It was an ordinary day. Reading about a small village known as Voganville which is in the township of Earl in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Voganville, sitting on the western side of Earl, is a hamlet that at one time had no trolley lines, railroads or macadamized highways. Within Voganville lived a family that had emigrated from a county known as Caven on the Emerald Isle known as Ireland. It was in Voganville that John Vogan was born on March 22, 1782. John erected the first house in Voganville in 1839 during Martin Van Buren's administration. Part of his frame home still stands today on the southeast corner in the center of town. Shortly after he had finished his house he planted a walnut tree which still stands today. Several years after he had constructed his home, he began a brick yard east of town where bricks were made with a single mould and by hand and burnt in a kiln by wood. Mr. Vogan used these bricks to build just about every house in town. He eventually owned hundreds of acres of land in this part of the county. His holdings extended to West Earl, Ephrata, East Earl and East Cocalico Townships. He made many bequests throughout his lifetime with one major bequest being the purchase of coal for the poor and indigent of Voganville. This bequest can be found in his will, recorded in the Register's Office of Lancaster County. It is in Volume X, page 575, fifth item. The bequest grew so large that it paid to erect the "Union Church." He still has a postal office named for him near his town. The illness that eventually caused his death lasted only a few days in 1863, when the Civil War between the North and South was at its height in our country. A prominent monument in the Union Cemetery towering above all the others marks the last resting place of the beloved Mr. Vogan of Voganville. Now...for the second part of my story...born near Voganville in 1862 was a woman by the name of Salome Buck. She married Abraham Whitman in the town of New Holland on August 2, 1883. A year later she was the first woman in Pennsylvania to be jailed for stealing horses. One night she was out late with the son of Abe Buzzard, who dared her to steal a team of horses that were in front of a house occupied by a Mr. Showalter. She never could turn down a dare, so she stole the team of horses and headed toward her grandfather's home near Briantown. During her ride she raced a Dr. George DeHaven and they both ended up in a bar in a town known as Blue Ball. The next day Mr. Showalter wondered what happened to his horses and found them in Blue Ball. DeHaven mentioned the girl who was tracked down and sentenced to twenty months in prison. The following year she was caught in another prisoner's cell and placed in solitary confinement.
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| Miss Buck, aka Mrs. Whitman and later Mrs. Filson spent time here. |
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