Lehigh County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization in the United States, founded in 1904, dedicated to collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the history of Lehigh County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

and the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley () is a geography, geographic and urban area, metropolitan region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh and Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Northampton counties in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a co ...

region of eastern

. The Historical Society and Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum are located at 432 West Walnut Street in

Allentown Allentown may refer to: Places * Allentown, California, now called Toadtown, California * Allentown, Georgia, a city in four counties in Georgia * Allentown, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Tazewell County * Allentown, New Jersey, a boroug ...

Features

Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum

The Lehigh County Historical Society is headquartered in the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum, a museum facility with four galleries and more than of exhibition space. Recent exhibits have included exhibits on General Harry Clay Trexler, Native Americans, and U.S. presidents. The museum maintains an exhibit on the

and an extensive collection of local and regional historical materials with more than 30,000 historical artifacts in its collection.

Library and archive

The Lehigh County Historical Society's library, the Scott Andrew Trexler II Research Library and Archive, houses 200,000 vintage photographs and nearly three million historical documents. Included in its collections are more than 800 volumes of church and cemetery records for Lehigh and neighboring counties, early county records including tax rolls, wills and land deeds, indexed marriage records and announcements, 800 volumes of family genealogical histories, city directories from 1860 through the present, maps, census records, and published histories. The library also maintains

microfiche A microform is a scaled-down reproduction of a document, typically either photographic film or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original d ...

versions of several of Allentown's early

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

and English-language newspapers. Access to the library is free for Society members; a small fee applies for non-members.

Historic sites

The Lehigh County Historical Society administers six historical sites in the region: * Claussville One-Room Schoolhouse (1893), a brick

one-room school One-room schoolhouses, or One-room schools, have been commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including Prussia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, and Spa ...

, the last one-room school in Lehigh County. 2917 Route 100, north of Fogelsville * Haines Mill Museum (ca. 1850, rebuilt 1909), a working

grist mill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...

. 3600 Dorney Park Road, Cetronia, South Whitehall Township * Lockridge Furnace Museum (1868), a 19th-century

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloome ...

, now a museum and park dedicated to the anthracite iron industry. 525 Franklin Street, Alburtis * Saylor Cement Industry Museum (1893),

Cement kiln Cement kilns are used for the pyroprocessing stage of manufacture of Portland cement, portland and other types of hydraulic cement, in which calcium carbonate reacts with silicon dioxide, silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silic ...

s built by David O. Saylor, father of the American

Portland cement Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar (masonry), mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in th ...

industry. North Second Street, Coplay * Trout Hall (1770), A colonial stone mansion and the home of James Allen, son of

's founder, William Allen. 4th and Walnut Streets,

* Troxell-Steckel Farm Museum (1756),

Pennsylvania Dutch The Pennsylvania Dutch (), also referred to as Pennsylvania Germans, are an ethnic group in Pennsylvania in the United States, Ontario in Canada, and other regions of both nations. They largely originate from the Palatinate (region), Palatina ...

stone

farmhouse FarmHouse (FH) is a men's social fraternity founded at the University of Missouri on April 15, 1905. It became a national organization in 1921. Today FarmHouse has 34 active chapters in the United States and Canada.FarmHouse Fraternity New Memb ...

, one of Lehigh County's oldest structures. 4229 Reliance Street, off Route 329, in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, Whitehall Township

Publications

''Proceedings'', the journal of the Lehigh County Historical Society, was published on a bi-annual basis since 1906 and featured articles focusing on local and regional history. From 1947 to 1994, the publication was bound in a distinctive blue

buckram Buckram is a stiff cotton, or occasionally, linen or horse hair cloth with a plain, usually loose, weave, produced in various weights similar to muslin and other plain weave fabrics. The fabric is soaked in a sizing agent such as wheat-starch ...

hardcover A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as casebound (At p. 247.)) book is one bookbinding, bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other clo ...

binding with gilt lettering. In 1994, the journal was published in

softcover A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, also known as wrappers, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboar ...

. Publication of ''Proceedings'' was discontinued in 2004.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control 1904 establishments in Pennsylvania Historical societies in Pennsylvania History museums in Pennsylvania History of Allentown, Pennsylvania Museums in Allentown, Pennsylvania Organizations based in Allentown, Pennsylvania