Exploring LancasterHistory with CEO Robin Sarratt

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Robin Sarratt, president and CEO of LancasterHistory, gave a tour to show the progress inside the Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy in Lancaster city on Friday, March 21, 2025. Sarratt stands in what would have been the parlor of the Stevens Hamilton Smith home and business where brick still needs to be repointed.

Aired; May 6th, 2025.

LancasterHistory is a nonprofit museum preserving the county’s heritage since 1886. We dove into Lancaster’s rich past with Robin Sarratt, President and CEO of LancasterHistory.

Reflecting on the organization’s evolution, Sarratt explained,

“For probably a hundred years, we were mostly a repository… people were dropping off their family treasures, trinkets and artifacts… that represented the community’s history.”
In 2009, a merger with the Wheatland estate—the home of President James Buchanan—prompted a rebrand to LancasterHistory and brought five local history organizations under one umbrella. “It was a good moment to have done that,” she said, “because… we also brought Lancaster’s Heritage Center Museum collection and the Quilt and Textile Museum collection into the fold.”

LancasterHistory has shifted from storage to center-stage. “These last 20 years, we’ve changed really dramatically… we started hosting a lot of educational programs, developing a roster of pretty robust exhibits,” Sarratt noted. School tours, living-history events, and story time for young children now complement rotating galleries.

One signature site is Wheatland, Buchanan’s 1840s mansion.

“You go in with 15 of your fellow guests… as though you are… visitors coming to see Mr. Buchanan or his relatives in their home,” Sarratt said. “It’s a very intimate way to interact with historic spaces.”

LancasterHistory cares for millions of items: “We have two million documents in our archives, we have 35,000 three-dimensional objects,” Sarratt shared. Highlights include a 300-year-old Lefèvre family Bible carried from Europe in 1865 and recently acquired abolitionist letters from Thaddeus Stevens urging President Lincoln to act more swiftly to end slavery. “With them comes a new story for us to learn from,” she said.

Not everyone can visit in person, so LancasterHistory offers virtual tours (“You can take a 360° tour of Wheatland…”) and online exhibits covering topics from the Underground Railroad to the county’s diverse church histories. The Museums for All programs also ensure free or low-cost admission via EBT or SNAP, making history available to all:

“I can’t stress enough how important Museums for All is…,” Sarratt said, calling it “vital” for underserved communities.