In early America, traditional commercial interaction revolved around an entity known as the general store. Unfortunately, most of these elusive small-town shops disappeared from our society without leaving business-related documents behind for scholars to analyze. This gap in the historical knowledge of America has made it difficult to understand the nature of the networks and trade relationships that existed between cities and the surrounding countryside at the time.
Samuel Rex, however, left behind a vastly different legacy. A country storekeeper who operated out of Schaefferstown,...
In early America, traditional commercial interaction revolved around an entity known as the general store. Unfortunately, most of these elusive sma...
Rural and charming, Schafferstown and surrounding Heidelberg Township in Lebanon County have preserved many of their earliest historic qualities. German immigrant Alexander Schaeffer laid out the village with a central square and built a water system around 1758 using underground wooden pipes to connect a spring-fed reservoir to two troughs on Market Street and the town square. It is one of the oldest public waterworks in the United States. Because the area was left isolated from rail lines, canals, and modern highways, the town did not grow appreciably in the 19th or 20th centuries. This...
Rural and charming, Schafferstown and surrounding Heidelberg Township in Lebanon County have preserved many of their earliest historic qualities. Germ...
