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
We are blessed with an abundance of gorgeous scenery in York County. It seems especially striking when you get away from the towns into some of the more remote corners. The long eastern border along the Susquehanna River affords many striking views from near Harrisburg to the Mason-Dixon Line. We
From the time the first humans walked the productive soil of what is now York County, Pa., food has been grown, preserved and happily eaten here. Here a few examples from our history: One of my recent York Sunday News columns told about York County’s very successful participation in the
My York Sunday News column last month illustrated how you often to take several sources and put them together to round out the story on a person, an event or a place that you are researching. Speaking of research, a couple occurrences this past week reminded me that you should
In a recent York Sunday News column I used Lewis Miller’s carpenter work on the 19th century York County Jail, which stood on the northeast corner of George and King streets, to illustrate that you can tie together several sources to paint a more complete picture of the past. When I
The York County History Center has a treasure trove of newspapers going back over two centuries. Most have been microfilmed, making these outstanding historical sources easily accessible. I often use them as sources for blog posts and my York Sunday News columns. (Some, but not nearly all of the
I could go on about the dozens of picturesque covered bridges that used to dot the York County countryside, but this will be my last post on them for now. I realize that they were rendered obsolete by mid-twentieth century transportation needs and were not really sustainable. It is a
As I mentioned in my recent York Sunday News column on Theodore Burr’s 1815 bridge at McCall’s Ferry, the lower part of York County did not have a lasting river bridge until the Norman Wood bridge was erected in 1968. The Harrisburg Evening News article below, dated December 8, 1933,
In 1801 famed engineer and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe was commissioned by Pennsylvania to survey the Lower Susquehanna, with an eye to navigation and canals. A few years later, in 1807, Latrobe also reported on the Susquehanna to the U.S. Congress: “Four miles below Burkhalter’s ferry, the river arrives at
The staff of the John and Kathryn Zimmerman Center of Susquehanna Heritage recently discovered a photograph of a previously unknown drawing of General Jacob Dritt (d.1817). The drawing is unsigned, but it is so similar in style to the many hundreds of original drawings done by folk artist Lewis Miller