York County minister/historian Elmer Q. Gleim, Part I: ‘Took me to many of these places as a child’
York County, Pa., resident Dianne Bowders is posting delightful photographs of scenes around her home county on ydr.com’s Your Photo site. And she provides detailed caption information, such as the following for this scene from York’s Quaker Meeting House. “Light streams through the windows of the Society of Friend’s Meetinghouse located on West Philadelphia Street. Quaker meeting begins when one is led by the Spirit, or the Light, to speak. This older, east section of the building was constructed by William Willis in 1766, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The west room was built in 1783 to accommodate the women’s meeting.” Also of interest: Postcards tell story of York County community and My Capture photo book available (containing additional photos by Dianne Bowders) and York County book ‘All in One Room’ ready for readers.
I’ve enjoyed Dianne Bowders’ photos of York County’s landscape and historic sites for many months and have further noticed the detail of her captions.
Turns out she gets her historical knowledge from her father, Elmer Q. Gleim, a retired public school history teacher and Church of the Brethren minister. The 93-year-old is noted for his historical work on his denomination and genealogy of German families.
In an e-mail, she gives some insight into her father’s influence on her work: … .
“You’ve made my 93 year old father so proud of me, too. He continues to write local and regional history and took me to many of these places as a child, talking about them as we walked the sites. He always wished that I’d write local history, but my love of the arts over-shadowed any journalistic efforts. It’s been fun to couple arts WITH history. We have so many wonderful historic places in this county.”
She lists the following titles under his name:
– Change and Challenge (1972)
– From These Roots (1975)
– The History and Families of the Black Rock Church of the Brethren (1987)
– Brethren Heritage Along the Big Conewago, 1741-1991 (history of Mummert’s Meetinghouse or the Upper Conewago Congregation)
– 16 other smaller works dealing with church and local history and genealogy.
Pastor, writer, historian – Elmer Gleim is a busy guy. And thankfully for York County’s historical record, is remaining so.
