Gold Fever: The Journal of J. C. Hagenbuch, Part 4
At the end of Part 3 in this series, J. C. Hagenbuch (b. 1862) and his uncle John “Jack” Hagenbuch (b. 1857) were camped near the mouth of Ukonom Creek, California. On August 11,...
Category: Stories
Gold Fever: The Journal of J. C. Hagenbuch, Part 3
At the end of Part 2 in this series, J. C. Hagenbuch (b. 1862) and his uncle John “Jack” Hagenbuch (b. 1857) had stopped on July 28, 1905 after covering nearly 20 miles in...
Gold Fever: The Journal of J. C. Hagenbuch, Part 2
At the end of Part 1 in this series, J. C. Hagenbuch (b. 1862) and his uncle John “Jack” Hagenbuch (b. 1857) had stopped on July 16, 1905 to dry out their supplies after...
The Deaths of a Father and Son
I have been inside the house on the hill twice. It overlooks the Susquehanna River. Both times, as I walked through the first floor rooms, up the two stairways, through the hallways, and into...
Gold Fever: The Journal of J. C. Hagenbuch, Part 1
Jack took the shovel, pick, and pan, and we found a few fine specks of gold. They say we found some “colors.” –J. C. Hagenbuch; Sunday, July 23, 1905 PREFACE In November of 2018,...
The Privy Bottle, Part 1
This two-part article tells the fictional story and true facts about a bottle recently discovered in a privy in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. The year was 1875. Mr. Smith, from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, had taken the train...
The Sauerkraut Diaries
On January 2, 2018, I wrote an article about New Year’s Day memories from the early 1900s. Some of these remembrances were gleaned from the diary entries of my mother, Irene (Faus) Hagenbuch. Of...
Christmas Ornaments
The tradition of decorating an evergreen tree during the Christmas season is believed to have started in Germany during the 1500s. Our early Hagenbuch ancestors certainly knew and practiced this custom before coming to...
The School Christmas Program
In 2014, I wrote about my memories of Christmas at our family church, Oak Grove, when I was a young boy. Though not quite as vivid, I also have some memories of when I...
Picnics in the Cemetery
Cemeteries are spooky places, right? After all, during Halloween, people set up plastic gravestones in their front yards to scare the trick-or-treaters. Shortly after arriving in California in 2008, the friend I was staying...
