The Boals of Boalsburg: Two Hundred Years of a Pennsylvania Heritage

What is the story of America?

The question stirs the imagina­tion, conjuring romantic im­ages of stalwart pioneers stalking the vast wilderness, of hardworking farming families toiling from sunrise long past sunset, and of village mer­chants eking out meager livelihoods in America’s heartland. Much of the story is devoted to the fledging hamlets and em­bryonic communities and their dedication to building schools, churches and stable local econ­omies. Surely, military, politi­cal and industrial endeavors are part of the story, as well as the contributions and customs of the seemingly endless waves of immigrants that began reaching the New World – and, particularly, Pennsyl­vania – early in the eighteenth century.

The story of America is also the story of the indomitable Boal family of Boalsburg, gen­eration after generation of spirited adventurers, whose evolution is a remarkable re­flection of all that has tran­spired in Pennsylvania during two centuries. Theirs is also the story of the Boal Mansion, where the family’s saga began in the late eighteenth century and where it continues, a tradition unbroken – to this day. The historic Centre County mansion is now being restored and is open to the public, while continuing to serve as home to the ninth generation of Boals.

Family tradition holds that the family patriarch, David Boal, emigrated from County Antrim, Ireland, and fought as a captain during the American Revolution. Included in the extensive family archives, which yields many details about the Boals’ activities through the course of two centuries, is a letter from fifth generation Theodore Davis Boal (1867-1938) to his son, Pierre (1895-1966), noting that, “David Boal, Sr., commanded a company of Cumberland militia in the Revolutionary War and his son, David Boal, Jr., after serving in the Revolu­tionary Army, returned to Ireland to take part in the revolution of 1798.”

At the time the elder Boal settled in 1789 in what is now Centre County, the entire region was an immense wil­derness, populated by few settlers. Today, his cabin, four miles east of the burgeoning city of State College and the main campus of the Pennsyl­vania State University, serves as the kitchen of the Boal Mansion.

David Boal, Jr.,’s return to this country, according to Theodore Davis Boal, “was made possible in putting him in a large chest and hoisting him aboard ship after the collapse of the Revolutionary movement.” (The walnut blan­ket chest in which he escaped Ireland – as well as most of the family’s extensive and varied collections – remains at the Boal Mansion.) He and his wife, Nancy Young Boal, to­gether with two children, Elizabeth and George, re­turned to his father’s cabin and in 1798 added a two story, three bay wide, Georgian style farmhouse, which included a front hall, dining and living rooms and a parlor. Their two youngest children, Mary and John, were born in Boalsburg.

According to John Blair Linn, author of the 1883 His­tory of Centre and Clinton Coun­ties, Pennsylvania, David Boal was recommended in August 1804 for a license to keep a tavern, which still stands on East Main Street in Boalsburg. Originally called Springfield, Boalsburg was named to honor David Boal, “a much respected and highly influential citizen of the place,” when a local post office was established in 1820. David, who laid out an addi­tion to the community in 1832, served as an elder of the Slab Cabin (Presbyterian) Church until his death at the age of seventy-three in 1837. His wife died in 1834.

Their son, George, was of the first Boal generation to grow up in America. Born July 16, 1796, in County Atrim, Ireland, he eventually became a leader in Centre County during a period in which resi­dents promoted educational and economic developments, as well as the institutions which enhanced them.

Although a farmer all of his life, George was intensely dedicated to the development of education in Pennsylvania. In 1834, he lobbied for the creation of a General System of Education by Common School, part of the statewide movement that resulted in the establishment of the Common­wealth’s first tax-supported school system for children. In 1853, he was one of the found­ers of the Boalsburg Academy that emphasized a scholarly, rather than a practical or voca­tional, curriculum.

George Boal served as pres­ident of the meeting of the Centre County Agricultural Society on January 23, 1855, during which Hugh McAl­lister, his son’s law partner, offered the resolution to estab­lish an agricultural high school in the county with funding by the state legislature. In June, he attended a banquet at the home of his daughter’s father­-in-law, Moses Thompson, for state legislators and trustees of the proposed school. The Farmer’s High School opened on February 19, 1859, and today- known as the Pennsyl­vania State University – is the largest employer in Centre County (for a detailed account of the creation of Penn State, see “Watts’ Folly” by Jerry Clouse and Kate Kauffman in the fall 1989 issue).

Until his death in 1867, George Boal was present at, and often president of, almost every community meeting to benefit fellow countians. He presided over the first meeting in the county endorsing the laying of a railroad through Penn’s Valley in 1845. When the Centre County Agricul­tural Society re-organized in 1852, he served as its first president. Despite his myriad civic duties and community involvement, he found time to devote to local politics.

Nominated in 1839 by the county Democratic convention for the state House of Repre­sentatives, he was opposed in the eastern end of Penn’s Val­ley at a meeting of the Miles Township Democrats in Rebersburg. He was defeated by their candidate, 1,178 votes to 1,004, but the convention held in August 1840 again nominated him for the assem­bly. Elected, he served in Har­risburg until 1841. In 1849, he presided over the Centre County Democratic conven­tion; in 1857, he conducted a meeting of the new Republican party endorsing county candidates.

George and Nancy Boal’s eldest son, David C., born March 27, 1822, graduated from Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, and worked as an attorney with Hugh McAl­lister of Bellefonte. In June 1851, he married Frances Burn­side, daughter of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas Burnsides. Four years later he followed his father to the state House of Representa­tives on the Democratic Whig ticket. He died at the age of thirty-seven in 1859.

Another son, John, born in 1838, organized a Civil War troop, the Penn’s Valley Infan­try, enlisted at Boalsburg on August 31, 1861, and serving as Company G, Forty-Ninth Regiment. He was commis­sioned captain of Company A, Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry of the 92nd Pennsylvania Regi­ment. On March 11, 1865, after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surren­der – but before the news was received – John Boal was killed at Averysboro, North Carolina, on Sherman’s march to the sea. He was buried in a federal cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.

John’s elder brother, George Jack Boal, born in 1835, attended the Boalsburg Acad­emy, and moved in 1857 to Iowa City, then Iowa’s state capital and the western termi­nus of the Rock Island Rail­road. He became a lawyer and married in 1861 Malvina Amanda Buttles, the daughter of prominent Iowa City Judge Joel Benoni Suttles (1806-1883). In an 1810 family bible, origi­nally purchased by David Boal, a notation recounts a poignant memoir of the third generation of Boals in America.

George Jack Boal and his wife, just after their marriage, saw him [brother John Boal] leave Boals­burg at the head of his company for service on August 31, 1861. The old father [George Boal] was heart-broken at the departure of his son, after the death of [his eldest son] David a short time before, and besought his son George to serve his country in some other way than joining the army.

At George’s death in 1867, the family home in Boalsburg went to his daughter, Elizabeth Maria, wife of John Irvin Thompson, scion of a wealthy land-owning family which lived in the nearby Centre Furnace Mansion. The year after his father’s death, George Jack Boal – who had estab­lished his reputation as a suc­cessful lawyer – was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. He twice declined the Democratic nomination for a seat in Con­gress and once for the gover­norship of Iowa. His obituary in 1895 noted that George Jack Boal’s “success was such that he attracted the attention of large corporations and men of wealth so that about eight years ago he was called to Denver on a guaranteed salary of $10,000 a year for a period of five years.” Upon moving to Colorado in 1887, he was the attorney for a mining syndi­cate controlled by wealthy New York industrialist J.B. Wheeler, and invested in spec­ulative mining ventures as well.

George Jack and Malvina Boal had five children, but only one, Theodore Davis Boal, lived to raise a family of his own.

Theodore Davis Boal – or Terry as he was called – lived a life of far-flung international travel, supported by the seem­ingly boundless wealth ac­crued by the previous generation. He was named for his uncle, Theodore M. Davis, who had married his mother’s sister, Annie Buttles. The Buttles sisters – Malvina, Annie and Sara, who re­mained single after losing her beau in the Civil War – trav­eled extensively and often appeared in the life of Theo­dore Davis Boal.

Theodore M. Davis amassed a great fortune from law and finance, and later became interested in Egyptian archaeology. While only seven years old, Terry went to live with his Uncle Theodore and Aunt Annie, who had no children of their own. Little Terry became a son to them. In a letter to his son Pierre, Terry recalled his youth.

Theodore M. Davis, for whom I’ve been named, went back to New York state with my Aunt Annie and settled in New York city. The business interests which sent him to New York also brought him west to Iowa and when I was seven years old, I was taken on a first visit by them in 1876 and later went to live with them en­tirely in New York city. They were moving about considerably [and] I was put in Charlier’s Institute on 58th Street opposite Central Park.

It was considered a very desir­able school and everything was done for me that was possible. Uncle had our riding horses at the stables which later became the riding club, the stables being on 58th Street. We used to ride daily in Central Park which was then the extreme northern end of New York city and quite in the country.

Davis later sent Terry to St. Paul’s School, where he lost interest in his studies and had trouble holding on to money. Only after a series of stern lectures and a stream of corre­spondence to his parents by the worried Davis, the eight­een year old was enrolled at Iowa State University to be nearer to his mother and father.

In the early 1890s, Terry traveled to Paris to study archi­tecture, where he met the beautiful Mathilde Denis de Lagarde, whom he married in 1894. The following year their son, Pierre, was born in Thonon-les-bains near Lake Geneva, where Mathilde’s father was a financial officer for the French government and the family owned an estate called Chignens. The well traveled family returned to Boalsburg in 1898, and Terry purchased the family farm from his aunt, Elizabeth Boal Thompson.

Buoyed by inspiration from his world travels and filled with ideas from his studies, Terry immediately set out to transform the Boalsburg farm into an estate. He added a spacious ballroom to the west of his great-grandfather’s farm­house addition, and servants’ and farmers’ quarters to the south of the original stone cabin. In 1901, he built a car­riage house and a large barn (which today serves as the Boal Barn Playhouse), and began cultivating extensive gardens. Not content to merely embellish his resi­dence, the energetic and entre­preneurial Terry Boal also founded the Boalsburg fire, electric, telephone, water and transportation companies!

In addition to his booming business interests and preoc­cupation with making the family farm a grand show­place, Terry and his family indulged themselves in travels to far-flung, exotic places, described in letters and a diary kept by his aunt, Sara Buttles.

March 6, 1899: Terry and Mathilde started for Cuba [where her family owned a number of plantations] via Galveston and Key West.

May 11th, 1899: Left Pasadena for Denver where we spent two days at the Brown Hotel. Then brought Pierre on to Boalsburg. Stayed two weeks at the Hotel [Boalsburg Tavern] waiting for repairs [to the Boal Mansion] to be finished. Visited Lemont and State College. Very beautiful. Terry came 10th June. Went to Newport [Rhode Island, where Terry’s uncle Theodore M. Davis built an imposing and magnificent mansion, “The Reef,” and where family members frequently visited] the last of the month with Annie and Marie.

August 1, 1899: Mallie [Malvina Amanda Boal] came up from Denver and three days later Mathilde left for Newport to spend a month. Repairs still going on and weather warm …

March 1, 1900: Annie and Terry stayed in apt. 1655 Sherman Ave. [Denver] until June then went to Newport. Terry sailed for Cherbourg – arr. Chignens July 23rd. Returned to Denver with Mathilde and Pierre in October.

May 13, 1901: Spent the night in New York and left early in the morning for Boalsburg. Obliged to spend the night at Lewisburg, two hours from Boalsburg. Good hotel. Arr. Oak Hall at 8:30 and drove to the farm. Found Pierre at “Uncle Jimmie’s” [the West farm] as there has been a case of “scarlet rash” in the family of the new farmer. Took Pierre to the Hotel where we stayed ten days. Build­ing new barn and stables at the farm. Annie went to Newport with Terry, end of June.

May 1902, Montreux: Mathilde and Pierre joined us in May …. Annie went to Boals­burg in November and in Feb. [1903] took Mathilde, Pierre and Cecile to Washington. They saw Mt. Vernon. Pierre visited the Roosevelt children at the White House – saw the laying of the cornerstone of the War College.

By then Terry had acquired an elegant house on H Street in Washington, D.C. At an auction of White House furnishings held during the presi­dency of Theodore Roosevelt, he acquired a French Empire period parlor piano that once belonged to Dolley Madison, wife of Pres. James Madison. The piano today graces the parlor of the Boal Mansion.

11 Aug 1902, from Chignens, Haute Savoie, France. He [Terry] says he is going to stay until the end of Sept. and says he finds it very restful here. Tito [Mathilde’s brother] is running the auto, that is, it runs sometimes and some­times needs to be pushed! I hope they will find a chance to sell it rather than keep it over another two years as improvements are being constantly made and it is growing old fashioned.

1905. Spent May and June in Boalsburg. Left June 23rd for Newport via New York where Terry and family sailed for Spain. Annie spent Oct. & Nov. in Boalsburg.

The Boals made the voyage to Spain to visit Mathilde’s aunt, Victoria, widow of Diego Columbus, a direct descendant of explorer Christopher Columbus. Childless, Victoria, Mathilde’s mother’s sister, lived in the Columbus Castle, also known as Llamas del Moro (“Flames of the Moor”), a thousand year old fortification built as a defense against the Moors of Asturias. From the village of Boal in Asturias, Terry wrote to his Aunt Sara.

Just two words to say that we have been resting a day after 122 miles of stage from Oviedo to Navia and six hours of cart up here to this lovely spot. A more picturesque and lovely place would be hard to find. I find the family came from here. Will tell you about it. We are leaving in the morning for a two day ride of 45 kilometers over two high ranges of picturesque mountains – a won­derful ride, I fancy – to the palace of Llamas where we will keep house for a couple of weeks. All three are well and send love to you both.

During the visit, the elderly Victoria offered nine-year-old Pierre the Columbus family titles – Duke of Veragua, High Admiral of the Ocean Seas, Viceroy of the West Indies and Governor General of Panama – if he would remain in Spain. Enchanted and intrigued, Pierre nonetheless declined Victoria’s magnanimous offer, preferring to remain an American.

Victoria Columbus died three years later and willed the castle’s chapel interior to Mathilde – which Terry saw as the crowning touch for his Centre County estate. Upon the settlement of Victoria’s estate, Terry promptly shipped the chapel to Boalsburg in 1909 and erected a small stone structure to house it. The chapel’s contents included baroque and renaissance oil paintings, ancient religious relics (such as two pieces of the True Cross) and an Admi­ral’s Desk which had originally belonged to Christopher Columbus. The Columbus Chapel in Boalsburg offers a glimpse at ancient Spain and remains, perhaps, the most tangible connection between the New World and the voy­ager in this country.

The trip to Spain was not without great sadness. Mathilde contracted undulant fever, feared because of the depression and neurosis it caused, from drinking unpas­teurized milk. She was to suffer its wrath for the follow­ing sixteen years.

As the clouds of war de­scended on Europe, Pierre returned to France in 1914 accompanied by his mother’s sister, Cecile de Largarde, who worked as a nurse in Cham­bery. His wary father chroni­cled, as best he could from afar, his son’s movements.

Both Cecile and Pierre joined up with the Staff of the large Military Hospital at Chambery. Pierre did not stay long on this job, but getting a letter of identifi­cation and introduction from our Notary in Thonon, he pursued for fourteen kilometers on foot, a Cavalry recruiting officer, who was making enlistments for the first Cuirassier Regiment. There were several irregularities in Pierre’s enlistment, but the re­cruiting officer said that anybody who walked fourteen kilometers in the snow to get into the Cavalry, was going to get in, and he took him.

[Later] I went to Paris with Cecile and a group of people from Chambery to meet Pierre, who was coming from the front line.

Pierre turned up tall and gaunt wearing a muddy great coat, the bottom of which was all frayed out. My first idea was to get him cleaned up, his clothes pressed and repaired, but I was mistaken in the effect this pro­duced. What touched the heart of Parisians, I noticed, was signs of the rough period they had been through on the front, as they had plenty of young dapper officers already ….

Pierre had come back from the front very enthusiastic about getting into the air service. I was not very much thrilled by the idea, as aviation at that period was almost a death warrant, and his uncle’s [Antoine Denis de Lagarde] recent sacrifice seemed to be enough. The boy went back to Chambery and it was a terrible wrench to send him back from there to the trenches.

Pierre, a lance corporal in the First Regiment of the Cuirassier, a cavalry unit, served in campaigns in Picardy and Flanders. He later enrolled in the Lafayette Flying Corps, a group of American aviators serving in French uniform before the United States joined the war. He made his first solo flight on May 24, 1916. In 1918, Pierre was a captain and the supervising officer of the American Army Pilots and Observers Assigned to French Air Squadrons.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Terry Boal could not keep still while his son took part in the war: he outfitted his own machine gun troop in Boalsburg! After training at his Camp Boal, now the site of the 28th Division Shrine and the Pennsylvania Military Museum, the troop was dis­patched to the Mexican border to capture Pancho Villa. At the border, Terry outfitted Ford trucks with machine guns – possibly the first mounted machine guns in National Guard history. In 1917, Terry returned from the border of Mexico, and Pierre from France. The elder Boal re­counted their exciting venture in his memoirs.

He [Pierre] came to Boalsburg and started the troop digging a trench with a dugout and the regulation barbed-wire entangle­ment. It was terribly hard work, but the men stuck to if and should have been rewarded by the thou­sands of visitors from all over the county who came to see this sec­tion of a front-line trench.

At the invitation of the ma­chine gun troop, the battalion of the first Pennsylvania Cavalry, plus one troop, marched over with their horses and combat wagons and bivouacked at Camp Boal. The sham battle which took place the second day, as well as the review, was a night attack by these four troops, against the machine gun organization which was defending its strong point. The attack battal­ion left their horses in the woods, and an advance group crawling up the bed of the stream from the direction of Pierre, completely surprised the defenders of the trench. Very bright lights, alarm rockets and imitation shell-bursts made quite a picture. Thousands of people came to the review which was taken by Major Fetzer, later killed, and most of the people stayed for the night show.

The visiting troops came from Bellefonte, Lewisburg, Sunbury and Tyrone. It was very pictur­esque, to see these troops that had come long distances right into camp, their arrival announced in the distance by their bugle, and the whole thing awakened a great enthusiasm in the countryside for our local effort.

Terry Boal’s machine gun troop departed for Camp Han­cock, Georgia, to train for European battle. Before being dispatched to Europe, Terry left the troop to become aide­-de-camp to commanders of the 28th Division, Maj. Gen. Clement and, later, Maj. Gen. Charles Muir. “It was an awful wrench to leave my Machine Gunners,” Terry wrote, “but I realized that on account of my knowledge of the French lan­guage and of the French, and ‘France, that I might be more useful with the Commanding General of the then 7th Division …”

Terry Boal proved useful. He also saw much action.

We got into enough shell and rifle fire to satisfy us. In climbing out of a trench, I was obliged to put my hands on the parapet which I found was wet, and to my horror when I stood on the edge, I found that I had put both hands into a man’s brains.

General Clement was not allowed to go in, as the risk of losing an American Major Gen­eral either by fire or by capture was too great. He, however, had a good view of the battle with General d’Esperey, and later furnished some valuable propa­ganda for the Allies, by appearing in his American uniform at the woven wire of the prisoners’ cor­ral, which contained most of the 15, 000 men captured in two days activity. At first the prisoners would not believe his statement that he was an American Major General, but they flocked to us in a large group, and there is no question but what the information that the Americans had really come, reached the German lines in an incredibly short time.

As we returned, I loaded my­self up with all the German equip­ment I could cam;, and even made Col. King carry his share. These pieces are in the collection of the officers camp at Boalsburg. The French officers were very amused at our enthusiasm as collectors; they had already seen too much German equipment …

While I was in Paris I took steps to get together my collection of war relics, and in conversation with the Commandant of the Mission to America he suggested that l call on him with reference to certain things of interest which the French War Department would give to the Officers’ Club of the 28th Division. He obtained from them quite a number of interesting pieces of ordnance accompanied by an official letter from the Ministre de Guerre, making a formal gift to the Offi­cers’ Club of the 28th Division, A.E.F. This was the paper that saved me from court martial at Saint Nazaire, when I tried to put three small freight car loads of souvenirs on board one of the 28th Division transports.

The artifacts and weaponry collected by Terry Boal were shipped to Boalsburg, where a special building was erected to house them. In 1919, he founded the 28th Division Shrine which he later gave to the Commonwealth. It is the home of the Pennsylvania Military Museum, created in 1968, which is dedicated to the valor and courage of the Penn­sylvania citizen-soldier.

Despite his father’s fears, aviation had not become a death sentence for Pierre and, through his aunt, Helene de Lagarde, he met a wide circle of charming – and eligible – young women, one of whom he married. In Paris in 1919, he married Jeanne de Menthon (1898-1984), who lived near the French Alps in the Chateau de Menthon, where her ancestor Bernard de Menthon resided a thousand years before. Ber­nard trained dogs to rescue lost and stranded Alpine trav­elers, and the church later proclaimed him a saint. The dogs were named after him: St. Bernards.

Pierre joined the State De­partment, which took him all over the world, including Europe, Canada and Latin America. He later served as U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua and Boliva. Pierre and Jeanne’s daughter Mathilde (nicknamed Mimi), born in 1920, married Maryland’s Gov. Blair Lee III.

The Great Depression was not easy for Terry Boal, who lost much of his holdings, which at one time included two thousand acres and twenty-one farms. On his death bed in 1938, the wife of a local ban}

Upon Terry’s death, the mansion was dosed. In 1952, however, Pierre retired from the Diplomatic Corps and re­opened it – but this time to the public as a museum. With a determination reminiscent of his father’s preservation of the Columbus Chapel nearly a half century earlier, Pierre began to save the extensive collections, archives and accumulations. He set up displays in the big barn and began to restore the family estate. He organized a nonprofit, educational corpo­ration to administer the estate. During the following fourteen years, he was able to make the ground floor of the mansion, the chapel and the barn acces­sible to visitors.

In summer 1965, his daugh­ter Mimi’s teenage son, Christopher Lee, arrived in Boalsburg to help, and when Pierre died the following spring, Christopher took over. Continuing his forefathers’ foresight and commitment to the local community, he served on a number of boards and councils. As one of the found­ers of the Boalsburg Village Conservancy, he led the effort to change the zoning of Boals­burg from “commercial” to “village,” creating a district of mixed business and residential uses that reflect the commu­nity’s historical patterns. To­day, he lives at the Boal Mansion with his wife Jennie and their two children, the ninth generation of Boals to occupy the historic – and handsome – structure.

In a report for the American Association of Museums in 1986, J. Ritchie Garrison, as­sistant director of museum studies at the University of Delaware, characterized the significance of the Boal Man­sion, as well as its generations of caretakers and custodians, who have preserved it for all to enjoy.

The generations of the Boal family who have occupied the estate evoke an understanding of time and of many of the themes that dominate the study of Ameri­can history. There is something here that touches nearly every visitor, that makes the site more than a self-indulgent shrine to one family.

That something is, indeed, very special, not only for the members of the Boal family, but for the visitors who trek to Centre County in search of the ultimate family experience – a story which encapsulates two centuries of America’s pioneer­ing spirit. It’s a saga that con­tinues to intrigue and fascinate even the most discerning his­torians and the most casual of visitors. One cannot walk away from the Boal Mansion without feeling that he or she has, in some magical but unex­plainable way, taken part in a story that appears larger than life itself.

The Boal Mansion is located on Route 322 in Boalsburg, directly opposite the Pennsylvania Mili­tary Museum and the 28th Divi­sion Shrine. The historic site traces the evolution of American history, from the eighteenth cen­tury pioneering era through fanning and commercial enter­prises to the turn-of-the century grand tours made by Terry and Mathilde Boal. On view are exam­ples of fine American and Euro­pean furniture, glass, porcelain, silver, painting and similar deco­rative arts. On exhibit in the famous sixteenth century Christopher Columbus Chapel are baroque and renaissance religious paintings, vestments, chalices, candlesticks and related religious objects. Housed in adjacent build­ings are military artifacts from America dating to the American Revolution, as well as Medieval period objects from Spain and France. Also on view are car­riages, weaponry and armor, china, glassware, clothing and fanning implements. For information regarding seasonal hours, write: Boal Mansion Mu­seum, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania 16827; or telephone (814) 466-6210.

For Further Reading

Boal Family Papers. State College, Pa.: Rare Books Room, Pattee Library, The Pennsylvania State University.

Desroches-Noblecourt, Chris­tiane. Tutankhamen. New York: New York Graphic Society, 1963.

Hoving, Thomas. Tutankhamen: The Untold Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Gibson, William J. History of the Presbytery of Huntingdon. Bellefonte, Pa.: Bellefonte Press Company, 1874.

Klein, Philip S. and Ari Hoogen­boom. A History of Pennsylva­nia. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973.

Linn, John Blair. History of Centre and Clinton Counties, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883.

Portrait and Biographical Record of Denver and Vicinity, Colorado. Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1898.

Rupp, Israel Daniel. History and Topography of Northumber­land, Huntingdon, Mifflin, Centre, Union, Columbia, Juniata, and Clinton Counties, Pa. Lancaster, Pa.: Gilbert Hills, 1846.

Long active in community and civic affairs, Christopher Lee resigned from his local govern­ment offices in 1988 to entirely devote his attention to the Boal Mansion. As a member of the Boalsburg Village Conservancy, he was instrumental in the crea­tion of a yearly festival to honor Boalsburg as the site where the national holiday of Memorial Day began in 1864. In 1978, he also organized the first Memorial Day Committee which coordinates the local observance each year. He is currently working to ensure that the mansion meets professional standards, particularly since it will play an important role in 1992 as the country commemorates the five hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ famous voyage of 1492. As museum ad­ministrator, the author has also stressed the mansion’s role in community education and orga­nizes a number of community­-oriented functions and activities throughout the year.