Located in a 250-year-old Pennsylvania field stone house, the Hamburg Area Historical Society is like the old lady in town who knows everybody–and I mean e-ver-y-body who has ever lived or sneezed in this town.

With every issue of the Hamburg Area High School yearbook dating back to the beginning of the school, and every issue of the Hamburg Item (our local rag) dating back to 1902, the Hamburg Historical Society has you covered. I mean, it didn’t take a lot to make our local paper—births, deaths, marriages, baton twirling competitions, 4-H awards, traffic stops, high school plays, honor rolls, dance recitals, visits to the neighbor, church picnics—it’s all there and more!

If by any fat chance you didn’t get documented in one of these official bulletins, you can probably find yourself in one of the eight, yes, eight! (8!) photo albums donated by the local shoemaker who took Polaroid photographs of his customers over the years. This dude would have loved Facebook if he had lived to see it. 

Quirky small town life aside, this was a cool little museum kept up by super-dedicated people. I particularly liked learning about the old German newspaper, the Schnellpost,

and seeing the ways individual lives here have connected to  national and world headlines—from the Vietnam War to the changing economic landscape that brought and took so many different industries through this town.