Falling Into Winter ...

“November comes And November goes

With the last red berries and the first white snows.

With night coming early,

And dawn coming late,

And ice in the bucket

And frost by the gate.

The fires burn

And the kettles sing,

And earth to sinks to rest

Until next spring.”

        ~ “November Comes and November Goes”

            ~ Elizabeth Coatsworth

                 ~ 1893-1986

           ~ Winner of the Newberry Medal, 1931

Autumn meets winter as fall foliage reflects in the path wetted by melted snow on the afternoon of November 16, 2018 – a day after the season’s first snowfall – at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The pre-Thanksgiving snowfall blanketed the region with eight inches of snow.

Steeped In Faith ...

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on the trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”

      ~ Martin Luther

         ~ 1843-1546

Steeped in history and faith, St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church stands majestically in downtown Allentown, Pennsylvania on an early November afternoon.

As Allentown’s first Lutheran Church, it was founded in 1762.

St. Paul’s was one of two original churches in Allentown, first founded in a log structure in the 1760s. The current location was donated by the Allen family in the 1790s.

The remains of Margaret Elizabeth Allen Tilghman (April 21, 1772 - September 9, 1798), who died in childbirth, are in a special crypt located underneath the church tower of St. Paul’s. It was written that when the remains of Margaret were exhumed in 1903, after 105 years of interment, strands of her auburn hair that charmed the beaus of Philadelphia were still recognizable. 

A plaque located near the crypt honoring her reads: “Endowed with warm affection and an excellent understanding, she enjoyed the flattering prospect of a useful and happy life, but it pleased Almighty God Whose Providence tho' unsearchable is all wise, that she should be cut off, in the flower of her youth from this transitory world. She died surrounded by friends.” 

Margaret’s grandfather William Allen and her husband William Tilghman were both Chief Justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Tilghman Family is a famous Maryland family. According to a WFMZ article, “No less a figure than John Adams’s wife Abigail had hailed the three Allen girls as part of the “constellation of beauty” that brightened the national capital of Philadelphia. But now an early death had darkened one of those beautiful auburn-haired stars.”