Mark Shifflet, who recently accepted the position as President of the Montgomery Area Historical Society, accepted the donation of a Norman Rockwell Poster. “Freedom from Want,” painted by the famed illustrator was published on the cover of the March 6, 1943 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

MONTGOMERY-Looking for an opportunity to help his community, Mark Shifflet joined the Montgomery Area Historical Society (MAHS) in 2019. “Later, past president Larry Stout asked if I would like to take the helm with Stout stepping down to vice president,” Mark said.

Mark became interested in history at a young age, saying, “Although I grew up in Lancaster County, PA, we often visited my grandparents farm in the Muncy area. They and my mother grew up around Montgomery. On these visits, my grandmother told me stories about the frontier history of the West Branch Valley. I learned of the Brady family, Rachel Silverthorn, Fort Freeland and other aspects of frontier life.” In addition, Mark’s other grandfather had been a history teacher giving him old textbooks as soon as he developed an interest in the subject.

“At the moment, I am most interested in genealogy (heavily focused in Lycoming and Montour Counties), colonial Pennsylvania, the canal systems in PA, and Pennsylvania German history and culture,” Mark said. One could say Mark has come full circle from being born in Danville to his return to the area residing in the Musser Lane area of the Muncy Hills.  The journey included graduating from Warwick High School, then earning a history teaching degree from Shippensburg University in 2014. Mark interned at the Ephrata Cloister Museum in 2013, giving tours and creating educational materials for visitors, and later served for a year on the Board of the Ephrata Cloister Association.

“While my wife Christine, an optometrist for the Eye Center of Central PA, was in optometry school, I taught ninth and tenth grande in Philadelphia from 2016 until 2019 when we moved to Montgomery. Here I substituted at Montgomery Junior/Senior High School. In the summer of 2020, I was hired to teach seventh grade history at Danville Middle School where we are having a great year,” he said.

Concerning MAHS, Mark said, “Currently we are undergoing a heavy renovation/reorganization. Plans are to streamline space to enhance visitor-friendliness, focusing on telling specific stories of Montgomery Borough and surrounding townships of Brady, Clinton, and Washington.”

The group is also working to make the Adam Room a research space, where genealogists and local historians can easily access the many resources available. Lastly, the society is beginning to develop and oral history program whereby they can preserve twentieth and twenty-first century aspects of the area’s history while those who experienced them remain. 

Recently, an anonymous individual donated a Norman Rockwell poster purchased on eBay. It completes the set of four, three previously discovered in the Montgomery Library, folded up and apparently never used. All are in excellent shape. The Freedom series by the famed illustrator was painted for Saturday Evening Post Magazine covers during the WWII years. They had appeared from mid February to mid March 1943. In addition to the recent addition, “Freedom of Want,” there were also “Freedom from Fear,” “Freedom of Speech,” and “Freedom to Worship.”

In May, Mark’s duties will increase as he and wife Christi expect their first child, a little girl. An indication that the interviewee is seriously immersed in the subject is when the word ‘history’ is part of his email address.