[PRCo] Re: Penn Pilot

[Fred Schneider]

It's a hoot as long as we don't take ourselves too seriously!

I had no idea that you had family in this area.

The amazing thing about this county is that it was probably about  
half half English and half German at the time of the revolution.   
There were a lot of Germans that had land from the Penns.   Most of  
our Germans didn't come to the United States until they got fed up  
with wars in the 1850s.

On Jun 24, 2008, at 10:03 PM, Donald Galt wrote:

> On 24 Jun 2008 at 12:18, Fred Schneider wrote:
>
>> I'm glad, Don, to see that someone is having fun with them.
>
> Oh, I love old aerial photos.
>
> Years ago in a used book store in Lancaster I stumbled across a  
> soil atlas of
> the county, with the soil information overprinted on just such  
> photos. At the
> time I was into my ancestors in the Earls and Salisbury townships,  
> and what
> made the atlas a "gotta" purchase was that historic property  
> boundaries - going
> back even to the original 18th century patents from the Penn family  
> - could be
> descried from the field lines in the photos, in a way that they  
> never showed up
> on topo maps.
>
> Guess I need to dig it out to see whether it shows any traces of  
> Conestoga
> Traction, though I'm pretty sure it is based on a more recent  
> edition of the
> photos.
>
> Right now I'm concentrating on downloading from Washington,  
> Westmoreland &
> Fayette. As far as I know, USGS never got around to mapping most  
> the West Penn
> areas of Westmoreland when the trolley line was around - everything  
> is either
> too old or too recent - but comparing these aerial photos with the  
> PennDOT
> historical maps answers most of my questions.
>
> Don G
>
>