Universal York

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1830s Archives

I noticed Prospect Hill Cemetery has been posting historical information on their Facebook page about notable people from York County’s past who are buried there.  Today’s was on Henry Lee Fisher, attorney, historian and Pennsylvania German poet.  Fisher is one of my favorites from the past, and I realized I

Many of you might know that Adams County was created from the western part of York County in 1800.  It was named for the sitting United States president at the time, John Adams. If some local state lawmakers would have had their way in the 1830s, then-president Andrew Jackson would

Some months ago I wrote about the Pennsylvania German Birth and Baptismal certificates (often known as Taufscheine or Fraktur) that were produced in the Hanover print shop of Wilhelm Daniel Lepper and Samuel Endredy Stettinius.  These two printers established Hanover’s first newspaper Die Pennsylvanische Wochenschrift, in 1797 and issued their

A friend told me about a recent article by Lower Windsor Township resident Gene Schenck in the Columbia/Hellam/Wrightsville Merchandiser. It detailed how four local men, Jim Anspach of Columbia, Gene Smeltzer of Lower Windsor Township, Bill Dehoff of Windsor and Bruce Herbst of East Prospect have been working for some

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

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.

While doing some research on Phineas Davis and his York locomotive for an upcoming column, I realized I had never posted my column from some time ago on John Elgar and his Codorus steamboat. Elgar was a member of York’s Quaker community, as was Davis, and his iron steam boat