Around that same time, his stepmother began teaching in a one-room Amish school, ... During grade school, I read every book I could find about horses. I also loved stories about the 1800s.

The conference starts, naturally, at the home of Thaddeus Stevens, the savior of public education. It ends at Amish one-room schools still in operation.

Amish laborers have come together in the spirit of a barn-raising to rebuild an early 1800s tannery that was destroyed in an arson fire last year at the historic Union Mills Homestead. "As old ...