The Hobby That Became a Museum: Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, 1925–2025

Posted by on Aug 29, 2025 in | Comments Off on The Hobby That Became a Museum: Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, 1925–2025 Brothers Henry Landis (1865–1955) and George Landis (1867–1954), the founders of Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, were descendants of Germanic Mennonite families who moved to the area that would become Lancaster County in 1717. As young boys, Henry and George were encouraged by their forward-thinking parents and several teachers to pursue their personal interests and begin collecting....
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Aug 25, 2025 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter One hundred years ago, Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum — now a site on PHMC’s Pennsylvania Trails of History — opened to the public. It was founded by two free-spirited brothers, Henry and George Landis, who essentially devoted their lives to building a massive collection of artifacts related to Pennsylvania German rural life and culture. Conestoga wagons, farm implements and machinery,...
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Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Preserving Pieces of Pennsylvania’s Past: An Inside Look at the Building of the Commonwealth’s Collections Associations between butterflies and buttons, Conestoga wagons and cannon, sculpture and arrowheads, or fossils and founder William Penn’s original Charter may seem tenuous, even obscure and, perhaps, nonsensical. But a relationship does exist: they are among the one and a half million objects and thirty thousand cubic feet of manuscripts, records, maps and photographs in the custody and...
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The Great Escape: Camping in the 19th Century

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Great Escape: Camping in the 19th Century During the turbulent nineteenth century, Americans were as mobile as wheels, waterways and ambition could make them. The population was preoccupied with carving out a new nation, emigrating, pioneering, surveying, sod busting, prospecting for gold and, fundamentally, attempt­ing to preserve body and soul. With the surge westward and the consuming desire to push on to the frontiers, there was a...
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts Fort Hunter Day, a celebra­tion of autumn, will be hosted on Sunday, September 19 [1993], from 10 A. M. to 5 P. M. by Fort Hunter Mansion and Park. The event, free and open to the public, will feature crafts show and demonstrations, carriage rides, period entertainment, and numerous activities designed especially for children. Also featured throughout the day will be demonstrations of...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Canoeing on the Juniata, 1888 by Henry K. Landis Pennsylvania Histori­cal and Museum Commission and Landis Valley Associates, 1993 (68 pages, cloth, $15.95) Elizabeth F. Johnson, who wrote the introduction to Canoeing on the Juniata, 1888, describes Henry K. Landis (1865-1955) as “a collector, recorder, keeper, and lover of history.” Throughout his long life, he sustained a keen...
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Landis Valley Museum: The Legacy of Two Brothers Lives on!

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Landis Valley Museum: The Legacy of Two Brothers Lives on! There is an undeniable simplicity, a serenity, that pervades one of Lancaster County’s most fascinating visitor attractions, Landis Valley Museum. A visit to Landis Valley Museum, actually a complex of more than two dozen buildings and structures, offers a glimpse into the lives of those who settled in Lancaster County, beginning in the early eighteenth century. An assemblage of workplaces...
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Percheron Filly at Landis Valley Museum

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Percheron Filly at Landis Valley Museum Museum visitors do expect to see objects, artifacts, documents and, with growing frequency, interactive kiosks. Living history sites, such as Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster County, offer visitors a firsthand look at living – and growing – collections, among them trees, gardens, and landscape plantings, as well as historical breeds of animals, such as draft horses, once so vital to...
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Bringing German Culture to Life at the Landis Valley Museum

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bringing German Culture to Life at the Landis Valley Museum Not far from a paved Lancaster County road and the distant buzz of afternoon traffic, Pennsylvania’s centuries-old German culture is alive and well. At the Landis Valley Museum on Kissel Hill Road, in Lancaster, one of the popular stops along the Pennsylvania Trails of History administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), members of the Pennsylvania Conservation Corps...
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Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, founded in 1812, is the oldest natural history museum in the Western Hemisphere. Early expeditions organized by the academy were of central importance to the exploration of America’s vast western wilderness, and the plant and animal specimens...
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