1983—On Our Way: Strasburg
1499
The Strasburg home of “John Neff, the Mormon” 		On our way we stopped in Strasburg, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a principal “treasure city” for our family. In a relatively early glimmering of my current (21st-century) consuming fascination with family history, we found our way to the lovely rural community where my Great-Great-Grandpa John Neff and his family met the “Mormon” missionaries in 1842 and cast their lot permanently with the Saints. And we took some pictures and generated some sweet memories whose specificity has suffered over the intervening years.
We’d know better now than to come to such a visit so poorly prepared; but I did say this was early on…

We found a camp-ground adjoining an Amish farm; the kids turned up their noses at the barnyard smells, but we did buy some home-brew root-beer from the neighbor kids. Then we drove into the town and just wandered around looking for the remnants of grist-mills. When we saw this evocative ruin, we pulled over, and I went up to the open kitchen door of the home across the street, knocked on the screen door, and asked the lady of the house if she knew where we might find “the Neff Mill.” 		1499
Smiling, Mrs Caldwell1 allowed as how that could be a complicated question and invited us in (although she was clearly preparing the evening meal for her and her husband). I don’t recall the details of their rather amazing hospitality over the next 24 hours or so; it was clearly above and beyond what impromptu wanderers (eight of us, travel-worn and riding in a frowsy VW “casserole”) could reasonably expect.
1Or maybe it was Cardwell. Or maybe not. I’ve misplaced our subsequent correspondence and just didn’t take proper notes.
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