The Hidden History Bus Tour was a full day in the Lehigh Valley’s “Dreisbach Country,” where 1743 immigrant Simon Dreisbach and his sons lived, worked and worshipped. The Tour also explored the three groups who preceded the Dreisbachs in the area: the Lenape Indians with their peach-orchard and gardens, the first European settlers (the Ulster Scots), and the Moravians and their experiment in communal living.
The tour included historic sites such as Whitefield House, built in 1740-43, and its 1740 log house neighbor; the newly restored Jacksonville settlement; and an authentic, fully furnished 1756 Pennsylvania-German homestead, the Troxell-Steckel House. After lunch the tour continued to the lower reaches of the Lehigh Gap to see the path ancestors took when they moved out of the valley. The group learned about the area’s recently identified prehistoric “sacred landscape,” about cheated Indians who wailed on a mountaintop through the night, about massacres and abductions, and about the Pennsylvania governor who had a Dreisbach mother-in-law.
This tour lasted eight hours and included bus, lunch, admissions, gratuities and a “Dreisbach map” made especially for the tour.
A second ten-hour bus tour experienced the Amish country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.They enjoyed an insider’s look at farmlands, one-room schools, horses and buggies, the plainest of dress and life without electricity. They explored their common Pennsylvania Deutsch heritage.
