When I was very young, I used to amuse myself with my grandparents’ parlor organ, very probably made by the Weaver Organ and Piano Company. As a teenager I took piano lessons, as my daughter did later, on a York upright piano, another Weaver product. I am working on an
It used to be common to see newspaper features repeating news tidbits of the past. Some used a specific formula, like 50 or 100 years from that date. The Hanover Evening Sun seems to have been a little more arbitrary. Their feature, “Looking back over 50 years,” wasn’t as precise.
The first reported sighting of a flying saucer was in the state of Washington in late June 1947. In less than two weeks reports were pouring in, including from our area. I looked at a sampling of local newspapers on microfilm and at newspapers.com, both accessible at the York County
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.
Prints of this illustrated map of York County were issued in 1932 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of York City Laundry and Dry Cleaners. It shows townships and some, but not all, of the present-day boroughs located in the county, as well as a close-up of downtown York. Curiously, the
I hadn’t been to the Haines Shoe House for several years until last week. My eight-year-old great-granddaughter and I were delighted with the tour (as well as the Beck’s ice cream and the home baked treats offered by the owner). It had changed hands not too long ago, and I
I don’t think that today we usually replace any major components of our automobiles unless they fail, so I was surprised by a prominent ad in the March 25, 1948 Gazette and Daily pointing out the advantages of replacing the engine in your Buick with a new one. The local
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,
Advertisements in old newspapers give us a glimpse into the lives of our ancestors. Here is a sampling from the December 21, 1824 York Recorder, on microfilm at the York County History Center: FRESH CRANBERRIES The Subscriber begs leave to inform his friends and the public generally, that he has
One thing leads to another, or, off on another tangent. A valuable reference for research on the “Pennsylvania Dutch” (Pennsylvania Germans) is the now defunct Pennsylvania Folklife magazine, published first in 1946 as The Pennsylvania Dutchman. The articles were scholarly, but popular. The founding editors were well known historians Dr.