To everything, there is a season and to live in Adams County means to appreciate the seasonality of life. Th  e HGAC McAllister’s Mill Underground Railroad (UGRR) project is an example of a project that is in the springtime of its life. A lot of energy has been put into the project, but there is even greater potential for what we might be able to accomplish in expanding the interpretation of the site and tying it into the other UGRR sites in Adams County that HGAC nominated.

The Barn Preservation Project was started in 2003 but really got launched in 2005 with the Workshop that HGAC co-sponsored with the Adams County Historical Society and the PA Historical and Museum Commission. Although there is still a long way to go with completing the documentation of Adams County’s barns and establishing a grant program to help barn owners preserve their barns, we have created and helped maintain a level of interest in historic barns in the county through our annual BarnArt show, the annual Civil War Barn dance, the annual Barn preservation award, and the bi-annual Barn tour or workshop.

After years of programs on an irregular basis called ‘Preservation in Progress’ where visits were made to active preservation projects, we now have an Education program whose schedule is much more regular and whose scope is much more open. Yet it still includes site visits from time to time as is the case with this September’s session that will be held at the Klingel Farm. When the program started, no lectures were scheduled for the summertime, but that will change next year as we back off of meetings in the dead of winter and expand the schedule throughout the summer.

The Architectural Salvage Warehouse continues to do what it set out to do; extend the life of useful architectural details, provide some income for HGAC and give people a local location where they could donate useful building materials, fixtures, etc. Space is a continuing challenge, but our volunteers have made it work and continue to expand the availability of objects to the public. Of course, we are thankful to the NPS who allow us to use the space in the Washington street garage at a very reasonable rate.

The last project that I’ll talk about is the house awards program. As many of you may have noticed, our concept of recognizing good preservation work by home owners was copied by the Gettysburg HARB who gave out a number of awards and letters of recognition this summer. It is all good. The more people that are paying attention to the treatment of our built historic resources, the better.  In order to bring even more attention to the preservation work done by so many, we are in the compilation stages of republishing ‘Light in the Window’ a summary of our annual house awards winners. If you have any descriptions of your own house or any of the others that received a house awards plaque since 1990, I would appreciate it if you would send me a copy at the HGAC mailing address listed in the newsletter.

Yours in Preservation,                                                                                                                  -Curt Musselma

In April of this year, a team of National Park Service historians who specialize in the story of the Underground Railroad, accepted the nomination of the McAllister’s Mill Site to the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (UGRR NTF). The site was nominated by HGAC, and this is the first site in Gettysburg to ever receive formal recognition by the NPS and to be included in the Network to Freedom.  The Network is a nationwide collection of sites that have a verifiable association to the Underground Railroad and it is composed of several hundred sites. In Adams County, there are three other NTF sites, all nominated by HGAC, and they include the Menallen Friends Meeting House, the Huntingdon Friends Meeting House and the Yellow Hill Cemetery.

On May 3^rd 2011, HGAC introduced the site to the press and local officials through a briefing and tour. Joining us for the tour were the National Park Service Superintendent, Bob Kirby, representatives from the offices of Congressman Todd Platts, State Senator Rich Alloway and State Representative Dan Moul, Norris Flowers and Stacey Fox of the Convention and Visitors Bureau and a host of about twenty others.

Since then, HGAC has conducted tours of the site every Saturday and you can read more about that elsewhere in the newsletter.

Successfully nominating a site to the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (UGRR NTF) is a lot of work. First of all, we need to thank the site’s owner and friend of HGAC, Bruce Stair, for allowing the site to be nominated. Consulting historian, Randolph Harris, was the final author of the nomination that used a great amount of research done by HGAC Advisory Board member, Deb McCauslin.

Randy is dedicated to researching and helping people understand the UGRR story and he did a great job of helping us give the Park Service what they needed. NPS historian and overall coordinator of the NTF program, Diane Miller, gave us helpful advice throughout the application process and our regional NPS UGRR historian, Sheri Jackson, was also encouraging and supportive throughout.

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Spring 2011