Jean (Geissinger) Schneck was born in 1931 to Mennonite parents who owned an 88-acre farm in Zionsville, Pennsylvania. In many ways, Jean grew up living a 19th-century lifestyle. (Electric lines didn't reach their farm in southern Lehigh County until 1945.) This lifestyle included making apple butter in a large copper kettle in their "old kitchen," using a cast-iron cookstove set inside a hearth. In this video, Jean, age 92, describes what it was like to make a batch of apple butter in the 1940s on their farm. The Geissinger's copper kettle was sold at their household auction in 1967. In 2023, Jean's daughter, Darlene, bought it back from the person who purchased it in 1967. Jean and her sister, Grace, were reunited with the kettle after more than 50 years!
