Over the years the York County History Center Library and Archives has collected many plans for preservation of our local historical architecture and other resources. Most of them are full of good ideas on how not to lose those valuable resources. Unfortunately, many have not been implemented at all, and
In response to my recent York Sunday News column on the 1914-1915 York County campaign for woman suffrage, Brenda Neff kindly shared a photo of four of the local suffragists. It is great to put some faces on community participants. Note that the sashes closely resemble the two in the
We will mark the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution this June. Before that women and men all over the country had spent years trying to get individual states to allow women to vote. By 1914, woman suffrage was in effect in only
Suppose you were ready to spread your toast and the margarine was white instead of yellow. It is not very appealing, is it? Some of you might remember when margarine came packaged with a capsule of yellow food coloring; it was mixed in at home to make the spread look
Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss) and his wife Bess (Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner) were young circus performers in 1898. They came to York County with the Welsh Brothers circus in September of that year. The show set up at Poplar and Edgar Streets with two performances each day for several days. The
Each of our York County communities, no matter what size, seems to have its own uniquely rich history. My own families settled, some well over two hundred years ago, in the southeastern part of the county. I still have so much to learn, especially about the rest of the county.
Over the years I heard of the “Hermit of the Hellam Hills,” and came across a couple late 19th century newspaper articles that mentioned Joel Strong, the hermit. When I started digging in the files at the York County History Center and perusing newspapers.com (available to use at the YCHC
York attorney Thomas Hambly argued Prigg v. Pennsylvania before the United States Supreme Court.
On October 19, 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis’s army surrendered his army at Yorktown, Virginia. That American victory effectively ended the Revolutionary War, although it was not official until nearly two years later, when the Treaty of Paris was ratified in September 1783. Camp Security, York County’s prisoner of war
