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Civil War Blog

A project of PA Historian

Ku Klux Klan Day at Elizabethville Attracts Huge Crowd, 1926

| April 4, 2018

A report on the attendance of more than a thousand persons for the first Lykens Valley Ku Klux Klan Field Day appeared in the Lykens Standard in 1926. This post is a continuation of the reporting on hate groups that were active in the Lykens Valley area in the years following the Civil War.  It […]

Conrad Zimmerman – Last G.A.R. Member of Halifax

| April 2, 2018

The death of Conrad Zimmerman in Halifax, Dauphin County, on 22 October 1930, was widely reported in area newspapers because he was the last surviving member of a G.A.R. post that had disbanded.  The portrait above was published in the Harrisburg Telegraph of 24 October 1930. What was not stated in any of the articles […]

Obituary of Lazarus Zerbe of Williamstown

| March 30, 2018

Lazarus Zerbe, also known as Zerby, died in September 1905 in Williamstown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.  According to his grave marker in the United Methodist Cemetery in Williamstown, he served in the 17th Pennsylvania Infantry, Company H, as a Private.  Confirmation of this service is found in the Pennsylvania Archives, but the service was in the […]

Emma [Hoffman] Yentch – Lykens Woman’s Relief Corps Member

| March 28, 2018

According to her death certificate, Emma [Hoffman] Yentch died on 5 January 1908 in Lykens, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, of pneumonia.  She was the widow of Frederick Yentch, a Civil War veteran who died in Lykens on 11 September 1885. Her obituary, which appeared in the Lykens Standard, 10 January 1908, told of her role in […]

Rev. John Winebrenner – Uncompromising Opponent of Human Slavery

| March 26, 2018

Rev. John Winebrenner was a Reformed minister who broke with his denomination over among other things, the issue of human slavery, on which he was an uncompromising opponent.  His views surely were known in the Lykens Valley in the days before the Civil War began.  He died on 12 September 1860 and is buried in […]