Today I’m up at the Route 248 intersection in Cherryville, taking a last historical look before the Turkey Hill expansion takes place. My interest is concentrated on two historic buildings.

One is the old Cherryville Hotel, which dates to 1767, before the American Revolution. I had the privilege to visit the old hotel when Ms. Betty Seidel operated a well-known gift shop there. You may have read the series, which I wrote a number of years ago.

Here’s a brief flashback: Her father, Harry, started his career as a quarry blaster for cement companies. Her brother, Jack, became a well-known Hollywood cartoonist. Betty, a Northampton High School graduate, was an artist known for Pennsylvania German motif. She also designed the plate celebrating President Eisenhower’s first birthday in the White House in 1953.

When my wife and I visited Eisenhower’s home in Kansas, we purchased one of the duplicate plates. Volunteers were shocked when we told them that we knew the designer.

The gift shop over the years was visited by celebrities, such as Tony Bennett and Burl Ives. Ms. Seidel also conducted a thriving mail order business. Her grandfather had been a cement packer at the Atlas Cement Company and helped pack cement for the Panama Canal.

Another historical note tells us that Samuel Kress, the chain store magnet and art collector, was born in the hotel in 1863. One of his paintings was donated to the Northampton Area School District. This writer was fortunate to interview Ms. Seidel a few years before her death. She was very spry and gracious, and the discussion was lively to say the least! Will the structure still be there when the expansion plan is completed?

Another building on the corner was the old general store and post office. The store and post office were centers of the village when folks made daily visits to pick up groceries and mail. The upstairs of the building hosted a men’s lodge.

There has to be a sense of nostalgia and loss when old-timers recall these two structures.

Cherryville was founded in 1804 and named after the numerous cherry trees in the area. These are the ones George Washington neglected to cut down! In 1874, the village consisted of 25 dwellings, two carriage shops, a wheel shop, three stores, two blacksmiths, a hotel and a tailor shop. There were no 5 p.m. lines of automobiles at the busy Route 248 traffic light, as there are now. Were the old days better?

If you want a picture of Cherryville’s past, purchase the “Lehigh Township Images of America” book. There are numerous photographs of our past in the work.

I’ll try to look at some other township villages in the future.