It’s very easy to believe General Montgomery is just in the next room. (The General’s son, Daniel opened the first trading post and the town began to be known as Dan’s Town and later Danville.) There is a deep sense of endurance that emanates from the house, overlayed with the obvious care and maintenance which is evident everywhere. It felt somehow permanent and fragile together. The Montgomery House has been carefully furnished and decorated with not only items that are representative of the past but real historical artifacts. Intricate needlepoint samplers and framed original documents adorn the walls along with beautiful artwork. An upstairs bedroom contains some of Abigail Geisinger’s own belongings. Abigail is well known to the locals as the lady who started Geisinger Hospital, brought about by her belief that folks shouldn’t have to travel far away for medical treatment. In honor of her husband, she purchased land for the George F. Geisinger Memorial Hospital, which opened in 1915. Today Geisinger Health Systems spans 10 hospitals, employees over 25,000 people and 1700 doctors! That’s just one of the dozens of local anecdotes we learned about. We learned about the history of iron and its impact on Danville, saw documents signed by Benjamin Franklin. Dozens and dozens of arrowheads and other tools, all collected locally are on display. Unlike other historic homes I’ve visited in the past, I really felt like this is a place where some of the work of building our nation was done. We stepped right next door to the Boyd House and if I was feeling like a stepped in to history before, we now were fully submersed in it. In one room, there were volunteers from the Montour County Historical Society in the Genealogy Room, surrounded by neatly organized volumes of records, occupying shelves and filing cabinets. They open this room every Wednesday and for a small fee, you may find some of your own ancestors and their stories too. The area that really hit home for me was the Military Room. I’ve seen various US military historical collections but I’d never seen one quite like this. My grandfather, who I was very close to growing up, served his country during WWII, leaving his wife and very small children
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