It has been about 25 years since I first wandered through a cemetery with a marble composition notebook in hand, scanning the headstones for certain surnames to scribble down. While discovering numerous lines, thousands of names, and many perplexing and remarkable stories over the decades has been a thrill, I think only genealogists really understand the exhilaration that is the experience of following the ghosts, as it were, of one’s ancestors. To stand where they stood and experience a semblance of life as they did.

And I unexpectedly had one of those moments this June when a visit to an alpaca farm in East Greenville when my family and I found ourselves not only on old Krauss land, but in a Krauss farmhouse.

Awhile ago while scrolling through Google Maps to see where the earliest Krauss’s land on what became Kraussdale Road may have been, I noticed a pinned location: “Kraussdale Alpaca Farm.” Well, I like alpacas, and I had a newfound love of crocheting – and alpaca yarn is a dream to work with. So when we visited in June for my mom’s first mother-of-the-bride dress fitting, I reached out to the owner to arrange a visit.

Our GPS led us to the driveway of a stately old farmhouse, a two-story home likely from the nineteenth century. Its ornaments and size must have made it a mansion for its time. Maggie, the owner of the farm, greeted my parents and brother and I and introduced us to a number of the alpacas grazing in an area beside a barn which was perhaps even older than the facade of the house. We learned that Maggie grew up on “Krauss land” in a “Krauss haus” and how happy she was to purchase this Krauss property as well. She lovingly and longingly talked about the beautiful cat iron Krauss fence that ran along the road, and which has been repeatedly damaged by careless drivers failing to navigate the near hairpin turn (though, in a battle between modern car and 1800’s cast-iron fence, I’d think the fence would emerge the victor).

We ventured into the portion of the home that is the farm’s shop, replete with alpaca-themed novelties (the plush my parents got is a squishy dream), garments, alpaca wool roving, and a wall of yarn I quickly raided.

It was only in the last year I discovered that both my parents are descended from immigrant Anna Krauss (see “Everyone Marries the Schwenkfelds” on this page). And so what a treat to be able to look at my parents and say, “your ancestors build this home.”

Heading back along old Kraussdale Road’s winding turns and hills, the fields on either side remain dotted with sizable farm complexes, sprawling red barns, fields beaming green with crop, and modern equipment tending the rows. This land was first cared for by countless Indigenous people who through the mechanism of colonialism were displaced – this is something I must remember as I research and write about my ancestors who first settled in this country. When the Krauss family began farming this land I wonder if they knew that three centuries later their fields would still be feeding local families, and that modern townsfolk would speak of the Krausses with such veneration.