History of pretzels, aunt anne's pretzels and joanie bosserman ,smitties, the pretzel ladies and their lives.

I got curious about the history of pretzel recipes online, food recipes using pretzels as one of the ingrediants, and who came up with what , so I researched online, as far as I found apparently , joanie from smitties soft pretzels had a pretzel group at yahoo groups and she came up with 2 really neat recipes dated back in 9/5/2007 for pretzel bread stuffing and a kids pizza pretzel, at yahoo answers the recipes use the smitties pretzels, and i've tried them and they are delicious! I decided to talk to joanie so I contacted her, she is a quiet girl from dover pa, apparently she decided to delve into soft pretzels, namely smitties when she re-connected with todd smith 3rd generation son of smitties pretzels, joan had lost her 5 year old son, jeramiah rosengrant in a severe car accident in sept. 1989, the other driver, margaretha stark of thomasville, failed to yield a stop sign injuring joan and ending her sons life, as the car spun joans last move was to hit the brakes her daughter, heather  was luckily ok, as was jim. I found this so interesting as I researched aunt annes and apparently she had lost a 19 month old daughter in an farm accident -- and later revamped a pretzel recipe to sell becoming aunt annes, Joan told me she worked hard on penn dot, and did a petition in dover to put up a 4 way stop sign intersection where the accident occurred, joan had found out 8 people were killed there prior to her son and nobody did anything to stop it-- except for joan , she helped change two intersections in dover pa by her efforts-- namely davidsburg rd, and south salem church road- joan heard about a school bus getting hit one intersection away from where her accident happened and went after them to put up a signal light- and they did, plus fixing the intersection where she was hit at admire road and south salem church rd dover pa-- joan is out to save lives she said and she has!! but we will never know how many it will ever be, Joan always liked smitties pretzels she said, her and todd were classmates in school and just happened to get together with each other later on in life, "smitties has a great product, joan said and she decided to busy herself promoting it at first with her recipe ideas and next she started a simple website for the company, in the meantime also delivering to local customers, " I know how to twist and dip and bake too , she said I would bake for the stand and they would sell as fast as I baked them" she came up with the novel idea to ship the pretzels and rolls to customers across the united states and added her buy now buttons to her website, People rave about the product, and relatives would send family members the pretzels and rolls and some would visit Pa and take some home to the other states to family members to enjoy, she registered her online business back in march 2010 she later turned over the shipping division to todds daughter christine at the bakery you can now call to the bakery at 1-717-292-1193 to place your shipping order , they accept credit card now. As for hobbies joan quilts, she told me she has donated a few to charity, one was an ohio star quilt, the other a amish diamond in a square quilt, she plans to make another one she said, she has also donated alot of pretzels too...one of her favorite charities is the york rescue mission ,she likes helping out and will continue her efforts she said, : I hope the bussiness prospers as time goes on, I like to use some of money to help others in need, I was impressed by this girl, she is a model citizen, and thinks more of others, and has a giving spirit. Her website is now http://www.joanshomadejellys.webstarts.com. . author marilyn 7/2011