These are a couple of pictures of my freshly painted house. It also includes a picture of my newly redone porch. I am pleased with how nicely it turned out. The previous paint job was a little dull looking compared to this new paint. But I stayed with the same color. I love the red and cream color look.















Notice above the garage door I have a Pennsylvania Dutch "sign". It was hanging inside the garage. I had the painter hang it instead of the huge wreath that was there previously. This particular design stands for friendship. If you want to read about these signs you can link here to http://www.amishnews.com/featurearticles/Storyofhexsigns.htm.

I looked to see what actually constitutes being "Pennsylvania Dutch." I checked it out on the internet. This is what I read:

The Pennsylvania Dutch are not even Dutch at all. They are not from the country that we know today as the Netherlands. Some say that the Pennsylvania Dutch should be more properly known as Pennsylvania German. Deutsch means German and the early English in America corrupted the term Deutsch to Dutch. The term German though had a different meaning before 1800. The Germans were not members of a formal country at that time, but were a loose collection of principalities, free cities, protectorates and confederations. The country that we know today as Germany came into being in 1848 with the unification process starting around 1800. German areas before 1800 included areas that are now part of Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Russia, France and other areas as well as Germany. A more formal definition of Pennsylvnia Dutch then are those that came to America from those areas where the German language was spoken before 1800. Those that came after 1800 are usually referred to as Pennsylvania Germans or just German imigrants.

So I suppose technically our family may not be able to trace our roots back before 1800. I have not done a geneology history of Gram Helm's family (Hardy) or Grandpap Helm's family, but I suspect that they were closest to being here before 1800. I know that Grandmommy Holdren's family (Mundrick) were only first generation American, so they probably came in the late 1800's. I don't know about the rest. I will have to check it out someday. But in the meantime, I like the looks of the Pennsylvania Dutch sign.