One year ago today, I published my second article on Keystone Wayfarer, telling the story of the Fralinger Mansion—a stunning, privately owned home just a short drive from mine in Schwenksville. Built by saltwater taffy magnate Joseph Fralinger as a summer retreat for his family, discovering the mansion sparked something deep within me. This moment, combined with my desire to learn more about my own home’s biography, ignited my passion for the area’s rich and often overlooked past. As I often say, it marked the beginning of my ongoing love affair with history.

This journey has been shaped by years of journaling—capturing thoughts, reflections, and experiences in ways that only those who cherish the written word can truly appreciate. Pairing this reflective habit with my growing passion for history led to the creation of this site and now, fifty articles later, my words have reached thousands. Each week, as I dive into new stories for an ever-growing audience, my love for this work only deepens.

Blogging has evolved a lot since its early days in the late 90s. Once a space for personal diaries and reflections, it now forms a cornerstone of the digital landscape, covering everything from professional advice to corporate strategies. In many ways, early bloggers—and newer ones like me—helped lay the foundation for a community built on sharing stories and ideas. It was never about building a grand platform but about self-expression and connection. That desire to connect remains the driving force behind the stories I explore each week.

Keystone Wayfarer has been shaped by many bloggers who’ve inspired me along the way. Some, like The Daily Antiquarian, offer stunning photos and brief but fascinating insights into local landmarks. Others, like The Pennsylvania Rambler, bring history to life with curiosity and flair. There’s the popular podcast Pennsylvania Oddities, which takes a twice-monthly dive into the darker side of Pennsylvania’s history and the video journal of The Wandering Woodsman. But the one blog that has truly stood out is MarkerQuest. Created by Lehigh Township resident Laura Klotz, her unique exploration of Pennsylvania’s blue historical markers has been a constant source of inspiration. It’s Laura’s focused, local approach to history that keeps me coming back—transforming these seemingly small roadside markers into fascinating windows into the past.

Laura’s love of writing began as a teenager when she discovered the power of the typewriter. Like me, her journey into blogging was fueled by a passion for reading others’ work. Since launching MarkerQuest in May 2017, Laura has embarked on a weekly “quest” to uncover and share Pennsylvania’s rich and often trailblazing history.

“I’ve always found these markers fascinating,” Laura shared. “Growing up, I loved reading them whenever I could. I remember asking an adult about the ‘state signs’ and getting mocked for thinking they were from the state just because they had the state emblem. It made me wonder: what are these markers really for, and what stories do they tell? If I had these questions, maybe others did too.”

I can’t help but agree with her curiosity. When you start digging into local history, you realize how much there is to discover. Pennsylvania—and my home state of Massachusetts—are at the heart of the nation’s story, and every field, intersection, and old house holds a piece of that history. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) was founded in 1945 to preserve and share this heritage, and now over 2,600 historical markers dot the landscape. Knowing that PHMC and Laura’s MarkerQuest are dedicated to chronicling these stories is both inspiring and reassuring.

For Laura, history is more than just a collection of facts—it’s something deeply personal. She credits her grandparents with sparking her passion for the past. Her grandfather, though only having a high school education, was incredibly knowledgeable and loved sharing stories about their family’s history. Her grandmother, a dedicated genealogist, spent countless hours working on family trees. The bond to the past and the sense of carrying those stories forward is something Laura and I both treasure.

In a recent chat, I shared with Laura how I discovered, through my uncle’s research into my grandmother’s family lineage, that my great-great grandmother was interviewed during the police investigation of the Borden Murders; she was a neighbor. Laura responded with her own fascinating family history.

“It’s been a particular delight for me to discover that so many of the markers I research are in some way connected to my own lineage,” she shared. “One of my ancestors was Nicolaus Kratzer, the royal astronomer to King Henry VIII; he was the one who designed the great astronomical clock which is still a major component of Hampton Court Palace today. Among his descendants was Philip Kratzer, who was the first member of our family to immigrate to America from Germany in the early 1700s. He settled in what is now Emmaus. The family home still stands; it became known as the Shelter House because it provided a safe place for new settlers to sleep while they waited for their own homes to be built. Philip’s grandson Johannes was a prominent landowner in Lehigh County, and he donated a tract of land for the first public schoolhouse in the vicinity. The building itself is long gone, but the elementary school which occupies the site today is still known as Kratzer Elementary.”

The most difficult part of blogging is time—researching and laboring over every word. Laura chuckled in response. “My joke is that I keep a lot of balls in the air at one time, and I never actually learned how to juggle.  One thing that helps is that I’m a really good multitasker. I can have research open in one tab while catching up on the day’s social media, or I’ll read articles on my phone with one hand while loading the dishwasher with the other. The actual writing is arguably the hardest part, though. The challenge is presenting the basic history of the subject while making it entertaining and personal. I don’t want to just write essays; I want people to understand that I found a connection to the history and that they can too.”

Last year, Laura launched a podcast, and I was hooked, listening to every episode until it went on pause. “I’d love to revamp the podcast because it was so well-received,” she noted. “2024 turned out to be a comedy of errors, and by the time things calmed down, the holidays were already here. But I’m hoping to get back to recording with an improved format as the weather warms up.”

Laura contributes to other outlets when she can. Her work has been featured on Mainly Museums, a crowd-sourced blog focused on museums around the world. She’s also a regular attendee at Zenkaikon, a “geeky” convention held every spring in Lancaster. For the last few years, she’s contributed to various presentations on Lancaster history. And she’s found time to launch a secondary blog, Confessions of a Wandering History Nerd. The site has only a few articles, but she plans to add more in the coming months.

Laury’s Island: The Lehigh Valley’s Forgotten Park is a 2020 book by Laura Klotz. WFMZ described it as “a detailed and readable history not only of a slice of Lehigh Valley history, but also a nostalgic look at how Americans relaxed during those good old summer times of yore.” The book is available on Amazon.

It was nice to hear Laura enjoys reading Keystone Wayfarer as well as Second Glance History and Creative History. Her favorite, however, is the work of YouTuber Jon Miller. “He covers different facets of history in his video series, including the PHMC markers. That’s how I found him.”

Keystone Wayfarer has written about or mentioned several markers also highlighted by MarkerQuest, including Dr. Chevalier Jackson, Pennypacker Mills, Rhoads Opera House, Pennhurst State School & Hospital, The Doan Gang, and Augustus Lutheran Church. In the year since launching Keystone Wayfarer, I’ve developed a deep sense of gratitude for the stories I’ve uncovered and the community I’ve connected with along the way. As Henry Glassie, Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, once said, “History is not the past, but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveler.” The road ahead is indeed filled with many more stories waiting to be shared.