Local residents can take a walk through history this month with the Historic Langhorne Association's walking tours.
The planned excursions will give children and adults an opportunity to explore local history as they search for historic buildings, solve questions, examine old photographs and help piece together the story of the community.
The Historic Langhorne Association will offer its new children’s walking tour, “Discover Langhorne: 1776 Edition,” on Sept. 12, from 3 to 4 p.m. and Sept. 19, from 10 to 11 a.m. An adult walking tour covering Langhorne from 1680 to 1820 will be held Sept. 19, from 3 to 5 p.m.
All of the tours begin at the Historic Langhorne Association (HLA) - Anna Mary Williamson Library.
Carol Ann Aicher, a lifelong Langhorne Manor resident and HLA board member, will present the tours with her sister, Lynn Losch, a native of Langhorne, who is also an HLA member. Aicher has a doctorate in education, while Losch taught elementary school for 30 years. Those backgrounds helped shape the children’s tour, which is designed to keep participants moving, talking and looking for clues rather than simply listening to a guide.
“These kids aren’t just going to be listening to history. They are going to discover Langhorne’s story by walking through history in our town,” Aicher said.
The children’s tour is limited to 12 participants, and parents may accompany their children. Aicher said keeping the group small will make it easier for the children to interact with each other and participate in the activities.
The approximately one-hour tour will begin inside the library with a large magnetic map of Langhorne. Children will be given magnets of houses that existed in 1776 and will have to determine where they belong on the map.
Some of the children may even discover that their own homes were standing in Langhorne nearly 250 years ago.
The activity will also introduce the children to how the community developed around its water sources and the crossroads known as Four Lanes End.
The children will then head outside for the walking portion of the tour.
Each child will receive a picture of one of the historic buildings they will encounter. “They will have to yell out when they see their house,” Aicher said.
The group will stop at each building to learn about its history, but the children will have another role to play — each picture will have a question on the back that the child will answer as the group explores the site.
The tour will include historic locations including the Langhorne Hotel, Richardson House, the building now occupied by Langhorne Coffee House and other buildings surrounding the Four Lanes End crossroads.
Aicher said the children will also learn about some of the people who worked in the community, including cobblers, silversmiths and other tradespeople.
“At the Langhorne Hotel we might ask them, ‘How do you think residents got their news back then? They didn’t have phones or TVs. No computers. People met here because this was the center of news,'" Aicher said. “We want them to understand how things were socially, how things were different back then."
The children also will learn about the Revolutionary War and the role Langhorne played when Washington’s troops arrived in December 1776.
Several buildings in the community were taken over by the Continental Army and used as hospitals or quarters. One of the most memorable stories involves Jane Richardson, who was 11 years old when the troops arrived.
From the upper floor of her family’s home, Richardson witnessed soldiers being carried from the hospital and taken away on sleds for burial.
The story offers an opportunity for the children to imagine what it would have been like to live in Langhorne during that difficult winter.
Aicher said the guides might ask the children whether they would want to sleep on straw, as the soldiers did.
“Do you think that’s comfortable?” she said, describing the types of questions the guides will ask.
The Revolutionary War burial site is an important stop, and also the final stop, of the tour. Approximately 166 soldiers from the Battles of Trenton and Princeton are buried there. Many died from disease and starvation rather than battle wounds.
The site was investigated archaeologically in 1992 when development was proposed for the property. Evidence including rose-head coffin nails and wood fragments helped confirm the presence of an 18th-century burial site.
At the cemetery, the children will receive a postcard and pen and be asked to write down their favorite part of the tour, whether it was a particular story or building.
The goal is to have the children do much of the discovering themselves.
“So we’ll be asking a lot of questions and then getting them to talk,” Aicher said. “We are hoping the kids will actually lead and we will guide them through the history more than telling them about the history.”
The approach is intended to leave the children curious about what they have seen after the tour ends.
“I’m hoping that by the end of the tour kids will want to know more, that it will spark their interest and that they will realize that history is right at their doorstep,” Aicher said.
She said the tours are a way of keeping that history accessible to the next generation.
“We have to keep history alive, we learn from history, but it’s something you have to experience, and that’s why we want to make this tour more interactive,” Aicher said.
The adult walking tour takes a more in-depth approach, covering Langhorne’s history from 1680 through 1820.
The two-hour tour is divided between an indoor presentation and a walking portion. During the first hour inside the library, Aicher and Losch use slides to discuss historic sites and events that cannot be covered while walking through town.
“We cover everything from the Lenape Indians where we started here,” Aicher said, describing the broad historical period covered during the indoor portion. “There are a lot of things we want to cover that we can’t walk to. So we cover a lot inside.”
The outdoor portion focuses on the historic center, beginning with the water sources and the ways the community developed around them. Participants also learn about the different groups that settled in the area, including Quakers, Presbyterians and Dutch settlers.
The guides use iPads during the walk to show participants historic photographs of the buildings they are seeing.
The tour also explores Langhorne’s importance as a center of commerce and transportation. Aicher said the community once served as a significant crossroads, with businesses and stagecoach routes bringing people through Four Lanes End.
“We were such a center of commerce and everyone came to Four Lanes End,” she said.
Participants will visit several historic buildings, including the Richardson House, Hicks House and Langhorne Hotel, before making their way to the Revolutionary War burial site and returning to the HLA.
The Revolutionary War portion is also explored in greater detail on the adult tour, including the arrival of Washington’s troops, the use of local buildings as hospitals and the story of the soldiers buried in Langhorne.
“The crust of our historic walking story is the 1776 story that happened right in the center of town,” Aicher said. “So it’s a similar walking tour as the children’s walking tour, but told in much more detail.”
The adult tour is the first part of a planned series. Aicher said a second part is in the works to continue the community’s history beyond 1820.
For Aicher, the tours offer an opportunity to help people see the historic center in a way they may not have before.
“People are often shocked that we have such a rich history,” she said. “They drive on Pine Street or 413 and they miss the center of our historic town.”
She said that understanding our history is particularly important in a community like Langhorne, where residents may pass historic buildings every day without realizing what happened there.
“They walk past these historic homes with no idea what preceded them so we are hoping these tours will shed some light on our history,” she said.
Registration for the children’s and adult walking tours is available through the Historic Langhorne Association website at historiclanghorne.org
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