Lehigh County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1904, dedicated to collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the history of Lehigh County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the no ...

region of eastern

. The Historical Society and Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum are located at 432 West Walnut Street in

Allentown Allentown may refer to several places in the United States and topics related to them: * Allentown, California, now called Toadtown, California * Allentown, Georgia, a town in Wilkinson County * Allentown, Illinois, an unincorporated community in T ...

Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum

The Lehigh County Historical Society is headquartered in the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum, a state-of-the-art museum facility with four galleries and more than of exhibition space. Recent exhibits have included exhibits on General Harry C. Trexler, Native Americans, and American Presidents. The Museum maintains an exhibit on the

and an extensive collection of local and regional historical materials with more than 30,000 historical artifacts in its collection.

Library and archive

The Lehigh County Historical Society's library, the Scott Andrew Trexler II Research Library and Archive, houses 200,000 vintage photographs and nearly three million historical documents. Included in its collections are more than 800 volumes of church and cemetery records for Lehigh and neighboring counties, early county records (tax rolls, wills and land deeds), indexed marriage records and announcements, 800 volumes of family genealogical histories, city directories (1860 onwards), maps, census records and published histories. The library also maintains

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

versions of several of Allentown's early German and English-language newspapers. Access to the library is free for Society members; a small fee applies for non-members.

Historic sites

The Lehigh County Historical Society administers several historical sites in the region: * Claussville One-Room Schoolhouse (1893) – This brick

One-room school One-room schools, or schoolhouses, were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including Prussia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain. In most rural and s ...

house was the last in Lehigh County. 2917 Route 100, north of Fogelsville * Haines Mill Museum (ca. 1850, rebuilt 1909) – Working

grist mill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the Mill (grinding), grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist i ...

. 3600 Dorney Park Road, Cetronia, South Whitehall Township * Lockridge Furnace Museum (1868) – 19th century

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloomeri ...

, now a museum and park dedicated to the

anthracite iron Anthracite iron or anthracite pig iron is the substance created by the smelting together of anthracite coal and iron ore, that is using anthracite coal instead of charcoal to smelt iron ores—and was an important historic advance in the late-1 ...

industry. 525 Franklin Street, Alburtis * Saylor Cement Industry Museum (1893) –

Cement kiln Cement kilns are used for the pyroprocessing stage of manufacture of portland and other types of hydraulic cement, in which calcium carbonate reacts with silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silicates. Over a billion tonnes of ...

s built by David O. Saylor, father of the American

Portland cement Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in the early 19th c ...

industry. North Second Street, Coplay *

Trout Hall Trout are species of freshwater fish belonging to the genera ''Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of the subfamily Salmoninae of the family Salmonidae. The word ''trout'' is also used as part of the name of some non-salmonid ...

(1770) – Colonial stone mansion. Home of James Allen, son of

's founder,

William Allen William Allen may refer to: Politicians United States *William Allen (congressman) (1827–1881), United States Representative from Ohio *William Allen (governor) (1803–1879), U.S. Representative, Senator, and 31st Governor of Ohio *William ...

. 4th & Walnut Streets, Allentown * Troxell-Steckel Farm Museum (1756) –

Pennsylvania Dutch The Pennsylvania Dutch ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ), also known as Pennsylvania Germans, are a cultural group formed by German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They emigrated primarily from German-spe ...

stone

farmhouse FarmHouse (FH) is a social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity founded at the University of Missouri on April 15, 1905. It became a national organization in 1921. Today FarmHouse has 33 active chapters and four associate ch ...

, one of Lehigh County's oldest structures. 4229 Reliance Street, off Route 329, Village of Egypt, Whitehall Township

Publications

''Proceedings'', the journal of the Lehigh County Historical Society, was published on a bi-annual basis since 1906 and featured articles focusing on local and regional history. From 1947 to 1994, the publication was bound in a distinctive blue

buckram Buckram is a stiff cotton (occasionally linen or horse hair) cloth with a loose weave, often muslin. The fabric is soaked in a sizing agent such as wheat-starch paste, glue (such as PVA glue), or pyroxylin (gelatinized nitrocellulose, deve ...

hardcover A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occa ...

binding with gilt lettering. In 1994, the journal was published in

softcover A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, lea ...

. Publication of ''Proceedings'' was discontinued in 2004.

References

External links