul destroying machine . . . fatal to the lover of scenery or the naturalist." As most roads of the time...

Originally published in 1914 by the Tribune Press, Wolf Days in Pennsylvania preserves the fascinating history of Pennsylvania's lost wolves and their hunters, which was already becoming the stuff of folklore and myth during Shoemaker's lifetime at the turn of the twentieth century. With his characteristic penchant for juicy narrative and a naturalist's enthusiasm and respect for the animal, Shoemaker details the decline of the wolf in Pennsylvania during the westward progress of the state's settlement by whites, as its population dwindled over the course of the nineteenth...