The Expression Introduces Walking Historic Boyertown

Ed. As the year featuring Margaret Harner's One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA,  has ended, we are eager to share additional efforts highlighting our community's history. Gretchen Shimer Lea's booklet featuring historic homes and buildings came to mind as our next offering. Enjoy! 

by Gretchen Shimer Lea, 2014

“Walking Historic Boyertown” is a much-expanded version of the paperback booklet “A Walk Through Turn of the Century Boyertown” written in 1973 by Holly K. Green and Margaret K. Harner. 

I happened to read "A Walk Through Turn of the Century Boyertown” in 2007 while I was the Director of the Tri-County Area Chamber of Commerce’s Art Foundation. The information in the book ignited my curiosity and made me wonder about the origin and history of all the other old buildings in town that were not in the book. I happened to be working in the right place at the right time. That same year, the Chamber of Commerce was running a Leadership-Tri County class in which professionals from the area were being grained to become active community leaders. They were to learn about the area’s non-profits, the local governments, school systems, religious organizations, and arts and culture. In order for these Leadership “students” to graduate, they were required to do a special project for a non-profit. As the Director of the Arts Foundation, I was so fortunate to have two professionals from National Penn Bank, Sue Flemming and Kevin Bieber, and Susan Krall from the YWCA in Pottstown assigned to me as teammates to pursue the answers to my questions.

Coming up with an idea is easy. Making it come to fruition is the challenge. This project was even harder to accomplish than I had anticipated. The Leadership team was great in contacting the people who owned the buildings in the borough of Boyertown. However, we did not get much of the information that we had wanted. Our next step was contacting the Boyertown Area Historical Society’s Collection Director Lindsay Dierolf and a Boyertown Area School District history teacher Margaret Harner, hoping they could help to find more information. They were great. I could never have done this without their dedicated help. They researched old Boyertown newspapers and books housed in the Historical Society’s Library. I was also able to recruit the help for a short time of a local residents, Marlene Smoyer, Boyertown Area High School student Bryan Tyson, local architect Tom Farmer, and two hobby photographers Clayton Leister and Kim Frain.

I am the reason this project took so long. I started it when I was with the Chamber of Commerce, at which time my computer skills were limited. I am now working on a third computer since the project began, the Tri-County Area Chamber of Commerce no longer has an Arts Council, all the wonderful pictures the photographers took for me were not labeled and I am employed elsewhere. However, Margaret and Lindsay stuck with me. Hopefully, readers find the booklet an inspiration to walk the lovely town of Boywertown as they gain insight into the lives of those who lived in Boyertown years before our time.

A Thank You also goes to the Berks County Community Foundation for helping to fund this endeavor and waiting for me to finish this long-anticipated project.

xx

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