Monday, July 4, 2011

Happy Fourth of July, but It's All About Heritage Day in Easton!

A reenactor reads the Declaration of Independence to the crowd at Centre Square in Easton each year on Heritage Day, the weekend after the 4th of July, to commemorate the fact that Easton is one of three cities where the Declaration was read aloud in 1776.

Posted by: Noël Jones


For details on activities and road closures for Heritage Day this Sunday, check Ed Sieger's article for the Express-Times here.


Easton never gets too much into fireworks for the Fourth of July--but not because we're not patriotic--it's because we're proud of our history, being one of only three cities (Philadelphia, Trenton and Easton) where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud on July 8th, 1776.  So we celebrate on the weekend after the Fourth of July, with a big festival complete with reenactors, food, live music, local artisans and fun stuff for kids, finishing off with a terrific fireworks display on the Delaware, which draws thousands of people from both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey sides of the river. This year Heritage Day will be on Sunday, July 10th. Last year, I talked to people who had driven for hours, all the way from upstate New York and the Poconos, to come to the festival.


Not to confuse history, but I guess, to revel in even more of it, this year the Civil War Road Show will be in town, according to Jim Deegan of the Express-Times. The Road Show trailer will be parked on Pine




Street behind the Sigal Museum and between Third and Fourth Streets, starting on Friday, July 8th and will be open to the public from 12:30 PM to 8:30 PM. 


The Civil War Road Show is being hosted by the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society, which has a Civil War Exhibit of our own (also, for anyone new to the area who might not know already, the monument at the fountain of our Centre Square is a Civil War memorial as well).


Admission to the Road Show is free!

8 comments:

Alan Raisman said...

The Heritage Day website is:

www.heritageday.org.

You can download this year's Heritage Day brochure at:

http://www.heritageday.org/heritageschedulev8.htm

noel jones said...

Thanks, Alan.

noel jones said...

Alan--or anyone else out there--do you know where the events for the day are listed? I poked around the Heritage Day web site and couldn't find a schedule of events. I know the ET usually posts them at some point during the week before, but I haven't seen the schedule published yet...

Alan Raisman said...

http://www.heritageday.org/heritageschedulev8.htm

or

http://www.heritageday.org/heritageday11brochure2.pdf

noel jones said...

Thanks, Alan--the first link goes to a pdf which has super tiny print, and the second one looks like the url somehow got cut-off at the end by blogspot--weird. I don't know that glitch could happen on a cut-and-paste. It looks like it actually cut a letter in half, from where I'm sitting...

Alan Raisman said...

Sorry. That's .pdf

http://www.heritageday.org/heritageday11brochure2.pdf

Alan Raisman said...

I don't know why it cuts it off. I put the link as my name, so by clicking Alan Raisman you will get to it, though it will redirect you from this blog.

noel jones said...

totally fine, thanks, Alan.