Jeanie Glaser Public Comment RE: Buck s Tavern Board of Supervisors Meeting 1/3/2017

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Morris Harrison
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1 Jeanie Glaser Public Comment RE: Buck s Tavern Board of Supervisors Meeting 1/3/2017 Hello, my name is Jeanie Glaser. I am Vice-President of West Hanover Township Historical Society and founder of the Dauphin County Community History Coalition, which celebrates the history of our county and helps residents take care of the built and natural environments that tell the stories of our shared heritage here. As the township has recently acquired the property at 7590 Jonestown Road, I would like to provide history and comment on this important historical site, commonly known as Buck s Tavern. I would ask that these comments, which I will provide in writing, be entered fully into the record and made available to all township residents who may be unaware of the significance. For the majority of its post-settlement history, Buck s Tavern was the center of life in West Hanover Township. The following is just a sliver of the history of this site. Native Americans lived in and traveled through our area at least 15,000 years ago, and sometime between then and 1700 AD, they began to use what we now know as Jonestown Road. Before the mid- 19 th century, it was most often called the Great Road, as it connected not only to a 3,000-year-old trading post on the mighty Susquehanna now known as the city of Harrisburg but to the city of Philadelphia, and stretched out all the way to Pittsburgh and even further west, a major line in a complex network of paths traveled for thousands of years across the continent. What we now know as Manor Drive was then a path that stretched from another pre-settlement route, now known as Linglestown Road, seamlessly down the much-altered course of today s Hershey Road, leading to the Swatara Creek at Union Deposit, then south to Lancaster County and beyond. The first structure on the Buck s Tavern site was likely a one-story log home erected between 1730 and The first warrant to the land was given in 1750 to David Ferguson, a prominent settler who came to America around 1730 with his father and siblings, and whose children became scholars, lawyers, government authorities, and congressmen for our region in the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Over the 18 th century, the log house was expanded. Its second owner was Jeremiah Sturgeon. Born in West Hanover, his father was a mill owner on the Manada Creek; his grandfather and namesake had come to Dauphin County by Jeremiah received an education at University of Pennsylvania and was awarded his degree in 1791 alongside Andrew Ferguson, a son of the property s original owner. He returned home to West Hanover and started his family at the tavern site soon thereafter. In 1798 tax records, Sturgeon was listed as its owner, and the home consisted of a two-story stone wing adjoining a two-story log wing, with a log kitchen and log barn also on the property. Between 1800 and 1807, the home began to serve as a tavern under the keep of Sturgeon. It s likely that at this time, the log side was extended to its present length to accommodate the growing population in the township and the rapidly increasing amount of traffic the Great Road hosted once Harrisburg was made the state capitol in Beyond serving as a stopping point for travelers, taverns like this one served a vital social function in young America. In agriculturally-rooted areas like ours, farmers would come to the local tavern for refreshment and community after a hard day s work. Many were unable to read or afford their own copy of the newspapers and would only be able to learn what was going on in the world by stopping into the tavern. Before the creation of the local post office the one in Manada Hill, which is now long gone

2 mail would be held for residents at the tavern. And in 1814, the building then known as Sturgeon s Public House was formally made the voting place for all of West Hanover Township. Prior to this time, everyone had to travel to the courthouse in Harrisburg to cast their vote! In these days, voting was not merely a solemn patriotic act, it was a lively event. Voting Day took the form of a communitywide gathering to discuss the year s most pressing issues with your fellow citizens one last time before casting your ballot. Voters would eat, drink, debate, and finally make their selections at the end of the evening. Can you imagine all that was argued out in the tavern s rooms in the early days of our nation? While Jeremiah Sturgeon had been a slaveowner 1, by the mid-19 th century, Pennsylvania had transitioned from a slavery-based economy. Our location in southern Pennsylvania, just north of the Mason-Dixon line, made our region a hotbed of Underground Railroad activity. Since its public opening, the tavern had been a well-known location on its major road. After Jeremiah Sturgeon died in 1828, the tavern was kept by his widow Margaret for a decade until it was taken up by the Rudys, a Pennsylvania Dutch family from Lebanon County. The Rudys were probably responsible for the early expansions in the rear of the building, which construction clues suggest date to around the 1840s. The Rudys were well-documented Republicans, then the party of abolitionism. The Rudys tenure at the tavern was followed by another Republican family, the Bucks, my own ancestors. John Buck and his wife Sidney Heckert were born in the vicinity of Linglestown and moved to West Hanover in the early 1850s to take possession of the tavern. They must have left an indelible mark on it in their three decades as its keepers because it has been called Buck s Tavern to this day. Throughout the 19 th and 20 th century, newspapers across our state referred to Manor Drive then still connecting to the Swatara Creek as the road to Buck s Tavern (and occasionally, the Great Road was referred to as such as well!). Such well-known and capacious sites with abolition sympathizers at their helms were commonly utilized as stops along Underground Railroad routes. Those who have seen the partially-collapsed passageway to nowhere in the basement at Buck s Tavern know how it rouses the imagination, but there are also some written records suggesting the site may have been an Underground Railroad stop. James Rutherford wrote in the early 20 th century that his uncle regularly conveyed fugitive slaves from Harrisburg a city whose URR activity and abolitionist leaders have been well documented to the Rutherfords House in Paxtang. From there to a well-known tavern to the north quite plausibly the one in question - was a flat ten miles on the old roads. The groups would then be taken from this tavern to Harper s Tavern in Lebanon, which is again a flat ten miles from ours on Jonestown Road. This connection is certainly worthy of further research. Buck s Tavern served as our township s sole voting place until World War II: voting was moved to Sandy Hollow Elementary in This means our citizens served their most fundamental duty to our democracy in its cozy rooms for 130 years! Imagine all the pivotal moments in American history that stirred the souls of our townships forbearers and, I am sure, many of your ancestors who came to cast their ballots for whomever they thought would be best to lead our people through the times our children now learn about in their textbooks. 1 In accordance with state law, Sturgeon registered the birth of a baby named Dinah born to his slave at the beginning of the 19 th century. Slaves were not recorded in censuses or tax records before David Ferguson died, but his children and siblings were recorded as slaveowners in various documents, so it is probable that he participated in the practice as well.

3 Since then, Buck s Tavern has mostly served as a private residence, but for the past two years, my family has been working nonstop with statewide organization Preservation Pennsylvania to fulfill our dream of returning the property to its longest-held use: that of a public gathering space and inn. We are intimately familiar with the condition of the buildings, the work they need to be restored to safe and welcoming accommodations, and we know how to maintain the historic fabric of each section of the building in the process. We see Buck s Tavern as a keystone in its Neighborhood Commercial district and want its use to echo the vision West Hanover residents provided for the future of their township in the survey taken prior to the start of the township s Comprehensive Plan update: a place defined by the serenity of its abundance of open space and natural beauty, with scaled-down, locally-owned commercial offerings more similar to a traditional downtown or village commercial square than the style of the second half the 20 th century s megamall 2. We see West Hanover as a township poised to become either a sprawling, pavement-covered, traffic congestion-burdened extension of Lower Paxton, or a place that honors the vision of its residents and the words of its mission statement, and carefully plans future land use to preserve our historic buildings and the agriculture-based landscape they anchor. Buck s Tavern could be a local historic landmark, and the first place in the township that attracts tourists of its own accord in the 21 st century: because no one goes out of their way to visit a strip mall or endless miles of beige townhomes arranged into cul-de-sacs. It could be a site that inspires wonder in those who drive by it, instills a sense of place and tells visitors who might otherwise have never considered returning that our township has as many stories to tell as it truly does. Or it could become a vacant lot choked by suburban sprawl, like the sites of so many historic homesteads and institutions 3 have become in the past 20 years in our township and county. We will continue to watch this matter closely, as we have done for the past two years, when we first leaned that the protection of historic places is provided for in West Hanover Township s Code, , through collaboration with the Historical Society. I have watched and worked to find a way to protect Buck s Tavern not just for my sake, or for that of my family, but in memory of all those who built lives in this township and held the tavern near to their hearts. And I do it for the sake of the, at this point, countless West Hanover residents and others who have stopped me in public to ask me what was going on with the tavern, or who have ed or called me after finding my website, restorebuckstavern.com, to express concern that it might be lost to development or neglect, and to express relief that there was someone out there with the enthusiasm, knowledge, and dedication necessary to take up the task of rehabilitating the site and preserving its story and the fascination it kindles in the hearts and minds of all who cross its path. I invite further discussions with you about the future of Buck s Tavern, because I trust that a positive outcome for the site and the history it embodies is of great importance to you, as township officials elected to serve the public and direct the course of the township s evolution in a way that is conducive to the health and happiness of its residents. Thanks for your time. 2 This style is well-represented nearby, and notably, such developments have failed to maintain full occupancy in the past two decades. 3 Visit dchps.org to review or submit information to the Dauphin County Historic Places Survey: while a mere fraction of the county s historic places have been surveyed so far, what is currently mapped provides some inkling of the richness of our history and what we have already lost to development and neglect.

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