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
Some of us can remember when the big furniture factories in Red Lion were in full production. Local workers crafted fine furniture shipped around the country and perhaps beyond. A couple of weeks ago, while I was writing my recent York Sunday News column, I saw a news item that
York’s Bullfrog Alley (part of East King Street) had a distinct personality over the years. It was famed as the home of “gypsies” who went out traveling each summer and for basket making, some of which seem to be in same families. It was also the home of a gang
An exciting trove of art by late Yorker Ralph Eck (1930-2015) has recently been discovered. The paintings are on display at Millersville University’s Eckert Art Gallery, but only until May 11, so you will have to act quickly to see the exhibit. The gallery, in the Winter Art Center at
There are still a fair number of people around who attended the rural one-room (sometimes two-room) schools that dotted York County until the mid-twentieth century. Ask your parents or grandparents and you might get some interesting tales. (Including how they had to walk five miles through the snow, uphill both
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,
A Facebook friend asked about the history of Victor’s Italian Restaurant on Ogontz Street, knowing that the building was a former church. I looked through the York County History Center files and City Directories as well as online sources. Several newspaper articles on Victor’s in the YCHC restaurant file recapped
Is Abraham Lincoln on any of the known photos taken at Hanover Junction? Even though I have seen some pretty convincing evidence presented by other researchers that Lincoln doesn’t appear in the photos taken at Hanover Junction by the Brady photographers, I still keep hoping that some new photos or
Walking through the mezzanine gallery at York County Heritage Trust the other day, I stopped to take a new look at the cast iron lions guarding the stairs up to the second floor. I remembered some photos in the YCHT Library/Archives taken of them while they still watched over their
Dr. Florence Gipe was a very interesting woman. She was a pioneer in modern nursing education and also deeply interested in York County History and Civil War history. I only met Dr. Gipe once, even though she was a childhood friend of both my parents and my stepfather. They all