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
A few weeks ago I posted the tale of Spoonie Gohn’s supposed encounters with Slaymaker’s ghost at Margaretta Furnace. I had initially shared that story with the attendees at the York Daily Record annual Unraveling York County History night in early December. Margaretta Furnace with the grand mansion house and
The campaign to save the historic Mifflin House, the extremely significant site in Hellam Township at the edge of Wrightsville, is moving on, but help is needed from the public. To bring you up to date, in August 2017 Hellam Township denied a demolition permit requested by the developer of
In 1826 Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) created the first real photograph known to exist today. The view from a window at Gras, France is also known as the “First Photograph,” and it is in the photography collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
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
Due to York County’s crossroads location, its residents have had access to many experiences during the past few hundred years. We were not nearly as far off “the beaten path” as we are sometimes made out to be. For instance, children in more remote areas could read about exotic animals,
Fellow blogger Scott Mingus has done extensive research on the Mifflin family of Hellam Township. He has written, both in his Cannonball blog and in his recently published book, The Ground Swallowed Them Up: Slavery and the Underground Railroad in York County, Pa., about the significant role Jonathan Mifflin, his wife Susannah
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
The 2016 edition of the Journal of York County Heritage will be officially launched on Thursday, September 15, with a reception at the York County History Center Museum, Library and Archives at 250 East Market Street in York. Doors open at 6:30, with the program beginning at 7 p.m. The
It is exciting when one piece of research ties back into a nother. I was reminded of this when looking at old and new almanacs and the listed moon signs, especially the lore of their influence on planting vegetables. I recently wrote about these almanacs, printed in York and throughout