On May 23, as per his tradition, Leon Jim Smith of Millheim, Pa., planted a geranium at the grave of fraktur artist the Rev. Henry Young. Jim Pass of State College came along to document the event. The geranium is considered a Memorial Day flower. Smith, a retired auctioneer, sold a number of Henry Youngs fraktur in the 1970s and 80s at local estate sales. Henry Christian Andrew Harmon Young (1792-1861) is buried in Old Union Cemetery in Millheim (Centre County). Today, we recognize him as a fraktur artist, but his recorded occupations were that of schoolmaster, farmer, and organist. Born in Saxony, and immigranted in 1817, he first settled in Union County and served as a schoolmaster in Mifflinburg. A prolific fraktur artist for over 40 years, he is considered a lay minister. No reference is known of him being ordained. Practicing portraiture and using German and English, Young produced a wide variety of fraktur styles. An eight pointed red and blue star with round yellow center is one trademark. There are over 400 surviving examples of his work known today. The annual flower planting tradition was spawned roughly 35 years ago and is always done by Smith on or near Memorial Day. We held an on-site estate sale in Aaronsburg (about a mile from Millheim) sometime in the 1980s, and there were two Henry Young frakturs. At the end of the day, we were settling up the records and discovered a deficit of $20. We knew the person who owed it, and they later dropped off the money at our house. When we went to give this extra $20 to the executor of the estate, the woman said she didnt want it, and she told us to just buy a flower for the grave of Henry Young, and that is how it all started. I figured Ive made enough money selling Youngs fraktur in my career it should be an annual tradition and have told myself as long as I live or am able to I will plant a flower on Memorial Day at his grave, according to Smith. One of my favorite pieces was a drawing of a horse along the top reading, This horse is the property of Mr. Andrew Jackson Hosterman 1855. I was in the attic of a house in Aaronsburg, in the 1980s, it was a very hot summer day, I was pouring sweat, and the woman, who was quite poor, insisted there was nothing valuable up there, but I wanted to look through the boxes of old books, and I found the horse drawing in one of the books, referred Smith. Bill Koch bought it at the sale. It was not included in either of Kochs sales, the first being in 1992 through Horst, the second in 1999 through Pook & Pook. Another item I will always remember was a sewing box we sold at an estate sale in Millheim in the 1970s. The buyer was Lester Zettle, who later sold it to Roy Buck, said Smith. Sources: Papers For Birth Dayes: Guide to the Fraktur Artists and Scriveners, 3rd Edition, Volume 4., Pages 344-346, Corinne Earnest, Patricia Earnest, Russell Earnest, 2019.