Book Review: At a Place Called the Boiling Springs
At a Place Called the Boiling Springs. Edited by Richard L. Tritt and Randy Watts. Illustrated, 247 pp. Boiling Springs Sesquicentennial Publications Committee, 1995. $35, cloth.
Book Review: Taverns of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Taverns of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1840. By Merri Lou Schaumann. Illustrated, 250 pp. Carlisle: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1994. $34.95.
The title of Ms. Schaumann's superb work understates the wealth of material to be found therein; indeed, the book contains just about everything the reader might wish to know about early taverns, particularly those rural and small town hostelries that flourished in the Pennsylvania hinterland. Communities often derived their colorful names from their early taverns. Whatever strikes the reader's fancy—architecture, socio-economic status of the tavern patrons, historic events that occurred, ownership and proprietorship, and the varied uses to which taverns were put—it will be there, all carefully researched and documented.