News
MHEP Founders Event Aug. 28-29
Date: 7/28/10
The Mennonite Heritage Center, 565 Yoder Road, Harleysville, invites the public to special events on Saturday, August 28 and Sunday, August 29, 2010 that will highlight the twentieth anniversary of the center. Enjoy a local heritage bus tour, a Pennsylvania Dutch dinner followed by a program at Salford Mennonite Church and an open house and dedication reception at the Mennonite Heritage Center.
The bus tour on August 28 from 1 to 5 pm features favorite local sites of historians John Ruth and Mary Jane Lederach Hershey and includes the Lower Skippack Mennonite Cemetery (Christopher Dock grave), Mensch family sites, the John Clemens Homestead and the Salford Mennonite Meetinghouse and cemetery. Tour leaders are John Ruth and Mary Jane Lederach Hershey with the tour coordinated by Joel Alderfer.
The Pennsylvania Dutch dinner on August 28 at 6 pm features old fashioned roast beef with gravy and chicken pot pie, vegetables, sweets and sours along with cheese pie and peach pie for dessert. Reservations are required for the meal which will be held at Salford Mennonite Church, 480 Groff’s Mill Road, Harleysville. A visual presentation of the early years of the Mennonite Historians of Eastern Pennsylvania will run during the dinner.
The public is also invited to the program that follows the dinner at 7:30 pm at Salford Mennonite Church. The program includes Dr. James Juhnke, Professor Emeritus of History at Bethel College, as the keynote speaker, and a panel of former board members and staff will discuss highlights of the organization’s early years. The evening will end with an auction of a reproduction quilt from a vintage quilt design in the MHC collection and an original fraktur by Roma Ruth. No reservations are required for the program and admission is by donation.
Then on Sunday, August 29 from 2 to 5 pm, all are invited to an Open House at the Mennonite Heritage Center. Mary Jane Lederach Hershey and John Ruth will give informal talks in the fraktur gallery and the historical library. From 3 to 4 pm, dedication of the John L Ruth Historical Library and the Mary Jane Lederach Hershey Fraktur Gallery will take place. Light refreshments will be served.