About Us

Our History

We’ve Come A Long Way

A questionnaire was circulated about 25 years ago, asking who was interested in forming a local historical society, and hundreds of people signed it. With that encouragement, a meeting was held in June 2001 at which the Hamburg Area Historical Society was formed. The purpose of this organization is to preserve and educate so that our unique history and culture will not be forgotten.

Building our Museum

To establish an identity, we took part in community events and began a schedule of regular meetings featuring interesting programs. We wanted to create a local museum, and in February 2002 we bought an old stone house at 102 State Street. That structure needed a lot of work, and many of our members rolled up their sleeves and repaired, cleaned, painted – they put their hearts into it. At the same time, others were busy raising money to pay for the building. Eventually, we successfully paid off the mortgage in December 2004, thanks to the sale of our first history book. The publication costs were sponsored by the Therman Madeira family, so the income from book sales was all profit for the museum. A capital campaign also found enthusiastic donors, who believed in the organization and appreciated its early efforts.

Organizing Programs

The topics of the programs at our meetings ranged from the Civil War to outhouses, from local Native American history to veterans’ stories, from hats to hobos! And there still is a marvelous variety of topics to cover. Field trips featured such destinations as Gettysburg, Harrisburg, the Pa. German Cultural Society at K.U., the Reading and Northern RR works at Port Clinton, the Gruber Wagon Works, and the Dreibelbis Homestead at Virginville, among others. We ran walking tours in Hamburg and Shartlesville, and even horse-drawn trolley rides at Heritage Day in Hamburg. Our society rescued an old huckster wagon that was made at the Hahn wagon works in Hamburg years ago. It got needed repairs, and will now grace our new museum on N 4th Street.

Not forgetting the younger crowd, we have guided interns through their school projects at the museum, and we award a scholarship each year to a graduating senior at Hamburg Area High School. We encourage Scout groups and other young people to tour our museum and see our programs.

Preserving Local History

We have established an extensive library of photo albums, scrapbooks, journals, hundreds of books on local history from Port Clinton to Shoemakersville, and even Shartlesville. Our museum has a unique collection of Polaroid photos taken of all the customers at Wengert’s Shoe Repair shop for several years. People find relatives among those, as well as on large group photos of employees of local mills and foundries. There’s Grandpa, or Mom when she was young, or Aunt Katie! One of the most important research gems we have is 100 years of bound copies of the local newspaper The Hamburg Item from 1901 to 2001.

Important to history over the years, as well as great fund-raisers, were the excellent books we wrote and published, available at our museum, and our Memorial Brick Walkway. These continue to be very popular. Other fund-raisers are our stand at the “Taste of Hamburg-er” festival each year, and yummy BBQs and bake sales.

An important bit of history at our museum is the WWII memorial. When the old wooden panels of names that had been displayed in town during the war surfaced many years later at a public auction, they were rescued and we had the weathered old boards re-done in durable metal and they will always be on view now. Also memorialized is Richard Etchberger, a local soldier whose actions during the Vietnam War earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Ongoing Community Efforts & Support

We have produced a Newsletter four times a year since 2002. We also have a very popular Facebook Page.

When an old movie of Hamburg taken in 1939 was found, we had that preserved on DVD. Thousands of items have been brought to us, vital pieces of local history that might otherwise have ended in landfills. Our little stone house soon was filled to capacity. We purchased a lot in 2019 on which to build a larger space for our artifacts and activities. COVID delayed that project a few years, but it is finally a work in progress.

Did you know: A slogan of the Hamburg Merchants Assn. used to be "101 Places to Shop." Were there really 101 places to shop in Hamburg in those days (1930s-1990s)? Yes, in fact there were even more than 101 in the 1950s-1970s!