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I have had a lifelong love of the outdoors. As a preteen I wandered the local woods with my dog, Stormy, watching the wildlife and learning to appreciate nature. What then could be more appropriate than to study the natural sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Graduating in 1953 I was married a week later and entered the United States Air Force two months after that. Yes 1953 was quite a year, still married to the same woman by-the-way.
Fishing, hunting and photography were my passions and allowed me to explore many of the remote regions of Western Pennsylvania. A love for history was nurturing in my mind and many times when out wading a stream, or pushing through thick laurel in quest of the whitetail deer I would let my mind slip back trying to imagine what it would have been like to live there 200 years earlier. The rugged life of the pioneers fascinated me, so when an archeological dig was begun in Hanna's Town, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, I became completely immersed in 1700 history.
In 1966 I wrote and sold my first magazine story, it was on fishing the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania and the beginning of placing words on paper that has carried on to this day. Most of my articles were outdoor oriented and over the years I produced literally hundreds of them for magazines such as Pennsylvania Game News, The Pennsylvania Angler, Pennsylvania Outdoors, Country Discovery, and the list goes on and on.
It was in the 1970s that I felt a book should be written covering Hanna's Town, which had been the county seat of Westmoreland County in the 1700s and had a colorful, and exciting, history. Working on the idea periodically for the next 25 years I finally put all else aside and finished The Summer of 1763, a fictional story of pioneer life using actual events and dates to weave the story around. That was so much fun I jumped right in and wrote The Great Land Grab the following year and A Bloodstained Land the year after that. All the books follow the same pattern, real events, many times using real people, with fictional happenings to bring the history to life.
The first two books are being combined into one which I think makes an exciting and educational read (watch for publication notices), and a brand new book on the life of Reverend John Corbly in the 1700s is now available. All four books are available from Amazon or my web site, samhossler.com.
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