The almanac

Places in their time

What a place was like in a given decade: its work, faith, law, money, dangers and news, year by year, written from cited sources. Each was researched for a family that passed through, and is free for everyone to read.

83 places · 113 decades · 16 states and countries

Pennsylvania

Bedminster TownshipBucks County
- The 1760s A wooded German and Scotch-Irish farming township, tied to Deep Run churches, county courts at Newtown, and markets by rough roads.
Bryn Mawr
- The 1910s A small Upper St. Clair place on the rural South Hills edge, between farms, coal patches, roads, and Pittsburgh’s expanding reach.
Bucks County
- The 1870s A farming county of wheat, corn, butter, Quaker memory, cigar work, river towns, and rail connections to Philadelphia and Trenton.
DallasLuzerne County
- The 1950s A small Back Mountain borough was becoming a road-linked school, church, library, and shopping center above the Wyoming Valley.
- The 1960s A growing Back Mountain borough and township lived between farms, commuting roads, Catholic college life, weekly news, and fast suburban building.
DoylestownBucks County
- The 1880s A small county-seat borough of courts, churches, shops, schools, farms, and a railroad branch to Philadelphia.
- The 1890s A small county-seat borough of courts, newspapers, rail connections, churches, schools, shops, and nearby farms.
East Penn TownshipCarbon County
- The 1810s A farming township on the Lehigh frontier, Germanizing after the Revolution, with church, tavern, river, creek, and courthouse far away.
EastonNorthampton County
- The 1760s A small county-seat river town, German and English, where courts, ferries, churches, and Indian diplomacy met at the frontier’s edge.
ErwinnaTinicum Township, Bucks County
- The 1830s A small Delaware River and canal village where farms, mills, ferries, churches, and coal traffic met older township life.
- The 1860s A small canal-and-farm village on the Delaware, German in culture, tied to coal boats, mills, churches, and Civil War news.
KingstonLuzerne County
- The 1830s A small Susquehanna-side village and farming township, just beginning to feel canals, coal money, party politics, and epidemic fear.
Lancaster
- The 1960s A manufacturing city of brick rowhouses, downtown shops, suburban pull, civil-rights pressure, and federal urban renewal.
LigonierWestmoreland County
- The 1840s A small turnpike borough in a farming valley, living from wagons, stage travel, mills, churches, and the road between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Lower Nazareth TownshipNorthampton County
- The 1770s A German-speaking farming and church landscape, pulled into war while Moravian Nazareth remained tightly governed by its congregation.
Mauch ChunkCarbon County
- The 1820s A company-built coal landing was becoming a canal town, ruled by anthracite, river engineering, and the first railroad down the mountain.
- The 1830s A company coal-and-canal village pressed between mountain, creek, river, and the new machinery of anthracite transport.
- The 1840s A steep coal-and-canal town, just made a county seat, lived under company power, courthouse law, and anthracite dust.
Nazareth TownshipNorthampton County
- The 1790s A Moravian farming township, tightly church-shaped, stood between older communal discipline and the wider republic.
Nescopeck TownshipLuzerne County
- The 1800s A thin Susquehanna-edge settlement of mills, ferry travel, new roads, and families pushing into forested creek land.
- The 1810s A river-crossing township of farms, mills, taverns, horseback mail, and a new Reformed church on the Susquehanna frontier.
NewtownBucks County
- The 1950s A small courthouse-era borough met the school-consolidation and suburban-building age while farms still pressed close around it.
Northampton County
- The 1760s A German-speaking frontier farming county, anchored by Easton’s courts and Bethlehem’s Moravian workshops after years of war scare.
PittsburghAllegheny County
- The 1870s A crowded river-and-rail factory city, smoky with bituminous coal, pulled between immigrant labor, churches, schools, and industrial power.
PittstonLuzerne County
- The 1840s A small river-and-canal coal place was becoming a village, with mines, churches, and corporate plans pressing into farm country.
- The 1880s A fast-growing anthracite borough where railroads, coal companies, churches, newspapers, and immigrant labor shaped ordinary life.
Point Pleasant areaBucks County
- The 1780s A river-and-creek farming country, split by Revolution loyalties and tied to ferries, roads, tax lists, militia rolls, and Philadelphia news.
ScrantonLackawanna
- The 1940s A coal-and-rail city, still crowded and working, but already feeling anthracite’s long decline.
- The 1980s An old anthracite and rail city was losing jobs and people while trying to rebuild itself around downtown heritage.
Skippack TownshipMontgomery County
- The 1710s A new Pennsylvania-German farming settlement was taking shape along Skippack Creek, tied to Philadelphia by land deeds, petitions, and Mennonite faith.
White HavenLuzerne County
- The 1860s A lumber-and-coal transfer town was being remade by flood, railroads, and wartime industry.
Wilkes-BarreLuzerne County
- The 1790s A small Susquehanna county seat, still shaped by land conflict, courts, farms, ferries, and memories of war.
- The 1870s A new coal city, county seat, rail junction, and immigrant workplace in the Wyoming Valley.
- The 1880s A fast-growing anthracite city, county seat, rail junction, and market town crowded around Public Square and the mines.
- The 1900s A fast-growing anthracite city where courts, newspapers, railroads, immigrant neighborhoods, and coal labor shaped ordinary life.
- The 1920s A hard-coal city, crowded with mine families, trolley lines, churches, newspapers, and arguments over wages and power.
- The 1950s A county-seat coal city in decline, with colleges rising downtown and the mines still powerful until the river broke in.
- The 1980s A shrinking anthracite city was remaking itself around government, shopping, roads, medicine, and flood memory.
WyomingLuzerne County
- The 1820s A mill hamlet on Abram’s Creek stood between old war memory, river-bottom farms, and the coming coal economy.
Wyoming BoroughLuzerne County
- The 1840s A river-valley crossroads of mills, farms, churches, canal talk, and anthracite change before the railroad arrived.
Wyoming or Wilkes-Barre areaLuzerne County
- The 1870s A fast-growing anthracite county where river towns, mines, railroads, churches, newspapers, and courts crowded the Wyoming Valley.
Wyoming ValleyLuzerne County
- The 1820s A river valley of farms, arks, county offices, New England villages, and anthracite just beginning to find its market.

New Jersey

ChesterfieldBurlington County
- The 1680s A new West Jersey Quaker creek settlement stood beside Lenape country, provincial experiment, and cleared farm beginnings.
- The 1720s A Quaker farming township on Crosswicks Creek, tied by road and court to Burlington and by faith to Philadelphia Friends.
FanwoodUnion County
- The 1960s A small railroad suburb was finishing its postwar build-out while civil-rights fights reached its streets and school boundaries.
GreenwichSussex/Warren County
- The 1750s A newly settled frontier farming township, mixed in language and church, watched by county courts far away and by war on the Delaware border.
GreenwichSussex County
- The 1750s A new frontier county of farms, roads, courts, churches, disputed borders, and war news from the imperial edge.
GreenwichWarren County
- The 1780s A limestone farming township on the Delaware frontier edge, recently through war and still governed from distant Sussex County.
Greenwich or Lopatcong areaSussex County
- The 1780s A broad frontier county of farms, court days, ironworks, churches, and fresh memories of war.
Greenwich TownshipWarren County
- The 1730s A newly settled Delaware-border township of farms, mills, footpaths, freeholders, enslaved labor, and shifting county government.
- The 1760s A broad Delaware-valley farming township, tied to German and Presbyterian churches, county courts, ironworks, and roads toward Easton and Philadelphia.
MontclairEssex County
- The 1910s A wealthy New York suburb on the Orange Mountain slope, with rail commuters, sharp class divisions, and ambitious public health reform.
- The 1920s A fast-growing railroad suburb of commuters, servants, shopkeepers, reform institutions, automobiles, theaters, and sharp racial boundaries.
MorristownMorris County
- The 1760s A small county-seat village of farms, churches, taverns, courts, and iron country, still loyal to the king but already politically alert.
Mount PleasantAlexandria Township, Hunterdon County
- The 1840s A small mill-and-church village in rural Hunterdon, growing fast but still tied to roads, farms, and township authority.
near High BridgeHunterdon County
- The 1760s A wooded iron-plantation settlement on the South Branch, tied to Philadelphia owners, charcoal fuel, wagon roads, and colonial protest politics.
PittstownHunterdon County
- The 1800s A creek-side mill village, tavern stop, and farming neighborhood in a New Jersey county still living close to slavery and revolution.
Princeton
- The 1930s A small university borough, segregated by race, reshaped by Depression building and newly famous for refugee scholars.
Somerset County
- The 1740s A scattered farming county of Dutch, English, Scots-Irish, German, Lenape, free and enslaved Black lives under British rule.
- The 1760s A wheat-growing, Dutch-and-English county of farms, churches, mills, enslaved labor, river trade, and tightening imperial rule.
- The 1780s A rural Raritan Valley county rebuilding after war, governed by courts, churches, farms, mills, taverns, and slavery.
Sussex County
- The 1730s A thinly settled Upper Delaware frontier of Munsee homeland, Dutch farms, old roads, disputed land titles, and distant county government.

New York

BrooklynKings County
- The 1960s A dense subway-and-bus Brooklyn neighborhood was losing old certainties while civil rights, immigration, preservation, and school power remade daily life.
Cayuga County
- The 1820s A young Finger Lakes county of farms, mills, canals, Presbyterian schooling, county courts, and the new Auburn Prison.
- The 1890s A Finger Lakes farming county with Auburn’s prison, factories, seminaries, railroads, and reform politics at its center.
IraCayuga County
- The 1860s A small upland farm town of sandy loam, churches, creeks, and wartime news from Auburn.
LyonsWayne County
- The 1810s A young crossroads village at the Forks, still clearing forest, organizing churches, roads, shops, and town government.
New York
- The 1900s A newly consolidated metropolis of immigrants, tenements, garment shops, Tammany politics, and a subway opening under City Hall.
New YorkNew York County
- The 1930s Depression Manhattan is crowded, immigrant, vertical, governed by reformers, and remade by subways, relief work, and federal money.
PittstownRensselaer County
- The 1830s A hilly farming town of turnpikes, mills, schoolhouse churches, and small hamlets tied to Troy and Vermont.
RiverdaleBronx, New York City
- The 1980s A hilly, suburban-feeling northwest Bronx neighborhood of co-ops, schools, trains, old estates, preservation fights, and city politics.
RyeWestchester County
- The 1960s A Sound-shore commuter city of houses, schools, churches, trains, and a county amusement park, close to New York but watchful of its own borders.
SkaneatelesOnondaga County
- The 1970s A small lake village and rural town, suburbanizing slowly while guarding old streets, farmland, and Syracuse’s drinking water.
WeedsportCayuga County
- The 1930s A small canal-born railroad village lived through Depression years among dairy farms, school consolidation, fires, floods, and passing trains.

New Hampshire

Goffstown
- The 1760s A new royal-chartered farming and timber town was still arguing roads, worship, taxes, and who controlled its white pines.
- The 1810s A river farming town of mills, meetinghouses, school districts, and wartime politics on the Piscataquog.
Hillsborough County
- The 1730s This was disputed border country: river farms, fresh town grants, scattered English and Irish settlers, and older Pennacook ground.
Litchfield
- The 1850s A small Merrimack River farming town lived with ferries, church, town meeting, and trade slipping past it by railroad.
LondonderryRockingham County
- The 1730s A Scots-Irish Presbyterian farm town made linen, fought boundary claims, and pushed west through nut woods and stony fields.
Nashua
- The 1890s A river-and-rail mill city, crowded with textile work, Catholic parishes, newspapers, and new immigrant neighborhoods.
- The 1910s A river-and-rail factory city where cotton, shoes, paper, immigrants, war, and influenza crowded daily life.
- The 1930s A Merrimack Valley mill city lived between old textile power, Depression strain, fire, flood, and new public works.
- The 1960s A former textile city was becoming a fast-growing electronics and commuter city at New Hampshire’s southern gate.
NashuaHillsborough County
- The 1920s A mill city on the Merrimack, crowded with textile work, immigrants, strikes, newspapers, and city government.
New BostonHillsborough County
- The 1820s A hill-and-river farming town, thick with sawmills, schools, meetinghouses, and post-Revolution religious change.

Germany

Bad DürkheimRhineland-Palatinate
- The 1710s A small rebuilt wine town under Leiningen rule, still marked by war, frost, taxes, church, salt, and hoped-for newcomers.
GöttingenLower Saxony
- The 1920s A Protestant university town, modernizing but modest, where science, pensions, cinemas, inflation and nationalist politics shared the same streets.
HardenburgBad Dürkheim, Rhineland-Palatinate
- The 1660s A forested castle-residence valley, still repopulating after war, under Lutheran Leiningen counts.
- The 1680s A Leininger castle-residence over a forested Palatine valley, living under Lutheran rule and then French war.
NiederrimbachWürttemberg
- The 1730s A small Lutheran farming village in a Rindbach valley, governed by overlapping Hohenlohe and Brandenburg-Ansbach authority.
Nürnberger StrasseErlangen, Bavaria
- The 1910s A small Bavarian university and garrison town was becoming an industrial town, with war soon turning workshops, streets, and households toward the front.
Wachbach
- The 1720s A small Franconian valley village under divided lordship, with Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish lives crossing under old rights.
- The 1750s A divided Tauber-Franconian village of fields, stream, castle authority, Protestant parish life, and Teutonic-Order claims.
- The 1760s A divided Franconian village of fields, livestock, lordly rights, Protestant worship, Catholic officials, and protected Jewish households.

Massachusetts

DuxburyPlymouth County
- The 1640s A small farming town on Wampanoag land, tied by bay and court to Plymouth, governed through meetinghouse, freemen, and militia.
- The 1660s A small Plymouth Colony farming-and-fishing town lived around its meetinghouse, bay shore, town officers, church discipline, and uneasy frontier news.
- The 1670s A small coastal farming town in Plymouth Colony lived by fields, fish, church rule, and wartime watchfulness.
- The 1730s A scattered coastal farming, fishing, milling, and meetinghouse town, still Puritan in its institutions but increasingly tied to trades beyond Plymouth Bay.
MiddleboroughPlymouth County
- The 1770s A large farming town with ironworks, taverns, meetinghouses, Native remnants, and Revolutionary politics pressed close together.
PlymouthPlymouth County
- The 1750s A small coastal county seat lived by fish, wharves, mills, livestock, courts, meetinghouses, and imperial war.
Plymouth County
- The 1680s A small English farming-and-fishing county, recently scarred by war, governed through town, church, court, and colony law.

Connecticut

Old GreenwichWestern Connecticut Planning Region
- The 1990s A coastal commuter village beside Long Island Sound, affluent but arguing hard about housing, access, and local control.
Wilton
- The 1990s A wealthy Fairfield County commuter town balancing corporate offices, protected open space, schools, trains, and controlled suburban growth.

England

Earls ColneEssex
- The 1620s A hedged Essex farming village on a through road, watched by manor, parish church, poor law, and distant markets.
ScroobyNottinghamshire
- The 1590s A small road village, church living, and archbishop’s manor on the main northern route.

France

Paris
- The 1920s A crowded postwar capital of widows, workers, clerks, migrants, newspapers, Métro stairs, new housing, and arguments over modern France.

Illinois

ChicagoCook County
- The 1860s A lake-and-rail city swells through war, trade, disease, immigration, and the new stockyards on its southern edge.

Ireland

County Mayo
- The 1950s A western farming county of small towns, thinning rural parishes, Catholic routines, Irish-speaking edges, and relentless emigration.

Ohio

SteubenvilleJefferson County
- The 1830s A growing Ohio River town where courts, churches, workshops, steamboats, and reform politics crowded the same streets.

Prussia/Germany

Göttingen
- The 1910s A Prussian university town of railways, lectures, soldiers, ration queues, and wartime scarcity under an old civic skin.

Scotland

Edinburgh
- The 1750s A crowded capital of courts, colleges, churches and trades, just beginning to imagine escape beyond its old walls.

Sweden

Stockholm
- The 1940s A neutral capital under wartime controls, crowded housing, tram wires, ration cards, refugees, and arguments over the coming welfare state.

Vermont

EssexChittenden County
- The 1800s A new farming town of log houses, taverns, schools, mills, and unsettled land along the Winooski and Brown’s River valleys.

Opening the almanac…

Places in their time

Pennsylvania

Bedminster TownshipBucks County

Bryn Mawr

Bucks County

DallasLuzerne County

DoylestownBucks County

East Penn TownshipCarbon County

EastonNorthampton County

ErwinnaTinicum Township, Bucks County

KingstonLuzerne County

Lancaster

LigonierWestmoreland County

Lower Nazareth TownshipNorthampton County

Mauch ChunkCarbon County

Nazareth TownshipNorthampton County

Nescopeck TownshipLuzerne County

NewtownBucks County

Northampton County

PittsburghAllegheny County

PittstonLuzerne County

Point Pleasant areaBucks County

ScrantonLackawanna

Skippack TownshipMontgomery County

White HavenLuzerne County

Wilkes-BarreLuzerne County

WyomingLuzerne County

Wyoming BoroughLuzerne County

Wyoming or Wilkes-Barre areaLuzerne County

Wyoming ValleyLuzerne County

New Jersey

ChesterfieldBurlington County

FanwoodUnion County

GreenwichSussex/Warren County

GreenwichSussex County

GreenwichWarren County

Greenwich or Lopatcong areaSussex County

Greenwich TownshipWarren County

MontclairEssex County

MorristownMorris County

Mount PleasantAlexandria Township, Hunterdon County

near High BridgeHunterdon County

PittstownHunterdon County

Princeton

Somerset County

Sussex County

New York

BrooklynKings County

Cayuga County

IraCayuga County

LyonsWayne County

New York

New YorkNew York County

PittstownRensselaer County

RiverdaleBronx, New York City

RyeWestchester County

SkaneatelesOnondaga County

WeedsportCayuga County

New Hampshire

Goffstown

Hillsborough County

Litchfield

LondonderryRockingham County

Nashua

NashuaHillsborough County

New BostonHillsborough County

Germany

Bad DürkheimRhineland-Palatinate

GöttingenLower Saxony

HardenburgBad Dürkheim, Rhineland-Palatinate

NiederrimbachWürttemberg

Nürnberger StrasseErlangen, Bavaria

Wachbach

Massachusetts

DuxburyPlymouth County

MiddleboroughPlymouth County

PlymouthPlymouth County

Plymouth County

Connecticut

Old GreenwichWestern Connecticut Planning Region