Above: The Musical Berger Family: Anna, Fred, Louisa and Henry York County has a rich musical background, both in spawning home-grown musicians and as a regular stop for traveling musical performers for the last hundred years or two. I just received an email from Robyn Card, who is working on her
In my recent post on Jonathan Jessop and his York Imperial apple I mentioned that his son Edward raised a large family at Springwood farm. In 1930, one of those children, Little Rock, Arkansas businessman Alfred Jessop, wrote back to York to his brother Jonathan. He recounted his memory of
We would probably be surprised at how murky city skies were a hundred or so years ago. Manufacturing was booming, and that meant a lot of smoke and steam. The York Gazette of December 31, 1867 reports on a major fire that took a while to get noticed because of
Tom Thumb ad illustration makes him look really small. I recently noted that people in York County have always seemed to turn out in droves for whatever entertainment came to town. In May 1849 the biggest little sensation to hit the circuit appeared at the York County courthouse. He was
I n 1867 the York Fair was held in October, about a month later than the current September time slot. What did those fairgoers do for fun 140 years ago? The fairgrounds, which then stretched from King Street, just east of Queen, to the Spring Garden Plank Road (Prospect Street)
A 1917 newspaper account captured some reminiscences of David Sloat, who at 90 was one of the last three Civil War veterans in Wrightsville. After the war Sloat had moved to Ohio and lived there for fifty years, but he retired back to Wrightsville. There he shared his vivid memories,
Bridges make our lives so much more convenient. We have recently been hearing about the high cost of maintaining bridges. They are, of course, much more expensive to build from scratch. Where would we be if we didn’t have the four bridges (Norman Wood in the south, two at Wrightsville
Wall Street, 1903 A colleague recently asked me where Wall Street used to be in York. It doesn’t appear on present-day maps. A search through old maps with a magnifying glass located a tiny little Wall Street in the 1903 Atlas of York published by Frederick B. Roe.
I recently recounted the story of the rumors that swept Hanover, PA of a Confederate invasion on April 22, 1861, when the Civil War was barely a week old. Click here to read about the Hanover incident told by eyewitness Henrietta Stroman Stair. Captain W. H. Jenifer, then of the
The Prince family, that is. A few days ago I wrote and that I thought there were two contemporary David Princes in York. I based that assumption on that two different women married David Prince, and that one David Prince moved to Baltimore and another taught at the York County