Do you ever wish you knew what your ancestors were like? After all, they were living, breathing souls just like you and me. Most of you probably know or knew your parents and all or many of your grandparents. Some even remember a great-grandparent or so. Just multiply those family
I became interested in Meyer and other York County printers because several also printed Taufscheine, the birth and baptismal certificates that I have been researching for years. Most of them were also very interesting individuals, especially as they used their newspapers as a political platform. One good example is Solomon
Would you like to visit an active archaeology dig? It has been a few years since the last archaeological dig at Camp Security in East York, mostly because it takes time to raise funds to support a hands-on dig, but that doesn’t mean the Friends of Camp Security haven’t been
Some volunteers are still needed for the 2019 Camp Security dig, which starts in less than three weeks. No experience is necessary, but volunteers do need to fill out the Volunteer Registration Form and submit it quickly. The form is posted on the Friends of Camp Security website homepage: www.campsecurity.org.
Some of you might be lucky enough to have Pennsylvania German birth and baptismal certificates that were done for family members well over 100 years ago. Or you just might be intrigued by the art and design of these unique folk art documents and perhaps collect them. I have written
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
Eliza E. Ridgely was a beautiful young woman born into a prosperous Baltimore family. The Marquis de Lafayette was said to be charmed by her during his 1824 visit to Baltimore, and she played her harp for him when he was a dinner guest of her parents. Eliza’s letters at
Our area has a high concentration of descendants of so called “Hessians.” This general term was applied to those soldiers from German-speaking regions whose rulers hired out their regiments to fight on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War. (Germany did not become a confederated nation until 1871,
Jonathan Mifflin was also a prominent Revolutionary War patriot, even going contrary to his Quaker religion to become an officer and assistant Quartermaster General for the entire American army. He also became a friend of George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette during the war. Charles Thomson
If you are a member of the York County History Center, you have probably already received the 2017 edition of Journal of York County Heritage. As part of the YCHC publications committee and one of the editors of the journal, I am again proud of this issue, the eighth in